what about the plastic animals?

The Dave Clark 5 in Harlem

The renovations to the building where the tire shop used to be at 117th and Frederick Douglass Blvd. have uncovered fragments of three old posters.  The yellow poster on the left is for a supreme court judge election in Manhattan and the Bronx.  There's not enough remaining of the blue poster to tell what it is about.

The Paramount Theatre, in the truly fabulous Art Deco Paramount Building, closed on August 4th, 1964.  Murray the K was on WINS-AM (now the all-news 1010 WINS), from 1958 until December 1964.  I couldn't find concert dates for the Dave Clark 5.  However, I found that they played the Ed Sullivan show three times in 1964 before the Paramount closed:  March 8th, March 15th and May 31st.  That would make these posters almost exactly 45 years old.  Check 'em out before they disappear for good.

Update:  A commenter on the Gothamist posting knew that the blue poster was a Johnson, Humphrey, Kennedy (Robert), campaign poster like this button.

Behning and Sons

Here's a mystery.  Somebody left part of an upright piano, the heavy part, next to a garbage can in Morningside Park over the weekend.  Who thinks "How should we get rid of our old piano?  I know, let's take it apart and bring it to a park!"

The piano was made by Behning and Sons.  A cursory search doesn't turn up much information about the company.  Henry Behning started the business in 1856 and it became Behning and Sons in 1880.  After Henry's death the name changed to the Behning Piano Co.  I can't find a date.  In 1926 the company was sold to Kohler.  That would make this piano about a hundred years old, plus or minus a couple of decades.

Zip codes were introduced in 1963, so Hans Deutsch tuned this piano at least forty-five years ago.  Mr. Deutsch lived in a handsome four-story townhouse at 38 W. 74th Street, just off Central Park.

Moldy Oscars

Even though Juno stars a Canadian actress and the Juno Awards are the Canadian equivalent of the Emmys, the movie itself wasn't nominated for a best original score or song Oscar.  The Juno soundtrack features a number of songs by Kimya Dawson, formerly of the Moldy Peaches.  I had the good fortune of seeing the Moldy Peaches way back in 2000 and managed to get an advanced copy of their only CD.

One song that is nominated for an Oscar is "Raise it Up" from August Rush, a movie I've never heard about.  The music and lyrics for the song are by Jamal Joseph, former Black Panther, current Columbia professor and someone whom I often see in the neighborhood.

Speaking of artistic endeavors, Erica used an old photo of mine to make a pretty scrapbook collage.

Princess Katie and Racer Steve

Princess Katie and Racer Steve were rocking out for the pre-school set at Union Square Saturday morning.

San Francisco Was Warmer

I'm back from a busy week in San Francisco.  It was mostly work so there aren't many pictures, but I did manage to steal away for an hour at the Farmer's Market at the Ferry Building.  In addition to button accordian player extraordinaire Renée de la Prade of Culann's Hounds, they'll be in the Bronx at the end of March, there was plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.  More on those later.

Getting to San Francisco was quite a chore.  I flew out last Wednesday, the nasty weather day. 

I'll skip the details, but suffice it to say the monorail at Newark Airport wasn't working.  That meant taking a bus on unplowed access roads from the train to the terminal.  Apparently the airport only has one bus for such emergencies.  By the time I got to the terminal I was told it would be speedier if I used curbside check-in.  The curbside line went quick, but it was too close to departure time to check bags at curbside.  The line in the terminal took a couple of hours, so I missed my flight.  The re-accomodation line took another hour but I got on the next flight.

The delay itself wouldn't have been so bad, but the way the airport handled the monorail situation and the way Continental handled their long lines is troublesome.  Weather emergencies happen a few times a year and you'd think that they would have trained for expected emergencies.  In both cases passengers weren't informed about what was happening and no employee took control of either situation.  It is scary to think about what would happen if an unexpected emergency were to arise.

Once I got on the plane all went well.  It didn't hurt that I had several hours of Jean Shepherd broadcasts on my iPod.  I've been listening to a lot of Jean Shepherd lately.  His 45 minute shows are perfect for the bus ride to work and are available as podcasts.

Laura Cantrell, Steve Malkmus, and Yo La Tengo at Battery Park

Steve Malkmus in the white shirt on stage.

In the "what was I thinking" department, I went to Battery Park yesterday for the Laura Cantrell, Steve Malkmus, and Yo La Tengo July 4th concert.  I got there just before Malkmus started playing.  There was a non-moving line that snaked through the park and the police weren't letting any more people in. 

Outside the park, the sidewalk was packed with concertgoers and non-goers.  I stood on a construction barrier and took crowd pictures for a few songs before moving across the street, where it was much less crowded.  I didn't see Zelda (sorry, don't know why that old page looks so bad), but Brooklyn Vegan, whom I do not know but who must've been standing next to me at one point, did.

Update:  Yo La Tengo will be playing their excellent soundtrack to the underwater films of Jean Painleve (i.e. playing their Sounds of the Sounds of Science album live) at MassMOCA in North Adams, Massachussetts this coming Saturday night.

Tax Music

Songs chosen by iTunes shuffle while filing Federal and State income taxes last night.  The shuffle is allegedly random but it's not.  After the songs above played I played Fight Test again.  I Wouldn't Hurt a Fly and Pilgrimage followed.  The odds of randomly choosing the same three songs (out of 4198) in the same order must be very close to zero.  Hmm, now Doing Business in Japan is playing. 

This reminds me of the time I caught two students cheating on an exam.  They sat next to each other and had the same answers for all their incorrect multiple choice answers.  Too bad for them the test was computer graded.  The grading center spewed out all sorts of statistics on each question.  With that information it was easy to calculate the probability of any two people having the same wrong answers (way less than one in a million).

I overlooked a sign yesterday:

 

The Cagle Family

I've seen this family performing in the Union Square and Times Square subway stations in the last week. I enjoyed their amateur spirit. According to Harlem Live the family has been performing together for twenty years. Someont took their picture last year in Brixton, London and in a VH1 Behind the Music lesson plan. I haven't been able to reach their website.

Uh Huh It's Her

PJ Harvey is coming to town! October 6th at the Hammerstein Ballroom. I've got my tickets. How about you?

Here's the rest of the tour dates

If thy eye offend thee...

Sometimes things turn out right. The band Pere Ubu was playing at Prospect Park Thursday night and I wanted to see them. If you haven't heard of them they are a semi-obscure, but very influential art-punk band from Cleveland that has existed in various mutations off and on for thirty years. The one constant has been their founder David Thomas. One way to think of their influence is Pere Ubu is to the Pixies as the Pixies are to any number of current bands.

But I was not having a good afternoon. I was dead tired. There was a horrendous traffic jam getting to the bridge. I stopped in a deli to get the smoked turkey and brie sandwich advertised on their specials board only to be told "we don't have any brie". I guess that's what made it special. I got home, ate half the curry chicken sandwich bought at another deli and fell asleep on the couch for 15 minutes. I was not in the mood to go to Brooklyn, but decided to check the schedule to see when the show started.

What do I see? A picture of Ray Milland in X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, a classic Roger Corman film that I haven't seen in years. Pere Ubu will be playing along with the movie. Hmmm, a band from Cleveland whose music often has science fiction overtones playing along with a sci-fi classic? Having lived in Ohio and being a fan of old horror movies, I suspect this can only mean good things are about to happen.

Minutes later I'm on the 3 train to Grand Army Plaza.

I get to the bandshell just as the opening act finishes. I find a semi-decent seat. After the huge screen is set up David Thomas comes out and introduces the band because "after an hour-and-a-half movie I'll have to leave to take a pee." He pauses and says "This is dedicated to 'Ghoulardi' Ernie Anderson." and mentions something about Anderson's son.

My suspicions are correct! Back in the sixties Anderson played an anarchic horror movie host named Ghoulardi on WJW TV in Cleveland (great Fangoria magazine profile of Ghoulardi written by Michael Weldon, another Cleveland native and publisher of Psychotronic Video). Ghoulardi would interject himself into the movie, blow things up with firecrackers, and played records over the movie. The band was going to play the role of what must have been one of their childhood heroes.

They played off the movie almost perfectly. They played over the movie, under the movie, sound clips from other movies ("Calling Dr. Howard. Calling Dr. Fine."), and interjected new dialogue into scenes. It wasn't the concert I was expecting. It was something rarer and more than this sleepy guy could have hoped for.