Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

I lolled around in bed this morning until 11, alternately reading a novel and cruising the morning papers on my laptop.  I used a long-overdue haircut appointment as a catalyst to get out of the house for most of the afternoon.

After my haircut, I walked to a cafe, bought my second espresso of the day and settled in with my book again, determined to get the first 100 (of its 400+) pages read, just to establish a beachhead.  The novel is The Virgin In The Garden by A. S. Byatt, and it’s this fortnight’s book club selection.  It’s dense with meticulous description and deliberate pacing, much in the mode of Iris Murdoch, whom Byatt admires.  It lacks the romance and interpersonal sizzle of the more accessible and popular Possession, but I’m drawn to its intricacies.  I’m also seeing a little hint of Gravity’s Rainbow in its delving into parapsychology and mathematical puzzling, but that may prove to be a mistake as I advance.

Mission accomplished, I set out for a little stroll around the ‘hood.  Things are blooming an blossoming all over, and I walked through this metaphorical tunnel between winter and spring (Click photos to enlarge):

I passed an apartment window that had an interesting table decoration. When life deals you lemons…

When I saw the license plate bracket on this car, I knew I’d find some piece of Washington State Cougar insignia elsewhere on the car:

Tulips are coming into their own, a little bit late, here in western Washington:

More culcha tonight - we’re off to the Intiman Theatre to see a stage adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. After today’s stew of philosophical sturm and drang, I’ll be parsing tomorrow’s Sunday comics for signs of humanistic nihilism vs. moral values that can only come of religious faith. Watch out, Doonesbury!

I only made one New Year’s resolution this year, thought it’d give me a better shot at keeping it, and that was to write a blog entry every day.  I’m beginning to think I suck at New Year’s resolutions.

I’ve been pecking away at E. Annie Proulx’s collection of Wyoming short stories, Close Range, and finally finished it over the weekend.  The last story in this collection is Brokeback Mountain, from which the film was made.  I don’t have much basis for determining whether her characters in these stories ring true or if they tend toward caricature.  I haven’t spent that much time hanging out in ranchland cafes.  In some cases, I think she intended to caricature; in others, including Brokeback, they’re more carefully crafted and nuanced.  She keeps a chilly distance from virtually all her characters.  She’s not their buddy, and I remarked at one point that I didn’t think any of her characters got out of her stories alive.

I do have enough visual knowledge of the West to know that she’s got a wonderful talent for describing the landscape:

 You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country–indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky–provokes a spiritual shudder.

I’ve been there, and she takes me vividly back.  I also liked this description of a sunrise up on Brokeback:

Dawn came glassy orange, stained from below by a gelatinous band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mountain paled slowly until it was the same color as the smoke from Ennis’s breakfast fire.  The cold air sweetened, banded pebbles and crumbs of soil cast sudden pencil-long shadows and the rearing lodgepole pines below them massed in slabs of somber malachite.

She may not be sympathetic to her characters, but she’s clearly taken with the country.  I see she’s published two further collections of Wyoming stories, and I’ll have to put them in the queue.  That one that already stretches to the time when I’ll be too blind and addled to read them.

I saw the very tail end of the Brokeback Mountain film in my hotel room last month, and really want to see the whole thing now that I’m finished with the story.  Also intriguing: Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) was involved in the screenplay.

We’re off to a Halloween party - I have to leave a 3-3 Penn State-Ohio State game at halftime (click to enlarge if you can stomach it)

I thought I had things sealed up pretty well, but summer’s leaking away through fissures I never knew existed. I’m spending another precious week of it in Milwaukee, where I’m watching helplessly as the days noticeably shorten.

Last week in Seattle, we got out into the ‘hood for some quintessential summer walks. One night, we walked down to Greenlake and, on our way back, turned a corner and found a Night Out Against Crime block party in progress. Now, we’d had our own Night Out the week before, when the rest of the country had theirs. We asked a woman how they managed to stage their event a week or so later, and she said, “bad planning”.

Well, it might have been late, but it seemed to have been impeccably planned. There was, to our delight, a band, Six of One, playing some vintage rock on a parking strip, while kids rode trikes and skateboards and harassed each other with light sabers.

I had the S3 IS along, which takes pretty good video with stereo pickup. Here’s a rendition of the Allman Brothers’ tune One Way Out, with a bunch of cute kid-action shots:

This one is Del Shannon’s My Little Runaway.  At the beginning, you can hear me and Mrs. Perils guessing cluelessly at both the artist and the song.  Mrs. Perils, however, could probably get a degree in 60s musicology.  She partially saves her reputation by nailing the song title before the first word is sung, but we both strike out on the artist - we’re sure it’s The Ventures.  Some nice vocal cameos from Mrs. Perils here:

And this last number is CSN&Y’s Long Time Gone, with some delicious guitar work and, again, (possibly reluctant) vocal cameos from Mrs. Perils.  I think they’re darling:

We’re glad we discovered this little gathering, and we’ll look for the band whenever they’re giggin’.

We had a delightful time last night re-acquainting with Rockin’ Teenage Combo.  The venue, a little cafe in Ballard, was cozy and intimate, perfect for the acoustic set.  I was able to make some video - here’s a Spanish-sounding number that begins with a really whacky solo on the string bass, then grooves into a mesmerizing piano solo:

The band played tirelessly in the late 90s/early 2000s up and down the west coast, but it’s a hard life living out of a van and living on cover charges, and Dara finally moved back to the Tri-cities to help her mom run a restaurant, and to start a family.  PK and Olli continue to play in the area pretty frequently, and once every year or so, Dara comes to town and they put on a show.

I’ll add another video to this after my software finishes cooking it down.

(Later that same evening) Here’s an old number of theirs.  There’s a bitchin’ bass solo at about the 4:40 mark.  I apologize for the Tourette’s cinematography on these.  I was multitasking, trying to manage noshing plates, my beverage, the camera on an unreliable tripod, my beverage, actually concentrating on the music and, last but not least, my beverage:

Meanwhile, my brother in Atlanta is sending me photo and video cell phone messages from an REM concert.  There’s quite a contrast in the aural experience.  I just received a video of Losing My Religion, with my bro’s voiceover crooning, “That’s me in the spotlight, losing my erection!”  No detectable backup harmony from my SIL.

Seems like we’re on a cultural roll here.  Tonight, we’re off to the Ballard Jamhouse to hear a reunion engagement of a groove jazz trio that was our house band in the late 90s/early 2000s.  The group is called the Rockin’ Teenage Combo, comprised of Dara Quinn on keys, Paul Kemmish (PK) on upright and electric bass and Olli Klomp on drums.  We hired them to play for both of our 50th birthday parties, gigs that, by their mere definition, degraded their image.

I posted about them previously here, which includes some audio clips:

I’m so psyched to be hearing them again.  They’re playing the gig at the Jamhouse at 9, then playing an extended set in a loft in the SODO district.  The loft is where we held Mrs. Perils’ 50th birthday party, but I think there’s not much chance of us making the Loft scene tonight, as the gig starts at 2 am.  We’ve been to the Loft a couple of other times in the early 2000s (one time exiting just as rosy-fingered dawn revealed herself to the city), but it’s pushing it these days to get Mrs. Perils out past 9:30.

I’ll try to record some clips.

On Wednesday, we stepped out after dinner to hear a jazz performance at the Good Shepherd Center a couple blocks from the house. I’d been tipped off about the performance because I’m on an email list from a bass player that has been one of our favorite musicians over the past decade. His name is Paul Kemmish, but most often he goes by “PK”. He plays both upright string bass and electric bass guitar.

We had never heard of the trio he was performing with Wednesday and didn’t know what to expect, but no matter what incarnation we’ve heard him in, we’ve seldom been disappointed.

The Good Shepherd Center and the adjacent property is a former nunnery and home for “wayward girls” that the Catholic Church sold to the city back in the 70s. It’s a huge hulk of a building that now houses a senior center, a private elementary school and various headquarters for non-profit organizations. As often as I’ve been in and around the building, I’ve never been to the upper floors.

This performance, then introduced me to a chapel space that I’d never known about, located on the fourth floor of the building. It’s not that often that we’re seated concert-style for a PK performance - it’s most often in a bar or a nightclub-style music venue.

The music this trio played was mostly improvisational, although it seemed “tight” in the sense that they knew where they were headed and were very attentive to each other. It was interesting to see PK playing outside his more familiar funk and groove riffs. The pickup on the video below is not the best, but you can see how hard the guy works and pick up a few of his riffs:

We latched onto PK back in 1998 0r 99 when he was part of a groove jazz trio called Rockin’ Teenage Combo. I had just returned from a business trip and we were hosting a young co-worker who wanted to visit Seattle for the weekend, and Mrs. Perils had read an interesting review of RTC. So up to Pike Street we went. By the time they had played 5 bars, I was hanging over the rail in rapt attention. They were a trio of PK on bass, a woman named Dara Quinn on keys and several different drummers. They played a driving, yet intricate acid-funk-jazz that you could either stand and drink in or boogie down to. Dara was a gifted keyboard player who was just as comfortable with a baby grand as she was with a Roland and a synth.

We stalked them (and a couple of other bands) around town after that, and they sort of became our house band. We hired them to play for both of our 50th birthday parties. Mrs. Perils’ was really cool, held in a loft in a warehouse south of downtown. RTC’s drummer that night was Jason McGerr, now the drummer for Seattle band Death Cab for Cutie.

Here’s a podcast of a few selections that I really like. The first is sort of breezy and poppy, and you can feel PK providing the solid foundation. In the second number, PK is playing bass guitar and Dara is playing her Roland electric keys. The other numbers are there if you like it and want a soundtrack for awhile.

RTC broke up a few years ago. I think you might still be able to purchase their cd’s here.  I’m still going to make a podcast some day of bands that we’ve killed with our attention.