Roofscape Garden Journal: Boston

Showing posts with label Boston. Show all posts

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Flooded and Muddy

Roofscape's garden in Boston's Fenway has been flooded since Hurricane Irene struck coastal New England a glancing blow in late August.

... Work in progress.

The Fenway - by Jonathan Richman

The Fenway - by Jonathan Richman

Now I was born by the Fenway,
in Beth Israel Hospital.
Could that help to explain why I love the Fenway so well.
Nowhere do I feel more at home, it seems,
Then on the Fenway, where I dreamed my dreams.

Well I was small, they took us to old Mechanics Hall.
We got to see the Mighty Ted Williams,
Put one over the right field wall.
All that nostalgia comes out every day, you see,
On the Fenway where I've dreamed dreams.

Sometimes it rains, and then it is just damp and cold.
Sometimes I've roamed, its little paths when I've felt old.
Now smell the air, and you'll smell exhaust fumes everywhere.
Cause the place is just too narrow not to be bothered by them there.

But there's silence to the place when you stand there in the sun.
And there's an echo from an era that's already past and gone.
And there is silence in the Gardener Museum.
Where's that?
It's on the Fenway where I've dreamed my dreams.

Well after all.
Clap your hands.

And there's a silence to that place as you stand there in the sun,
and there's also this haunting silent sorrow,
Cause the glory days have gone.
And there is silence in the Gardener Museum.
Where's that?
Well, it's on the Fenway, as you know, where I've dreamed my dreams.
Boston's Fenway, where I've dreamed my dreams.

NOTE ... I love this song and it's very meaningful to me. But I'm pretty sure these aren't the real lyrics, as online lyrics often aren't, due to - well, I don't know what. I'll find the tune and transcribe the actual words.

Image ... Looking up the Muddy River running through the Fenway.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

November 8, 2011

Image ... Footbridge in the Fall. Esplanade, Boston.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

May 29, 2010

Met two prospective clients in the South End this morning then spent the day in the garden. Did nothing, read, resting up for tomorrow's move. We're decamping to deeper Dot. Read the Exile article in Rollling Stone (the current New Yorker looking like a snooze fest). Nothing I didn't know or hadn't seen. Watered the plants.

Weather
3:00-71°. H-81°. L-56°. Sky-95% clouds. W-?. RH-moderate.

Got caught in thundershowers biking back home. I thought things were looking slightly ominous 10 minutes before the heavens opened up I was listening to WBZ and they were reporting t-storms just moving into the Berkshires with nothing arriving here until evening. Soaked! Stopped at Moe's BBQ for collards and cornbread.

Image ... Fenway Park at sunset.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

May 6, 2010

A sultry day, clouding with a fitful southwest wind promising afternoon thunderstorms. Got the first boxes for moving at the end of the month to the other side of Dorchester, Fields Corner.

Working on the May 1 magazine cover, the third part of N-E-W-S @ Roofscape, featuring Roofscape Journal - which you're now reading. Journal, our blog hosted by Google, is the most dynamic part of the magazine and one of the most fun to produce. It is also by far the easiest since it has a predetermined, if limited, structure which takes care of all the housekeeping chores for you unlike the magazine which is created by hand from scratch and has a far more complicated structure. Journal changes at least once a day, there is always a daily entry featuring an interesting new photograph, usually accompanied by the story and thoughts of our day. I'm trying to figure out how to give it a more prominent place in the magazine.

Programmed the first Noontime Dance Workout.

Is Keith Richards the world's greatest musician? The question is stupid, of course, like all other talk of the best, greatest, biggest and baddest. On the other hand, however, this is Keith, a sort of singularity at the event horizon of a black hole, black as night. And he is getting on, now amazingly at age 67, so this is well worth asking. Before the famous death head ring kicks in and calls him home.

Image ... View from the statehouse to the harbor. Boston, Mass.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Bongo in Squaresville . 11 | Boston Jazz Week, April 23 - May 2, 2010: Made & played in Boston.

Bongo in Squaresville is a weekly webcast radio show devoted to the jazz music, of every style and genre, that's gone down in Boston through the last 10 or so decades. Join us at Radio Roofscape every Wednesday night. The music starts at 9:00 and there's never a cover charge or drink minimum.

Ray Santisi w/ Debby Larkin - Old Devil Moon (Been there, done that)
Gilad Barkan Band w/ Melissa Aldana - Fe
Bo Winiker & New Philharmonia Orchestra - In a Sentimental Mood
Blaque Lyte - Breakout
Al Vega - 88 Over 88 (birthday jam at Scullers)
Yoko Miwa Trio - Untitled original composition (live at WGBH FM, Boston)
Either/Orchestra w/ Mahoud Ahmed - Bemen Sebab Letlash
Rajdulari - Me and You
The Workingman''s Jazz Band - When the Saints Go Marching in Concord
Hal McIntyre & His Orchestra - Sentimental Journey
Sergio Salvatore & Antonio J. - Point of Presence 09
Wendee Glick - Baby, I'm Fine
Dominique Eade - Have I Stayed Away Too Long?
Ran Blake - Lost Highway
Ro Sham Beaux - Can't, Can't, Can't, Can't, Won't
Patrick Kunka - Live at the Lemon Tree, Aberdeen

Image ... Bongo in Squaresville. The Starlight Room, Boston.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Bongo in Squaresville . 9

Bongo in Squaresville is a weekly webcast radio show devoted to the jazz music, of every style and genre, that's gone down in Boston through the last 10 or so decades. Join us at Radio Roofscape every Wednesday night. The music starts at 9:00 and there's never a cover charge or drink minimum.

Joe Lovano & Gunther Schuller - Angel Eyes
Roy Haynes - Afro Blue
Rebecca Parris - That Old Black Magic
Rebecca Parris - All of You
Rebecca Parris - I Wish I Knew
Donal Fox & David Murray - Ugly Beauty
Duke Ellington featuring Paul Gonsalves - Blow by Blow
Esperanza Spaulding - Live at City Hall Park, NYC (part 2)
George Russell Sextet - Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature
George Garzone, Brian Blade, Christian McBride - Chasin' the Trane
Dave McKenna - Some Other Time / A Time for Love
Serge Chaloff Sextet - Bob the Robin
Gary Burton Quartet featuring Pat Metheney - Falling Grace
Ruby Braff Trio - Mean to Me
Terri Lyne Carrington - Virtual Hornets

Image ... Rush Hour. Cover art, album by Joe Lovano & Gunther Schuller.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

April 1. 2010

Uploaded new cover, the April Fools image with the domino that scared Christopher Walken, at least when worn by Meg. Not to say that Meg's scary. Although CW sure seems so.

Programmed a cool Bongo set last night, Sort of Blue, delving into the blues side of Boston jazz. This is a set theme that I'll redo again and again. Johnny Hodges, Serge Chaloff, Charlie Mariano, Dave McKenna and Phil Woods - I mean, what's not to like? Listening to the whole set again, which I seldom, no make that never, do.

Duke's Blues is nuts, easily swinging out of the gate harder than anything I've ever heard. Compare this to the next cut. TLC introduces St. Louis Blues with a drum solo and the band takes like forever to get down to business. Which is cool, I guess. A little musical journey through the tune. Herbie Hancock on piano, a pupil of Madam Chaloff, I believe, Serge's mother and a famed Boston teacher of many greats. Too much fancy soloing in modern music, showboating, rather than intricate ensemble interplay. Legacy of the beboppers? And when did a Jew's harp (which takes out the tune) become a jazz instrument? Too cute by ten octaves.

Biking downtown this PM for an appointment. I'll stop by the garden, but I'm fearing the worst. Probably won't even be able to get in the gate after all the flooding from 13 inches of rain in the past month (a new soggy record). Taking pictures.

Image ... Stork Club. The Starlight Room, Boston.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Bongo in Squaresville . 7 | Sort of Blue

Johnny Hodges - Duke's Blues, 1952
Terri Lyne Carrongton, Herbie Hancock - St. Louis Blues
Phil Woods, Dizzy Gillespie - Goodbye Mr. Evans
Donal Fox - In rehearsal
Rebecca Parris - That Old Black Magic
Rebecca Parriis - All of You
Charlie Mariano - Django
Dave McKenna - Serenade in Blue
Serge Chaloff - Stairway to the Stars
Herb Pomeroy, Donna Byrne - Ill Wind

Image ... Bongo in Squaresville.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Bongo in Squaresville . 5

Charles Walker, age 87, saw Sammy Davis, Jr. at the Hi-Hat, once on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Columbus. “You had to have money to go there,” he says of the club, which had a restaurant and lounge downstairs, while the music was upstairs.

The Hi-Hat was the first jazz club in the South End. It was established after World War II, when big bands had gone out and performers such as drummer Buddy Rich, Count Basie and Charlie Mingus were traveling with small combos.

“The Hi-Hat sort of became a symbol of jazz in Boston. It was popular; it inspired other young guys to open clubs,” says Ray Barron, who used to book the acts for the club. He started the popular Sunday jam sessions at the Hi-Hat.

Charles Walker and Ray Barron quoted in South End Jazz: An invisible tradition, by Drake Lucas.

The Hi-Hat was an example of a larger club where the bands, waiters and waitresses were black, but the audience was white. People would come from all over town. When I got out of the army in 1946 I went down there to hear Count Basie.

Thomas O’ Connor, Boston historian and Boston College Professor

Sunday afternoon jam sessions were a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Only the squares were home. No matter if it was summer, fall, winter, or spring, the Sunday afternoon jam sessions at the Hi-Hat was where you belonged if you were hip.

Ray Barron, Pick Up the Beat and Swing

Image ... Mural at the site of the old Hi-Hat CLub. Harriet Tubman House, Boston.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Quiet Desperation . 2

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Bongo in Squaresville . 4

Friday, March 5, 2010

March 5, 2010

Worked in Brookline all day for a painter with a studio in the South End. Coolidge Corner has everything, and lots of it. Whatever you could possibly want is on sale there. What doesn't it have? Nothing. Went into the craziest tobacconists I've ever seen. And they had everything, all in one cramped, claustrophobic mon and pop hole in the wall, or perhaps just pop, with his hundreds of pipes arranged in cases like rare museum pieces.

Stopped for coffee and later had lunch at Panera Bread. Good onion soup, and I usually hate everyone's soups. Not a traditional French presentation, however - a sprinkling of grated cheese and a few repurposed salad croutons which didn't really fit, with a section of baguette on the side. Potato chips or an apple as an alternative. Go figure.

I do like the ambience of the place however, and the ambience of almost all restaurants is another thing I hate about them, bad or mediocre food being first of course. A big armchair in front of a (realistic) flickering log gas fire, with WiFi, on a chilly winter's day. You got me. Qualty chains can sometimes get things really right. But the other candidates currently escape me.

Renee's coming to dinner tonight. Our former house mate who we haven't seen in awhile.

The Boston Massacre [March 5, 1770, 240 years ago] is one of most important events that turned colonial sentiment against King George III and British acts and taxes. Each of these events followed a pattern of Britain asserting its control, and the colonists chafing under the increased regulation. Events such as the Tea Act and the ensuing Boston Tea Party were further examples of the crumbling relationship between Britain and the colonies. While it took five years from the Massacre to outright revolution, it foreshadowed the violent rebellion to come. It also demonstrated how British authority galvanized colonial opposition and protest. ... Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Image ... The Bloody Massacre. Paul Revere engraving.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Bongo in Squaresville . 3

Bongo in Squaresville is a weekly webcast radio show devoted to the jazz music, of every style and genre, that's gone down here in Boston through the last 10 or so decades. Join us at Radio Roofscape every Wednesday night, the music starts at 9:00 and there's never a cover or drink minimum.

Check out Roofscape Journal too. Each week we'll be looking at a different aspect of the Boston jazz scene down through the years to today - digging the music, meeting the musicians, hanging out with the fans, making recording sessions and visiting the clubs. To start off, we're going to look at the scene in the 40's and 50's when Boston was one of the great jazz mecccas.

Here's the playlist for Wednesday, March 3, 2010, then Tal Farr takes us to the Sunday afternoon jam session at Wally's, the last of the classic Boston clubs ...

Duke Ellington / Johnny Hodges - Going Up
Billie Holiday - I Cried for You
Dreaming of Your Love - Tony Williams
Charlie Mariano & KCP4 - Live TFF Rudolstadt 2007
Professor Longhair - Go to the Mardi Gras
Dave McKenna - Nobody Else But Me / I'm Old Fashioned
Leon Collins - Flight of the Bumble Bee
Kid Koala - Basin Street Blues
Serge Chaloff Sextet - What's New
New Black Eagle Jazz Band - Perdido Street Blues
Louis Armstrong - Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans

Wailin' at Wally's ...

Local jazz joints like Wally's are curiously rare in Boston, home of the Berklee College of Music and the Boston and New England Conservatories, each one of them world premier schools for jazz training. But the city hosts dozens of other schools and universities as well and the kids there, like kids everywhere, are rockers. Boston is a big rock and roll town, home of some of the biggest bands of all time - the band Boston, of course, the Cars, the Pixies, New Edition, the J. Geils Band and a million others you've never heard of praticing in chilly warehouses and playing in sweaty clubs of all sizes.

Wally's lives in a time warp. Back in the day when Wally's was founded, by Joseph L. 'Wally' Walcott on January 1, 1947, Boston was a jazz-mad town. Throughout the forties and fifties the intersection of Massachusetts and Columbus Avenues was a mecca for jazz lovers with famous nightclubs like the High Hat, Savoy Cafe, Chicken Lane, the Wig Wam, Big M - and Wally's Paradise, across the street from its current loaction at 427 Massachusetts Avenue. All the hottest bands of the day played these clubs.

Then one day it was all over. My former neighbor, singer Charlotte Bartley explained the end of the era this way:

"The Weekend of a Private Secretary', my first big label solo record was about to be released in 1964. RCA had hooked me up with first class producers, songwriters, arrangers and jazz musicains, including Tito Puente's band. It was what today would be called a concept album, maybe one of the first ones in jazz. Private Secretary follws a young gal's hinjinks around Havana where she's run off on a fling for a few days with her (maybe married) boss. It was hot and naughty and the company was expecting a huge hit."

"Then the Beatles arrived in America [2/9/64 was the first Ed Sullivan show, watched by half of America - ed.] and it was all over, RCA abandoned the album. My career ended overnight. I was finished - and many other big and small band jazz musicians along with me."

Wally's survived the demise of jazz and the big bands as America's popular music through stubborn persistance and a strategy of billing less expensive local musicians, but still stellar talents, who mostly didn't have the big names and big traveling and touring expenses, but walked a few blocks with their axes from their day gigs teaching or studying at Berklee or one of the conservatories. Wally's has provided a stage for the development of countless musicians, many now famous names, and continues to do so - 365 days a year, as the sign says, with never a cover charge.

My favorite time to visit Wally's is for the weekly Sunday jam sessions between 4:00 and 7:00. There you'll see and hear a succession of the baddest cats from around the world crowding the postage stamp size stage making all kinds of music with some competitive cutting and carving contests bubbling up occasionally. The other days of the week are each devoted to a different jazz genre and the bands play from 9:00 to 12:00.

The room is small, intimate and the pure, unamplified sound is superb and envelopes you. It's the way music was meant to be heard and so seldom is these days, so it's a special treat. A long bar runs along one side of the club and tables down the other with the small stage at the back of the club. Drinks are reasonably priced and they serve a simple menu. Photos of the jazz greats who've gigged here crowd the walls. The atmosphere is very low key, friendly and often elbow-to-elbow, so you'll inevitably strike up conversations with your fellow listeners or the musicians between the sets.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Allan Rohan Crite | Streetscape . 1

Allan Rohan Crite's townhouse at 410 Columbus Avenue in Boston has been boarded up and appeared abandoned ever since I can remember. But a few weeks ago scaffolding, a demolition chute, dumpster and building permits suddenly appeared. The artists's former digs, studio and gallery are being renovated to the standards of the million dollar South End. Now, before the paint dries, might be a good time to take a fresh look at this painter who so lovingly portrayed the black community.

I've only done one piece of work in my whole life and I am still at it.

I wanted to paint people of color as normal humans.

I tell the story of man through the black figure.

Image ... Marble Players. Allan Rohan Crite, 1938.

February 2, 2010

Programmed a jazz, hip-hop, funk set. The intersection of these three, along with rap and spoken word, fascinates me. Why isn't this the current popular music? But it may be the future of music.

Gang Starr - Jazz Thing
Parliament - Color Me Funky
Jazz - Mystikal
Digable Planets - Cool Like That
Miles Davis - On the Corner
Maceo Parker - Pass the Peas
Salvador Santana - Keyboard City

Pete and I worked on Beacon Hill.

Image ... Fenway Park infield, Boston.

Monday, February 1, 2010

February 1, 2010

This photograph is composed of many triangles - arrows, spears and convergences. It was taken from inside the Copps Hill Burying Ground, in the North End, looking down onto Snowhill Street running in the foreground.

A friend of mine, Al Petrucelli, said he used roller skate down Snowhill and stop his imminent demise by grabbing onto and swinging around the sign post at the apex of the triangular front yard of the peaked little witch's house.

Peter and I spent the day doing a project on Beacon Hill. Cold bike rides there and back again. It's cool that we get our fitness training in the course of getting paid rather than paying a gym to ride a bike in front of a TV screen. With people who, at a guess, are in front of screens all day.

Image ... Snowhill Street, Boston, from the Copps Hill Burying Ground.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Dr. King in Boston | Notebook . 1

We're going to try an experiment and publish our writer's notebooks for their works in progress. If they want to, that is. I'll lead off with the notes for Dr. King in Boston. Please feel free to comment and offer corrections, criticism or useful information. -- Steve.

- Shopper's World opens in Waltham. One of the first suburban shopping malls in the US.
- October 24 – U.S. President Harry Truman declares an official end to war with Germany.
- Nuclear testing begins in Nevada and the Marshall Islands.
- The first military exercises for nuclear war, with infantry troops included, are held in the Nevada desert.
- First nucleaur power plant.
- Rosenbergs tried and executed.
- The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger published.
- The movie adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire premieres.
- Other movies ... An American in Paris, The African Queen.
- Ninth Street Show.
- Chinese invade Tibet.
- The transistor, the fundamental building block of all electronic devices, introduced bt Bells Labs.
- The King and I opens on Broadway.
- In Joplin, Missouri, the George Washington Carver National Monument becomes the first United States National Monument to honor an African American.
- Oral contraceptives developed.
- October 20 – The Johnny Bright Incident occurs in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
- Marshall Plan expires.
- September 8: * Treaty of San Francisco: In San Francisco, California, 48 nations sign a peace treaty with Japan to formally end the Pacific War. * Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, which allows United States Armed Forces being stationed in Japan after the occupation of Japan, is signed by Japan and the United States.

From a summary of the country at the time, we go to a snapshot of Boston at that time.

Image ... Geese flying over the Fenway, Boston.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

January 29, 2010

Biked to Coolidge Corner, Brookline yesterday - from Uphams Corner, Dorchester. Nearly died. Looked over a project then went to this place to warm up with some tea. The place was freezing, the tea got cold in two seconds. I didn't get warm, so when we left I was chilled and shivering. I knew I wouldn't make it home. I'd have to stop somewhere warm. So by chilly circumstance I got to do something I've wanted to for years. Eat at the Busy Bee and chat up the waitresses about the Winter Hill Gang (Whitey Bulger's crew).

Sat in the book furthest back, as far away from the door as possible, next to the warmth of the kitchen. The waitress let me because the place wasn't busy. Ordered spaghetti and meatballs. Found out they obviously didn't eat here for the food.

So I was wondering - where did they sit? They were gangsters. Creatures of habit. Probably always sat in the same spot and had their table. Thought to myself, right here, down back, out of the middle of things, keep eyes on the whole place.

So when I was done, having hardly touched the horrid strings, asked the waitress, "This is where the Winter Hill Gang used to hang out isn't it?" She affirmed and I asked, "Where did they sit?" She said that was before her time but called over a senior staffer and asked her.

"Always right up front. First two booths," she said. Of course. Stupid me, although I got the always part right. They were gangsters. To watch the door and get out fast if need be.

Waitress #1 filled me in on the story she'd heard. The FBI bugged the napkin dispensers at those two tables to record the gang's Busy Bee business meetings. And no one ever knew, not even the owner (she said gesturing to the guy in a Busy Bee cap sitting at the counter watching the lottery on TV) until the whole Bulger story came spilling out when Whitey skipped. "He's dead," she said. And waitresses often know whatever needs to be known.

On the way home stopped by the garden. No criminal activity. Everything intact and in place but for a few things blown around a bit. Brought back a book and some packets of seeds to start. Coming wasn't as bad as going, but it wasn't easy. Walked parts of the way in scattered snow showers.

Driveway Shrine. Dorchester, Mass.

Friday, January 22, 2010

30 Rock Boston | Rooftop Movie Night . 3

The always unfunny NYC-based 30 Rock TV show visits Boston on a clueless class trip with totally humorless results. Or something.