Bostworld

Over the years, my brother Damon has left a long list of projects behind him — many completed, some not so much. Sometimes, the strain of trying to hold all the pieces together is just too great to sustain for any length of time. People lose focus of his quixotic vision, or he gets fed up with cajoling them into following his lead. Sometimes, there are feuds. It’s always gratifying, though, when you see people committed enough to see it through to the end, especially when you can’t pay them.

I don’t know if all the players in these clips remain in Damon’s good graces or not, but he managed to coax terrific performances from all of them. Michael Block’s droll commentary in “The American Eating Show,” is charming to the extreme, but I confess I have no idea what’s going on with the hallucinatory visual effects Damon has added. The two gentlemen in “About Five Minutes” do an acceptable job with Damon’s convoluted script, though they sound like they could have used more rehearsal time. Regardless, if nothing else, this piece succeeds in making my wife very nervous.

My brother has created a lot of music in his life. He started and disbanded more groups than I’ll ever be able to remember. He’s even produced music for the City of Tucson as well as a couple of churches. Just this last weekend, he joined the Unitarian Church Choir for a performance of a couple of his pieces at a service commemorating the installation of their new minister. And while everyone was very proud of him (especially his parents), in my heart, it will never supplant “About Five Minutes.”



Back the late sixties, any time you’d see the likes of a Fonda, Nicholson, Sutherland or Redford up on the screen, chances are you’d also be hearing such “exciting” new artists as the Association, the Sandpipers, Simon & Garfunkel or B.J. Thomas on the accompanying soundtrack. This no doubt helped fuel interest in other members of the “now generation,” such as Neil Diamond, Glen Campbell, Three Dog Night or Blood Sweat & Tears. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that a whole generation was first exposed to the “now sound” at the movies.

Albums like arranger Joe Scott’s “”Motion Pictures: The NOW Generation” also brought added grease to the wheels, helping to point Middle America down unfamiliar roads and smoothing the path at the same time. Appropriately lush and stately-of-pace, with just a touch of electric grit, Joe’s album offers listener a nice pat on the back for being so musically adventurous. Which is to say, the whole thing goes down like the average late-sixties nightly network news broadcast theme.

The album kicks off with a glossy reading of The Band’s “The Weight,” and includes driving, uptempo detective-show takes on “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” and “Mrs. Robinson. The rest of the album is filled with alternately shimmering and brooding big orchestra arrangements of such “now” filler as “Midnight Cowboy,” “Goodbye Columbus” and “Come Saturday Morning.” My personal favorite track is a version of “Born To Be Wild” that’s just dying to be carved up into dope samples.

I don’t know much about this album or Joe Scott. The internet has not been much help either, telling me only that the album can be purchased for collectors prices and that the name “Joe Scott” is quite common. Fair enough. I can’t do anything about the latter, but as to the former, I might be able to save you 35 bucks. That is, provided you don’t mind that my rip is from a non-shrink-wrapped copy.


DOWNLOAD

I actually worked at the Luhrs Building on Central and Jefferson several years ago. During the lowest point of my last bout with unemployment, I spent a couple of weeks at ten dollars an hour cleaning out the office of a guy who worked behind the main building in the Annex. In addition to my hourly rate, I also got a ladder and a carpenter’s level in a swell case, as well as a handful of empty jewel cases. I also got a tour of a piece of Phoenix history that up until then, I’d never really explored.

Erected the 1920s, the Luhrs Office Buidling and Tower were Phoenix’s very first skyscrapers. The two-story 1914 Luhrs Central Building that separates them served as Phoenix’s first post office. The top four floors of the office building originally housed something called “The Arizona Club,” a hale institution that continues to this day under different haunts. But by the time I came to work there, both buildings and their annex offered nothing but seedy office space. But the charm that remained was undeniable. From the funky parking lot ramp-ways and the brass mail schutes to the marble walls in the lobby and the barber shop by the elevators, the place threw off some serious ambiance. I was badly smitten.

Since everything else downtown is being demolished, gutted or re-purposed, I knew it was only a matter of time for the Luhrs collection. Recently, I was summoned to the area for jury duty. I spent a relaxing afternoon away from work, dozing, listening to music, and stumbling from courtroom to courtroom before I was finally released. That evening, as I walked from the courthouse back to my car, I noticed that the windows on the Luhrs Office Building were all boarded up.

The renovation of the two main historic buildings is being carried out by new owners with the approval of the Office of Historic Preservation. However, it sacrifices the connecting arcade, the southern annex and the Luhrs Central Building, as well as the fifties-era parking structure in the back. According to one city official, plans include “a full-service, AAA, well-branded hotel; some historic office buildings; a contemporary high-rise building in the center; and then another building over where the parking garage is.”

Given the direction the economy’s moving — with condo developers backing out of projects up and down the central corridor to the tune of over a thousand units at last count — who knows, we may have the boards in place of the historic window glass for many months to come. But I like the boarded-up aesthetic, so I grabbed my camera and my walking around lens and went on a commando mission. Unfortunately, my low light stealth shots from inside the gutted structure didn’t come out so good, but I got decent coverage of the outside:



My wife leaves her instant messaging client on all day while she’s working. No wonder it takes her 60 hours a week to get anything done. It doesn’t help matters that her ten-year-old niece periodically bombards her with interruptions. On the other hand, some of the transcripts are good enough to withstand the test of time:

Continue reading ‘The Economics Of Christmas Vacation, as Explained by My Wife to Her Ten-Year-Old Niece’

Like so many guys my age, I made my first connection with male sexual identity in the back of mass-market magazines like “True Detective” and “Man’s Adventure.” Naturally, I was drawn to the so-called “adult” content in these tiny sidebar ads, but what strikes me now is how juvenile they are, and how devoid of any actual females. They almost seem to suggest that pictures, films or stories about women are much better than the real thing.

Continue reading ‘Things I Should Throw Out: “The Kind Adults Want”’

I didn’t vote in the first presidential election I was eligible for. It was 1980, and my attention was elsewhere. I was right on the precipice of a fifteen-year hole that was to be my career as a rock and roller. Little did I know that America was poised on a precipice of its own.

I never made the mistake of not voting again. Even at my most fogbound, I would manage to do my research and get myself to the polls. But I never actually participated in a campaign until this year. I not only donated actual money to the Obama campaign, but I guilted my wife into doing the same. And then on election day, we both took off work and spent the day calling folks in New Mexico.

Most of the people we called weren’t home, but we were told not to leave messages; just keep going through the lists as quickly as we could. The folks who did answer were pretty evenly split between those who had already voted for Obama and parents of newly registered kids. “She’s at school,” they would tell me, “But I’m pretty sure she voted for Obama last week.”

Continue reading ‘Your Favorite Little Podcast: Episode Fourteen’

Happy Voting Day, America!

No matter what your race, no matter your creed
It’s justice for all that we want and need
United in brotherhood, we will succeed

All together , all together, we are stronger every way
We will build together, work together for a better day


DOWNLOAD