THE VILLAGE STAR REVUE
Community gardeners rally at City Hall
SUSAN SWARTZ SHOW, PAGE 8 NEW BUILDING APPROVED PAGE 8 GRELLA ON NEW MILES
WALKING WITH COFFEE
by Bob Racioppo
A BOOMER-TO-BOOMER DIALOGUE with JOE FORD
After several columns talking with millennials I’m switching it up this month and talking with a fellow boomer Joe Ford. Joe is a recording engineer and music producer, and full disclosure I grew up with him in Sunset Park Brooklyn. This change is sparked by a comment in a previous column describing boomers as “too
Just last summer, a global NGO named Food Tank wrote about community gardens in their newsletter.
"Urban agriculture offers a multitude of economic and environmental benefits to New York City that are overlooked. When properly resourced, it can be utilized as a framework to achieve food justice and create a more sustainable food system rooted in equity, community power, and climate resiliency."
Just one month later, Mayor Adams sent a chill through the hearts of NY's community gardeners as he issued what is called "Executive Order 43."
This order directed all city agencies to examine their portfolio of city-owned property in search of places to build housing. By including the Parks Department, this put most of the hundreds of NYC community gardens at risk, as most lack permanent status.
A petition went out during September's LUNGS festival, with this ask:
"We demand that Mayor Eric Adams issue a clear directive exempting community gardens on city-owned land from Executive Order 43, reaffirming their protection, and ensuring
old to matter.” We are sitting having coffee.
B.R.- Joe, the first question I always ask is, DO YOU WALK WITH COFFEE?, which is the trend these days.
Joe -The short answer is NO. I like to grind my coffee every morning, then I make a pot. I change my coffee every day , switching between 8 O’clock medium blend….”
B.R.- “A&P?”
Joe Ford- Yes , “A&P”, whole bean Columbian or French roast. I like to change my coffee up and I like to sit and drink it.
B.R.- But you’ve noticed people are
by George Fiala
that any land review process fully recognizes the irreplaceable value these spaces bring to our city.’"
On Monday, October 28, a number of local green groups gathered on the steps of City Hall to let Mayor Adams in on their fears.
A colorful group of advocates included members of LUNGS, the Green Guerillas, The Community Gardens Coalition, activists working to save the Elizabeth Street Garden, the Brooklyn Queens Land Trust as well as members of the NY City Council.
Christopher Marte represents all of lower Manhattan as well as much of the Lower East Side. First elected in 2022, he has been popular with the grassroots community, but not so much with the business and real estate community that supports the City of Yes mindset.
Marte stepped to the microphone rallying the crowd with a pro gardens chant. He then continued:
"I am here today to tell Mayor Adams to stop your proposal to demolish community gardens in the name of housing. This false narrative is not new. We’ve seen it before. The Gi-
walking with it.
Joe Ford- Yes people are walking with coffee, people are eating dinner in their cars, people are on their phones when strolling with their child who is looking up and being ignored. We are multi-tasking everything and not getting the full experience of anything.
B.R.- Millennials tell me they walk with coffee because it’s just part of the flow. You get 2 things done at once. It’s production, production, like being part of the machine..
Joe Ford- “If you sit with a good cup of coffee the caffeine has the effect of energizing and relaxing you at the
uliani administration specifically targeted community gardens. DeBlasio looked to build market rate housing on NYCHA open space.
"We are dealing with the climate crisis. We haven’t had rain for 26 days. We need our community gardens
more than ever. It’s not just for community gardens — it’s a fight for social justice.
"We are in a housing crisis, but if we don’t fight this climate crisis then it doesn’t matter where you live because you are going to be displaced. Housing and climate are one thing together (continued on page 5)
Councilmember Christopher Marte (Fiala photo)
Editor & PublishEr George Fiala
rEPortErs Nathan Weiser Oscar Fock
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FEaturEs Kelsey Sobel
CulturE Roderick Thomas
ovErsEas man Dario Muccilli
insights Joe Enright
musiC Kurt Gottschalk
Jazz George Grella
Film Dante A. Ciampaglia
books Michael Quinn
WEbmastEr Tariq Manon
dEsign George Fiala
Merry Band of Contributors
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Bob Racioppo
email gbrook@pipeline.com
The Village Star-Revue is a new publication filling a void in downtown journalism.
We publish once a month, distributing 4,000 copies in the NYU buildings, downtown supermarkets, arts institutions and the occasional pizza shop.
Publisher George Fiala began his newspaper career with the Villager back in 1978, and in 2010 started the Red Hook Star-Revue in Brooklyn. In 2023 he founded the Amagansett Star-Revue in the Hamptons.
All ads are printed in full color. Advertising deadline is always the last day of the month for the next month’s issue.
This silly season is deadly serious
God only knows what the world will look like by the time you read this. I am writing this on Friday, November 1, four days before the election. I just signed up for a bus trip to somewhere in Pennsylvania to do canvassing for Kamala Harris and other Democrats. After that comes Election Day, a day I've been dreading for at least a year. Perhaps you've been dreading it as well.
When I was little, presidential elections were fun affairs. There was a pomp and circumstance that was exciting, and alluring to young citizens. And nobody thought that Democracy hinged on the outcome.
The first election I remember was 1960. To be honest, my only actual memory is a photo published in the World Telegram Almanac. It showed Eisenhower and Kennedy, both wearing top hats, smiling and riding to the inauguration together. Anything but a peaceful transfer of power was unthinkable until 60 years later. By 1964 I was grown up enough to think about volunteering for one of the campaigns. I liked all the souvenirs that were being given out on the streets of my neighborhood of Forest Hills, things like buttons and soaps and pens. I went with my best friend Alan Rosenberg to the Lyndon Johnson campaign office on Queens Boulevard, but we were ushered out the door as they told as they already had too many volunteers.
So we walked over to the Republican storefront on Austin Street which was much less crowded. They were hap-
py to see us 11 year old boys and gave us shopping bags full of flyers to hand out. Excited to be part of the political process we headed out to the street. My memory after that is of an older woman taking a leaflet, reading it, and then screaming at the both of us, "Don't we know how terrible Goldwater is, how could we even think about having him as president, he'll blow up the world.!"
Later on I found out he wasn't such a bad guy after all, especially in comparison with later Republicans.
Go Hubert
By 1968 I was old enough to stay up late, and I watched the returns in a little black and white portable GE TV that I brought up from the kitchen to my bedroom desk. I was really hoping for Hubert Humphrey because by then I had already favored the Democrats. Kind of like this year, Humphrey was a late entrant into the race, as Lyndon Johnson waited until the spring to withdraw, That was the year of the bloody Chicago convention, assassinations and Vietnam and civil rights protests, and Nixon started out a favorite. But it wasn't until the middle of the night, as the California returns started coming in, that it was clear that Nixon won. It was pretty exciting listening to Walter Cronkite chronicle the evening on the tiny screen.
I was a Mets fan, and used to defeat, so I didn't despair. As it turned out, Nixon was a bit more liberal than we thought, although he didn't get us out of Vietnam, and his presidency ended up in flames, which helped bring us my favorite president so far, Jimmy Carter.
Cartoon Section with Marc
By then I was living in Lancaster, PA, after attending college there, and working for what we called then an alternative weekly newspaper, the Lancaster Independent Press, or LIP. I was the advertising guy, and I hitchhiked with the calendar guy, M.R. Carey to the inauguration. We both didn't like Republicans, and were happy at the change of party at the top, and thought we should see the transition.
I have a clear memory of Carter walking up Pennsylvania Avenue in just a topcoat, despite the very cold day. Somewhere we heard that Willie Nelson and the Marshall Tucker band would be playing at various balls, which was quite exciting, as rock and roll was still not quite in the mainstream. However, we weren't invited to anything, and wondered where we would spend the cold night (a hotel was not something we could afford or even think about back then.)
We found out that the Yippies had rented out an old movie theater where they were holding an alternative inauguration. That seemed a ticket to warmth, and we spent the whole night alternately listening to people like Wavy Gravy and nodding off in our seats. I kind of wish I had thought of bringing a camera, as I'm sure some counter culture celebrities were there. By 1979 I was living in the East Village, working for the Villager. That April we went to the NY Press Association's spring convention in Albany. As our convention was wrapping up, a bunch of older people starting setting up for theirs. They unfurled a banner proclaiming Grandparents for
Reagan. I kind of laughed at the idea of a movie actor actually running for president. My idea of a presidency was that of a serious student of government heading it. Not the first time I've been wrong.
By the turn of the century, big TV's started appearing, and a good friend in Port Chester had one in his basement. We both watched the Bush/Gore returns until late at night, until he got sleepy and went to bed. I didn't, and around three in the morning the election seemed to be called for Gore as Florida was declared against George W. Bush. The camera showed the Bush family, including I think Florida Governor Jeb Bush in disbelief, saying that this is impossible. Those words were prophetic, as a short time later that call was reversed, and I spent the next month watching all the various court trials on C-SPAN, learning about voting machines and chads.
While I believe a lot of Iraqis died as a result of that election, and our environment might be a little more sustainable today, for most of us the world didn't end.
Jump 16 years and another close election resulted in a whole lot of weirdness, not to mention unneeded drama for many of us, but we did survive and recover.
But I along with a big chunk of Americans have dreaded this election. This time Donald Trump has some actual government experience, so there's no telling what he will accomplish this time, if he wins.
And if he doesn't, do we go back to 1861?
Publisher George Fiala
FUNNY SIDE UP BY MARC JACKSON
SHORT SHORTS:
BY STAR-REVUE STAFF
send us your items: gbrook8344@gmail.com
Excerpts from a press conference relating to the East Cost Resiliency Program, 10/17/2024
Mayor Eric Adams: We are a coastal city and we’ve seen the danger and damage that storms have cause. We are marking the completion of phase one of Eastside Coastal Resiliency. Twelve protective gates are now in place, twelve. When the project is completed in 2026 they can be deployed when a hurricane or storm surges ahead, is on its way here, protecting lives and property. They will protect over 110,000 Lower East Side residents, including 28,000 in public housing, often ignored during these storms. But we have been focused on those communities that have historically been ignored.
The completion of phase one also involves the reopening of the new and improved Murphy Brothers Playground on Avenue C. This is a $1.5 billion climate adaptation project, it is the single largest urban climate adaptation project in the country. Construction on the second section includes a complete reconstruction of East River Park and will prepare our city to withstand a future of extreme weather and rising seas.
City Councilmember Carlina Rivera: This park is a part of the community’s culture. It is where people spend
their summers. This park and all along down to Pier 42 is where I learned to ride my bike, where I grew up, where I was standing that night when the storm hit. With this new park that is on time and on budget, thanks to DDC and our friends in the Mayor’s Office, we are going to see 3,000 feet of coastal flood resiliency walls.
We are going to have a brand new footbridge on Jackson Street called the Corlears Hook footbridge and more and more to come.
City Councilmember Keith Powers: Following the approval of that project in 2019 and the pandemic in 2020, we did a groundbreaking, I believe in 2021, and we started to open up new playgrounds and projects as part of that. The first playground to our north was completed in 2022. Stuyvesant Cove Park here reopened in 2023. And now 2024, the third portion of that is open. We have two new dog runs, large and small dogs. Fowl Play
When it comes to choosing a leader, birds are just like us. Subject to gaggle mentality, bitter political campaigns and senseless squawking, they argue endlessly and viciously peck each other. That is inspiration to Vít Horejš and Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre (CAMT) for “Fowl Play: Conference of the Birds,” an object theater rock opera inspired by Farid us-Din Attar’s 12th century Sufi poem, “The Conference of the Birds.” The work is conceived, written and directed by Vít Horejš. It has an angular melodic art rock score and lyrics by Avi Fox-Rosen. World premiere of the piece will be presented by La MaMa E.T.C. from November 22 to December 8 in its Ellen Stewart
Theatre, 66 East Fourth Street.
La MaMa has been honored with 30+ Obie Awards, dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie Awards and Villager Awards, the 2018 Regional Theatre Tony Award, and most recently a 2023 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Special Citation.
La MaMa’s vision of nurturing new artists and new work from all nations, cultures, races and identities remains as strong today as it was when Ellen Stewart first opened the doors in 1961.
Erik Bottcher announces PB Participatory Budgeting (PB) lets YOU decide how to spend $1 million of City Council discretionary funds in our community. You can now submit your ideas online—the PB Idea Link is live! https://rnd.council.nyc.gov/ideamap/ Over the next few months, his office will gather ideas and put them on the ballot in the spring.
Greenwich House grant
Spectrum has awarded a $30,000 Spectrum Digital Education grant to Greenwich House for its digital literacy and workforce development program offered free of charge to Manhattan residents aged 60+ with limited mobility, immigrants, and those living on fixed incomes.
Greenwich House will utilize the funding to expand access to digital literacy programming at its Lifelong Skills and Opportunity Center by increasing the number of courses offered and providing door-to-door transportation for mobility-challenged participants who attend monthly digital education seminars.
Spectrum presented the check to Greenwich House on August 12 during the organization’s Tech Day, a series of workshops designed to equip
community members with the essential digital tools and strategies to utilize digital networks and navigate online platforms.
New theater production
The Theater for The New City presents the world premiere of “Woman on a Ledge,” starring celebrated harpist Rita Costanzi.
What happens when a sensitive artist, a woman destined to become an acclaimed world-class musician, has her journey of self discovery and liberation cruelly interrupted by old world Italian Catholic Patriarchal ideas of female place and obligation, and by her own obsessive all-consuming love for a man she meets on his one way street? You get “Woman on a Ledge,” a story of Life, Art, Love, Beauty, Devotion, Betrayal, Conflict and Loss- all told and acted through spoken word and the glorious strains of her heart and soul- her harp. Will she jump or will she break free and fly? Come see “Woman on a Ledge” and find out.
November 7 – 24, 2024, Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8:00 PM, Sunday at 3:00 PM, 155 First Avenue (between 9th and 10th Street)
St. Luke in the Field
The Antiracism Discussion Group discusses issues of race, color, and ethnicity and their impact on our society. It is designed as a safe place for members of our community to gain a deeper understanding of how racism affects our lives.
Currently the group is involved in discussions on Antisemitism Here and Now by Deborah E. Lipstadt. The group meets from 7-8 pm on Mondays via Zoom. Email ardg@stlukeinthefields.org for the link.
photo by Warren Eisenberg
Fate of Beth Israel still in courts
by Phyllis Eckhaus
“If this hospital closes, people will die.”
So declared attorney Arthur Schwartz to New York State Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Pearlman during a nearly allday Halloween hearing on the fate of Mount Sinai Beth Israel—the embattled hospital on East 16th Street and First Avenue.
Schwartz, representing community advocates, urged Judge Pearlman to maintain the temporary restraining order (TRO) he’d issued in August, halting a shutdown.
Schwartz said that emergency rooms at nearby Bellevue and NYU Langone are already bursting at the seams, with the Bellevue ER so overcrowded, it is routinely diverting patients to Beth Israel, and the ER at NYU Langone so packed with stacked patients, it resembles “a cattle car.”
David Friedman, an attorney for Mount Sinai Health Systems, delivered his own dire warning, telling the judge that unless Mount Sinai is allowed to shutter Beth Israel, the $10.8 billion hospital chain could be forced by financial losses “ultimately to close all its facilities in New York.”
Friedman decried as “absurd and offensive” community advocates’ claim that Mount Sinai seeks to profiteer off Beth Israel by selling off the property to real estate developers, ridiculing that accusation as one that casts Mount Sinai leadership as “supervillains.”
Closing plans
Mount Sinai a year ago last fall announced plans to completely close Beth Israel, the 135-year-old teaching hospital, renowned for treating patients turned away elsewhere, and for pioneering medical advances ranging from colonoscopies to AIDS treatments.
Beth Israel is the only full service community hospital with an emergency room for a large swath of Lower Manhattan, from Canal Street up to 23rd Street, river to river. According to government data, residents of Lower Manhattan below 14th Street have less than one hospital bed per 1000 people, while Upper East Siders boast over ten beds per 1000.
The ongoing battle began following the announcement. A battle that is basically unreported outside of local media. Major media—The New York Times, Spectrum, Fox, CBS, Crain’s and others—all broadcast imminent demise.
In July, the NYS Department of Health
(DOH) conditionally approved closure, following months of wrangling. However, the hospital remains open due to the lawsuit.
In August, the judge dismissed that case—once again putting Beth Israel on the brink.
Community advocates immediately filed a new suit specifically to challenge DOH’s approval of closure.
A few community newspapers tracked the new case, and the subsequent restraining kept Beth Israel “on life-support,” as reported in The Village Sun Mount Sinai contends Beth Israel is costing its system $18 million dollars a month.
Advocates have countered with an analysis documenting Mount Sinai’s apparent sabotage of Beth Israel’s profitability since acquiring the hospital in 2013. A damning chart matches hospital losses to Mount Sinai stripping Beth Israel of lucrative medical departments, transferring them elsewhere. Services removed included cardiac surgery, maternity, neonatal care, pediatrics, chemical dependency and rehabilitation.
A similar strategy was undertaken at Long Island Community Hospital, a 150 year-old hospital serving downtown Brooklyn. Over there, a similar community process delayed the closing for a couple of years, but in the end the hospital was shut and most of the property sold to real estate developers.
Sabotage
In September, Schwartz charged that while Beth Israel’s emergency room census was up to 135-150 patients a day, the hospital was stealthily shipping patients to other Mount Sinai facilities rather than admitting them, “as an artificial and hidden means of reducing the admitted patient population,” again to sabotage Beth Israel and bolster the case for closure.
Whether Judge Pearlman can even consider the evidence offered by community advocates is an open question. Nicole Gueron, the attorney for DOH, argued that the extreme deference to government built into state law means that DOH’s approval of closure must be upheld unless there’s “no rational basis for it.” She also asserted that the court can base its decision only on DOH’s administrative record, not evidence introduced by community advocates.
Schwartz and colleague David Siffert
countered by leaning into New York’s public health law, which calls on DOH to wield its hospital oversight powers with more than ordinary care, given that “hospital…services…of the highest quality, efficiently provided and properly utilized at a reasonable cost, are of vital concern to the public health.”
Schwartz and Siffert also argued that the public health law gives the judge authority to sanction Mount Sinai for violating the law when it shut down Beth Israel services before receiving DOH approval to do so.
If allowed to close Beth Israel, Mount Sinai has agreed to open an urgent care center on the 14th Street campus of New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, and also to provide $20 million over three years to Bellevue Hospital for the eventual expansion of its Emergency Department.
The urgent care center, which would not be an emergency room, but which would have emergency medicine doctors on staff, would be open 24 hours a day for its first three months, with future hours to be determined. It would accept patients regardless of their ability to pay. Community advocates have vehement-
GARDENS
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and both worth fighting for."
Do no harm
Raymond Figueroa-Reyes, President of the Board of Directors of the NYC Community Garden Coalition, told the crowd that government needs to stop "scapegoating community gardens in the name of affordable housing." He said above all, government should "DO NO HARM!"
All the speakers made the important point that community gardens to more than to just simply enhance the environment, city living, environment for our feathered friends — all vitally important benefits — but to also enhance a sense of community.
Community gardens give city dwellers a place to meet their neighbors, to volunteer for the public good, and to help promote social and cultural causes.
A case in point was the recent LUNGS festival, as detailed in the
ly contested the adequacy of these plans to address community need.
The parties await a ruling by Judge Pearlman on whether Beth Israel closes or this fight continues.
The Beth Israel battle takes place against a backdrop of accelerating hospital closures, locally and nationwide. For the past two decades, communities have grappled with the loss of Cabrini Medical Center in Grammercy Park, St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in East Flatbush.
Earlier this year, SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn faced the threat of closure, and while it is temporarily stabilized, its future remains uncertain.
These losses—and especially Beth Israel on the brink—recently spurred state lawmakers to pass the Local Input in Community Healthcare Act, which would require more robust public engagement when a hospital seeks to close. The bill awaits the Governor’s signature, but it would not be retroactive. At this point there is no indication when Judge Pearlman will issue a final ruling, possibly influenced by the
October Star-Revue. As one of the speakers pointed out, community gardens bind communties together. Another City Councilmember, Chris Banks of East New York, pleaded that gardens "not fall victim to the greed of developers."
Ricky Colon, a vice president of the Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens, the aforementioned LUNGS, told the enthusiastic crowd "We reclaimed these abandonded lots. When we see major endeavors such as the Elizabeth Street Garden under major threat, we must heed the warning."
He also brought up a major benefit in these times of climate change and often excessive rainfall, that these gardens are vital for drainage. Another speaker spoke of making sure that community boards, usually representing community wishes, are heard by the higher ups.
More than one speaker cupped their ears in the direction of City Hall above them, symbolically directing their messages in the Mayor's direction
A VISITATION ON EAST 7th STREET
by Stephen DiLauro
I opened my eyes and there was a face, a spirit face, hovering inches above my face. It had no body, per se. Just a face and a long tail of spiritual essence that trailed off into nothingness.
So, in the late 1970s I became fascinated with the work of the poet Robert Graves. This interest was sparked first by watching I, Claudius on PBS. The series, starring Derek Jacobi as the Roman emperor Claudius, was based on two of Graves’s novels.
By the spring of 1982, fascination had blossomed into full blown obsession. I was living on East 7th Street at the time, a couple of doors east of McSorley’s Old Ale House.
To me, Graves had become an oracle. I became obsessed with his book The White Goddess. The book is both theory and guide to mythic origins and inspiration for poetry found in the Welsh bardic tradition. It is also a paean to the Divine Feminine in the form of a Mother Goddess, and the Muse. Over the decades since its publication, this tome has developed an avid, decidedly new age following. Poetry was a holy endeavor to me then, and still is, I suppose. I was living across the street from St. George’s Cathedral, spiritual home for many in the local Ukrainian community. The little side street beside the church is named Taras Shevchenko Place, after that nation’s greatest poet. I remember how impressed I was that a street was named for a poet, and that I could see that street out my front window. (Writing this now, I am sitting in a room on Via Giovanni Pascoli in the remote, medieval mountain village of Sorano in Tuscany. Pascoli was an important Italian poet. My being here is a bit of serendipity, perhaps to be recounted in the future.)
Nowadays, the ground floor of 19 East 7th Street, where I used to live, is occupied by the Blackstone Collective, a high-end cult (their term) hair salon. They have the entire floor at street level. Back then it was divided into two storefront spaces/apartments. The photographer Don Hamerman –who got me a gig writing about sculpture for Smithsonian Magazine – lived across the hall with his wife Fern Galperin. I recently checked online and saw that an apartment in the building
now rents for $4200 - ten times what I paid back then.
My apartment became a rest stop along the global bohemian highway. Jack Micheline once slept on the couch for a week or so. Max Scherr, founder of the Berkeley Barb and a mentor of mine, came to visit for a couple of nights not long before he died. Blind George, a legendary figure on Ibiza and Goa back then, stayed for almost 2 weeks, until two young hippie gal companions came to lead him on further travels. Eddie Woods from Ins and Outs Bookstore in Amsterdam visited. Stephanie, my wife at that time, and I held art exhibitions for the poet and watercolorist Irving Stettner. My sonnets and other light verse were frequently appearing in The New York Times. Lawrence van Gelder was the first editor at the Times to publish me. Soon he moved on to another section of the paper. Glenn Collins took over and continued to publish my efforts for the next several years.
Graves saying what had just happened and that I was coming to Mallorca to visit him and to find out if it was true, if he had astral projected into my bedroom on East 7th Street. The hubris of youth: just announcing myself like that; the madness of it all: I went out and mailed the letter at dawn.
Stephanie totally accepted the story as I raved over breakfast that morning. She agreed to ask for a leave of absence from her publishing job. I managed to get a couple of magazine assignments before we left. Stephanie got into the whole idea. She had recently received a small inheritance from her maternal grandmother and decided to dip into that to help pay for the trip. At the time, I had quite a collection of Graves’s books, going all the way back to his first volume of poetry – Over the Brazier – and Stephanie suggested I bring the books to get them autographed.
So it was that I travelled across Europe with a mustard-colored Samsonite
"I opened my eyes and there was a spirit face hovering inches above my face. It had no body, per se. Just a face and a long trail of spiritual essence. I started kicking, flailing at it."
Such energy compounded my fascination with Graves and his theories about poetry and the Goddess in her various manifestations, especially late at night when I was awake alone. I would drink a little red wine and smoke some hashish to send the information contained in The White Goddess deep into my subconscious. That was my excuse anyway. In the Welsh bardic tradition, it was acceptable to ingest various substances to help one receive inspiration, called “awen.”
The time on the clock radio was 3:04 a.m. when I went to bed after an intense foray into Graves’s book one spring night. Stephanie was already asleep, as she had a day job at Harry N. Abrams — publisher of fine art coffee table books. I lay back and closed my eyes. Immediately I felt, or sensed, a presence.
I opened my eyes and there was a spirit face hovering inches above my face. It had no body, per se. Just a face and a long trail of spiritual essence. I started kicking, flailing at it. The face’s expression changed from curiosity to what I would call shock, or perhaps dismay, at my reaction. It immediately backed off and disappeared into its own essence. Poof, it was gone.
I looked at the clock and it was 3:06. Two minutes had passed. I hadn’t been asleep. It wasn’t an hallucination. Then I realized my visitor had Robert Graves’s face. The shock of an actual apparition frightened me, I suppose. Surprise at the unknown?
I got out of bed and wrote a letter to
the Major Arcana cards of the Tarot deck. Nikki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden of amazing monumental sculptures based on the same cards, coincidentally, is close by on the way to the sea. The artist claimed the project was inspired by the Divine Feminine.
Beryl Graves, the poet’s wife, was outside in her kitchen garden as I came upon the house. She remembered my letter, saying she had expected me sooner. I explained that a case of bronchitis had laid me low in Paris. She invited me inside, saying as we went, “Robert hasn’t spoken to anyone in two years.” That was disconcerting, to understate, but I refrained from comment beyond a raised eyebrow and “oh.”
suitcase full of books. She and I had decided to fulfill a shared hippie-style fantasy as part of the trip. The acquisition of a Volkswagen bus in Amsterdam and our traipsing is a whole other story.
It was July 11, 1982, when Stephanie and I arrived in Deya on the island of Mallorca. In Madrid, Italy beat Germany to win the FIFA World Cup that evening. Stephanie and I watched the game on TV on the terrace of Hotel Es Moli, where we stayed. The locals were thrilled to see Germany defeated. I knew little about soccer but the sport made the date searchable for this.
The next day I walked into town alone. Stephanie wanted to come but quickly agreed it was probably better that I make the first foray alone. Graves’s home was at the end of the main road through the village, as I recall. Walking from the hotel down to the village center, I observed the landscape, terraced for agriculture, and a prominent peak named El Teix. It was July 12, 1982.
Along the main street, through every window that was open, I saw a different portrait of Robert Graves hanging on the wall. Some of the pictures were photos, others paintings. Quite a creative community thrived there with the poet at its center.
Notably, Nikki de Saint Phalle – one of the most important woman artists in history – had lived as Graves’s neighbor for ten years. That was before my visit. I am here in Tuscany right now writing a series of sonnets based on
The kitchen was abuzz with family and locals. Graves’s daughter Catherine, from his first marriage, introduced herself. I declined a beverage, and Beryl took me on a tour. She showed me the poet’s office. There was a shelf around the room with all his books, some of which I had back in the hotel room, in various editions and languages. Then Beryl asked if I wanted to meet Robert and say hello. Of course, I said yes.
Graves was sitting in a chair in a room adjacent to his office, dressed in a man’s night gown - like something out of the Nineteenth century, something you would expect Scrooge wore when the ghosts came to visit him.
Hello
So, there he sat, his head hanging down. His gray hair was long and hanging around his face. Beryl said, “Robert, someone’s come to visit you. A friend from New York.” He lifted his head, looked at me and his eyes lit up with recognition. He raised a hand in greeting and said, “Hello. You came. Welcome.” Then his head and hand both dropped back down and that was it.
There was no question in my mind that he had visited me in spirit form. His face was the face that hovered above mine. However, actual face to actual face, the only thing I could think was, ‘Holy crap, all this way and all I get is a hello?’ Beryl, on the other hand, seemed quite excited by his
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Bleecker and Christopher rebuild approved
by Jack Tateronis
The Landmarks Preservation Committee has approved the design proposal for the vacant lot at 327 Bleecker Street following a public hearing on October 29, 2024. The site, located at the intersection of Christopher and Bleecker Streets in the West Village, has been empty since the previous four-story residential structure was demolished for safety reasons. The approval comes with specific recommendations aimed at ensuring the new building aligns with the neighborhood’s historic architectural character.
Background and architectural significance
The West Village is renowned for its rich architectural landscape, which features a range of styles from Federal to Renaissance Revival, contributing to the district’s distinctive streetscape. The original building at 327 Bleecker Street, constructed in several phases beginning in 1832, underwent various architectural changes, including the addition of a Mansard roof and other structural modifications. These elements added character to the property but also contributed to its structural decline, necessitating its emergency demolition in 2020. Just
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hello. She said, “Oh my” several times. She led me back to the kitchen and offered a glass of lemonade, which I accepted. Beryl told everyone there,
“Robert just spoke to this gentleman.” Juan, one of Robert’s and Beryl’s sons, descended from an upper floor of the house, introduced himself, and shook my hand.
Then I went back to the hotel. Stephanie immediately asked: “Did you meet him? Will he sign the books.”
“I met him and I don’t see this guy signing anything, now or probably ever.” I explained what had happened. Stephanie was clearly disappointed but was a good sport about it. That afternoon we walked along the main street of the village. We were going to have a coffee and figure out our next move.
Our VW van was at the airport in Barcelona. We were headed to Italy next where I was to write about marble and sculpture, and about the international community of sculptors that had grown up around the town of Pietra Santa (Holy Stone) in the Massa Carrara region of Tuscany. It was disappointing to not have experienced a true conversation with Graves. But hey – we were on the island of Mallorca and adventure awaited.
As we walked, this Englishman came charging out of a small stone house and stopped us. “You’re him. Robert went clear for you.” The man’s name was Martin Tallents. (NOTE: I could only recall his first name, until I re-
four years earlier it had completed a similar landmarking process as owner, Neil Bender planned to redevelop the original building. That plan was scuttled by the buildings department, however.
Neil Bender's uncle was William Gottlieb, who in his lifetime amassed an enormous collection of Greenwich Village buildings while operating a liquor store on Hudson Street.
Conditions from CB 2
The Community Board reviewed the proposal at a meeting on October 17, 2024, and recommended approval with several conditions. The board emphasized the importance of design elements that reflect the building’s historical evolution and its contribution to the architectural diversity of Greenwich Village. The specific recommendations included: • Design Modifications: The design should recall key historical features, such as the Mansard roof, the fourthstory addition, the irregularity of the Christopher Street facade, and the visual separation between the main structure and its extension. These features were highlighted to maintain the building’s unique presence in the neighborhood.
cently told this story to my friend the performance artist-poet-playwright Penny Arcade. She had made a visit to meet Graves ten years before I did and knew Tallents and told me his surname. Penny had stayed in Deya for several months. Thanks to the internet, I located David Holzer, who writes a blog about Deya. He filled in a couple of hazy details about the topography and buildings in the town, and he put me in touch with the artist David Templeton, whose drawings accompany this article, and who still lives there, next to the church.)
Tallents insisted we join him for a cup of tea. Inside, he told us that two years before, Graves had told “everyone” he was going to take magic mushrooms and go astral traveling and that he might not be able to come back. I had read Graves’s essay on using magic mushrooms, found in his Oxford Addresses on Poetry, and was there due to the poet astral projecting into my bedroom. None of this surprised me.
The community of expats around Graves, everyone in the village, according to Tallents, believed the poet had gone astral projecting. Now I was proof that it was true. This seemed to mean far more to Tallents than it did to me at the time.
Stephanie and I toured the island for three days. We saw the monastery where Georges Sand took Chopin one winter, hoping the composer’s tuberculosis would benefit. (It didn’t.) We went to the beach, looked around Palma de Mallorca. Stephanie got more and more disappointed daily at not meeting the great poet and wanted to move on. So, with the suitcase full of unsigned books, we left.
Rooftop Mechanical Equipment: The mechanical equipment on the rooftop will be entirely enclosed with sound-deadening acoustic fencing to mitigate noise and preserve the area’s residential ambiance.
Approval and next steps
During the October 29th public hearing, the committee approved the design proposal, taking into account the Community Board’s recommendations. The developers have expressed a commitment to making the suggested adjustments, which aims to ensure the new building contributes positively to the historic streetscape.
After a six week visit to Italy, it was back to the apartment across the street from the mosaic mural of St. George slaying the Dragon above the main entrance to the Ukrainian cathedral.
The poets kept coming to East 7th Street. I remember Stephanie painted a lovely watercolor based on the houses in Deya. Robert Graves’s books were back on my bookshelf. Our son Jesse was born the next spring. We moved to the country, as new parents often do.
Eventually Stephanie filed for divorce, dissatisfied with the financial ups and downs that often are part of youthful
COFFEE
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B.R.- Haaa…..wait, not. One of the millennials EVER mentioned smoking.
Joe Ford- Yeah well.
B.R.- In a previous interview was raised that boomers are “Too old to Matter.” What’s your reaction to that.?
Joe Ford-I think that being a boomer, a person of this generation, there’s a certain productivity that was expected. There was an America that was on the rise. A lot of things were not told to us that we had to find out for ourselves. In 1968 when we started seeing the fire hoses and the Pettit bridge we began to realize how insulated those of us in the white middle class were, and how tough it was for others. So, our cavalier attitude hadn’t been confronted with defeat. Then I started seeing older guys on
literary pursuits. I moved back to the East Village. I sold my Graves collection to the antiquarian Argosy Book Store, to pay my divorce lawyer.
For many years, looking back, I sometimes wondered if perhaps I should have gone to Graves’s house again and tried to communicate further. It didn’t feel right at the time. Whatever else, the man was obviously in his advanced dotage. My reason for the journey had been confirmed: Astral projecting is real.
And I got a pretty good story out of the experience. Sometimes, that has to be enough.
the block going off to Vietnam and coming back quite changed. I just missed getting drafted but Vietnam affected all of us. The Millennials have never been exposed to the horrors of war so it’s really easy to talk big and get radicalized. Saying stuff like “Well I’m a Libertarian and the government is spending too much money defending Ukraine. And in the South China Sea, we should reconsider our imperialist tendencies.”
I think some of today’s issues can be summed up in the words of the scientist Neil Degrasse Tyson who says: “ The problem in this world is that too many people know enough to think they’re right, but not enough to know they’re wrong.”
B.R.- Ok…..how’s the coffee here btw?
Joe Ford- (taking a sip) A little weak. You can check out JOE FORD’s recording and production work @ (SouthBrooklynSound.com/listen)
Artist rendering of new building approved by Landmarks
Previous building that was torn down.
Seeing great art free in Downtown Manhattan
by Stephen DiLauro
Susan Swartz’s exhibition is enjoying an extended stay at Georges Berges Gallery in SoHo. Visitors will be able to view the vibrant, intriguing works now on display until November 20. Both a nature and abstract painter, in the same compositions, Swartz’s work is provoking discussion worthy of a major talent, which she is. The curator of the exhibition, Donald Kuspit, one of America’s most prominent and respected art critics and art historians, called Swartz “the best abstract nature painter alive today.” The exhibition is titled Renewal.
Apart from a painting of birch trees on view immediately to the left as one enters the gallery, a relentless artistic energy and concern for the importance of beauty and the power of color, are the overall first-blush sensations. However, upon close inspection, the canvasses reveal a painter’s cry from the soul, a desire for the gestural nature of brushstrokes to escape
the flatness of the painting surface, which flatness is part of the essence of the birch trees painting.
Not unlike Schnabel
To emphasize this breaking free, Swartz employs flower petals, mushrooms, leaves, seeds, and other organic detritus from nature. These organic elements are chemically stabilized with paint and clear lacquer. Swartz has written and spoken about Holy Scripture as a major source of her inspiration. In the presence of the paintings incorporating these elements from nature, Genesis Chapter 1 verses 29-30 came to my mind.
Freeing the painter’s gesture here is not unlike Julian Schnabel’s efforts to expand the artistic gestural in his famous plate paintings. Both artists, by challenging the boundaries of the painted surface, discovered an innate power in their efforts that might have previously only been hinted at. For Swartz, this change in approach to
Theater for the New City NOVEMBER EVENTS
RITA IS THE GOAT by Melanie Maria Goodreaux NOVEMBER 7NOVEMBER 24
THURS. to SAT. @8PM, SUN @3PM
DIVA THERAPY by John Mark Lucas NOVEMBER 7NOVEMBER 24
THURS. to SAT. @8PM, SUN @3PM
WOMAN ON A LEDGE by Hershey Felder NOVEMBER 7- NOVEMBER 24
THURS. to SAT. @8PM, SUN @3PM
ROME NEAL'S BANANA JAZZ PUDDIN' NOVEMBER 25TH MON @7PM
ORSON'S SHADOW by Austin Pendleton NOVEMBER 8DECEMBER 1
TUES. to FRI. @8PM SAT. @2 & 8PM SUN @3PM
the canvas came at a critical personal
In mid-life, Swartz suffered the double
ry poisoning from eating fish. While
ing underwent a dramatic upheaval. It was during this time that her work
ed. They are abstract subjects rather than being portrayed figuratively as in
ing so, mines the cycles of nature and
Sunflowers; Evolution of Nature;
may
works are fully realized paintings with the rare power to draw in the viewer’s attention, and then to hold it almost endlessly. The artist seems to want to
remind viewers that while there is no escaping the natural cycle of life and death, beauty is there every step of the way for those who would gather it in with their eyes.
The quality of Swartz’s relentless passion is ever-present in this powerful exhibit of work by an accomplished and much-lauded painter. Swartz’s work has been displayed in museums around the world. Renewal is a chance to enjoy a museum-quality examination of this important artist’s work, without an admission fee.
Susan Swartz Renewal through November 20, Georges Berges Gallery, 462 West Broadway
In Other Art News
Speaking of museum admission fees, the Whitney has announced that beginning in mid-December anyone under 25 years of age will be admitted to the museum free of charge, every day. This is in addition to the Free Friday Nights (from 5 pm – 10 pm) and Free Second Sundays (all day), both programs which began in January of this year and are available to everyone. Online ticketing in advance is required. Check the Whitey Museum web site for more information: whitney.org/visit/free-days-and-nights Stephen DiLauro is a playwright and poet who also writes about art.
Swartz's painting "The Awakening"
Sunflowers
Revisiting Reubens and Breughel and more
by Lee Klein
Cecily Brown’s work is in the order of delicious maximalism and has by no means ever been an easy read. Indeed, certain passages in her paintings are busy beyond perception, and one may even ask after a long standing view are they occluded indecipherable visual entities, or rather, rapturous musical movements akin to a Joan Michell work, but with even more muscularity (and where Mitchell abandoned the figure totally after ‘’Figure and the City” [1950], Brown boldly continues on).
The stop-action motion cinematic brushwork suddenly has become epic as has her dance partnership of figuration and abstraction, between which she sees no difference, as she has indicated in interviews and elsewhere. Her visual vocabulary is of a language which speaks of a state of becoming, and which has stunned many. She loves the Old Masters, and it is breathtaking to see a painter who can regenerate that vocabulary to such an extent in such an innovative manner. That all said, welcome to Brown’s first
ries “The Five Senses” as her point of departure and the works in the main gallery can come at you like giant multi-storied virtual cruise ships of sensory detail.
It may leave you wondering aloud, with other guests, until you see lobsters, oysters, cherries, and other tangible items begin to emerge in the pictures.
The Five Senses suite takes up the en tire main room but just off it hangs “Pretty Stories and Funny Pictures” (2023), which is a bit off the main leit motif, but is an atmospheric, very rich canvas.
The women appear as Regency duo (as if in a Sir Thomas Lawrence por trait) in a dark brown chocolatey background, sometimes gone black. Therein, a comic look comes across one of the women’s faces in a cavern ous interior, an imagined architectur al scene. This works also in the pas tiche subtext: it almost seems to have a touch of John Currin’s sense of par ody to it.
As the artist has indicated, worked, and hoped for, these pieces can take days to unravel and after multiple viewings still offer up new revelations. Though cherries may be evident immediately in one, another soon gives up oysters, mussels, bouquets, and groups of pears. Les Mademoiselles d’Avignon suddenly materializes in others.
ventures which can occur while creating a work of art with artificial intelligence.
This relatively small for Brown exhibition is in line with the artist’s acclaim as the current great songstress of fig-
uration and abstraction married together in a great rolling thunder. Cecily Brown , The Five Senses, Paula Cooper Gallery, 534 West 21st Street. Show ends December 7.
One particularly arresting canvas is “Emily at Play”, seemingly a portrait of a woman on a bed with her body disconnected from her head (which offers up an excellent sense of presence with her deep eyes of infinite black reminiscent of a void). Perhaps this strange body arrangement, with a full buttock back view, could be seen as an allusion to the anatomical misad-
Fowl Play: Conference of the
Fowl Play: Conference of
solo exhibition since her career retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2023. Here she takes Peter Paul Reubens and Jan Breughel the Elder’s most famous collaborative se-
La MaMa in association with GOH Productions
Pretty Stories and Funny Pictures
Part of Cecily Brown's "The Five Senses"
Mothers of reinvention. “It’s never too late to be what you might have been,” according to writer George Eliot, who spoke from experience. Born in the UK in 1819, Mary Ann Evans found her audience using the masculine pen name in order to avoid the scrutiny of the patriarchal literati.
Reinvention, of style if not self, is in the air this autumn. Adrian Younge reimagines Afrobeat, samba, tropicália, Blaxploitation soundtrack and more on Linear Labs: São Paulo (CD, LP, vinyl out Nov. 15). Younge is founder of the Linear Labs label and co-founder of the label Jazz is Dead. He’s released more than 50 albums under his own name and many more as a producer. One of the most notable in that tall stack is Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics (Wax Poetics Records, 2013), in which he teamed up with Philly Soul singer William Hart—notably the only Delfonic on the session—to reimagine the singing group in a brilliant psychedelic fantasy. A similar strategy is at play on São Paulo. With masterful pop arranging and a convincing period mix (although the fidelity is very this century). The album is actually a compilation of selections from upcoming Linear Lab/Younge productions, and it’s testament to his ear and his command of the mixing board how well it all hangs together. Vocalists include the soulful crooner Bilal, rapper Snoop Dogg, and Stereolab’s Lætitia Sadier. Younge’s taste for exotica is supplanted by Liraz Charhi (Iran/Israel) and Samantha Schmütz (Brazil). The 2025 Linear Lab calendar is, it appears, filled with retro-modern riches.
Loads of artists have reinvented their hits. Blondie, David Bowie, Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell and Taylor Swift are just some of the many who have updated and rerecorded their best-loved songs. But back in the first decade of the century, Brooklyn darlings The Fiery Furnaces seemed to reinvent
themselves every time they stepped on stage. It was always a moment of intrigue to look at the stage before a show and see which Fiery Furnaces they were going to be: were they a guitar band this time, or a keyboard band, or something in between (cf. the live album Remember, which collages different performances of the same songs into mad medlies). After achieving almost inexplicable popularity for such an oddball outfit (an album built around recordings of the grandmother of Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger— the band’s sibling core—telling stories is just one example), they took a long pause in 2011, each releasing solo albums, starting families and indulging in other artistic pursuits. A decade later, they reconstituted for shows at Brooklyn Steel and in Chicago and Los Angeles, and then went into the studio to lay down their latest realizations. That session came out last month (self-released streaming and download) and it’s a fantasy best-of. Twenty faves with a keyboard/bass/drum band, Eleanor handling all of the vocals and a perfect title: Stuck in My Head. Their arcane songs, with too many words and long, twisting melodies, managed somehow to be ear candy. The sibling act never really broke up, so there’s always a chance we’ll hear more—maybe a new album by 2034.
Lin Manuel-Mirana, the powerhouse behind Hamilton, and playwright/ songwriter Eisa Davis have reinvented the 1979 NYC gangland movie The Warriors into a concept album (CD, LP and download from Atlantic Records last month) which led me to go back and rewatch the movie for the first time in years. It’s not great but is better than I expected, theatrical in that it seems about as staged as an old Star Trek episode. The album is kind of a fan delight. Like most concept albums, the storyline is far from clear on its own, but it bustles with life. As would be expected, it’s a contempo-
rary and multicultural New York City in their audio staging, with better gender parity, some old school rap, more modern hip-hop, swooning ballads and even some leanings toward heavy metal. The nearly chimeric Ms. Lauryn Hill takes the messiah-like role of Cyrus in one of the highlights of the 80-minute show, and Busta Rhymes, Cam’ron, Ghostface Killa, Nas and RZA are among the album’s many voices.
There’s also some wonderful reworking in the soundtrack to Joker: Folie à Deux (CD, LP, download from WaterTower/Interscope last month), a movie I quite enjoyed — don’t let the Rotten Tomatoes fool you. Arrangements of such chestnuts as “That’s Life,” “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” and “When You’re Smiling”— customed after-the-fact to Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga’s in-character performances—are subtly haunting. Arnold (The Joker) and Lee (Harley Quinn, aka Harlequin) imagine themselves as show people but their brains are dark places and the orchestrations come with an undertow. Gaga in particular does a stellar job maneuvering between timid voice and brassy, imagined voice. It’s worth seeing if only to hear the soundtrack (and Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score) on a cinema sound system, but also for scoffing rights next time someone tells you it wasn’t the movie they wanted it to be.
And speaking or wretched clown, The Residents released a set of a half-dozen songs on Nov. 1 (10” EP and download via Cherry Red Records, MVD Audio and New Ralph Too) asking the perennial question, “where do clowns go when they die?” It’s a maddening 24 minutes of psycho-ditties, distorted voices, violence and an incessant laugh track. In other words, classic Residents. And speaking of classic Residents… The mysterious, anonymous troupe has never been bashful
about reinventing and rereleasing selections from their 50+ years of making records. It’s a lot to keep track of, with limited returns for all but the diehard, but The Residents Presents Buy or Die! Ralph Records 1972-1982 (triple CD and download out Nov. 4 from Cryptic Corporation) is an essential chunk of history from the fringes of
rock. Unable to get record company interest in their early days, the Residents started their own label and forged distribution channels (primarily through mail order) at a time when such DIY efforts were rare. The weird thing was, they turned out to be pretty good at it, gaining attention, signing other bands and putting out promotional samplers under the banner “BUY OR DIE.” The new set includes those promo tracks and other singles, select album tracks and unreleased material from not just the Residents but Art Bears, Chrome, Fred Frith, MX-80 Sound, Renaldo and the Loaf, Schwump, Snakefinger, Tuxedomoon and Yello, as well as a handful of tracks by comic and graphic artist Gary Panter. It’s a surprisingly diverse chunk of independently produced music long, 63 tracks from before “indie rock” was a genre, and a glimpse into the a world before the Internet made musical outskirts accessible—back when you had to earn your weird.
Jazz by Grella Directions in History
by George Grella
All record albums are an audio snapshot of a slice of time—documents of history, in other words. This has always been magnified in jazz, a music developed in actual conjunction with recording and broadcast technology, where so many musicians through the decades learned to play by listening to, transcribing, and playing along with the records from the musicians they love.
The bulk of this has been a controlled history in that studio albums are staged events, organized around settled ideas and material. There are exceptions, of course, especially the bulk of Miles Davis’ discography (and more on that ahead), records of important free jazz sessions, and live albums.
Davis was one of the most innovative thinkers in jazz on how to use the studio. From this first great quintet, he was constantly working away from the standard recording approach, from playing the material straight through, mistakes and all, as if it were a live club set, to turning the recording process into a complete musique concrète composition on Bitches Brew. For improvisers, there are the unique meetings and irreproducible results, like Jimmy Giuffre’s Free Fall album, and then Life of a Trio sessions with Giuffre, Paul Bley, and Steve Swallow 30+ years later. Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940 Live is not just one of Duke’s great bands on disc, but the band playing in their original element, which was for dancers—not in the Cotton Club, but not far gone from what that might have been like. For an artist working at the fringe and doing much of his playing without ever being recorded, the live album Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come is a chance to eavesdrop on the young artist in 1962 forming his enduring style.
These albums and others like them capture historically great music and historic, and often rare moments—especially radio broadcast transcriptions of performances meant to be heard in real time, then disappear into memory. It is a record of information that’s a finished history of the music, in that the vast majority of albums are history books but without bibliographies or footnotes that show original sources—which in musical terms would be the sketches of material, rehearsals, and alternate and/ or incomplete/unedited takes that never made to the final album.
Amidst all this, it is as rare as astatine to actually hear the precise moment that history changes. To begin with, music is a process, and there’s just almost no discrete moments that define a change between how things were done before and how they were done after. Moments like the premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 on April 7, 1805, or
when the audience first heard the “Tristan” chord in the prelude to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, June 10, 1865, or the notorious May 29, 1913 opening night of Le Sacre du printemps stand out as truly revolutionary fulcrums because they came in eras when music was heard live (even predominantly so in 1913), and new music came without preparation.
The recording era might seem to have changed this, except that again recordings are made to be finished. Sometimes insightful home recordings turn up, like Clifford Brown practicing or Charlie Parker playing with colleagues in a period when no regular recordings where being made. There’s a new album out from Verve, Bird in Kansas City, that collects some previously issued tracks along with newly rediscovered recording of Parker working
"Davis was one of the most innovative thinkers in jazz on how to use the studio."
his way through and out of swing. The album has two lushly but densley restored 1941 tracks from Jay McShann and his Orchestra, with no way to pick out Parker from the ensemble. These come at the end, the real gems are at the beginning, with Parker recorded with an unknown bassist and drummer in the home of Phil Baxter (a friend of Bird) in Kansas City, 1951. Already deep into the bebop era, Parker sounds so relaxed that he brings back the swing feel and style that follows via the reissue of a handful of tracks of Parker playing with guitarist Efferge Ware in 1944. These have been out before, notably on the important The Complete “Birth Of The Bebop” CD on Stash. Those tracks came at the end of the Musician’s Union recording ban. Late in November the following year, Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Curly Russell, and Sadik Hakim were in the studio, putting down some of the first bebop singles ever recorded and released. This was before the main album era, and the tunes were later collected on Savoy’s The Charlie Parker Story LP. That was released on vinyl in 1956, by then foundations of the jazz canon. The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings 1944-1948 in 2000 not only recollected that album but issued alternate material from the session, and that’s where you can hear the moment history is made.
The context is on the Verve release, Parker playing “Cherokee” in each
small group recording. This was a big band standard, one of the tunes the beboppers took, dropped the original melody, sped up, and then added their own new motivic ideas on top. “Ko-Ko,” recorded November 26, 1945, is based on that, keeps the harmonies and adds Parker’s bebop ideas. The first take has the band playing the fast bebop intro, then they start playing the “Cherokee” tune. Parker stops playing, whistles, and halts the band. The next, master take, once they get past the intro, they play Bird’s ideas and bebop shoves swing aside. And between those two tracks, you can hear not only history being made, but how it was made, and the exact moment it was made. It’s incredible we have this available.
This month, you can hear the same thing happening almost 20 years later. Sony/Legacy are release Volume 8 in their Miles Davis Bootleg Series of (mostly) live archival recordings. The subtitle to the new set explains it: Miles in France - Miles Davis Quintet 1963/64, concert recordings from one of Miles beloved destinations that span the end of the post-Coltrane quintet transitional period—George Coleman is the tenor on the 1963 dates, July 26-28—into the first appearances of the second great quintet with Wayne Shorter, who plays on the October 1, 1964 concert (Shorter had joined the group maybe two weeks prior).
The October concert is another incredible moment when history changed, captured on audio. The late 1950s on, Miles was developing his modal concept into a fruitful path for modern jazz. But always looking for new directions and refining every idea that
crossed his path or came into his mind, he shed his previous group and hired the young musicians Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and the prodigious virtuoso Tony Williams (who is still just 17 at the 1963 performances). Miles wanted musicians who would surprise him and show him new things, and famously felt that they were actually leaving him (of all people!) behind in the early stages of this band. By the time of the important Plugged Nickel live recordings, Christmastime 1964, Miles was all caught up and again leading the way, but he had to get there from some point prior. And, it turns out that point was October 1, 1964. That night, Miles opened the second set with one of his favorites, “My Funny Valentine.” He plays it with all the intelligence and care a listener expects from him, and tosses in a few familiar musical devices, like a quick, wobbling rise-and-fall hiccup and a fast, upward rip. He finishes his solo, and then Shorter steps up to the mic. And all of a sudden this is an entirely different group, playing an entirely different music, something allusively and subtly exploring the outer boundaries of song form without abandoning it. Shorter plays a long tone and takes a long pause, Hancock tosses in a brief, dissonant almostmodulation, a specific musical idea that he never plays on any other recorded instance of this group. All of a sudden, Miles sounds a little old fashioned, all of a sudden, a new music appears. In a few seconds, the direction of decades of music that came after was decided. It’s breathtaking.
New Miles Davis release: Miles in France, 1963/64
Spirit in the Streets:
Story and Photos by Kate Walter
Ilove Halloween in the West Village, even though I stopped going to the Greenwich Village Halloween parade years ago. It had become too crowded. One time I got pushed up against a police horse and couldn’t move. That did it for me. I had gotten too old for the crowd scene. So I created new Halloween rituals and embraced my memories.
The founder of the Greenwich Village Halloween parade, puppeteer and mask maker, theater artist, Ralph Lee, was my neighbor in Westbeth Artists Housing. Lee died in 2023 at 87. In the inner courtyard, there is a permanent installation of his art work that changes every few months.
When I was a graduate student in the early 1980s at the New School, I had an assignment to produce a short documentary film. My group decided to make our indie film about the Village Halloween parade. We went to Lee’s loft and interviewed him. We shot his giant creations. We captured Westbeth residents donning their costumes in the community room. We marched the entire route with the revelers and shot the ending in Washington Square Park.
That was when the parade was a real neighborhood event and it traversed through the winding streets of the West Village. (It started in 1974 and moved to Sixth Avenue in 1985.) Little did I know then that I’d eventually move from the East Village into Westbeth in 1997. Now this spooky film I made in the 80s feels like a positive premonition of my future home.
We called it “Spirit in the Streets.” I’d love to see it again, but even if I could find it, I doubt I could play it since it was shot on Betamax video. The professor loved it. We got a great grade but our group of four women nearly came to blows in the editing room.
Today the Greenwich Village Halloween parade attracts millions. But I get my thills from taking leisurely walks around the neighborhood and shooting the dazzling Halloween displays in the West Village. Ghosts and skeletons climb up steps and sway from balconies and fire escapes. Giant pumpkins and colorful mums line the stoops creating a festive harvest atmosphere.
Residents here decorate for this holiday the same way people in the suburbs decorate for Christmas. Over the top. And the folks who live in these buildings put out new art work every year. They don’t repeat themselves. It’s creative. It’s original. It’s the Village.
