Down by the bay

"Down by the Bay" is an old children's song popularized by Raffi in the '80's. Remember?

Down by the bay
Where the watermelons grow
Back to my home I dare not go
For if I do
My mother will say:
"Did you ever see a......(fill in the blank with a rhyme...) down by the bay."

We just returned from Netarts bay, Oregon, and here are a few new verses for that old song.

Did you ever see a dune by the light of the moon?

Did you ever see the ocean all in motion?

Did you ever see a bird who had the last word?

Did you ever see a cliff with a rift like this?

Did you ever see a light flash all night?

 

Did you ever see a path all full of wrath?

Did you ever see an ATV outrun a tsunami?

Did you ever see egrets without any regrets?

Did you ever leave the sand with an empty hand...

...down by the bay.

B sides

I am making chicken noodle soup and corn meal muffins while simultaneously flipping the switches in the juke box to play all b-sides, loud, as John comes home from a bad day at work. A normal person would not be happy to come into this little world, but John is immediately cheered  & asks for a dance to "Walk Like a Man" (B-side to the Four Seasons "Sherry").

And so commences Friday evening.

I had flipped 20 b-sides in a row.You know, if you just play them loud enough, and you get in the mood, it works. Helps to have a glass or two of wine, or maybe a bottle of beer.

We eat dinner and realize that the Zombies were amazing. ("You Make Feel So Good,"  b-side of "She's Not There"...could totally be the Beatles). By the time "Tutti Frutti" ( b-side of "Blue Suede Shoes") comes around, John has gone to hear a buddy play trumpet with a well-known jazz singer that I don't want to hear tonight. I'm waiting for the juke box to play the Dixie Cups' "Iko Iko" (b-side of "I Wanna Love Him So Bad"). "Iko Iko"-played with drumsticks on ashtrays- is one of my all-time favorite songs, which I first heard at night on a car radio, late, from New Orleans. It has its own Wiki page and I can't believe it was a b-side song.

Playing #85: Booker T and the MGs

But really, why be surprised at that? Every artist has the thing that sells, and then the other thing, which does not. That second thing is worth looking at, so revealing. The runner-up, the underbelly, the hopeful stab in the dark. I wish we still had records with just two songs on them.

Excuse me. Now I cannot write. I must listen to Patsy Cline ("I Fall to Pieces" b-side of "Crazy.")

Name the band

There's something vaguely biological about the forming of bands, like a sort of ongoing mitosis in which groups split up, constantly creating multiple new entities. At first-long ago-I didn't understand this and it wasn't hard to con me into developing logos, perhaps a t-shirt design for John's latest band.

Coming up with a clean, cool logo is much much harder than it looks. As bands went through their rather short life cycles (1-3 years), I lacked enthusiasm for new pro bono projects associated with them.


It's probably short-sighted to feel this way; what if John Pasche had been like that when the Rolling Stones needed him to come up with something? Oh right, John Pasche didn't work for free and would never have turned down the chance to design that big tongue-and-lips. Pre-dating Miley Cyrus by 42 years, it was later to be voted the greatest band logo of all time.

Anyway. All of the music has been super-fun. It's ranged from solitary classical guitar to bluegrass to rock and roll, free-form jazz, standard jazz, and now a swing band. There's a huge drum set downstairs, and a nice piano, plus musicians coming over over once or twice a week to practice. Just one little problem: the swing band is about to play its third gig and it doesn't have a name. Nobody can agree:

Four Swings and a Ms.
Dogtown
50 Finger Swing Band
Swing Theory
The Bad Samaritans
The Fabulous Delusionists
Highwire Cakewalk
Frim Fram

Lengthy discussions have ended in laughter, frowns,  and head shaking.  After a few beers a name sounds perfect...Tony Legato and the Fuckin' Re-tahds (musical terms, people, musical terms thought up by a band member from Boston)...but later with a clear head...no, perhaps not.

They are happily taking submissions for a name, and I keep thinking of stuff, but nothing is just right. Websites that generate band names aren't much help although they're fun to mess with. One such site came up with The Swinging Potatoes, and Swing of the Adverse, and Glory Swing of the Wooly Prosthetic.  ??????? If you visit that site let me know if you have better luck. Or please just think of something.

Frozen in time

It's been a long time since I put a picture up for Friday Shoot-Outs. I'm not sure why; it's such a great little group sharing photos of home towns, each week addressing a different theme. When I first got my camera (a Canon point-and-shoot) I used FSO as a way of learning how to use my new device, while also having an interesting assignment each week.  Then I kind of drifted off...

 But I noticed that this week's theme is "frozen in time," which I think is pretty cool. It happens that I took some pics last weekend of musicians in an Irish folk band, playing in a darkened room downtown.

 The resulting grainy images look like old-timey photos, the setting as if it were in an unheated  pub many years ago.

Friday Shoot-Outs are a good way to learn more about photography and get feedback from others in a small group. If you're interested, check it out.

Turkish delight

Because of the greedy little kid in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I've long held a negative opinion of Turkish Delight, plus I always thought it was made out of rose water and tasted like soap.

It turns out that's not true. I now know this because of the largesse of our new Turkish friends, Kayham and Sezgin, visiting professors from central Turkey whom John sponsored for a 2 month stay at OSU.  They brought us a box of coconut Turkish Delight that is to-die-for: a very nice, unlooked-for gift.

Their wives and families came with them for a few weeks, and we had the whole gang over for dinner. Damn, why didn't I know it was still Ramadan!!  That's when Muslims fast until sundown, which occurred a bit late that night. At least I knew not to serve pork or alcohol. They were very relaxed about my breach of knowledge, and only K adhered to the exact moment of sundown, watching for it on the internet, eating his dinner an hour after everybody else.

 In the back yard the kids played for hours with Ed and Reub, who enthusiastically endorsed them. I was flabbergasted because:

1.  Eddy always overwhelms children with his desire to play, and Reuben is always terrified of kids because he sees them as unpredictable.
2.  These particular kids have never had a dog, and come from a culture where canines are generally lowly street creatures, not house pets. Shouldn't they have been freaked out by these big dogs? They were not. Instead they were charmed by Eddy's tennis ball obsession, entranced by Reub's truly weird play routine (some day I'll describe it, or he will). Reub wasn't even slightly uncomfortable with them, and Ed was ecstatic.

 Turks must have a gift-giving tradition. That evening I was presented with a large bouquet of fresh daisies, a white silk shawl, and a cunning little 11-piece Turkish coffee set, plus a bag of the right kind of coffee.

This is Turkish coffee, creating just the right amount of foam as it heats up.

AND a lesson in how to make Turkish coffee. Are you kiddin' me? They had me with the Turkish Delight.

But that's not all. Before coming to the US they asked what to bring: "anything...anything at all" Sezgin said. Music-lover John jokingly said not to worry, that some day he would go to Turkey and get himself an oud.

Tezgin gives John a lesson in Turkish music

Imagine John's shock when he was presented with an oud (on the left), complimenting the saz (right) that he already owns. An embarrassment of gifts, he had seriously only joked about that oud, and look what happened. He swears that he only aided his guests a little, just a small amount here and there, nothing that might deserve such a gift from strangers.

As Sezgin gave John the music lesson this past Sunday, his overturned coffee cup sat on its dish. I had asked for a fortune-telling demonstration, but my cup had been washed already, so he agreed to tell his own fortune.

"There is a hand," he said, "reaching up to accept a lot of money. Maybe I'll become rich!" 

I see the hand. Do you?

"I see a beautiful young girl, with long dark hair..." and you know what, this I could not see at all, at least not then. What I saw was a howler monkey in a tree, which I now have trouble deciphering but I can kind of see the girl. There are lots of things you could read into the designs on this little cup! Sezgin was a good sport to play this game, but now I would love to go have my fortune read in Ankara, for real, after drinking my cup of Turkish coffee.

For now, I'll just have another bite of Turkish Delight with coconut; hold the rose water please.

Music around here

Music can be heard regularly in our house, and as I write this I am listening to my husband John, who is a jazz musician, practicing classical piano.

John plays guitar with a couple of different groups, and I am often tasked with the job of taking band pics.

I really enjoy this. It gives me a chance to observe them when they are practicing.

And I may find myself at a gig before there is any audience at all.

Gigs are hard to photograph, but usually there are one or two shots that I like.  This one captures the crazy improvisational energy that an 8-piece jazz ensemble can create. Taken with my little pocket Canon, I'm not even sure how this picture happened.

John also plays in a trio, and they have had a couple of gigs at a resort in the Cascades, about an hour and a half from Corvallis. This is a laid-back venue.

Still, I can't take my eyes off of the drum set.

It's a nice place to play, with surprisingly good acoustics. And twice now, a Yeti has appeared...can you spot him? Yep, the Yeti exists here in Oregon, and loves cool jazz. He always asks some beautiful young girl to dance with him. 

Another common venue for the trio to play is on the OSU campus, for various functions. I think it's a little hard to be cool in this setting, but the bass player's wide stance is helpful.

The trio has played multiple times at Cloud 9, a restaurant/music venue downtown, and this is what that looks like. Pretty cool. They get a free dinner when they play there; the Korean ribs are great.

Music, yeah. I really like this topic.

A wooden phone?

John, who has never even owned a cell phone, just got an iPhone. Holy cow! I actually don't covet his phone, but I kind of want a wooden one and this is why:



I wish all ads were this awesome.

Freeloading and off-course

 

 There wasn't even time to get over jet lag: as soon as we got back from a big three week trip abroad, we headed into the Cascades for a couple of days. Not that I'm complaining.

I owe both trips to John, who works as an anthropologist in OSU's college of forestry, and who from time to time teaches and speaks in places like Spain and Germany. In his other life, though, he is a guitarist, and that comes with its own special blend of perks.

There is something weird in this pic; can you spot it?

It was a music gig that got us a free stay at Odell Lake Lodge, about a 2 hour drive away.

I am a total freeloader on these trips. No worries, just eating, reading, walking. Ed and Reub really appreciated being included on this one.

Here they are competing over who has rights to the interesting beaver stump floating in the water. (Eddy won, but didn't have a big enough mouth to drag it ashore.)

Hooded mergansers swimming past, far enough away to be unperturbed about the dogs wrangling at water's edge.

Waterfall pictures all look the same! It's really hard to capture their amazing qualities.

Driving home mid-day we decided to stop at Salt Creek Falls, a place we've passed dozens of times but never devoted the time for a visit. That's because once we have our destination, it's hard to pause and go off-course; we're like old trail horses who, once they are turned towards the stable, are positively unstoppable.

I am so glad we stopped this time. You know what's cool about this veil of water? Behind it, on a ledge in the vertical basalt wall of rock, lies a nest. There are probably several nests, but because this is completely inaccessible, nobody knows.

Image: whatbird.com

That place beyond the fall of water is home to a beautiful rare bird, the secretive Black Swift. Black Swifts choose to live behind waterfalls, where they lay one egg each year. The adults disappear high in the sky before sunrise, and return at nightfall, feeding their young at that time. When the fledgling is old enough to leave the nest, the family flies away to...nobody knows for sure...Colombia?

Wow. I wonder what other stupendous things we've missed by never veering off-course.

Random stuff while I'm out

I'm in Germany right now, but just for fun here are some random items that were rattling around before my departure.

If you didn't know better, you might think Reub is the most confidant, mellow dog that ever was, and here is a 10 second video to prove it, taken in obedience class recently. The things you can get a dog to do if you don't feed him for 11 hours! There was no distraction in the world that would make him take his eyes off the possibility of trading a "sit" for a piece of chicken.

This girl was right next to our garage, with Eddy barking furiously at her from inside the house, 20 feet away. She's really worried, as you see.

The jazz band that John plays with, swinging hard at a recent gig.

 

Speaking of guitars: in case you want to check out a Google logo from the past, there is a way to do it, and you should  begin here, the best logo ever because you can run your cursor over the guitar strings and play it:

http://www.google.com/logos/2011/lespaul.html

It was June 9th, on what would have been Les Paul's 96th birthday. (He did live to be 94; that's OLD for a musician!)

Now go play some guitar, and I'll see you in a week or so!