Poster

One of the assignments I give to my photography students is to create a poster/still life that tells me and the rest of the class something about them. I want them to gather a selection of objects, pictures, nick-nacks, whatever it takes to let us know more about them than we knew before, arrange them as artfully as possible, light it evenly, and bring it in to class. The above photograph tells the viewer quite a bit about me, albeit only one side, but there are clues galore about approximately how old I am, where I live, my musical tastes, etc. The students generally do a good job on this project and it often reveals surprises.

Paris 2001

I'm posting these photographs not because of any artistic pretensions about them, but because I just found them after having lost track of them for many years. They were stuck on a CD in a box I hadn't looked in for who knows how long. These were taken with the Canon Powershot G1, a 3.3 megapixel camera that set me back about $800 in 2001. But it was my first digital camera and I was very taken with the technology, despite all sorts of issues. I also brought along my Rollei Prego 90 for the majority of the shots on this four day whirlwind trip. Out of camera, the pictures aren't very impressive, but I'm having fun using some newer software on a few of them. The NIK software suite is my personal favorite, especially Viveza. The middle picture shows my dinner, steak frites, and, typically for my wife, fish.

The Boarding House, Part 3

I think one must have to be pretty well-addicted to music to travel 100 miles, try to find a place to park in downtown San Francisco, and have to get up and go teach school the next morning. But I did it, a lot! The top two photographs are of the Tubes. While I did have a couple of albums, I rarely listened to them. They were much more a visual band, as should be rather apparent from the pictures. In the middle is Maria Muldaur, famous for her FM hit, "Midnight At The Oasis," but the version of that song that haunts me in my sleep is from the movie, "Waiting for Guffman" where Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard manage to make it  cringe-inducing. Maria also seems to be having trouble keeping herself together, as it were, something of a wardrobe malfunction. Two relatively obscure acts follow. Obscure didn't bother me back then. In fact, the obscurer the better for my music snobbery knew no bounds.The record store owners in "High Fidelity" didn't have anything on me as far as snobbery was concerned. So, second from last is the British singer Terry Reid, rumored to be the first choice for Led Zeppelin's lead singer. At bottom is Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, who also ran for governor of Texas if I'm not mistaken. Not the whole band, just Kinky. The Tubes and Kinky were very funny, but I also saw some great comedy at the Boarding House. Steve Martin recorded his first three albums there, and he was hilarious! As was Martin Mull, who had an extensive television and movie career to go along with his stand-up. Mull could play an instrument and sing pretty well too. 

The Boarding House, Part 2

The best thing about The Boarding House for me was the intimacy. You could see someone you really liked for a very reasonable price, even accounting for inflation, and up close if you got there early. If you got there at show time, you'd be about 50 feet away if memory serves. For the most part, everyone I saw there I was seeing for the first time. At top, the Byrds reunion on February 9, 1978, featuring, from left to right, Gene Clark, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, and Chris Hillman. Next up is Neil Young, who did an extended run there in 1978. They beefed up the lighting for this show. Below Neil is Tom Waits who I went to see mostly out of curiosity. I thought nothing of making the 50 mile each way trip on a whim back then. I wasn't enamored of Waits despite his hipster cred. I was, however, completely smitten by Emmylou Harris. She had a great band, led by the stellar English guitarist Albert Lee and other luminaries of the Nashville session scene. KSAN radio would often broadcast many of the shows, so I have a quality souvenir of some of those nights. Many of these and other shows are archived at the fantastic Wolfgang's Vault web site.

The Boarding House, Part 1

The Boarding House, on Bush Street in San Francisco, was torn down in 1980 to make room for condos, but during the 70's, it was probably my favorite music venue in SF. Very small, very intimate, and rarely the "impossible ticket" despite the A-list cast of performers who appeared here over the years. They often featured the "next big thing" in current rock and folk. Just when you'd worked up an appreciation for someone from listening to them on KSAN, they'd play the Boarding House. They served dinner too so we'd go early, get a great table, and eat an inexpensive meal before the show. Some of the artists weren't exactly household names, but they were big time to me. From the top, the late Dan Fogelberg, Ian Matthews from Fairport Convention/Matthews Southern Comfort, Doug Sahm from the Sir Douglas Quintet, folk icon Eric Andersen, and Jesse Winchester, making a comeback after a ten-year hiatus when he went to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. As is rather obvious, they didn't exactly break the bank on good lighting, so photography wasn't easy, though you could shoot with impunity.

San Juan Bautista

San Juan Bautista is a California Mission town about an hour south of San Jose. There is an old, quaint town square and a few pretty good restaurants, including a Basque one. My wife and I went down there a few years back so I could try out my then brand-new Nikon D300. I got about four good years out of that camera before selling it because it was too darn heavy. 

Dancing To Sculpture/Hanoi and Ha Long Bay

My wife was headed home, and I was left to my own devices. After seeing her off in a taxi to the airport, I had a day in Hanoi and then an excursion to Ha Long Bay the next day before heading home via Hong Kong. Walking down to the lake, I saw hundreds of women dancing to a boom box. It was just after five am and these ladies were really sweating to the oldies. Later the same day, the pedi-cab driver was catching some shut eye, and games were being played. Ha Long Bay, about a two and a half hour drive from Hanoi, was beautiful. We took a slow boat around the more than two hundred uninhabited islands, and the next morning, Japanese tourists were taking the waters before seven am. I can't wait to go back to Vietnam.