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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN
Thursday, MARCH 13, 2014
CommunitySection MUSIC
THE SOUNDS OFBLUE By Bob Putignano The four CD set of nearly two complete shows - the September 25, 1976 show at the Capital Centre, Landover, MD, and the September 28, 1976 show at the Onondaga County War Memorial, Syracuse, NY, is mastered in HDCD from the original recordings by Dan Healy. Musicians: Jerry Garcia - lead guitar, vocals, Donna Jean Godchaux – vocals, Keith Godchaux – piano, Bill Kreutzmann – drums, Mickey Hart – drums, Phil Lesh - bass, vocals, Bob Weir - rhythm guitar, vocals. Note: 1976 was the year that the band returned from a self-imposed nearly two-year touring sabbatical that also marked the return of (a more cluttered sound) with rhythm devils Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart who since 1971 – who were reunited this same year of ‘76. Disc one (from Landover, MD) opens with an uneventful “Bertha” where the only other highlights are the mythical “Cassidy” and a superlative “Let It Grow” with Garcia shifting into overdrive relentlessly creating songs within songs during his intense and innovative guitar solos. The first set closes with “Sugaree” and would have left a better impression had the band ended with the powerful “Let It Grow.”Set two starts with an okay coupling of “Lazy Lightnin’,” “Supplication,” tunes Weir previously recorded
Grateful Dead
“Dick’s Picks Volume Twenty” www.RealGoneMusic.com
and performed with his Kingfish band.There’s a pretty potent and funky “Dancing in the Streets” that segues into a lame “Cosmic Charlie” whose shelf-life should have expired in 1968. The set ends with a thirty minute run through of “St. Stephen,” “Not Fade Away,” a short “Drums” segment, back to “St. Stephen,” and the anticlimactic “Sugar Magnolia.” Onto discs three and four and moving to Syracuse, NY the band opens with a boring “Cold Rain and Snow,” “Candyman” is also a snore, as is “Friend of the Devil.” The first set is salvaged by another potent “Let It Grow” that (this time) coupled with a rare set ending “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad” that left me optimistic for the second set. This second set runs nonstop (other than the encore) for over an hour starting with “Playing In the Band” that gets sumptuously spacey, followed by the gorgeous “The Wheel,” into (an oddly placed and pedestrian paced) “Sampson and Delilah,” that morphs into untitled “Jam” that’s pretty free-form tinged. From the “Jam” there’s a lethargic “Comes a Time” that rolls into a five minute “Drums” segment. Given that the band had a bit of a rest (and probable fun backstage break) the band charges into a heavenly “Eyes of the World” performed here at breakneck
speed with extremely powerful guitar solos from Garcia, then shifts into another loose jam titled “Orange Tango Jam” which is a perfect setup for “Dancing in the Streets” followed by the set closing return of “Playing in the Band.”As if this wasn’t enough the band returns for more, and encore with a night ending “Johnny B. Goode.” Whew! Dick’s Picks, Vol. 20 carries the following warning: CAVEAT EMPTOR: “Dick’s Picks Volume 20 was mastered from the original stereo 1/4” reel-to-reel tapes, running at 7.5 ips, from the PA mix. Through optimal sonic manipulation of these master tapes we have aimed to create as good a replication of the live concert experience as possible. Enjoy.” For fifteen years Bob Putignano has been pivotal at WFDU with his Sounds of Blue radio show www.SoundsofBlue.com - Previously a senior contributing editor at BluesWax, Blues Revue, and Goldmine magazines. Putignano can be contacted at: bob8003@yahoo.com Bob Putignano http://www.SoundsofBlue. com is now celebrating 14 + years on the air at WFDU http://wfdu.fm
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
New Rochelle’s Shock Wave A Bridge too Much
By BOB MARRONE Walking through New Roc and over the bridge, to Donald Trump’s house we go. I wondered aloud if the bridge we just crossed was the ‘wave bridge,’ I just had to know. Sure enough, she said with a shrug, indeed it was what I had thought. It was, in fact, the blue wave crossing that a quarter million had bought. Nice little poem,no? I had forgotten about the bridge, and I had never crossed it before. But something about the wavy pattern jogged my memory, bringing out the poet in me. When you do news and current events for a living, the stories have a way of floating by you, no pun intended, like boats on a river. You
remember the real expensive ones or the very ornate ones and sometimes even those that sunk. But the vast majority just passes by rarely to be heard about or seen, again.The big stories that stick and we remember in New Rochelle tend to be political, focused on development or about the city’s famous residents past and present. The Naval Armory, taxes, big building projects and the introduction of new parks makes recurring news. So, it seems, does the history of the famous people who lived or live there. Thomas Paine and Lou Gehrig always resurface, and we hear repeatedly about Ray Rice and the wonderful church that the equally wonderful Mariano Rivera is building on North Avenue. As I sat in the new barbecue eatery under
the wigged one’s apartment house, the dust began shaking off my memories of a guest a few years back who talked about this wonderful bridge that was going to span Huguenot Street, allowing people to avoid the traffic and move to and fro from New Roc City to the Trump building etc. It was going to be, they said, an artistic masterpiece that would give pedestrians a sense that they were surrounded by blue waves. I was told that sound effects would enhance the experience. A well know talented artist was on the case and ordering the finest tiles from wherever. It was to be, I believed, a highlight of a resurgent downtown, something that would complement the born-again Division Street strip and the new and newer high risers of the area. Well, my bad. I never followed up. Time passed; we watched The Donald building have its grand opening, the ice rink have its grand closing and the downtown, slowly continued to improve. The city and the veterans continued to fight over the Armory like a scene from
the movie “Braveheart”. We continued to fight over school budgets, taxes and the off again-on again Echo Bay project, and Ray Rice won a Super Bowl, that is before he got arrested. We weathered a flood, two big hurricanes and lots of snow. We even passed the fifty year mark of futility over what to do with David’s Island. Through all of it, in these last five years, I never heard another word about the bridge with the magic waves. Now you will. Take a walk for yourself. As you pass over the admittedly pretty blues tiled walkway, ask yourself if it should have cost $250,000 dollars. Ask yourself if you don’t have a brother-in-law in the tile business who could have done it for much less. More to the point; ask yourself if you feel the experience of waves splashing around you. While you’re at it, ask yourself how much a quarter of a million dollars is. You could buy a decent house in most American cities for that, What did I think of it, you ask? Well, after I made the return trip, all I could think of was a large men’s room in a
Caribbean airport, or maybe the back wall at the Aquarium where they sell rubber dolphins. New Rochelle is a well run city; it really is. Despite the cries of the south and westenders that the city was better off with the old tax cap, and even as the new state imposed tax lid threatens to make city hall a ghost town and the roads a lunar landscape of pot holes, it runs a tight ship. Yes they have come up with clever ways, like garbage pickup fees, which some call a tax by another name, but they get by. So my first concern was whether the city paid $250,000 for this overhyped, way overpriced bridge. The good news is that they did not. I have on good authority that the cost was borne by the ever popular developer Cappelli Enterprises. The bad news is that we in the news business need to do a better job of following up on such good news. Robert Marrone is an author and freelancer writer.