On any stormy, gray faux spring Sunday, nothing beats the blahs like going to hear some live music. And live it is at The Northside Café on Boyd Acres Road with jazz from 4 p.
Bob Woodward
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Woody's NCAA Bracket Blues: Started fast and falling just as quickly
Woody’s high-flying NCAA tournament bracket takes a tough hit on Sunday.
Every year, I promise myself never ever to pick any of the extremely over-rated Big East teams on my NCAA basketball tournament bracket. But I succumbed again this year and picked Pitt to go to the Final Four.
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Great Vibes: Jazz at Joe's 29th concert soars
A review of Chuck Redd’s appearance in Bend, Oregon.
Three decades ago, a 21-year-old jazz drummer named Chuck Redd appeared in Bend as part of the Charlie Bryd trio at a gig at the now defunct Pat and Mike’s restaurant upstairs at 916 Wall Street. Byrd was responsible in great part for bringing bossa nova from Brazil to America. Pat and Mike’s was a restaurant/movie house (a la present day McMenamins) nervously testing the waters with its first jazz concert. The restaurant’s owners shouldn’t have been worried, the show was hugely successful.
Successful is also the word for this past Saturday night when Redd paid a return visit to Bend, this time to play the vibraphone and front a quartet at the 29th edition of Jazz at Joe’s at the Cascade Theatrical Company. Then, on Sunday morning, Redd conducted a clinic at the Cascade School of Music.
Over the thirty years since Redd last played here Bend has changed. So too has Redd going from an emerging young talent to an internationally acclaimed drummer and vibraphonist.
Based in Washington, D.C., Redd plays worldwide when not recording or teaching at the University of Maryland. Twice a year, he makes a pilgrimage to Portland to spend time plying with masterful young Oregon pianist Tony Pacini. The results of their collaboration is a tasty mélange of music from standards to bop, Bossa Nova and ballads.
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Owsley Stanley, the Acid King, Passes on
Owsley Stanley, one of the godfathers of LSD, passed away.
It’s one of those six degrees of separation things.
Reading the obit of Augustus Owsley Stanley III, I immediately flashed back (bad pun) to the sixties, life in Berkeley, Owsley as the world’s leading manufacturer of LSD and some connection to him I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Trying to come up the connection, I recalled that without Owsley there would not have been Tom Wolfe’s Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test, Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” The Grateful Dead’s “Alice D Millionaire” or the aptly named rock group-Blue Cheer. Owsley was, and remained to his death, a legend in hipster circles. He was also, during my Bay Area years, a wanted man.
Thinking about him as a fugitive, I remembered my connection. I knew a major “chemist” of the era not because of his acid production, but as the inventor of a machine that could blow down into jackets and sleeping bags.
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Geekology: iPad part deux
Portlanders line up for their new iPads.
The intended goal of our Portland-area trip this past Friday was to bring two local 12-year old fashionistas face-to-face with the wares at the recently opened outlet for Swedish retailer H & M. That location just happens to be in that most American of American places, The Washington Square Mall in that that oh-so-suburban community known as Beaverton. Just being in Beaverburg makes you think Bend is more than paradise, but that’s another story.
Onward we marched into the disco-pumping sounds that surround every purchase at H and M and other outlets like Aeropostale, Forever 21, Hollister, etc.
As we trolled from one brand location to the next, we kept passing pods of people sitting in camp chairs emblazoned with “Dick’s Sporting Goods” logos all arranged in cordoned off areas. To a person, everyone in each of the three pods we passed were on laptops, smart phones or iPads. Some were on two devices at once, all looked like fresh air wasn’t something they were used to and, to be honest, their average weight-per-stature seemed a bit high.
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Mud Be Gone: The Maston is ready for your mountain bike
The trails in the Matson Allotment are beginning to dry up.
Following what seemed like an endless mud season, the trails at the Maston Allotment are again in great shape mountain for bike riding. Yes, there are some short muddy sections but they comprise no more than 10 percent of the long loop.
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Free WiFi: A good idea gone wrong?
Yes the wifi is free, but please don’t spend all day in my favorite coffee shop.
Back in that bygone era of less than a decade ago, many who lived in major metro areas would drive around with their laptops on and when they encountered a hot spot, park and get online. It was great sport.
Today, we get free WiFi everywhere, big city or small. It's been a boon to the wired.
Now it's becoming, at least for some of us, a huge pain.
How so? One problem is that coffee houses that offer free WiFi draw freeloaders who make a minimal purchase and then become squatters taking up the shop's table and couch space for hours at a time.
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Remembering Carol Bryant: A local theater legend passes on
Carol Bryant passes away at 85.
When Carol Bryant passed away this week at 85, a chapter in local theater history came to a close. Bryant’s life revolved around local theater from acting to directing, to promoting and shepherding the Community Theater of the Cascades (now Cascade Theatrical Company) from it’s inception staging shows in the Kenwood School gym to its present day Greenwood Playhouse theater.
My first encounter with Bryant was in 1980 when she helping cast a show. I got the lead male part due, in part, to her persuasiveness with the show’s director. Years later, I acted under her direction and thoroughly enjoyed the experience as she turned the cast from bumbling to presentable.
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Making Music: The classical music is alive and well in Central Oregon
The Central Oregon Symphony continues to play excellent music in Bend.
Despite the continued portrayal of Bend and Central Oregon as a mini epicenter for indie, folk, rock, metal, hip-hop and pop music, thanks to the excellent musicianship of the Central Oregon Symphony under the able direction of maestro Michael Gesme, classical music remains alive and well in our community.
Playing to packed houses at Bend Senior High School this past weekend, the symphony proved once again that it can perform at a high level as it continues to offer great orchestral music as well as serve as a springboard for young solo talents. In the case of the three weekend concerts, 17-year-old flautist Nick Loeffler and 12-year-old violinist Kiarra Saito-Beckman.
Both young artists played flawlessly and with poise well beyond their years. Loeffler’s skill, particularly during the cadenza of Mozart’s “Concerto for Flute in D Major” was astounding.
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Plowing Snow: My continued battle to keep the snow off my sidewalk
The city of Bend keeps plowing snow onto my sidewalk.
Call me naïve, but I get out when it snows and judiciously clean the sidewalks bordering my house. I’ve done so for over thirty years and always thought that if I didn’t clean them I might get tagged because there’s a city ordinance on the books that sidewalks have to be cleaned within 24 hours of a snowfall.
Funny how ordinance guilt works on me, but as far as I know, not for a good many people as the ordinance has never (by my recollection), ever been enforced.
So I clean the sidewalks and accept thanks from those who walk to work, to the grocery store or with their children to school.