Pale.
And, to be honest, kind of pasty. That’s how John Schoen looked as the midnight
hour approached on Saturday, May 21. But most of us would probably look a lot
worse in his place.
As
previewed in the May 18 issue of City,
Schoen celebrated his birthday by spinning records from his massive collection
for 24 hours straight at the A\V Space.
“I’m
actually going ’til 12:20,” he said, beer in hand, at about five before the
hour, “because I really started at 12:20 last night.”
On
a small couch and chairs in front of the DJ table, a small group of supporters
— including Schoen’s wife and fellow musicians — gathered to watch and
listen.
“Let’s
finish off with some South American psych,” said Schoen as he let the needle
drop on Argentinean psychedelic outfit Color Humano’s “Costas Rustica.” As the
song was winding down, Schoen kept his eye on the clock.
“All
right, 12:20,” he declared to a round of applause before immediately heading
for the door.
Standing
outside in the low, after-hours hum of the Public Market, Schoen insisted that
he felt great. He’d avoided coffee, drinking water instead and eating
moderately. And, yes, he found time to go to the restroom.
“Didn’t
you close your eyes even for a second?” someone asked.
“No.”
Schoen
played 226 songs. Anyone who knows him knew that his choices were bound to be obscure. Interestingly, though, he
didn’t give much forethought to what he played. He stuffed two crates with
records he grabbed randomly by the handful. He also didn’t play “sets” of
different styles. At one point, for example, he zigzagged from Don Cherry to Ladies
W.C. to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5 to Pookey Blow to Blue Cheer.
Schoen
approached song-to-song choices intuitively, the way a musician would improvise
live.
“The
way I looked at it,” he explained, “it was a performance.”
The playlist from John
Schoen’s 24-hour Vinyl Vortex session is posted at www.avspace.org/shows/05_20_2005/.
—
Saby Reyes-Kulkarni
All
in the family
What
a difference a few days and an ideological divide make.
On
a recent Saturday Democrats were duking it out on the floor of the cavernous
War Memorial under soulless hockey-arena lighting. The whole scene was
calculated to impress. There was the electric buzz of a gathering where
important decisions were being made.
Fast-forward
five days to the Republicans’ countywide
convention at Logan’s Party House. The bar was open and the scene was cozy.
It was a convention in name only; delegates were really there for a
“coronation” as one of them put it. In fact, only one designating vote took
place all evening: Patrick O’Flynn was unanimously nominated candidate for
sheriff, a post he now holds. The atmosphere had all the informal collegiality
of a happy hour.
It’s
a testament to state and county party chair Steve Minarik’s savvy that the
Republican convention can come off appearing like a family reunion at a time
when the party is relentlessly crushing the Dems.
The
only break in the self-congratulatory mood came in the form of an extended rant
by mayoral candidate John Parinello, who assailed everything and everyone
Democratic in the city of Rochester he could think of, which, it turns out, is
quite a bit. Brandishing newspaper clippings, he assaulted everything from the
fast ferry to a bike path as evidence of waste and corruption on the Democrats’
watch.
“The
Democrats have done nothing in the last 30 years but screw this city up,” he
told party faithful. He called Mayor Bill Johnson “arrogant” and
“unapproachable.” Bob Duffy was “stone dumb,” and a failure as top cop. Wade
Norwood’s announced decision not to seek the Independence Party endorsement on
grounds of principle was “a flat-out lie.”
It’s
unclear how long his tirade would’ve continued (Parinello appeared to have a
sizable stack of clippings that he didn’t get to) if Minarik hadn’t eventually
tugged on his sleeve to get him away from the microphone.
Still,
Parinello’s attack-dog style suits past Minarik campaign strategies, and the
GOP boss said repeatedly that the city is his party’s next frontier in 2005.
Republicans
also plan to run a full slate of candidates for city council (though they
haven’t recruited enough yet) and for all 29 seats of the Monroe County legislature.
Mass
merger
It’s
official: Madison’s merging into Wilson.
The Rochester City School Board voted for a proposal to combine the two city
high schools at its last meeting, May 19.
The
merger has faced scrutiny, mainly because Wilson Magnet High School has become
one of the district’s leading lights, beating Brighton and Pittsford schools in
a recent Newsweek story on the
country’s top 100 schools. It also has a waiting list of nearly 1,300 students.
Madison, on the other hand, is rarely listed by students as a first choice.
“By
making this move, there will actually be more families and more students who
will get their first choice,” said Superintendent Manuel Rivera. “Less than 10
percent of the students at Madison are there as a result of it being their
first choice.”
The
plan calls for closing academically challenged Madison and combining it with
Wilson Magnet High School. Students bound for the newly formed school can
attend grades 7-9 in the former Madison building. Grades 10-12 will attend
Wilson Magnet. As many as 600 of Madison’s 1,060 students will be given the
chance to stay in the Wilson program or transfer to another high school. The
district has yet to account for the other 460.
Supporters
of the merger were nowhere to be heard at the meeting. Instead, opponents like
Glenny Williams, education committee chairman of United Church Ministries, said
that student demand to attend Wilson will not help southwest-area students. In
fact, he cautioned, it will send many of them out of the southwest to schools
with vacancies.
Kodak
adds, subtracts
Kodak
is giving Super 8 film aficionados
reason to mourn and celebrate in the same week. The photo-image company is
discontinuing its small-gauge Kodachrome 40 film stock while making “the
super-saturated, fine grain” Kodak Ektachrome 64T Color Reversal Film 7280
available in August.
This
year marks the 40th anniversary of 8mm film stock, a cheap alternative to 16mm
and 35mm film. Kodak acknowledges the vitality of the format, whose
accessibility and vibrancy is well-adored.
Super
8 film “provides an easy, inexpensive way for students and enthusiasts to work
at film resolutions and color depths as yet unmatched by the latest digital
technologies,” says Bob Mayson, vice president and general manager for image
capture products in Kodak’s imaging division.
Amateur
filmmaker Brittany Gravely has already experienced the effect of Kodachrome 40s
discontinuation. On a small-gauge enthusiasts’ listserv last week, she
announced: “I just placed an order for the 7270 Kodachrome 40 film directly
from Kodak and she told me I was ordering the last 14 rolls…”
Kodak’s
decision was made primarily as a result of “marketplace dynamics.”
This article appears in May 25-31, 2005.
