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night out
I went to see Lisa Dewey and Dave Ray at the Phantom Galleries reception.
The Phantom Galleries are one of the coolest parts of the fascinating and ongoing effort to create cultural life in the downtown of San Jose, known mostly as the quasi-suburban heart of Silicon Valley. There are, unfortunately, a lot of unused retail spaces downtown, and the fine folks at Two Fish Design convinced the powers that be to host temporary exhibits in most of them. So now when you walk down the street, you stroll past not empty windows but art. It's great.
The Phantom Galleries receptions are part of 'Third Thursdays,' a night each month on which most of the downtown arts organizations stay open late. (I think "late" means like 8.) In the former site of the City Cafe, they throw a party, with entertainment and art and snacks and mingling. Tonight, in addition to the musicians (I'll get to them), there was a guy doing a live watercolor demo, and a Lomo event.
The short version: The Lomo is a former Soviet camera that has grown a cult. "Shoot from the hip," etc. There are three Lomographic Embassies in the United States, and it turns out one of them consists of our friends the Two Fish, who lend out the cameras and send people on missions. My favorite result of this is that construction sites downtown are now boarded over with giant Lomo photographs from local youths. This month the Phantom Galleries include a display of Lomo work by another group of locals, and tonight they lent out a bunch of cameras to anyone who dropped by the reception and wanted to be part of the next batch.
But I didn't get one, because I was there for the music. Lisa Dewey is maybe my favorite local musician--she just sends me into a trance state. She has a band, but tonight she just played solo acoustic, and it was great, despite some problems with the P.A. system. Another of my local favorites is Dave Ray, owner of the P.A., and he was great too.
I haven't seen either of them for months. I've played mandolin and melodica with Dave before--he recently got back in touch, and it looks like we'll be playing a show together next month, possibly with his violinist friend Joan, which would be even better. The three of us played together (after one hasty same-day rehearsal) at a charity art auction last year, and it was great fun.
But I'm straying from my unstated point, which is this: I love San Jose.
And then after that, I went to an open mike, at Josline's Cafe in Sunnyvale. Not much to say about it--I showed up late, so I missed most of the show. But I did get to play my long-neglected mandola, and plug my show tomorrow, and plug Kris Delmhorst's shows next week, and play a song ("World of Freedom") that I've only played once before, on the night I wrote it, maybe a year ago. And people liked it! Hooray! But this doesn't mean I'm going to start dragging the mandola to gigs.
The Phantom Galleries are one of the coolest parts of the fascinating and ongoing effort to create cultural life in the downtown of San Jose, known mostly as the quasi-suburban heart of Silicon Valley. There are, unfortunately, a lot of unused retail spaces downtown, and the fine folks at Two Fish Design convinced the powers that be to host temporary exhibits in most of them. So now when you walk down the street, you stroll past not empty windows but art. It's great.
The Phantom Galleries receptions are part of 'Third Thursdays,' a night each month on which most of the downtown arts organizations stay open late. (I think "late" means like 8.) In the former site of the City Cafe, they throw a party, with entertainment and art and snacks and mingling. Tonight, in addition to the musicians (I'll get to them), there was a guy doing a live watercolor demo, and a Lomo event.
The short version: The Lomo is a former Soviet camera that has grown a cult. "Shoot from the hip," etc. There are three Lomographic Embassies in the United States, and it turns out one of them consists of our friends the Two Fish, who lend out the cameras and send people on missions. My favorite result of this is that construction sites downtown are now boarded over with giant Lomo photographs from local youths. This month the Phantom Galleries include a display of Lomo work by another group of locals, and tonight they lent out a bunch of cameras to anyone who dropped by the reception and wanted to be part of the next batch.
But I didn't get one, because I was there for the music. Lisa Dewey is maybe my favorite local musician--she just sends me into a trance state. She has a band, but tonight she just played solo acoustic, and it was great, despite some problems with the P.A. system. Another of my local favorites is Dave Ray, owner of the P.A., and he was great too.
I haven't seen either of them for months. I've played mandolin and melodica with Dave before--he recently got back in touch, and it looks like we'll be playing a show together next month, possibly with his violinist friend Joan, which would be even better. The three of us played together (after one hasty same-day rehearsal) at a charity art auction last year, and it was great fun.
But I'm straying from my unstated point, which is this: I love San Jose.
And then after that, I went to an open mike, at Josline's Cafe in Sunnyvale. Not much to say about it--I showed up late, so I missed most of the show. But I did get to play my long-neglected mandola, and plug my show tomorrow, and plug Kris Delmhorst's shows next week, and play a song ("World of Freedom") that I've only played once before, on the night I wrote it, maybe a year ago. And people liked it! Hooray! But this doesn't mean I'm going to start dragging the mandola to gigs.