Weekly Rochester Events #251: The Scottsville-Mendon Expressway

Thursday, October 30, 2003

Er ... well, yeah, I guess they are, but coming up soon—next week to be exact—is The High Falls Film Festival. There's a bunch of events starting on Wednesday ... check the site for the details. I got my tickets to the opening ceremonies the other day. Thankfully for you, I'm amazingly anal retentive (sometimes) and I decided to put all the films and events into my Palm Pilot along with all the movie descriptions. Well, to do that, I had to make a file to import, and I opted for tab-separated format. As a favor to my readers, I set up three versions of each file for the line-break format on particular operating systems, so the schedule is available in Macintosh, UNIX, and Windows/DOS format and the movie descriptions are also available as Macintosh, UNIX, and Windows/DOS.

I didn't bother asking the festival people if it was cool to do this, so they may find it someday and tell me to take it down. Oh, and it might be out of date because it's based on their update from a few days ago. Let me know if anything is incorrect if you find it. To use the files, the short instructions are to right-click on the appropriate link, save it somewhere, then open the Palm desktop software, import it as Tab-Separated Format (to the schedule or to the memo pad, depending on which file) and then adjust the descriptions, times, dates, and categories so they import correctly ... the same can be done in a spreadsheet (like Microsoft Excel) or a database if you want. If you have any trouble, get a paper copy and carry that around instead: I'm not doing technical support.

Anyway, this Friday I'm going to a Halloween party out of town and I might not make it to O'Bagelo's on Saturday. More important, though, I don't want to miss anything while I'm out of town, but I'm going to have to. My solution is to go to everything I can this past week so I'll be all burned out and not want to see anything. It doesn't seem to be working, though, as I keep seeing good stuff.

Mostly for bragging rights, here's what I did last week:

On Thursday I went to Java Wally's and got to see (and meet) Silandara Bartlett. I thought she did fine, but almost everyone there was playing "Go" as part of the RIT Go Club, so she didn't get much response from the audience. Next, I went to The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) and saw The End who were high-energy metal to me (but I guess it's "techincal metal") and Bongzilla who—not surprisingly—do 1970's stoner rock. From there it was off to Monty's Krown (875 Monroe Ave.) where I got to see the last couple songs of Low Ton, heavy modern rock with Throttlerod and Quintaine Americana who also play hard rock.

On Friday, I caught Nuts and Bolts Improv Troupe (see their site at ImprovAmerica too) at German House (315 Gregory St.) which will be known as the show that Frank messed up his ankle. Batman will never be the same. From there it was off to Johnny's Irish Pub (1382 Culver Rd., still smoke-free) to see John Akers who did as expected and played covers of popular songs.

Saturday, I got out to the The All-Purpose Room (#8 in the Public Market, off N. Union St.) to see that Clear Housing and Clearing House installation. I thought it was pretty good (but certainly not for everyone.) A primarily orchestral composer, Brad Lubman, did some experimental work adding "found" samples onto one another in an interesting composite. It's presented as a CD played on a loop ... a somewhat odd choice, I guess, but it's effective. I got lost in the sound-field manipulations in the "K.O.M. 2" segment, toward the end of the show. Anyway, I went to Montage Grille (50 Chestnut St.) after that and got to see Vienna Teng. I thought she was okay—certainly techincally perfect—unfortunately, she seemed to limit her emotional range which I thought detracted from her performance quite a bit. After that I went to Acme Bar & Pizza (495 Monroe Ave.) for The Filthy Funk. I stayed for a few songs ... they were pretty good. I still like their drummer's unique style derived from DJ house music. From there I was off to The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) to see The Franks do some fast rock-and-roll, and then the Fertility Rite Brothers who proved that you can't really pull off the sloppy, teenage, garage-band sound if you're over 40.

On Sunday, I got out to First Rate Foods & Deli (127 East Ave.) with the crew and had a great sandwich. Late that night, I went to The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) to see The Purrs continue to improve their punk-influenced hard-edged rock and The Hentchmen who do high-energy power-pop.

Monday, it was off to St. Anne Church (1600 Mt. Hope Ave.) for the The Upper Mount Hope Neighborhood Association meeting. After that, I headed to The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) ... again ... to see Turn Pale with their nearly non-describable gritty, eclectic rock, The Retreads who are honing their punk-rock style, and Kaito who do rock-based music with the staccato style of punk.

Tuesday, I headed to Java's (16 Gibb St.) and saw Oshe who are actually pretty good ... they do this jazzy groove-funk with elements of experimentation. From there it was off to The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) for another late night with The Flipsides who do straight-forward punk-rock, The QUiTTERS driving home the punk-rock theme, and finally The Groovie Ghoulies who do this humor-filled, high-energy classic-style punk.

Wednesday I was starting to get tired and only went to see the experimental band show with Sauce at The All-Purpose Room (#8 in the Public Market, off N. Union St.)

All told, I made it to 14 of the events of the 36 unique things I listed last week. Like I said, I'm feeling like this is a lot of fun like the good old days and not really working to get me to not want to see any more music. I guess it's like my dad's idea to feed a stray cat to see if it'll go away.