From small things, Big things one day come!

So this picture deserves a whole blog post.  Because, it involves one of the biggest parts of the romance of Asbury Park to me.  This is Carrie Potter-Devening.  She is the author of a book called For Music's Sake Scrapbook  Asbury Park' Upstage Club and Green Mermaid Cafe-The Untold Stories.  Her grandparents owned and operated the Upstage Club.  It is a building still standing on Cookman Avenue.  It is where Thom McCann shoes were located on the corner.  The back of the building still has a ghost painting of the Thom McCann sign facing Lake Avenue.  The book unfolds a magical place opened during the late sixties for only a few years.  Not only is it a time capsule of that time during a very artistic period during American Art History........the murals painted in neon paint on black walls after ALL these years are still there!  I will share more pictures from when I bought the book a few years back and hope to meet up with Carrie again this week.

Dream on......

This is how the store looked when you opened the door......dreamy right?  Love that the fireplace is original.  Love the dreamy abstract mural on the wall, the candy fixtures, the packaging and the paper goods designed by the owner.  Curious to see what I purchased and how it was packaged.....stay tuned.

Curious?

I was too!  Can't wait to show what was inside, and answers to a lot of  questions about staying in business.

DejaVu

I am definitely having some deja vu this week.  And I am not happy about it.  The news is old.  I am disheartened by what I see on TV.  My thoughts of being hopeful are shattered.  I do believe, though, through Art we can express ourselves better then violence.  We can overcome disasters, also.  But, I don't feel right now the world has overcome anything......it is the same old sad story.
I am also doing a lot of soul searching for decisions in my personal life.  Not too sure this busy life is worth it all.  I think I need to slow down, but I don't want to miss any opportunities.  So, I am looking to the past for answers.  Four years ago this week we had two stores open.  Glen was at the store in the Grand Arcade most of the time.  It was May 5 2011 and Crosby and Nash were going to play at the Paramount theatre.  I made a decision to close the store at Cookman and work the store in the Grand Arcade.  I still can't believe Graham Nash stood in my store flipping through records asking ME questions and telling me how cool I was.  Then later, I had the pleasure of David Crosby looking at a scrapbook and telling me about the Deja Vu album cover.  When I saw the album cover I knew it would make a perfect scrapbook cover and rushed to have one ready for when they would play in the building.  David Crosby set up the perfect story of being careful what you wish for.  He told me each sepia picture was attached to the early albums by hand....then there was the gold embossing.  It was the most expensive album cover ever made.  So, after they sold a million copies......they had to make more.  You would think that would be a good thing.  But, it was a very expensive process.  I could feel exactly what he was talking about.  As Artists go an investment in yourself can be very brave, but when it is a group effort it is even braver.
This morning I saw a pile of records Glen was cleaning.  The Deja Vu album was on top, so I put them together to take a picture.  Isn't it amazing?????  You can tell each picture was attached by hand.  Most are a little crooked.  Some are closer to the bottom.  It reminded me when I use to sell Waterford.  I will never forget in the early 90's a bride came in.  She was so lucky to receive twelve Lismore goblets (all from different people).   She was furious!!!  LOOK she said as she pulled each one from the wrapping. LOOK, she said these are horrible.  Horrible I thought?   I love Waterford and would be happy to own just one.  She starting comparing the cuts.  She said EVERY single one is different.  This cut is small, this is long.  Isn't it terrible she asked?   Well, yes I said they are all different, but they are all hand cut.  That is the beauty of being hand made.  She, didn't see it that way.  And, I found a lot more people had the same attitude.  A few years later the pattern became machine cut.  We had a lot more happy customers who ended up paying the same amount of money for this.  By, the year 2000 most of Waterford was machine cut.  
I thought we had come so far, since this album was made.  But, we haven't it's the same old story.  And, all I hear is the media trying to find a moral to the story.....it's because there are no jobs?  It's because we don't manufacture any more?  I don't have any answers except,  people do need to express themselves.  But, when it is at the expense of others safety and well being, it is wrong.  Let's rise up.......again.

WISH FOR WHAT YOU WANT

I BELIEVE IN WISHFUL THINKING.  I BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF THINKING POSITIVE.  Not in the fictional kind like I dream of Jeannie, Bewitched or Disney fairy wishes coming true.  But, in real life I believe with hard work, goal setting, and determination you can take your skills and make the life you always dreamed of living.  This is a picture of my son and daughter at the Brooklyn Museum at Yoko Ono's Wish Tree.  I never asked what their wishes were.  I did write my wish and all I have left to wish is for their wishes to come true.
One part of our life that has been rekindled for Glen and I is going out and listening to live music.  This is how Glen and I met and like he says we went out "eight days a week"  to different bars to listen to our favorite bands.  When Ian got the call to play with the Billy Walton band we were thrilled.  I knew who they were right away, because Billy Walton played with Southside Johnny.  After we saw them the first time we were hooked.  We would stay for every set, and at our age that is becoming more and more challenging.  But, it is like we were in our early twenties, and believe me that is something I wished for.  Never getting old.....ha!  But, the trick is you really can feel like you are not getting old with the power of good music.  I highly recommend you attend one show this year and that is Billy Walton Band's CD release  on March 29th at the Saint in Asbury Park.  It is a Sunday afternoon show at 2pm and promises to be a great time with great people.  Ten dollars gets you in the door and you get a CD with the price of admission to take home.  So, come on Wish for What You Want with us!  More info on the Billy Walton Band can be found here.

International Women's Day-My tribute to Donna Summer

I have been enjoying facebook and all the attention to International Women's Day.  I love to blog,  because I feel it gives me the chance to be a student again.  I really did love school.  I wasn't the best student because I didn't have confidence in my choices of the subject, or what to include, without copying what I read.  When I took composition in college and recieved a D in my first semester and then a B in Composition 2, I couldn't really figure out what I did differently in the two semesters.  With me, anyway, it took age to understand more that writing is about you AND the reader.  But, the you has to come first, and then the hope you are connecting with your readers comes next.  I wrote more from the heart my second semester and the teacher  encouraged me and would write paragraph reactions to what I wrote.
I  find it fascinating  how easy it is to find and share information in today's age.  So, to do this blog post I googled Donna Summer and I read her record album covers.  I wanted to choose a woman to honor that I didn't see anyone else paying tribute to.  She was referred to as a the Queen of Disco.  A true talent who perfectly represented the music of the late seventies.  She was a wife, mother, songwriter, singer, actress and later became a painter.

One of her later albums was called "Once Upon A Time".  To me it sounds autobiographical.  It is about living a dream and afterall she is referred to as the Queen of Disco.  She in her own life was able to have her own successful career and then spend the rest of her life out of the public life at home.  A life she created. She totally was a reflection of the disco era.  A modern day success story.  Able to have career and family life.  A person to admire and remember as an honorable woman.  Interested in her art work? You can find it here.  I also love the video she did for:  "She Works Hard for the Money".  A great tribute to the working woman.

Happy Birthday Mickey Dolenz

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 As I drove to Convention Hall today I was listening to Steve VanZandt's Underground Garage station on the radio.  He was playing some Monkees songs and one that struck my in particular was Going Down sung by Mickey Dolenz and then they announced it was Mickey's birthday.  What a cool song...love the horns.  And, I don't know, but I think he may have started the whole rap thing with that song.

I started thinking how cool it was when I met him at one of the Happy Together shows at Convention Hall and he signed a record cover for us.  I started thinking how I loved the tv show and when my brother said to me once....."you know they are not real?".   It was like he told me there was not really a tooth fairy or a santa.  But, I came to their defense very quickly.  And he went on to say they were nothing but, lip syncers and they didn't really play the instruments.  It was all pretend. Yes, Geralyn they are a want to be, totally made up band to compete with the Beatles.  The American's defense against the British Invasion.  It all broke my heart.  A lot of time has gone by and now with the store I started looking at the album covers and reading the song writers.  It was Neil Diamond and Carole King who wrote a lot of the music.    I started thinking so what if they were made up....they still played an important part of American's contribution to rock and roll music.  One of my other favorite trivia I learned was David Bowie's real name was David Jones, but he couldn't use the name because Davey Jones already was in the entertainment business using the name.  Also, Davey Jones was about 11 playing Oliver in a play on the Ed Sullivan show the same night the Beatles were on and watched them perform and decided he wanted to be them.  So, after thinking and listening to that then they played a song from the Weeklings a new local band.  Their cd release is next weekend at the Wonder Bar and they have a sound a lot like the Beatles.  So, then my serendipity moment when I walk to Convention Hall and see the Monkees car.  So,  I am daydream believer, but you already knew that.  Here is the song in case you want to give it a listen.  I think it is a really cool song, that I don't really remember.