Two Poems

Two Poems
J.Aoyama

Holding a Kodachrome slide up to light from a north facing window
While closing one eye
Is like peering through a low powered spyglass into the past:
A sort of magic

One fortune cookie in an unlikely place
My garage workbench, let’s say, or your project space
White corner of paper showing begs to be pulled
Gently without cracking the hard stale pastry
A length of papyrus typewriter ribbon emerges slowly
With free verse in tiny brushed ink characters

*               *               *

Author’s note:
The first poem is what is ink-brushed onto the paper in the second poem.

Fourteen Random Photos

Pixie Houses

Here are fourteen randomly selected photos. Taken with a variety of cameras and phones, some are recent, some not so new, and one is quite antique.

In the picture above, we were hoping that some small creatures, whether mythical or actual, would take up residence. Possibly they did, but if so they were invisible except to the mind's eye.

My Two Yams

 Two Yamaha acoustic guitars (CSF-60, FS800T), plus other stuff.

In Studio

At Kyle's studio, featuring his wall sized homage to Elliot Smith's "Figure 8" album cover. Also semi- hidden but in plain sight is my old Danelectro / Silvertone bass.

Impressionistic Jimmy

A crop of an image posted on this site earlier, "Un Jour à La Pointe de Fermin, 1973". My humble attempt at emulating a painterly impressionist style.

Christmas Deer

Christmas is a fun time around here. Besides a fully decked out tree, door wreath, and holly draped piano, there are also various decorations throughout the house, including this bookshelf display of tiny deer and bottle brush trees.

Isuzu at the Canoe Launch

It was a perfect day to go canoeing: warm, light breeze, and mostly overcast, so there was little danger of sunburn. Actually, cloudy is a way of life here in western Oregon.

Almost Perfect Pie

Sometimes a home made pumpkin pie will turn out perfectly, and this is one of those rare and wonderful events. Absolutely a slice of heaven served with freshly whipped cream, subtly flavored with sugar and vanilla.

Aerial Dragonfly

Came out of the neighborhood medium sized supermarket, and found this amazingly calm dragonfly perched atop the radio antenna. It stayed on the aerial for about two blocks of slow driving, before it flew off to fulfill its destiny.

Eugene Toy & Guitar

With no logo decal, the headstock on the long-term project Strat Parts-O-Caster has been looking sort of barren since the new one-piece FujiGen maple neck was installed. A sticker from the Eugene Toy & Hobby store might just be the answer.

Chops in the Wild

Taking a portable charcoal grill along when car- camping at campgrounds in National Forests and Parks can be a delicious thing. Thick burger-sized chops perfectly done, served on buns with barbecue sauce, Joe's dipper corn chips and guacamole, a fruit bowl at hand, and beer or lemonade. Life is good.

And please don't come at me about the state of the grill. Exactly what part of "Camping Barbecue Grill" don't you understand?

Matryoshka Amplifier

These nesting Matryoshka dolls were a gift, and a great place to display them is on top of the amplifier that drives a pair of 1970s JBL audio monitors. Every time I sit down to do some editing, they make me smile.

Beat Up Altec

You might ask- how on earth does a speaker get so beat up? This Altec 417-8C was a brand shiny new gift when I first got it, but that didn't last long. Always installed in various Fender tube combo amplifiers, usually one of my mid-60s Deluxe Reverbs, it saw constant gigging duty.

After a show, often a one-nighter many miles of bad roads from home, we would toss equally beat up effects pedals, cables, and a Shure 545 mic into the back of an amp, and then chuck the whole thing into a car trunk or pickup bed. The bottom line was: whatever didn't survive that experience wasn't worth keeping.

Spirit Lanterns

We like to have fun on the holidays. Okay, Halloween isn't really an official holiday, and in recent years the Lizard People have tried hard to kill it, but this Pagan rite still survives. Great family fun is having everyone create their own pumpkin jack-o-lanterns.

Good Night

The last thing I see before switching off the wood and paper night lamp. Good night!

From Within The Imminent Grove: Track 2: Sakura Falling Onto Snow

 

One year ago, in March of 2020, I went into Kyle Everett's Robotboy Records studio in Eugene to start a recording project. The original plan was to do a few demos, translating what there was inside my head into at least some form of basic song structure, and take them home to listen and see which tracks had potential to expand upon and eventually build up into something more than just an idea.

And then the plague hit, and a lot of plans had to be put on hold, for a lot of people. Before the studio closed for the duration of the pandemic, we had five solid song demos with basic guitar + beat + vocals, recorded over two relaxed four hour sessions. Any of those could have been morphed into a completed song with the addition of more instrumentation, and there was also a sixth sketch track of a germinal sci-fi folk tune.

Last summer, after seeing that things weren't going to return to normal anytime soon, I put together a home recording setup in a quiet upstairs bedroom, and began learning how to record, edit, and mix on my own. For a guy whose concept of hi-tech is assembling and blowing up high compression air cooled VW engines and designing and building tube amps made to be detonated - both 1920s level technology - working with 21st century digital recording was a steep learning curve, but the journey was more fun than not.

*               *               *

Note: There should be an embedded YouTube vid below, with the song Sakura Falling Onto Snow, but if you're reading this on a phone or iPad, it's probably not there, Google only knows why. Here's a direct link to the song on YouTube.

*               *               *

Sakura Falling Onto Snow was little more than a sketch of a song last March, and none of its previously recorded demo tracks were kept. Since that time the key has risen two steps and the melody evolved, the tempo slowed a few bpm and new words written, and gradually a somewhat different song emerged from what was once a string of Haikus held together by a guitar pretending to be a Koto.

As of now, Sakura Falling Onto Snow is a work in progress, more than simply a demo version, yet not quite complete. You may notice there is no bass line to complement the lowest pitched wooden drum, and eventually it would be great to have another solo instrument added to the bamboo flute - perhaps a Koto or a violin.

If you do decide to honor this humble song with a listen, please consider doing so with headphones or some sort of speaker system besides the tiny ones in a phone, in order to get into the spirit in which it was, and continues to be, created.

 

Sakura Falling Onto Snow

Words and music by James Aoyama

Copyright 2021

For Kaede, Audrey, and Takeo

 

Basic tracks recorded at home with vintage gear

Remix, mastering, and additional tracks recorded by Kyle Everett at Robotboy Records, Eugene, Oregon: https://www.robotboyrecords.com/

 

James Aoyama: guitars, vocals, bamboo flutes, intro synthesizer

Kyle Everett: DX7 synth and percussion

Taiko drums by Jim and Kyle

Thanks and credit due to the memory of science fiction and fantasy goddess Ursula K. Le Guin for the title of the collection, "From Within The Imminent Grove".

*                *                *

Contact James at aoyamajim@gmail.com

Petri 2.8 Color Corrected Super Rangefinder 35mm

The photos in the previous three posts are scans of 35mm Kodacolor prints, taken with a Petri 35mm camera. Made by Kuribayashi Camera Industry Inc, in (where else?) Japan, the Petri 2.8 Color Corrected Super has a style reminiscent of a Leica, the preeminent compact camera of its day, which also had rangefinder assisted focusing.

The Petri 2.8 was my father's first 35mm camera, bought new in Japan when he was stationed with the US army in South Korea during the mid 1950s. It was also my first 35mm camera; after his untimely death, I found the Petri among my dad's effects and sort of "self inherited" it, the only memento of his that I kept.

By the early 1970s, the Petri was already obsolete; in the 15 years since its manufacture, the state of the art for semi-pro and professional level cameras had become the single lens reflex interchangeable lens 35mm, popularized by the Asahi Pentax and Nikon F. The now out of date Petri had only a fixed-mount 45mm f2.8 lens, but as many photo enthusiasts have discovered, it was in a way liberating to be restricted to the use of only one, normal field of view, prime lens. That limitation meant no telephoto shots of wildlife or wide angle panoramic views, but whatever one's own eyes saw, the Petri recorded that very well.

Compact enough to fit easily in the outside pocket of a sport coat or field jacket, the Petri was always readily at hand to grab a quick shot, and its whisper quiet leaf shutter was a lot less likely than a loud clanking SLR to suddenly freeze a rocking party cold dead. This camera didn't have a built in light meter, and I eventually bought a small Sekonic handheld, but I'd already gotten good at guesstimating exposure with the Sunny 16 Rule, and the meter was rarely used.

As you can see, even though it's ancient, this camera is still in very good condition. There used to be a beautiful two-piece brown leather form fit case, which did its job well - in fact that case died in the line of duty, literally falling apart while protecting its precious cargo. I gave the case, along with the original strap, a proper burial with full honors, at dawn in Monument Valley. Coincidentally, after returning from that trip, I bought my first single lens reflex 35mm camera, a Honeywell (Asahi) Pentax, followed soon thereafter by a new Canon AE-1 with multiple lenses, and my photos were never the same again. More precise and accurate, certainly, but most if not all of the indefinable magic and mystery of the Petri's photographs had gone.

I ran a lot of rolls through it back in the film days, and what's interesting is- the Petri took very sharp and clear black and white photos (usually Kodak Plus X or Tri X, and sometimes Agfa), but with Kodacolor the prints were not quite exactly focused looking. Rather than being perfectly detailed, the Petri's color images were pleasing in a diffused, dream-like kind of way. Sort of how memories seem to be.

 *               *               *

To see images taken with the Petri 2.8 rangefinder camera, go to:

Un jour à La Pointe de Fermin, 1972

One Evening At The East Rim Of Lake Abert, August 1973

Petri Kodacolor Portraits

Petri Kodacolor Portraits

The C&W Express: Harry, Harley, and Paul. Kearny, Nebraska

Here are a few more Kodacolor photographs taken with the Petri 2.8 Color Corrected Super rangefinder camera. Each photo has a story behind it, some of which are a short paragraph long, others somewhat longer, and a couple are 200+ page novel length. Maybe someday they'll be retold, but for now we'll just let the images stand alone, and be as expressive as a Kodacolor print from the last century can be.

Dave. Bishop, California

Martha. St Paul, Minnesota

Larry. Minneapolis, Minnesota

Jacqui. Glendive, Montana

Zoe. Fort Collins, Colorado

Dick. Minneapolis, Minnesota

Chester. Loveland, Colorado

Cathy and Serge. Bishop, California

Michael. Loveland, Colorado

Chester, Judy and Rita. Yellowstone, Montana

Harry. Glendive, Montana

Karen. Fort Collins, Colorado

Little Baby Jesus. Wheatland, Wyoming

Wayne and Friend. Loveland, Colorado

The Author as a Young Man. Orofino, Idaho

*               *               *

The last photo above wasn't taken with the Petri 2.8, although it is a Kodacolor print. It was snapped by Billy with his brand new Kodak Instamatic 110, which at the time was state of the art for affordable pocket cameras, and actually took quite decent images, considering its smaller size film format and low price.

One Evening At The East Rim Of Lake Abert, August 1973

Mark and Blue

One evening at the east rim of Lake Abert. Lake county, Oregon; August, 1973. Petri 2.8 Color Corrected Super rangefinder; Kodacolor, ASA 80, 1/50s at f8.

1957 International Travelall

Billy on the High Ground

You Haul

There's a story here, of course, and an adventure: Almost 2,500 miles of mountains and forests and desert and prairies. An indestructible 1957 International Travelall, with a dog named Blue in the back seat, pulling a trailer full of guitars, drums and amps, three down sleeping bags and hardly any luggage. Friendly folks along the way, and diners serving breakfast all day. 3mph on a rutted dirt road in granny low gear over the Continental Divide. And beer, lots of beer.

One Day In Loveland, Colorado, 1978

Hi Tom -

Here's a couple scans of photos of the original Radio Flyer band, you might remember the photo-shoot that day. Amazing to think that back then you could literally walk out the back door of the communal band house and up towards the Devil's Backbone, and suddenly find yourself in the Old West.

Fabrice "Fab" Dolegowski, Jeanne "C.B." Bacon, Tom Frech, Jimmy Aoyama-Clifford, Kathe Davis

Somewhere in some box on some shelf inside some closet, there's a couple more pics of the Patio Fryers from that same day, and maybe some negatives. When I find them, I'll scan and send them too.

I hope you're having a decently good enough day, and maybe even better than that. Don't forget what we talked about - when you're all recovered from the cancer thing, and the current virus crisis passes, you're gonna come on out here and do some drum tracks and harmony vocals when the studio opens back up.

Until next time, brother,

---Jimmy

101.8º Fever Two Hour Collage Challenge

"Happy Service Animals"

* Note: The following blog post was written in May of 2019. In it I somewhat humorously describe what at the time felt like a seriously life-threatening experience. However, for many others who came down with that same strain of the influenza virus last year, it was no laughing matter - indeed, between 30,000 and 60,000 in this country alone would never laugh again. This year's new and novel super virus is at this moment hitting the world like a modern-day Black Death plague, and it's all many of us can do on a daily basis to hold off fear and panic, and continue living our lives secure in some knowledge of, and hope for, a happy and productive future. As I write this, on Friday, April 3rd, 2020, our family is getting ready to celebrate the 20th birthday of our shining son, Take-o (nickname Tayo).

About a month ago I came down with a bad case of the deadly Influenza. The same disease that caused so much misery and tragedy in the early 20th Century, depopulating many towns throughout the US, it's still with us today. But now, we know how to deal with it, and very few people ultimately die as a result of contracting the ever mutating virus.

And no, it's not because of the "flu" vaccines that local supermarkets are happy to inject into you. Read the fine print on the label, and hidden in all the legalese jargon, it not so clearly states that the vaccine doesn't actually prevent contracting influenza, the manufacturer never specifically made any claims that it did, and you have no basis for any legal action or recourse whatsoever in case you sicken and die, so go talk to your own personal savior, amen.

What we actually do know now, that we didn't in 1918, is that the most efficacious method of recovery is to stay hydrated, and get plenty of rest in a clean and quiet place. So that's what I did, and it's hard to believe how many hours one can sleep through the course of a day when you have a fever over 101 degrees.

After almost three days of that, I felt well enough to sit at the kitchen table, and have a cup of soothing tea, while looking out at the springtime garden. There was a bundle of mail, and while going through it, a bunch of loose advertisements fell onto the table - stuff from a farm and ranch store, a couple pizza joints, an insurance agency, a store specializing in really crappy quality tools, a mail order cigar shop...

It was all so colorful laying there in a random mess; it was hard to stop staring at that cheerful pile of paper. It's been said that often, the most effective and compelling art is made during states of mental imbalance (or a short lifetime of it, like Van Gogh or Schubert). In my still feverish mind, I thought it would be fun to set myself an art challenge: What can be created from a very limited palette of material, in a very limited time, such as two hours?

I found a pair of scissors, a glue stick, and a sheet of blank printer paper, and got to "work". In spite of my best efforts, including making quick and imprecise cuts, the clock went about five minutes over, by the time the project felt done. So technically, I lost the self imposed challenge, but gained a strange and weird collage. It's the second collage I've done; the first was about a hundred years ago in a college art class. Since it's the product of a feverish (and thus unbalanced) mind, it must be art.

*               *               *

Here's a link to a fine web (and print) magazine devoted to the art of collage: "kolaj". It's made and curated by real collage artists (unlike, let's say, a random half-crazed guy hopped up on chamomile tea), and features the work of today's best and brightest practitioners of the artform.

Restyling an Ugly Epiphone Les Paul Junior / Special, Part 1

This is the tale of an ugly little Epiphone Les Paul Special that no one wanted, and how it got a style makeover. And now, even though it's still ugly, it gets a lot of attention everywhere it goes, appreciated not only for its one of a kind uniqueness, but also for its lovely voice. And really, that's all any one of us could ever hope for in life.

Every story has a beginning, and this one starts with an ugly little speaker cabinet that no one wanted, until it found a loving home:

Long ago, possibly in a faraway land, this cab started life as a solid state guitar amplifier, and there's no way to know what brand or model it may have been. At some point the amp circuit died, and its owner removed the amp chassis and tossed that into a dumpster. Then, he put in a really unattractive hand sawn plywood baffle that filled the entire front of the cab. It was even uglier than it is now, with an unpainted baffle, no grill cloth, and a chunk of MDF hammered into the back opening and glued crudely into place.

So far, this a really sad tale.

When my friend David from Massachusetts was rebuilding a late '60s Bassman head, he needed a speaker cab to test out his repairs and circuit mods as he went along, and found this ugly particle board cabinet on craigslist, really cheap. Besides its unsightliness, one reason it was cheap was that it didn't come with a speaker. I contributed an old Cerwin Vega 12", and that combination got David through his amp restoration project. Later he put the Bassman chassis into a beautiful JD Newell 2x10 combo cab, but that's another story.

Over the years, this ugly cabinet has had numerous 12" drivers in it, for auditioning various speakers, and as an extension cab for testing other tube amp mods and repairs, and it became known as The Test Cab. Which sounds better than The Ugly Cabinet. The Test Cab spent time both here and at David's shop, and when he moved back to Mass, I inherited it. Feeling sorry for the ugly little cab, I painted the baffle, put shiny new screws on it, took a hammer and knocked out the awful back panel, and cobbled up an input jack gizmo out of a Les Paul jack plate.

Out of all the 12" speakers that have been in The Test Cab, one of the best tonal combinations has been with an ugly old vintage speaker that no one wanted:

That's a Fender labeled CTS, original equipment in an early 1970s Deluxe Reverb Amp. I had replaced it with a late '60s Jensen C12N; a friend in Colorado now has that amp, but doesn't want the original CTS back at all - he's a guitar player, not a vintage hound or collector. I'm not a collector either, but old stuff seems to collect me, and I always have too many 12" speakers. I've tried selling that '70s CTS a few times - Reverb, eBay, craigslist, and nobody ever wants it. A real 40+ year old vintage Fender speaker that still works well and sounds great, for a low price, and no one wanted it, because it's ugly.

That is, until a couple months ago. I put the CTS up for sale again on local craigslist as a combo deal with The Test Cab, since there's now more than one empty cabinet in my shop for testing. Only $35.00, and no bites for over two weeks - until someone answered the ad, and asked if I was up for a trade, and sent this picture:

Hey, I've seen that Epiphone Les Paul Special II before, and I know that out-building, which is a cozy music studio in a little town a few miles west of here. I had some clue who had answered the ad, and I replied: John, you don't have to trade that Epiphone, you can just have that speaker cab, I'm happy it's going to a good home.

But John loves to barter and trade for stuff, almost as much as he likes making music and building unique and interesting guitars. He wanted that ugly old cab with the unloved speaker, and wouldn't accept them as a gift. So I did end up with that funky Les Paul, but I took the pickups, tuners, and most of the hardware bits off and gave them back to John, keeping just the control pots and switch.

Although these inexpensive low-end Epiphones are made of some strange space-age faux wood, they're really okay, except for the low-quality tuners, bridge, and pickups. This particular guitar had a neck I really liked, with a chunky, solid feeling '50s profile, and no fret wear at all. Almost unplayed, and pretty much like new, except for the badly done "relic" job on the body:

I'm not a fan of the whole relic thing in general - you know, if you want a beat up looking guitar, get a new or used one and play the shit out of it, and in the process become a better guitar player too. But I'm also a believer that whatever you own, you have the right to mess it up. And mess it up is what the original (or second?) owner did, to this poor Epi LP Special.

First, he (or she, but probably a he) sprayed red enamel over the original finish, without sanding or putting a primer on first, then applied a black coat on top of the red. After that, all layers of finish were sanded down through to the top veneer wood in a few spots to simulate wear, probably with an orbital sander. The final step in the uglification process was he applied a very tough epoxy-like clear coat (or clear nail polish) over those areas that were sanded through to the fake wood.

This also is a very sad tale. It's hard to believe anyone could be so mean to cute little guitars.

Soon after I got this Junior / Special from John, I noticed that small paint chips, red on one side and black on the other, were being left behind wherever I'd lain the Epi down - on the couch, the kitchen table, or the workbench. Since the relic job didn't include a primer or sanding between coats, the new finish was beginning to lift off. One night I absentmindedly started picking away at it with a fingernail, and a whole bunch of paint came quickly off:

At the same time, I grabbed an unused Telecaster pickguard and placed it on the Epiphone body:

Wow and amazing - the Tele bridge plate cutout on the 'guard perfectly fit the P-90 bridge pickup rout, and the neck cutout was only about 1/8" from fitting. The bottom horn was way too big for the smaller Les Paulish body, but still, it's something to think about.

Next day, I set up a couple sawhorses with boards laid on top, and started scraping off the ugly new finish:

Here's a picture taken as soon as the bulk of the relic paint was removed; I kept the two bridge mounting studs screwed in, to keep paint chips out of the stud anchors:

Next step was rubbing it all down with steel wool to get the last paint remnants off, and smooth it all down:

Here are close up shots of two of the fake worn-through spots on the body; note the tough clear coat that resisted scraping:

In the next picture, the top had been steel wooled as much as possible without wearing the original finish down too much. It's hard to see the wood grain of the top veneer layer beneath the semi-transparent black satin finish (possibly called "Worn Ebony"?) in this outdoor shot, but it's a very nicely done, subtly attractive top coat:

The last five pictures are slightly out of sequence - a pickguard was made after the red and black paint was removed, but before the body was steel wooled. You can see the newly drilled pickguard mounting holes if you look closely.

In Part 2, we'll make (or actually, adapt) a new pickguard - actually the first 'guard this Epi ever had - and look at a couple other mods that might work with the Epiphone Les Paul Special II. In the meantime, we'll end this installment with another view of the restyled ugly little Epiphone: