“It’s like the buildings are singing”: the Tower of Song in Portland, Maine
text: Peter Andrey Smith
photos: Natalie Conn

The live music appears to be coming from the street, but the only busker in sight sits with his saxophone on his lap in front of the Portland Museum of Art. A few people look up and point to the silhouettes in the fourth floor window at 602 Congress Street.

Inside an old hotel, singer-songwriter Johnny Fountain and his friend Will Ethridge have organized an informal live show during Portland, Maine’s First Friday Art Walk. They call it the Tower of Song.

“John is a musician, and we would always look out the window and we’d say, ‘This is the perfect stage,'” Will says. “We thought, ‘Why don’t we open the windows and point the PAs in the opposite direction to give people an impromptu concert?'”

It’s the first Friday in January and the Time and Temperature building flashes 5:50. It’s 25 degrees in Maine’s biggest city (pop. 64,000) and the quiet, indie act Dead End Armony, off the local Peapod Recordings, is finishing up their set inside the apartment. Their drummer sits on the couch. After all, he doesn’t want to piss off the downstairs neighbor.

Aly Spaltro, the petite 19-year old singer from Portland’s prolific, up-and-coming duo, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, makes a quick phone call to her mom.

“Take exit 7,” she says. “It’s at the corner of Congress and High.”

Minutes later, she’s in the midst of a song from her new album, Samples for Handsome Animals, with her friend TJ Metcalf on guitar. Tonight, the duo’s raucous, bouncy “Comet Flies Over the Underbelly” echoes throughout the streets of Portland.

“The Eastland Hotel and all the buildings around here act like this giant brick amphitheater,” Johnny says. “The sound fills out. It’s like the buildings are singing.”

The song ends. Inside, a few people clap and drink slushy, frozen beers (Welcome to Portland, where the fridge warms up your beer). The real audience is outside, walking around the eerie land of the frozen chosen, with their hands buried deep in their pockets, listening to the live show. A few hoot up at the show from the sidewalk.

When the three bands are done with their free, live show at the Tower of Song tonight at 6:43, they’re going over to One Longfellow, another Portland venue, to play another set.

“Thanks for involuntarily listening to me tonight,” Johnny says to the streets of Portland. Then, he unplugs the PAs.

CODA: Will Ethridge told me they’re going to do this once a month – and may even attempt an all-day event in May. The cops only come if there are complaints. So far, there’s been only one.

Audio from the Tower of Song: http://www.peterandreysmith.com/clip/towerofsong.mp3

More photos from the Tower of Song: http://www.natalieconnphotography.com/tos.small.html

The Tower of Song website

We need more of this, everywhere, as soon as possible: artisans making high-quality goods for barter and sale in local economies, and teaching what they know in hands-on workshops.

From The New York Times – February 25, 2009

Brooklyn’s New Culinary Movement
By OLIVER SCHWANER-ALBRIGHT

TO get the slightly battered convection oven for their new Brooklyn chocolate factory, Rick and Michael Mast traded 250 chocolate bars.

The chocolate is as good as legal tender for Andrew Tarlow and Mark Firth, owners of Marlow & Sons, the restaurant and specialty shop that bartered away the oven. “We can’t keep it in stock,” Mr. Tarlow said. “It sells better than anything else.”

About two years ago the Masts were trading truffles for beers at a local bar. Now Mast Brothers Chocolate has a national following as one of the few producers in the country, and the only one in the city, to make chocolate by hand from cacao beans they’ve roasted, in that oven. These days, with a kitchen and a bit of ambition, you can start to make a name for yourself in Brooklyn. The borough has become an incubator for a culinary-minded generation whose idea of fun is learning how to make something delicious and finding a way to sell it.
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Rue des Accords de Matignon, Tina, BP 378
98845 Noumea
New Caledonia

Renzo Piano Building Workshop 1998

The Centre Culturel Tjibaou, dedicated to Jean-Marie Tjibaou who died in 1989 while leading the fight for his country’s autonomy from the French government, is devoted to the cultural origins and search for identity of the native Kanak people of New Caledonia and the South Pacific. In the native tongue of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, pije language, it is also known as Ngan Jila – meaning cultural center.

The Center itself is similar to that of the villages in which the Kanak tribes live; a series of huts (or case in French) which distinguish the different functions and hierarchies of the tribes (les tribus) and a central alley along which the huts are dispersed. More specifically, the Cultural Center is composed of three ‘villages’ made up of ten ‘Great Houses’ of varying sizes and functions (exhibition spaces, multimedia library, cafeteria, conference and lecture rooms). The ‘Great Houses’ are linked by a long, gently curving enclosed walkway, reminiscent of the ceremonial alley of the traditional Kanak village…

(hipped to this via Lord Whimsy)

In the last Depression, neighborhoods routinedly banded together to physically resist landlords, banks and their tools (police or hired thugs) from carrying out evictions on anyone on the block. Yesterday the NYTimes reported on efforts by Acorn and others (including the brave ‘n’ bright Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who you can watch in the clip above, given a full fucking right on four-minute speech on the House floor) to organize resistance to foreclosure evictions on homesteaders, using 21c tools.

Keep in mind that many of the evictions that are happening now, and are likely to keep on happening, are on foreclosures of questionable legality; the entity doing the eviction often doesn’t have the paperwork in legal order because the mortgages have been sold and re-sold and packaged so many times in the market that it is difficult to figure who owns what, and what its value is. Or so I’m told.)

The New York Times – February 18, 2009

Effort Takes Shape to Support Families Facing Foreclosure
By FERNANDA SANTOS

As resistance to foreclosure evictions grows among homeowners, community leaders and some law enforcement officials, a broad civil disobedience campaign is starting in New York and other cities to support families who refuse orders to vacate their homes.

The community organizing group Acorn unveiled the campaign with a spirited rally on Friday at a Brooklyn church and will roll it out in at least 22 other cities in the coming weeks. Through phone trees, Web pages and text-messaging networks, the effort will connect families facing eviction with volunteers who will stand at their side as officers arrive, even if it means risking arrest.
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