Three of Life's Greatest Pleasures

Baseball, music and art:  three of life's greatest pleasures.  Friday night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, all were celebrated.  Breaking the Color Barrier in Major League Baseball a current baseball card exhibit at the MET through June 17th.  The cards are part of the extensive collection bequeathed to the museum by Jefferson Burdick, a lifelong collector who we were told never went to a baseball game. 

Today Major League Baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson.

The Baseball Project sang us through a history of baseball.  

Linda, Scott, Peter, Mike (Steve was too far to the left)

As to be expected, the melodies were catchy, the lyrics ironic, smart, funny and poignant.   Harvey Haddix is a tribute to those who have pitched perfect games (they name all of them) and the one who didn't get the credit.  Why don't we add Harvey to that list they lament.

10th inning down, 11th inning down, he moved on to the 12th
3 straight outs and the fans were pinching themselves
The best game ever pitched and still a scoreless tie
Poor Harvey had to carry on and give it one more try

13's never lucky so you can guess the rest
Harv gave up a hit and then he lost the whole contest
I wonder how he slept that night knowing how close he came
To a most exclusive club that should include his name

There were other tributes such as the one for the 1986 World Series (Buckner's Bolero) , which elicited a yell of "Let's Go Mets" from the audience.  Satchel Page, Ted Freakin' Williams, Willie and Jackie were all honored. 

The performance was a quasi REM reunion.  The Baseball Project consists of , Scott McCaughey  who has been part of REM since 1994, Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate), Peter Buck  and Linda Pitmon.  Mike Mills joined the band for this show and I believe I saw  Michael Stipe siting in the audience.

The evening opened with a panel discussion about cards and baseball's part in breaking the color barrier. Sharon Robinson, educational consultant to Major League Baseball and daughter of Brooklyn Dodgers pioneer Jackie Robinson, talked about her parents fleeing a house in Florida as a lynch mob was headed for her father.  The locals did not want a black man playing with a white team in their backyard.  Jackie was playing with a minor league team at the time and was one year away from joining the Dodgers.

The consummate baseball player Dale Murphy talked about his dad bringing him Willie Mays' glove.  A 9 year old Murphy was skeptical about it actually being Willie's glove.  When he got Willie's baseball card, he counted the stitches on the glove in the card and it was the same amount as on his glove.  The glove was a replica, but it was the same model.  New York Times sportswriter and author William Rhoden talked about practicing Willie's basket catch over and over.  Bill could not believe how easy Willie made the game look.  Sean Kirst, sports columnist for the Syracuse Post-Standard and author had a geographical link to two stories.  The collector Burdick came from Syracuse and Jackie Robinson had said "In Syracuse they got on me pretty good, but that didn't bother me."  He mentioned it as the one place that was hard on him.

As The Baseball Project sang (with a nod to Simon & Garfunkel), And here's to you Mr Robinson. 

Where Guster & Art Meet: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

The beauty of living in New York City is being able to take advantage of the bounty of cultural events.  For under $30, one can experience a magical evening of music, art, culture, etc.  These events always have produce moments that give you a chill, making you think, damn I'm so glad I experienced that.    Guster and artist Jon Sarkin provided those moments on Friday evening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  You're probably as surprised to hear Guster played there, as lead singer Ryan Miller and Sarkin were to in awe to be playing there.  

Sarkin's art is a big part of Guster's latest project, Easy Wonderful.  From the packaging to merch to the video, Sarkin's art is there.  Drummer Brian Rosenworcel was the first to discover Sarkin's work and as fellow bandmate Adam Gardner said, they all fell in love with his paintings.  Apparently he sent them so much art for the album, that they had a hard time choosing just one painting.  They immediately knew the color wheel would be the cover.  From there Sarkin wound up doing the whole booklet and participated in the video for Do You Love Me.  He is creating art as the video progresses.  Brian brought pieces of art that Sarkin left on the ground at the end of the video shoot and passed them around for the audience to look at.  Sarkin explained that the joy is in creating the art and he doesn't necessarily have to keep it.  He does keep whatever  his wife likes.  His recent work brings to mind Roz Chast, most famous for her New Yorker cartoons. 

The show started off with curators explaining music's relativity to pieces in the museum's collection.  One caught Ryan off guard by asking how he would explain an ancient Greek instrument depicted on an urn to his daughter.  The conversation continued to explore the relationship between the band, Sarkin and video director Chad Carlberg.  The band originally wanted to shoot the video in Sarkin's studio, but realized that wasn't possible as it's filled wall to wall with his work. The interview below from Good Morning Gloucester begins in his studio.  Carlberg talked about the hardest part of making the video.  They got the go ahead from the record company on a Friday and made the video on that Monday.  Nice to see things haven't changed in the making of music videos. 

After the conversation, Sarkin took his place at the easel and began to work while the band performed.  Ryan, Adam and Luke played musical chairs, each taking on the bass, guitar and piano.  They reworked their songs specifically for this "acoustic" show, keeping in mind that it might be a format to take on the road (Yes!).  The bulk of the 45 minute set consisted of songs from Easy Wonderful including Bad Bad World, Stay With Me Jesus, That's The Way To Get To Heaven and a rousing version of This Could All Be Yours.  Harmonies were in full swing.

In a hypnotic and powerful Satellite, the band was accompanied by two guest players on violin and cello.  It made the song a religious experience.  They concluded the set with Do You Love Me.  This has got to be the band's new anthem.  Didn't think they could match the pop magic of Amsterdam, but they did it with this song.  Speaking of religious experience, the encore of Jesus On The Radio brought the band and Sarkin to the front of the stage, all unplugged.  Brian played tambourine and Sarkin on teeny tiny maracas.  It was an epiphany.

Apparently in the next few weeks, the Met will be posting a video of the whole evening.  In the meantime, here's a snippet.

Here are more photos of the evening.