Submit your videos and pictures!

O-R Flix is live! We're still working out some of the kinks and design issues, but the system is ready to receive your submissions. Submit videos and pictures of almost anything you can think of so long as its pertinent to the readership of the Observer-Reporter or the Almanac. To get started, create an account and log in! View our channel listing to get a few ideas.

One great thing about this system is that it allows you to embed any video you see in our system on your web page. Example, our most recent What's Up With That:




Another interesting feature is that you can submit videos and pictures to us through your cell phone! Again, visit the site for more information. If you're at the site of an important event, YOU can be the one to break the story!

Main Street Artist Series: Ramblin' Ron Boone

This week's featured artist at the Main Street Farmers Market was Ron Boone, known as Ramblin' Ron to his fans. Ron specializes in folk style music and plays both the guitar and the banjo. We're featuring a few choices of him on the latter instrument.

Ron's performance of 'Greenland Whales Fishery' tells the story of fishermen on an Ahab-inspired journey. Following that we have 'Nine Hundred Miles'. Finally, Ron's quick rendition of 'Lonesome Traveler' which he used simply to warm up (but I thought it was pretty good and worth sharing anyway).

Also, the O-R will be debuting a new feature for our online readers tomorrow. This new addition to our website is called O-RFlix and it allows you to submit photos AND videos to us and in turn see them displayed on our pages. In a way, this will allow our readers to become a part of the journalistic process. Check it out tomorrow!

Putting the band back together

Some of them hadn't seen each other since they were high-school classmates, some three decades ago.

But once they started playing their instruments, it was just like the '70s again.

Alumni of the jazz band formed and led by the late Dave Pew, then the band director at Peters Township High School, have been rehearsing in preparation for a concert Saturday night. Their mission is to raise money toward a scholarship fund in honor of Mr. Pew, for a Peters student who plans to pursue a career in music.

I'll quote the information provided by Dave Sphar (Peters Twp. HS '77), who organized the effort and invited me to check out a rehearsal:

Before teaching, Dave played all over the country with several big bands, and he was selected to play lead trumpet in the San Francisco Air Force Band. At the end of his tour of duty, he studied music at Duquesne University and upon graduation began his teaching career at Peters Township.

His belief in the power of music was evident as he developed an award-winning program for the district.

The concert is at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 24 at Peters Township High School, also featuring the current high school jazz band. Tickets are $10 for adults and are available at the door.

Tax-deductible gifts directly to the Fund are also encouraged. Please make checks payable to “WCCF” with “Dave Pew” written on the memo line. Checks should be mailed to: Washington County Community Foundation Inc., 331 S. Main St., Washington, PA 15301.

For more about the concert, click here to see video.

Ramblin' Ron

The Main Street Farmers' Market in Washington is entering its fifth season, believe it or not.

The market has become a much-anticipated weekly event each Thursday afternoon from May through October, and those who attend can enjoy live performances by musicians.

The practice of featuring music at the market started rather informally, with people who cared to do so bringing their guitars and other instruments. Eventually, the market organizers started scheduling musicians as weekly features.

In 2006, the organizers came through with a professional amplification system, including four strategically placed speakers, so that the music could be heard throughout the market. And in June 2007, with the dedication of the Patriots Pavilion next to South Main Street, the musicians had a nice stage area on which to play.

Ramblin' Ron Boone, a South Strabane Township musician-author-traveler (hence the "Ramblin'" part), has been lending his talents to the farmers' market since the beginning, and he'll return Thursday with his laid-back folk songs, including a number of originals from his CD "Song Stories."

Ron is scheduled to play at the May 22 market, and we'll be there to film him as part of our Main Street Artists Series of videos.

Check out Ron's music on the Ramblin' Ron Boone site, including the humorous "Old Man's Rap."

Life's a long song

Some people like to hear a song that starts and ends in the space of three minutes. Short attention spans.

I certainly appreciate a concise, to-the-point tune. One of my favorites is Grace Slick's "White Rabbit," which in its Jefferson Airplane hit-single version lasts less than 2 1/2 minutes.

Then there's the other side of the equation.

I remember how excited I was to hear the full-length version of Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like We Do" – hey, I was 13 – when I helped propel "Frampton Comes Alive" to platinum status. Then I discovered that such songs as Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and the live version of Deep Purple's "Space Truckin'" took up entire sides of records.

And then … I was perusing albums in my favorite store when I came across one called "Live/Dead" by a group called the Grateful Dead. Although it contained two records, only half a dozen tracks were listed. To me, that meant some of those songs must have gone on forever, so I took the album to the counter.

Indeed, the first song, called "Dark Star," clocked in at 23-minutes plus. I put the disc on my turntable and started listening. It was like nothing I'd heard before, no fixed beat or chord changes, a free-flowing surge of instrumentation bookended by two brief vocal passages reciting thoroughly abstract lyrics.

Most listeners would have turned it off or left the room after a few minutes. I played it all the way through, then all the way through again.

Now that rock 'n' roll music has been around for half a century, historians can point to certain milestones, and "Dark Star" represents one of those: The Grateful Dead took the cue from John Coltrane and other masters of jazz improvisation, and adapted their methods to the rock idiom.

Critics at the time may have written off such sonic explorations as self-indulgent. But those who did apparently paid no attention to the effects of the music on the audience, particularly the Grateful Dead's audience.

I've been a big fan of "Dark Star" for more than three decades, and when I got the capability to do so, I downloaded dozens of versions of the Dead doing the song. The longest is 47-plus minutes in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1972.

So my ears perked up the other night during a show by the Pittsburgh Dead-influenced band theCAUSE when bass player David Tauberg launched into the run that introduces "Dark Star." After all, I was capturing it for posterity.

To see the resulting video, click here. I added some goodies for those who appreciate the type of music being performed.

And while you're at it, check out the medley of originals that the band One Gig at a Time performed back in March. That makes for a lengthy listening experience, too.

Just the way some of us like it.

Main Street Farmer's Market opens

The Main Street Farmer's Market is open again. Besides offering a range of locally produced goods, the Market (which operates on Thursday afternoons) features musical acts. The inaugural performer this year was Dan Baker who, with an assortment of other talented artists, played several jazz tunes for shoppers.

The O-R has decided to start a new video feature; the Main Street Artists Series. We will be featuring as many of the various artists that play at the Market as we can on our website in an ongoing series of videos. For our first week, I recorded Dan playing a couple of lighthearted numbers early in the afternoon.

The first is 'Summertime'. Dan is the guy with the awesome red dreads. Accompanying him were two tenor saxs (Bill Shadel and Sam Kearney), an alto sax (Mark Higgins), two drum sets (Curran McDowell and Joel Panian) and a trombone (Jim Cope). The same ensemble performed 'Black Orpheus'. Look for a new artist to be featured as often as every week.

Flyboy

I've never been averse to going up in airplanes. So when I received an invitation from John Klatt Airshows to take a trip, I didn't hesitate to accept.

Maj. Klatt, who hails from Minnesota, is in the Air National Guard and has been flying for the military for nearly 20 years. He is in town for the Wings Over Pittsburgh air show at the 911th Airlift Wing in Moon Township (Saturday and Sunday).

When he said we'd do some rolls, loops and the like, I figured, that sounds great! How many people get that opportunity. It certainly was exciting when we started flying upside down, then we twisted around a bit. What a view!

Al Serafini, the director of operations at the newspaper, was in a plane flying tandem with us, shooting photos through the open door. As Al later told it, he had more fun that I did.

That's because of the ol' stomach acting up on me. After a while, I had to ask Maj. Klatt to take it easy, so we headed for downtown Pittsburgh to see the sights from the sky. That was cool, too, but my gut was calming down only marginally. So I looked up at the blue sky and white clouds, thought about ginger ale, and managed to make it back to solid ground intact, so to speak.

I later put together a video/slideshow featuring Al's photos and portions of the commentary between myself and Maj. Klatt during the "mission."

Click here to check it out.

Monday, Monday

Monday mornings stink. You know the feeling. Aching muscles and joints from yard work all weekend. The prospect of another long haul at the office. Trying to get the kids out of bed to get 'em to school. Lousy performances in fantasy baseball. Etc., etc., etc., etc.

So I check my e-mails this morning, and there's one – among the tons of junk I have to wade through each day – labeled with a "". For some reason, I decided to open it. Wrong move.

A gentleman – let's call him Methuselah – provided some feedback with regard the video we shot last week to go along with the latest in our "What's Up With That?" series. (We're up to 11 episodes already!) The subject was the proliferation of footwear being tossed over wires, a phenomenon known as "shoefiti." I figured I'd give it a try and see if I could land my golf shoes.

Could I do it? Check out the video!

Anyhoo, here's what Methuselah typed:

Just one thought.......

You really gotta be hoping that when something bad happens (power outage, telephone or cable disruption.......injury..... worse...)

That nobody remembers this "instructional" video.

Oh I know..... It's gonna happen anyway. There will be no shortage of footwear on the the lines.

Just trying to sell soap, entertain.

Like I said,

Just a thought.

You're absolutely right, Meth. People are going to do it, anyway. And we are trying to entertain. Most folks enjoy being entertained. Please give it a try sometime.

I'm glad you put "instructional" in quotes. According to my kids, my technique wasn't any good, so no one should learn anything from what I was doing.

And by the way, we shot the video on the privacy of our company's own property. No public utility lines were involved.

But during my improvised dialog, I should've uttered this:

KIDS, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. OR UP ABOVE YOUR STREET.

There ya go, Meth. Happy Monday.

---

We do enjoy receiving feedback, though, especially when it looks like this:

Dear Mr. Funk,

I think that you did a bang-up job producing the video about Mr. Davis’ production of the Music Experience at Trinity Middle School last week. It was a blast seeing the interior of the school again (I am a ’76 grad of TMS), and a current teacher and musician. Thanks for showing that there are good things happening in education.

Linda Sherwood

Unfortunately, my reply of thanks to Linda bounced right back to me for some reason. Probably our sometimes-cheesy e-mail system.

But if you're checking in, Linda, you succeeded in brightening my Monday!

USA's Olympic Softball Team visits Washington

Last Thursday night I had the pleasure of going to watch the USA Olympic Softball Team play an exhibition match against Robert Morris University at Consol Energy Park. Having looked at the schedule of Team USA's exhibition matches, I was expecting a blow out (scores of past games typically featured Team USA in the double digits with their competitors all scoring zero runs). That's exactly what happened this time, but the game was exciting and considering Team USA is widely considered to be the best softball unit in the world, Robert Morris probably felt proud just to be on the field with them.

I'm not a big follower of softball, but I'm told that for softball fans, meeting Jennie Finch is like meeting Jordan or Ali. She is the face of softball in this country and was even featured in Sports Illustrated (albeit the swimsuit edition). I was immediately struck by how tall she and fellow star pitcher Cat Osterman are. Both were several inches taller than my 6 foot height. Other highlights included watching Crystal Bustos hit a three run homer in the first inning only seconds after the person standing next to me proclaimed, "That's the Babe Ruth of softball." No kidding!

Some highlights from the game followed by interviews with both Jennie Finch and Cat Osterman can been seen in the video footage. The game ended in 6 innings (one shy of the standard due to the 16-0 score), but the team stayed to sign autographs mostly for girls of all ages playing softball at various levels locally. Team USA will be playing in Beijing this year and pursuing their 4th consecutive gold medal. The sport was introduced at the Olympic level in 1996 and will be discontinued after this year, meaning Team USA would have won gold in softball every single year that it was possible should they do so again.

The Concert Experience

A couple of years ago, a gentleman named Mark Davis got in touch with me about an event he'd been organizing annually at Trinity Middle School.

The Concert Experience is something that we never got as kids: an educational program aimed at letting youngsters know what to expect if they venture into the wonderful world of live music!

Several professionals in the music business, as well as law enforcement officials, were at the school today to explain various facets of what goes into performing, attending concerts, etc. I was fortunate to catch a talk by Pittsburgh legend Joe Grushecky, concluding with an acoustic a performance of the title track to one of his albums.

• See video of "Coming Home"

I also had a friendly conversation with Johnny Polansky, a Trinity graduate who's played percussion with some of my own favorite musicians. Check out his band, One Under.

After learning about the music biz and enjoying a "tailgate party" under a suddenly sunny sky, the middle school students were treated to the actual concert experience, by the Brass Knuckles Band, featuring music teachers from areas such as Uniontown, Connellsville and Hundred, W.Va.

The kids were in for a surprise, too. It was announced that the band's regular vocalist had been summoned to Florida on business, so up to the microphone stepped none other than Mr. Davis. He proved his voice was up to the challenge by opening with the Ides of March's hit "Vehicle."

I compiled a video documentary if the day's proceedings, if you want to see what The Concert Experience – at least, the one at Trinity Middle School – is all about.

And thanks again for letting me know about this, Mark!