Poor Righteous Teachers

I am a musician and I have been playing guitar for 32 years now. I first took lessons at a music store on Broad and Liberty from a guy who was named, I think, Frank Siciliano. I know his first name was Frank. At first I rented a cheap acoustic guitar from him and played that for a while, but I got the fever and my grandfather co-signed a thousand dollar loan for me from the bank on Market and Broad, and I bought a Rickenbacker from Frank that was once his. I got that and a cheapo amp. I didn't know much. I wouldn't want to say here in public that I bought a quarter pound of pot with some of that money 31 years ago because I am a secretive sort of person.

Though I have always loved music and had (and have) a very open mind about it, I didn't "get" hip hop music when I was younger. I didn't really start to get into it until around 2002. Somebody who I met in Sedona, AZ, who was from Philly, suggested I listen to The Roots. I did, and I liked their music a lot and started frequenting the OkayPlayer boards, particularly the Freestyle Board. I wrote poetry on there and got turned on to tons of good music: Common, Dilated Peoples, Talib Kweli, and other OKP artists first of all.

Then I did my homework and listened to just about everything and now I know the voice of all the great emcees, and many of those that don't quite fall into that category. My favorite emcees are Big Daddy Kane, Ghostface, Raekwon, RZA (yes RZA, I don't like GZA, too wooden), Method Man, KRS One, Chuck D, Andre 3000 and Big Boi, Black Thought, Common, Kweli, Mos Def...I respect others that I don't like quite as much. KRS-One is in a special class as a dude, but his emceeing doesn't always blow me away. I like Guru, Rakim, Biggie, Jay-Z...I really don't like Tupac much at all to be honest. I've always like CL Smooth a lot. I can get into Dead Prez for much of their message. Eminem is more like pop music to me, but he has skills. I like Aesop Rock and other Def Jux at times.

Producers I think are especially good are Pete Rock, RZA, J Dilla, Timbaland, MF Doom, Madlib, RJD2, Hi-Tek, and Premier.

I know I may be leaving people out and I don't purport to be the ultimate expert, but that's where I'm at right now. Some names you don't see are people I just don't like that others think are great.

But the punchline is that because I was a dumb-ass earlier on, I slept on my homeboys the Poor Righteous Teachers. I love everything I've heard by them, and I'm proud to know I come from the same town that they do. They did something really special and understood very deep things very early on. Check out East Star. Totally completely Ill.

The Soho, A Trenton Business Past

One of the best friends that I have ever had is a guy who lived in Trenton for most of his life by the name of Charlie Weinhofer, and he worked for many years at a Trenton bar and restaurant that was located in Chambersburg called The Soho. It was a cool place that filled a niche perfectly, casual dining that was quality but inexpensive with a "Soho" kind of New York flair in terms of attitude and decor.

The Soho was originally started up by a guy named Bill Rednor (I think that is spelled right) and another fellow named Tom, and I don't remember Tom's last name. Tom moved on after a few years and started his own restaurant downtown that I never had the opportunity to visit, but the Soho persisted for a good number of years after Tom's departure.

I actually worked there myself one summer before moving to Boulder, Colorado to take some courses at Naropa Institute. They had some good beers on tap, like Dab, and some rather eclectic menu choices. It was a cut above the blue collar bar and a cut below the fine dining experience, a nice little cafe in the 'burg.

Old Trenton Theaters

My memory is a little spotty on this, but I can remember when I was a little kid there being some old theaters that were still showing movies in downtown Trenton. I can recall the Trent, and the Mayfair, I believe, and the Lincoln. Since I was born in 1960 and they closed in the early seventies or thereabouts, they played what they call the "blacksploitation" films like Shaft and Superfly, and I think they also had Kung-Fu films, Bruce Lee and such. The theaters must have been really special places back in the day before everyone had television. I can imagine that my mom would remember them differently than I do.

I like old theaters and they were one of the things that made a typical American town a typical American town before everything became homogenized and malls destroyed downtown shopping districts and took the movies with them.

Trenton Entertainment: Frank Pinto

It may sound strange to some, but I was very much inspired to learn how to play music by Trenton local musicians as much as I was by big rock stars and the like. The local guys seemed just like me, and it was like, if they can do it, I see no reason why I can't do it.

Frank Pinto was a fine songwriter and singer who performed locally when I was coming up in Trenton, and he played an astonishing array of covers as well. He would sometimes distribute a few sheets stapled together of all of the covers that he knew in case you wanted to request something, and he really knew a lot of songs. I always thought that he had a truly good voice, kind of gravelly, soulful, "Springsteenian" if you will. The first time I ever played in front of an audience was sitting in with Frank, who was gracious enough to let a dumb ass like me have the time of my life one night.

Thanks to Frank for the great music and the inspiration.

Notre Dame Reunion

I didn't actually graduate from Notre Dame because I had some problems with the junior varsity basketball coach and I changed schools (though in retrospect that really didn't help my basketball career--there couldn't have been politics involved now, could there?) Anyway, I have made the commitment not to write anything negative about anybody back in Trenton on this blog, so I won't get into the specifics of why I left Notre Dame.

I was a kid and I didn't value some of the things that are really important enough back then, and one of those things is having friends and teammates that you are tight with. I had some of those at Notre Dame, and though I am not one to harbor many regrets, leaving ND was a mistake.

Somehow I'm in the loop of ND alum of my class, and I was invited to the 30th reunion that is happening right around now. Though I live in Las Vegas, I wanted to attend, but circumstances are such that I'm not going to be able to make it.

My heart will be there though, and I hope everyone has a good time. Maybe I'll make the next one!

Pitching

When I played Little League baseball in south Trenton the league I was in was called the 6-11 league, and I don't know why. It was for kids 10-12 I think. That will have to remain a mystery, but I was always big for my age, and when I came out for the team as an 11 year old, the manager, who was named Bob Rahl, put me at first base. There I remained for that year and the next.

My team did not have very good pitching, and we lost more than we won. Since I was the biggest kid I could throw the ball pretty fast, but I had zero control. Still, I was always bugging Bob Rahl to give me a chance to pitch. We usually lost anyway, so what could it hurt?

The last game I played as a 12 year old was a blowout. We were getting shelled by the best team in the league, and in the last inning our pitcher was getting hit around. There were runners on first and second and nobody out The other team had the meat of their order coming up.

Much to my surprise, Mr. Rahl called time and came out to the mound. He looked my way and motioned me over. He handed me the ball.

I warmed up and got ready to face the first batter, who was one of the better hitters in the league. His name was Mike Susko. I threw as hard as I could and he took the first pitch, which was a called strike. He swung through the second pitch, and he swung at a pitch that was around his eyes on the third and couldn't catch up with it.

The next batter was the best player on the league, Paul Tweedley. He had hit a couple of home runs in the game as I recall (I know he hit at least one). I reared back and threw as hard as I could. The pitch was heading straight for his head.

He ducked. The ball flew to the backstop, and the runners took off. Strangely, the ball hit one of the posts holding up the backstop on the fly, and it bounced directly back to the catcher, Steve Zsenak. He threw to third and the third baseman tagged out the runner who was trying to advance, then threw to second and we got the guy trying to go from first to second as well.

I threw four pitches and got three outs, and that was the first, last, and only time I stood on a mound in earnest.

Bernie's Eagle's Nest

When I was in my later years of high school, I used to hang around an area around St. Anthony's church and grammar school that was called "The Lot" with a bunch of kids that were friends and acquaintances. There wasn't really a lot, it was just the corner of an alley and a street near a funeral home, but they called it "The Lot." The truth is, we would often drink some beers in the alleys around there because if the cops came, you had a lot of ways to run down different sections of different alleys and jump fences and cut through yards onto other streets and whatnot so, I guess, no cops would want to go through all of that to catch somebody for the crime of drinking a Gennesse Cream Ale at sixteen or seventeen.

This was all well and good for three seasons of the year, but during the winter, it was mighty cold out there. When I was sixteen, a friend, who shall remain nameless, and myself decided to try to get served in the bar on the corner of Olden and I think it was Liberty called Bernie's Eagle's Nest, largely due to the fact that we were freezing our butts off outside. We did indeed get served and started to hang out there regularly, and we were of course the envy of the underage, frigid lotsters all winter long.

Trenton Entertainment: Richie Cole and Alto Madness

Synchronicities abound if you are paying attention, and I listen to a radio station here in Las Vegas called KUNV that plays nothing but jazz during the week, uninterrupted by commercials. I was considering a topic to write about on Trenton Makes The World Takes when I heard Richie Cole's voice coming across the airwaves touting the station.

Richie Cole is perhaps the greatest musician to come out of Trenton. He is an internationally renowned bebop jazz alto man, and he currently tours with The Alto Madness Orchestra. Richie is a prolific writer and arranger, and to give you an idea of the type of respect he has earned worldwide, the University of Madrid in Spain has been offering its students an Alto Madness Orchestra course for several year running. He's listed in Who's Who in America, and he draws enthusiastic crowds wherever he plays.

He was educated at the Berklee School of Music in Boston through a Downbeat Magazine scholarship, so his special talent was recognizable even as a very young man. He has recorded more than four dozen CD's and albums, and he appears to have many more in store for us.

As a person who grew up in Trenton, I have always been proud to be able to say that the great Richie Cole is from Trenton as well. If you have never heard his work, you are in for a treat.

(Image and Info culled from RichieCole.com)

Trenton Business: Gould's Auto Parts

My grandparents owned a small restaurant called the Court House Luncheonette that was located at 309 Market Street, right next door to what is now Joe's Mill Hill Saloon. When I was a little kid, the property that is now Joe's was a drug store, and it was subsequently vacant for a while before Joe remodeled it, and the fact is that he did a lot of the work himself. He was really hands on in the actual building process.

Some of my grandparents' regular customers for many years were the Goulds, Sheldon and Wally, who owned Gould's Auto Parts on South Broad Street and in Levittown. Occasionally, other members of their family and folks who worked for them would eat in my grandparents' place as well.

I walked past Gould's countless times when I was going out to play ball or hang out with my friends in South Trenton, and I actually worked for them for a while delivering auto parts and I found it to be a tolerable, if not very lucrative, job. I am grateful that they gave me a job as a young guy and it got me through a summer.

Smitty's Kix

Another great business that once existed in Trenton is Smitty's Kix, which was a bar on Greenwood Ave. (?), if my memory serves me, that was a lively meeting spot back in the 1980's. The reason why it was called "Kix," and I think that is how he spelled it, is because the owner was the great Bobby Smith, who played on the New York Cosmos professional soccer team alongside the legendary Pele. Bob was actually inducted into the national Soccer Hall of Fame this past August along with Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy. He now runs the Bob Smith Soccer Academy in Robbinsville.

The place was a lot of fun and it was hopping. Toby Hankins was a regular bartender, and you would run into people that you knew that you hadn't seen in a while as well as the people you knew you would see. I remember that they had a really tight jazz fusion band that would play there on Thursday nights and I tried to be there every Thursday because they were quite talented and inspiring. They jammed hard.

Smitty's was a lot of fun, I don't know what I would have done without it.
(Image: Big Apple Soccer)