Category Archives: Bob Baker Marionettes

Waking Up in California – Posadas 2016

It’s so difficult to photograph an Aztec dancing hummingbird!

In which is described events in The Glamorous Life Of Professional Musicians

It’s the morning of Christmas Day. The Guitar Player is sleeping. He has a gift for sleeping in the mornings. I do not, although I’m  jealous. I have slowly begun to adjust to the two-hour time difference. Our home in Mexico is on Central Time. The first couple of days I awoke before 6 a.m., and today, in spite of the fact that we were awake until well past one in the morning, I slept until 7 a.m.

On December 14th we flew from Central Mexico to Tijuana, crossed the border, rented a car in San Diego, drove to the San Fernando Valley and got a room, all in less than ten hours, from house in Mexico to hotel in California.

We store the equipment we use annually for the posadas dinner party in la bodega “warehouse storage” part of the restaurant, upstairs. The building itself is an old winery. Every year when we arrive (and throughout the year as well) Chon is anxious about the equipment. None of it has extremely high monetary value, having been collected from pawn shops/thrift shops/chance purchases, but all of it is exceedingly difficult to replace. Picture microphones, speakers of various sizes, cables (many, many cables!), microphone stands, a keyboard stand, a good-but-old keyboard synthesizer, two now-vintage drum machines (we haven’t had a drummer since Sara moved to California), a PA/mixer for the system, vintage handmade textiles that I use for unique performance wear, an ancient tape recorder, and other items I can’t think of right now.

We arrived around 3:30 in the afternoon for the first night of the posadas dinner parties. For the last 5 years our equipment was all there, exactly as we had stored it. Only this year it wasn’t. There. The area had been cleaned and re-organized, and our equipment had been re-located to a small corner storage room in the old, old building. More apprehension. The first thing I noticed was the absence of my performance outfits, and the gorgeous, multi-colored thrift shop bag I kept them in – four huipiles.

These are some of the hupiles I wear during performances.

You can read about huipiles here, or better, Google huipil and see gorgeous images. Three long skirts, cleverly chosen from thrift shop purchases to match the huipiles in color, and in varying sizes, to accommodate a variable-sized waist, were also missing. I spoke to the office manager as calmly as I could, and told her that the huipiles were worth at least a thousand dollars. She wasn’t unfriendly, but there was obvious disinterest in her face. She said blandly, “Sorry about that.”

One of the waiters we’ve known for six years kept searching. In an ancient locked and unused bathroom he found two missing speakers and my bag of clothes. During this search, we discovered that a weighty bag of cables, including two very long, professional quality speaker cords, was not to be found.

We began to set up on the small stage anyway, while other people looked in various secret storage spots, to no avail. The night manager offered to replace the cords. Ummm – in downtown Los Angeles, about two hours before performance time? Well, it might have been possible to locate and purchase them, but all the available helpers had their own jobs to do. We kept on setting up speakers, instruments, sound equipment. We found a long speaker cord of dubious quality, with a couple of frayed spots wrapped with duct tape, belonging to the restaurant, and substituted that for one of the essential missing cords.

To make a frustrating story short, Chon worked his magic and got a good sound for us. We had a very nice supper, and the show went on, as it does. The audience that night was made up mostly of the large family-and-friends of a lovely man who has been bringing them to the show for 27 years. His thirty-two-year-old daughter has been attending since she was 5 years old. There is now a flock of pre-adolescent boys, most of whom have very nice manners when approached individually, but together – well, not so. But on this night they mostly refrained from throwing candies and using laser pointers, which helped to make everything more pleasant.

The kind and gentle man came to greet us and chat with the marionette master.

We wound up the show before ten, neatly stacked up our things on the stage, and headed to our motel, about a half-hour drive away.

Somewhere during the evening the office manager advised us that we’d be doing the show only five nights this year. Instead of nine. Imagine how we felt.

I won’t do a night-by-night breakdown of the posadas performances, but this twenty-ninth year was an excellent one. I will give you a short vignette of a silly thing that happened to me one night. We direct a posadas procession through the restaurant, with the children playing the part of the shepherds in Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter. Each year we’ve worked from a 50-year-old script most likely written by one of the then-workers in the restaurant. There is narration in English, and the traditional Mexican songs of the posadas procession are in Spanish. There is one word that I’ve never thought was a good descriptive word in the story script, and it’s always bugged me. When Joseph is begging for a place for them to stay, the person denies his request and the narrative says: “They are rejected.” Well, the narrator, ME!, got stuck right there. I said, “They are …………”. I couldn’t speak the word I’ve disliked for lo, these 29 years, and I stood there, just – tongue-tied!  Other words raced through my fogged brain – “dejected”, and then, “ejected”, which struck me as such a hilarious visual image that I made an unlovely sound with my mouth closed as I laughed at the thought, and at myself. The seconds ticked by. But Chon covered for me, saying, “She’s really more accustomed to saying this part in Spanish”, which was fanciful and so not true, and another hilarious image. I got the giggles, and barely made it through the rest of the little story without completely losing it.

“They are, umm, rejected? dejected? ejected?” The Guitarist’s reaction.

The last night, the traditional end of posadas, was particularly fun, as a family from Guanajuato, the Mexican state we live in, came – lovely and lively sisters, their parents and children came. We expected them – each year they come on Christmas Eve. And a couple we’ve nicknamed the hippies, also arrived as expected. These folks all greeted us enthusiastically, as old friends, and the night turned out just the way you’d hope a live performance could be. We played well, the beautiful Mexicanas danced, teaching their children Latin rhythms, and the hippies danced to all the vintage rock songs.

This year we added some vintage music to our song list, including some original cumbias and melodic rock songs like Midnight Confessions and Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In. Food, music, good company – really, what more could anyone ask for during the winter holidays?

GALILEO IN CALIFORNIA – POSADAS 2014

I see my one (ONE!) lonely post from last year and I think “I know, I’ll write about my Internet connection in Mexico!” But try as I might, I can’t make it funny or interesting. So just know this, Dear Reader, that I have a bad one. I swear it got much worse this year, although it didn’t seem possible. Like – No Uploading, Ever bad.

The first time I put on my headpiece each year is just seems so BIG!

The first time I put on my headpiece each year is just seems so BIG!

Galileo is in SoCal for our annual Posadas Dinner Party gig at La Golondrina in the old, historic part of Los Angeles, and instead of writing about farming in Mexico or other exciting details of our busy life (you think I’m kidding, don’t you?), I’m going to give you a glimpse into the life of us two professional musicians.

 

 

 

IMG_3439
This is the sculpture at the Tijuana border. I think it’s imposing but ugly.

I am seated at a desk in a hotel room – the same hotel we have stayed in for several years now. It’s not glamorous. Many of you would not choose to stay here. But it’s clean (enough) and safe (enough), has internet (see above – this is why some of my friends and family only hear from me in December!) and we’re used to it. Enough about the hotel. We’re notorious penny-pinchers. We travel a full day to get here each year, leaving Central Mexico and the central time zone early in the morning, arriving at the border still in the morning in a new time zone, getting across said border, renting a car in San Diego and driving to the Los Angeles area and haggling over the price of the hotel. (Bet most of you didn’t realize you could do that). We usually have one or two days to get acclimated.

IMG_0723-1

I got to see my friend Chris. Flannel twins.

Practice: maybe you thought that practicing is for beginners. Practice is for all musicians, all the time.
All through the year we practice, learn, and rehearse. For us that involves setting up equipment, as we don’t usually practice with acoustic instruments. Since Chon is a composer, we learn new songs throughout the year, to archive them, or to prepare them (arrange and organize) for live performances. Some weeks we have to put our farming schedule first, and put off practicing, but we always return to it as soon as we can.

IMG_3494

Makeshift studio in our hotel room, using headphones purchased today at a pawn shop.

And Chon is thinking throughout the year about our December gig. We do two to four gigs during the year, and they include my birthday party (June) and Chon’s birthday party (December), New Year’s Eve, and other dates, like Valentine’s Day and Mothers’ Day. These gigs often include repertoire we plan to use at the Posadas parties.

The Posadas dinner parties are held in a restaurant that can accommodate several hundred people. We have played nearly every night of each December 16-24 since 1987. Really. The show is pretty much the same each season. In fact, the manager prints us out the very same show order every year. This year they wrote in an extra group of dances by the folkloric dancers, which might not seem really important, but it turned out to be. And it was a different dance group than the one that we’ve seen every year for many years.

Many of the families that attend have made this a family tradition for longer than we’ve been hosting the show. Really! So we see children and grandchildren of those families one night of the year every year. And after so many years, you get a feeling of what to expect each night. Since it is a family-oriented show, you may not have a realistic picture of how the evenings might go. Although there are many small families with charming, wide-eyed children, there are often large families and some pretty wild behavior. Take last night for example.

While we were setting up, an ex-student arrived to chat with us. Thanks for coming, Jose!! Planning to stay, he and his friends instead had to leave, there being no room in the inn, ha ha (posadas joke). It was sold out.

Our student friend Jose stopped by while we were setting up!

Our student friend Jose stopped by while we were setting up!

When I saw the thin blonde woman walk in, with her extremely high heels and faux leather pants, I knew how it would be. The year before, her large family group had brought confetti-filled egg shells, and throughout the evening had thrown the eggs and hard candies around, one even denting the finish of a guitar onstage. They tend to drink a lot of Margaritas. Who knows – maybe this is their one night of the year to really cut loose! And so they did. There were 25 kids, seated at long tables facing each other on the dance floor, (right in front of us) leaving little room for the marionette show and the dancers. The kids threw confetti eggs at each other, and playfully ground confetti into each others’ hair. Their parents could be seen and heard admonishing the kids, to little avail, although the kids really seemed playful and excited, and not hurtful.

We began the evening on time, with some jazzy Christmas carols on the piano. While I played, Chon was fixing the sound to be even better. After the jazzy carols we played and sang Christmas carols in English and Spanish, and then the dancers came to the now-tiny dance floor, a few minutes late. The leader/organizer of the dancers had asked us to let him know when there were two carols left before they began. We told him, but they weren’t quite ready. Christmas carols are not long! They are certainly not as long as a three-minute pop song. We sang two more, and then the dancers entered the crowded dance area and presented some short Aztec dances. They have beautiful costumes and headdresses, rattles, and fire! in a fire pot.

Then we played two dance numbers for the audience, one in Spanish and one in English. The kids continued bombarding each other with confetti. Confetti on a polished wood floor seems to make it more slippery but no waiter or waitress bearing large trays of food fell.

Then the Bob Baker marionettes show was presented by the talented puppet master, Eric. I love the show, and have not tired of it in all these years.  There are clowns, a skating bear, a couple in Mexican folkwear, a tall couple in ballroom dance wear, a tall pink cat with maribou and high heels, little boys, a big yellow chicken that lays an egg on stage. I find it delightful. The kids edged closer and closer to the center, making it difficult for Eric to navigate.

The music used for the marionettes is “classic” humorous songs all adults recognize, a Spike Jones number, and even light classical music like Leroy Anderson. Eric has the music on his iPod/iPhone and it’s easy to hook it up to our sound system, but difficult to equalize so that it sounds good through the big speakers. Chon does that well. Recently Eric and Chon have discussed making new recordings of the music so it doesn’t take so much adjusting.

After the marionette show we did a Posadas Procession, a shortened version of the Mexican tradition of singing groups of people visiting neighboring houses before Christmas. The kids “help” with this, processing around the restaurant, with the dancers carrying a large Nativity scene. Joseph and Mary seek shelter and the story ends happily. We play live music for this. With so many kids it was difficult to walk around.

We followed the procession with more dance music, and then played very brief music for each kid to swing at the piñata (there were two of them, as there were so many kids – the twenty-five seated on the dance floor were joined by others who magically showed up when we announced the piñata.

Throughout the evening the dance floor was occasionally taken over by men wearing Mexican gabanes holding glasses – of – beer? It looked like that. They are the ones who like it when we play rock music. And we do. See how eclectic it is?

The dancers returned for a dance from the Mexican state of Michoacan, the above-mentioned change in our tried-and-true order of events, and at this point we began to get complaints. They came to me, and not to the manager, so it was a little weird. No, it was odd, and I wasn’t sure what to say.

One woman, loudly, said into my ear as I was singing, “The Baldwins are leaving! We were waiting for the Mothers and Sons dance, but we have to go!” As soon as I could, I told her that would be the very next thing. The Michoacan dance dragged on. Aside: the dance from Michoacan is a famous one called Los Viejitos, The Little Old Men, and it’s comical. Or it’s supposed to be. Dancers with masks depicting old men with long pink faces, dance like young men, and fall down, and get up and dance some more, and generally make a nuisance of themselves. To be really good it must have physical humor. It seems mystifying to most of us gringos, however, as it was last night to the audience. I must be missing something. The blonde woman also came to the stage to comment about the Mothers and Sons Dance, and I told her that the program was the same, and it WAS, it really WAS, except for that one little insertion of the Old Men Dance. The blonde woman hissed at me, “NO, it’s NOT”. They know the order of the show!

Anyway, it ground to an end, and we were relieved to announce the Mothers and Sons dance. We have often thought about changing the music we play for this, but perhaps we should put that idea out of our heads. Then the Fathers and Daughters danced, and we followed this with the Hokey Pokey, (yes, we really play the Hokey Pokey), La Macarena, and then a melange of mostly original holiday rock music, which has really great energy, and many kids and parents were dancing, including the blonde woman, who at one point put one high-heeled foot up on a table so that her pants slid down in the back and we got a really clear view of a body part usually covered up, and later made some dance moves not usually made on family restaurants.

Aside about the Hokey Pokey and La Macarena: these are musical numbers that we have considered changing over the years, usually at the request of the dancers who are sick of it – not much challenge there for a dancer, you must admit. But we will probably NEVER change them, because you now see what happens when you Change Things. And the other night when we began La Macarena, a thirty-something woman who used to be a teenager at the show said to her sister, with a lit-up face, “Oh, this is my favorite!”

And then it was over. We tore down equipment, packed it up and stowed it, and headed to the Valley. We sat and watched an episode of Anger Management and went to sleep.

Our schedule every day of the show – you may think that a three-hour show is just that – three hours. But now you know – there’s practice and planning all year. There is instrument repair and wires repair. There is tuning. We leave to go to the three-hour gig at 4 p.m. We set up for 45 minutes to an hour. We eat. That’s a lucky part, because the food at La Golondrina is really good, and it’s better every year. We play the show. We tear down, and we get back to our non-luxurious hotel aound 11 p.m.  When you have that sort of wire-tired feeling you can’t go right to sleep, so you sleep late. Then there is usually enough time to get breakfast or lunch and get ready to go again. It’s great work if you can get it.

POSADAS 2010

Ex-pat goes back to California after nearly two months in our house in Mexico:

We are professional musicians, and every year for the last 23 years we have done a special show in one of Los Angeles’ oldest restaurants, La Golondrina, on Olvera Street.


We left Guanajuato on a Monday.  We had changed our flight date from Friday because we needed to be there overlooking the construction. We had  also thought that more of our things were arriving from Nogales, and the workers were about to start digging for the foundation of the new room.  Chon wanted to be there to make sure they really started, partly because a niece, Irene, had been criticizing  them and us every time she passed by. We weren’t sure if they would keep working.

The flight was the early one we usually take when we leave the airport called El Bajio in Leon, and we arrived in Tijuana about 8:30 a.m.  We tried a new bus company to get to LA.  There are several that specialize, it seems, in taking people across the border (nearly all Hispanic, although once there were ten or twelve Italians traveling on our bus).  The bus stops at the border and discharges all the passengers, then we get picked up again after going through customs.  This company, Coneccion Magica, had nice new buses, and the trip was unremarkable except for the fact that the bus stopped at their own loading spot only about ten minutes from the airport, then stopped again to fill up the gas tank before taking us to the border.  After arriving in LA we walked about half a mile to an AVIS office and rented a gray Ford Focus.

We drove to our house in Lake Elizabeth, congratulating ourselves on the fact that the car rental would be much less than staying in a hotel.  We couldn’t get the mattress down from above the garage, so we made a bed on the living room floor with blankets and and pillows that were still there.  It hasn’t been very uncomfortable sleeping there, warmed with an electric radiator-type heater.

The first day was perfect fall-into-winter weather, but then a large tropical storm hit that has soaked the entire southland. At night the wind tears at the house and it’s a little scary when you are awake.  A window was broken when we arrived, and we temporarily repaired it by cutting a sheet of foam insulation to fit the window so the cracked glass didn’t fall completely out. We also had an adventure getting the water heater lit: the propane tank was completely empty.  We finally borrowed a large propane tank from a local mobile home manager – a long-haired guy who said “I don’t even know you guys, but I’m going to loan you my own tank.  It has nine gallons of propane in it right now, and when you bring it back we’ll see how much it takes to fill it again, and you can pay me for what you used.”  Pretty cool, man, but after Chon hooked it up outside we still couldn’t get the water heater lit.  A cold bath later, I went and talked to the man again.  He said we had to bleed the air out of the pipe before lighting it, and was very stern with me, telling me to really pay attention to his instructions.  We followed them, and now we have hot water.

And there was the deja vu factor – we had left some things in the garage, and it turned out to be much, much more than I had realized.  So we have ended up unloading Foxy, our big  Ford box truck, and bringing things down from the attic space in the garage.  It’s a lot of work, and rather depressing at the same time.

Since we have officially moved  to Mexico I am more aware of how many unnecessary belongings we took with us.  And there are more of them here, so we have the same decisions to make – toss it, deliver it to a thrift shop, or take it with us. We are both unofficial collectors of eclectic things, and most of the things we liked before, we still like.  It’s difficult.

Chon is entirely focused on searching for two bags that he has been missing since we drove to Nogales – a bag with a large collection of guitar picks, hand-selected over the years, and a bag of jewelry – watches, rings, chains, and more importantly, a small digital recorder with probably 180 original songs on it.  We have discussed this loss endlessly, with heavy-duty speculation as to what has happened to the two bags. it’s all speculation, and trying to remember what happened the last hour or so (news flash!! Chon just found two, TWO recorders!! that were not in the famous two bags, after all) of that final day of packing, when we were exhausted.  We just don’t know what happened to the bags.

*
Our gig at La Golondrina is going well, even though attendance is low this year, matching the economy.  The first night there were only twenty guests.  The second night the entire restaurant was reserved for a family that has been attending for at least twenty years.  There were over 50 children, and the place was packed.  It was the Kilroy family and friends. This year Bob Baker is not performing, and I miss him, although he has sent a very talented young puppeteer, Eric.  I love the marionettes.  I have old, happy meomories of Bob Baker – when I was about twelve, I think, I saw the Bob Baker Marionnettes in a Community Concerts performance at MJC.  It was the story of Hansel and Gretel, and I was thrilled.  I remember the performance lighing was dark blue most of the time, and I remember the odd way the puppets moved, with that floating walking movement that they make.  I seem to remember a grid where the puppeteers stood or lay down above the stage to work the puppets. Bob told me that it was his first big gig, and that he was very young when he got the contract.  We have worked with him now at La Golondrina for about 23 years.  He does pretty much the same show every year, which the return audience looks forward to. For the performance he uses recordings of familiar songs. There is a chicken who sings opera and lays an egg, a tap-dancing cat with a hat and cane, Santa Baby with Chon’s favorite puppet, a tall pink cat with a Santa hat, high heels, and a feather boa; there is a tall couple in red that tangos to Leroy Anderson’s Jealousy; there is also Mamacita, Donde Esta Santo Claus?, and El Jarabe Tapatio, a Mexican folkloric dance. 

I like to tell the audience that they know it was a good performance if your face hurts from smiling.  Last night the audience was tiny (maybe 6 kids total), and the performance was very, very good. Three little girls dashed out onto the dance floor, after their original fear of the marionettes, and were twirling around, dancing with the puppets. For me it was magical!  I never tire of the show.

Here’s Bob before a show:

                         
And it’s always fun to see kids reacting to the puppets – their reactions range from fear and delight (little kids) to feigned boredom (big kids).  The performance at La Golondrina takes place on the dance floor.  We invite the kids to come and sit around the edges of the area, and the marionettes get close to them.

The tiniest non-shy children usually wriggle out of their parents’ or grandparents’s arms and run towards the puppets.  The ones who follow the rules, usually the next -bigger ones, sit still and often hold out their arms in a beseeching manner.  Sometimes a child will get distracted for a moment and then be startled by a marionette right in their face.  The teenage kids try mightily to look bored, but almost always end up smiling and throwing sidelong glances at each other to see how their siblings, or friends are reacting.

It’s interesting to observe the families that attend year after year.  The first couple of years we were there it would surprise me to snotice familiar faces gradually.  now I remember some of them when they arrive.  We call the names of the children as they take their turn at the pinata.  I remember some of the names: white-blonde Mia, her cousin Harper, Antonio, Conor, and Freddy.  I suppose it’s that the names aren’t common these days.

One evening I watched a large family.  There was a grandmother and grandpa, both around my age – no, a little younger.  They have three  married daughters and eight grandchildren.  The mothers were not as attractive as their parents, and one of them completely ignored me when I approached her and her sister, who were visiting rather intensely.  I asked “Who are the mommies?” because the children were dressed exquisitely and I wanted to congratulate them.  One woman said “We are,” and the other one just kept right on talking.  I said how wonderful the children looked, but I doubt that either one heard me.  And the children DID look great.  There were six little girls, aged about 5 to 9.  They all wore red velvet dresses. The dresses weren’t exactly the same; some had ruffles around the bottom edge, some were pinafores, but each dress and each little girl looked great.  There were two little boys, too, wearing dress pants, white shirts and ties.  The women weren’t as attractive as either their mother or father,   But their husbands were rather doll-like and cute.  The mothers did all the organization and took many pictures and talked intensely. 

More posada guests:
One night there was a wonderfully nerdy boy (I use the term with full appreciation of the word).  He must have been 10 or 11 years old.  He had blondish hair.  He was wearing glasses, and a t-shirt and sweatpants with tennis shoes.  That separated him from most of the other kids right there, because they usually come Dressed Up to please their parents.  This kid was very earnest, and began visiting with me right away, even trying to talk to me while I was playing and singing.  Perhaps he thought I could add another skill to my musicianship.  He wanted to tell me that I was “doing a great job”.  Later on, when he was lined up for his turn to whack the pinata, he noticed that we asked each child his/her name and announced it on the microphone when they were taking their turn at the pinata; he caught my attention, and said, importantly and confidentially at the same time, “By the way, my name is Sean.”  When it was his turn about four kids later, his glasses were nowhere to be seen – I assume he took them off so they wouldn’t be in danger of being broken.

Another boy, another night, named Charlie, was just so – confidently boyish.  He loved the music, and would dance unabashedly to any type of rhythm.  He must have been about 8.  He hadn’t yet reached that time when he will be embarrassed to dance with his mother or other kids, pick up a small child, laugh at the marionettes.

While we are working there they give us a meal every night (an especially good thing this year since we are camping out here at our house with no stove or fridge!).  Years ago the food wasn’t nearly as good there as it is now, and we sometimes tired of it.  But now, Chon usually orders Enchiladas Suizas, chicken enchiladas with green sauce and sour cream, and I change around – Chicken Salad with a great vinaigrette (with a touch of chile!) or Tortilla Soup, or Beef Soup, or Tacos de Machaca (shredded beef).  It’s all quite good.  We have known most of the staff there for many years and it (almost ) seems like a family.  Well, better, really, because everyone is on their best professional, friendly behavior.  There is usually quite a bit of catching-up to do, hearing who had a baby, or who moved, or started taking new English classes, and the like.

Tonight is the sixth posada dinner show.  There are ten nights altogether.  And last night I came down with something nasty – I have a very sore throat.  I was so happy not to be sick this year…

Well, the final night, Christmas Eve, my voice was pretty much gone.  I sang the Christmas carols anyway, sort of.  Chon set the sound so my mic was very hot, and the voice I heaqd sounded a little like me.  Chon did much of the talking that I usually do, and we made it through the night together. 

Here’s a photo of part of our performance set-up.

A few comments about Chon’s skills: he is a very skilled musician.  He doesn’t like to say he is gifted – he says that he has worked hard to be at the level he is now.  Anyway, he is also very, very good at managing sound, something most people just take for granted.  At La Golondrina, first of all, he must consider the space itself.  The restauarant is all hard surfaces – wood and concrete floors, and brick walls.  Chon is given cassettes and CD’s and CD player by the dance group and Bob Baker for the puppet show.  They either have not been well-recorded, or are being played by a not-so-high-quality CD player.  Chon changes the equalization for each act, and often in the middle of a song to make each performance sound better.  He also does this for us, adjusting the sound and volume of my keyboard and our voices – all without missing a note, while we are performing!