In a story published by San Jose's Mercury News, a woman who was trying to improve a local neighborhood park apparently got "permission" by the Backesto Park King to set up a children center, after she used tamales and a little diplomacy to throw the homeless people out, displacing them, putting them at the other end of the park.
[embed]https://twitter.com/SOMN3R/status/464909246958940160[/embed]
That woman is named Carmen Cauteverio.
Well, she actually told them that the side of the park she was 'moving' them from, belong to the children which no doubt, disarmed them and forced them to relocate.
This is how the writer of the article puts it:
And then the mysterious "Backesto Park King" stepped up. According to Cautiverio, the intimidating man with a scraggly beard and hard look showed up very early one morning and peppered her with questions. After I explained to him what we're trying to do here, he said, 'OK, you can stay,'" Cautiverio remembered. "I haven't seen him since."
One spacebar after that, he writes about how the kids are enjoying themselves and how Carmen has still had to chase off drug addicts from the park restroom before he ends the paragraph. Yes, the story about the Backesto Park King makes up the first half of a paragraph which ends up not having anything to do with him at all.
[embed]https://youtu.be/wUq_E2KWc88?t=11m12s[/embed]
And there are other places in the article which make me question the writer's ability to report anything without being neutral, calling the homeless people 'lowlifes'.

I actually spoke with the composer Wade Williamson on that story and he too cannot confirm the existence of the 'Backesto Park King', but he has said that some of those 'homeless' people are still there, but put it in a more positive light that it's part of the neighborhood melting pot.
The first thing I wanted to do with was to write a story that would help me round up all the emotions I felt this album represents.
It would have been a unconventional approach to a music review but I have to say, I spent more time just trying to figure out what those emotions were.
It should also be said that it doesn't help me that Williamson 'locked in' Backesto Park as the subject here, forcing me to stay on topic, as Backesto Park, his fifth release, is a tribute to the neighborhood and the community he loves.
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/221706278" params="color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]
Of course with some effort anyone can rewire their brains to see things differently. But, I won't ignore the powerful sense of community Backesto Park is tapping into.
Because that's exactly what Wade was getting at when he put this album together. The mingling of different cultures that come together at the community park, which is a subject that actually, draws me in more.
The albums starts off with momentum building track All Thanks To Paul, which puts me in the center of a clear and sunny weekend morning, cracking open a breakfast beer on a front porch because, there's no one who can tell me I can't.
And as I visualize it, what's better than a park that rolls right into your backyard where, all you have to do is face it to measure the vibe of the day? Boy, could you imagine if everything was a park?
But the opening track has what sounds like a vibraphone with guitar at the beginning, together mimicking wind chimes before the music swells into something with more purpose. And I refer to it as something because, I can't yet put my finger on what it is but then again, that's part of the adventure.
The tracks that follow, Homeward By Flagella and Protozoan Sunrise are a continuation of the abstract tone and soundtrack like structure of the first track but with more purpose.
There's the definite effort here to surround us with the sounds of thriving vigor, the buzzing of life to a beat. If for a little bit, it reminds me of glistening waves, which might appear to be a bit cliche but, if you hold onto that thought for a bit, it's an image which will perfectly and gradually evolve into something else.
I recall the sounds off of CLARK's TED E.P. from almost ten years ago.
And still for a release I can't quite wrap my head around; that we're still at the beginning of the 14-track album, it's still quite a solid start.
But it it isn't until Fast Moving Shadows when I really get pulled in, with its basic 3-chord/note progressive, rock structure.
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/221706277" params="color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]
This of course makes me wonder if my brain is too basic to make sense of anything that comes out of unconventional approaches to music, a thought which is short-lived because I refuse to accept that it's even possible.
And yet, Williamson appears to settle for the same simplicity with the cool and collected You Don't Understand or my other favorite Walking Home And Aiming For The Light, which to me, is more of an evening piece, as opposed to the daytime Fast Moving Shadows piece.
Yes, Wade Williamson is holding me hostage in the Northside neighborhood with Backesto Park, and yet I'm willing to stay here because I'm finding that there's more to this work than what I first gathered during the first few listens.
Also, Wade collects recordings which you'll hear throughout Backesto Park such as in the track Let's Learn Japanese where voice snippets of a language lesson are tightly woven into the melody, filling in those gaps appropriately.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLw0PJ98uso[/embed]
It would be wrong to approach Backesto Park from a individualistic perspective because there are so many different colors in this, that approach would cause you to lose a lot of ground.
At the very least you would treat it as a pleasant collection of tracks and background mood music. But that would probably put you in a place which threatens you to dismiss a few tracks which would completely work against you being able to enjoy this release, and to thinking on a completely different level.
Let's imagine that you were interacting with different cultures on a regular, daily basis where maybe you get used to trying to communicate with someone in your community who cannot speak or understand English very well. Through consistency you become familiar with them and that makes communicating with them easier?
Which is similar to the experience I've had with Backesto Park.
And let me assure you that there's nothing mediocre about this at all! It's as complex and interesting as real life itself, a true-life soundtrack that uses very real sentiment, turning music into real places, real people and into a new experience.
Stream the entire album on
SoundCloud,
Go to
Amazon,
to get his other three albums and E.P.
Facebook,
Official Site,
eMusic,
iTunes
"My Communal Experience With Williamson's 'Backesto Park'" by incendiaryAmerican is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://wp.me/p6VWlN-1bG. [Featured image by David Sawyer via Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0]
