I've been doing some early spring cleaning this weekend and I've been dancing around the house to garage music a lot. It's all I can do to not throw things out the window, I'm so ready to just get rid of all my crap from miserable days past and just feel new and open and ready to start again fresh. It feels GREAT to purge all the old things I don't need anymore. And it feels even better to do it in a t-shirt and panties, with the window shades all the way up and sunlight coming in, screaming songs like this at the top of my lungs.
I wonder if my neighbors hate me now. But hey, I beat them, 'cause I'm awesome.
The song, by the way, is from the just-released CD from the Dollyrots, a band signed by one of the coolest women on earth, Joan Jett, on her Blackheart Records label. Go buy it, and stuff from all the bands on the label, because a dollar for Joan is a dollar well spent. I'm currently seething with jealousy because all of the Blackhearts Records bands did a showcase at SXSW this weekend. Hiromi, I hope you took full advantage, and maybe gave Joan Jett a kiss for me.
My friend Ray mentioned he's off to a neighborhood festival tonight, down New Orleans way. And it got me thinking about how much I love street fairs, or any fair or outdoor festival in general. I adore ever hokey, marvelous, lowbrow thing about them. The odd mix of people, the bizarre, cheap entertainment (pig races, anyone? face painting? test your strength?), the carnies, the rigged games, the strange crafts for sale, the smell of real kettle corn, the kids all wide eyed looking at everything and pointing at things and saying, "Pleeaaasseeee!" The adults smiling again like they did when they were kids at their first fairs. The lights of the rides at night. General goodwill and collective excitement in the air. The novelty of something different, waited for, in a boring year.
But, for all those joys that American fairs bring, there is one thing that makes them rock harder than any fair I've ever been to, anywhere else in the world. One joy that towers above the rest. One thing that makes me laugh with sheer delight and allow myself to have a moment of hope that perhaps American ingenuity and creative spirit is not dead after all. And that, my friends is the mother of all concepts: food on a stick.
Look at that. The beauty and madness of it. I defy you to find scotch egg on a stick anywhere else. Food on a stick is, quite simply, a divine gift from some totally debauched god.
And um, just as an aside...
Hey you...guy in the "orgy" shirt at 1:19--is that a Jurrasic Dog, or are you just really happy to see me?
(Come on, you know you watched all the way to the end to see him put his mouth around that, didn't you, you feelthy people?)
So. What's your favorite food on a stick? Or, the most bizarre food on a stick that you've ever tried?
When you're feeling low, there's no cure like getting in your car, driving fast down a scenic highway with your windows wide open, your hair whipping around your face in the spring wind, and the Apples in Stereo blasting at highest stereo capacity, while you sing the songs from their amazing new CD at the top of your lungs. (You can hear all the songs from their CD at that second link, streamed. Play it LOUD, or you won't get the full, proper feel of how good they are.)
Plus, they're like a band of real, live human muppets:
Preface: I've spent way too much money buying and fully enjoying a particular seasonal delicacy the past two weeks (see #1 in the list below) and it made me want to write this post.
I was watching a marathon showing of Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America this weekend.* In it, chef Gordon Ramsay was trying to educate a particularly stubborn young French chef on what really wins a chef culinary accolades. The young guy was building beautifully elaborate dishes with stunning color palettes; and each blended a huge number of flavor combinations together. You could see the love and effort the guy was putting into his ideas; but in the end, Ramsey (and two surprise Michelin inspectors) gave it to him straight: strip it down and make it simple.
Sure, there are any number of avant-garde fusions you could create with ingredients, but at the end of the day it's not about how many interesting and high-end ingredients you can mix up together or how clever you are or how pretty it looks. It's about your clientele being able to put a morsel of that dish in their mouths and instantly get that rush of naked freshness from each ingredient caressing their tongues.
Over-seasoning is the culinary equivalent to making love to a person drenched in cologne. It desensitizes the experience and erases the pleasure of one's primal instinctual triggers being roused to extreme heights. The intensity of that one scent overwhelms your other senses, and all you can smell or taste is the cologne. You can't taste your lover's sweat or natural juices. You can't smell the way their body scent changes as their arousal builds. When you finish, you can't smell their scent on you for the rest of the day--all you can smell is the horrible unnatural scent of a chemical concoction. At the end, from a sensory perspective, you're not sure you've slept with a human.
It's the same with food. When I eat, I want to be sure of what I've eaten. I want every sense to be stimulated, not saturated to the point of dulling-out.
With that in mind, here is a shortlist of my favorite stripped-naked foods. These beautiful (and sometimes rare) items are those that I love to eat above all else in the world, and which I think taste far better naked than they ever do with any kind of dressing up.
1) Rainier cherries. Grown only in the American northwest, available only 2 months out of the year, most difficult of all cherry varieties to grow successfully. Incredibly delicate flesh. A short whisper of a shelf-life once picked. Worth a king's ransom at American supermarkets--and even more in other countries like Japan, where one source I read said people can pay up to $1 per cherry. Sound extreme? You're wrong. There's a reason people think it's worth it. The gorgeous, glowing yellow-blushed flesh, the intense burst of sweet pungence...there is NOTHING like it. Regular cherries simply don't even come close. The fruit's nectar is such that you imagine it must have been food created for the sustenance of gods and goddesses, and by some lucky accident, some of it slipped down to earth. Right now is the season for them. Go get some.
2) Oysters. Cold, briny, smooth as silk; one sip and gulp and it's the closest experience we'll ever have to understanding what it's like to live under the ocean (a childhood fantasy of mine--I've always been drawn to the sea). Besides a slight kiss of either cocktail sauce or vinegar mignonette, any kind of dressing up of these heavenly things makes them lesser. I don't care how great a po' boy tastes or how rich they are Rockefellered, or how surprisingly good they are in an omelette. If they're not naked, you've lost something.
3) Chanterelle mushrooms. Not dried, not commercially farmed. Wild, fresh, ONLY. These beautiful, delicate, creamsicle-colored trumpets from the earth are another item that's extremely seasonal, and depending how far you live from their original growing regions, the quality of them (and the price) can really vary. I often see them wet and slimy to the touch (obviously through a failed attempt to keep them hydrated), or a little too dry and leathery feeling (through not keeping them hydrated enough). The best will feel..well...mushroomy. When touched, they should have a feel of having a moisture held inside (as with a standard button mushroom) and give a bit to the touch, but should not be wet and clammy, or dry and leathery. Like other short-seasoned produce, they're gonna cost you, but they're worth it. They taste like no other mushroom on earth--delicate and nutty, with a slight hint of meaty wildness--not at all earthy or musky like other mushrooms. One site I looked at described them as "having the aroma of apricots and tasting more like a flower then a mushroom." They truly are that lovely. And the sad thing is that many chefs bury their delicate taste and aroma by combining them with other ingredients. SACRILEGE. These mushrooms should be eaten on their own. Just sauté them quickly in the a small amount of butter (and if you insist on getting fancy, you can add a touch of sherry)--and that's IT. This brings out their natural flavor and it is a feast for royalty. One bite and you'll want to eat nothing else but that for weeks on end.
4) Uni (sea urchin roe). Cold, creamy, lush and lightly sea-scented, moist and softly firm, eating this delicacy is like French kissing the ocean. You're probably not ever going to find this at a regular supermarket, and as it's eaten raw, if you're buying on your own, I'd be hesitant to purchase it from anywhere but a fish market of the absolute highest reputation. But really, unless you have serious restaurant-industry connections, it's going to be difficult to find it anywhere outside of a sushi restaurant--so that's where you should look for it. But even in restaurants, it can be really difficult to find good quality uni. When being served it, be sure it doesn't look dry and grainy or super wet and mushy and falling apart. It should look something like...well, an orange tongue, really. And like oysters, it should have a scent of fresh, clean sea water--it should NOT have a very strong, fishy smell. If it does, send it back. Good uni looks and tastes as described in the opening sentence to this paragraph. And once you've found it, you'll know. And when that happens, once you've found the right place, from thereon out, if they'll allow this, get your uni naked--deep six the sushi rice and seaweed bed--order it as sashimi. You won't be sorry.
5) Watermelon. I don't even need to go into this one at any length--I'm guessing everyone's experienced it. Remember that hot, hot day way back when, you and your family or a whole bunch of kids outdoors somewhere, and someone cracks open a watermelon and hands you a big slice. You take your first bite and suddenly the whole hot, sweaty day just disappears and you're transported to a secret cave of coolness and for just a moment, life is so, so sweet...ahhhh. Aside from slightly chilling it, there is nothing you can do to this simplest and most basic of all melons that would make it in any way more perfect than it already is.
Wow, I could go on forever, but one more...my secret shame and delight...
6) Foie gras. Yes, I stopped eating veal. I only buy free-range organic chicken. I attempt to always buy cruelty-free meats. And yet...as the quote goes, "consistency is not really a human trait." Despite its un-PC nature, I still can not keep myself from eating foie gras whenever I have the chance. Which is not often, because it's difficult to find unadulterated foie gras. Anyway, I apologize if I've disappointed anyone--go on and hate me if you must. What can I say...it's friggin' delicious. It's lush and creamy and full of delicate meatiness. Cold or hot, it's amazing. BUT--I HATE when people bastardize it with pork or chicken fillers. Straight duck! C'est fini! And don't stick a whole bunch of herbs or a massive amount of pepper in there, either. Just let me taste the duck, please. And I won't even go into the horror of putting foie gras in things like (::shudder::) hamburgers or hot dogs. I will allow a tiny touch of sweet fruit or its preserves as a side, as this only boosts the natural flavor of the foie gras. But anything else is just a defloration of one of the world's most perfect foods.
So...hungry yet? Agree with me? Disagree? Have some favorite naked-is-best foods to add to the list?
*Side note: if you've never seen this show and have any interest at all in food, the fine dining industry, or endearingly egotistical chefs (are there any other kind?), it's a must-see--new season coming on soon, so I hear.
I was going to use this photo to add context to a somewhat serious post I've been struggling to write for a week now. But you know what? I find it's Friday, and the sun is out, and I realize I just don't feel like being serious.
So I'll just put it out there in the spirit of playfulness and attitude with which it was taken.
Which is as it should be. Because all the joy in the world is all about play, ain't it, people?
You know, I just heard an old song on the radio that matched the photo's sentiment exactly. It lifted my heart right up, the singer's rough and ragged voice bragging to the world that hell, it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive.
Too fucking right. I'm not ashamed to be glad. Don't you be, either.
Gladness. You can feel it. Take in as much as you fucking can, till you think you can't take in any more. And then take in more. Because you can.
Yes. I do believe in the hope, and that it may raise each and every one of us above the badlands.
Happy weekend, my darlings. And a big, lusty tongue kiss to each and every one of you.
---
And because I love encores, and because it's about to be the weekend, and because I wish you were here to play with me, and because you can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can't take the Jersey out of the girl:
Some things stay exactly the same, no matter how long ago they were new.
This song still has the ability to make me smile and start dancing like a little kid all around the house. It's so sweetly romantic in lyric and plinky-boppy in synth, it should be too tacky for words. But it's not. It's pure and simple every time.
Come over and dance with me? That would be even more perfect and happy.
It's the sound of Sigur Rós making love to The Who--while orbiting the sun in an air-conditioned Great Glass Elevator, high on joy juice and surrounded by gravity-free floating gerbera blossoms.
MUST be played at top volume until it's shaking your speakers (or vibrating your eardrums if you're wearing headphones) to fully appreciate the beautiful madness of what they're doing.
Given that I've often been accused of being obsessive about music, it may come as a surprise that I've always been somewhat ambivalent about going to live shows.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy seeing a band I love in concert. And sometimes discovering a new band can be fun, too. But so often the shows are just...well, so-so. Factors conspire to make the experience less than transformative. Sometimes the sound sucks, or the band's not as good live as they are recorded, and I am disappointed and either left questioning my former belief in their talent or wondering why I didn't just stay home and listen to the CD. Or, on the opposite end of the scale, sometimes the sound is TOO perfect--SO perfect, in fact, that it sounds JUST like the CD, with no particular flair to make the performance feel live or interesting. And in those instances, too, I wonder why I didn't just stay home and listen to the CD.
Or sometimes the band seems to be going through the motions, and not caring much. I've seen some bands who make Disney animatrons look lively. Alternately, sometimes they're wasted and stumbling all over the place, which is amusing for a short while and then just gets really annoying when they can't remember how to play their instruments and nod off and end the show after 30 minutes. Sometimes it's the audience who's way too wasted and ruins an otherwise brilliant show by drunkenly shouting out stupid things at every opportunity or not knowing the difference between drunken brutality vs. actual moshing. And of course, seeing new bands I've never heard before is always a crap shoot and nine times out of ten I wonder if I might not have done better to have just stayed home and saved my money for, like...rent or something.
But sometimes, there are these incredible live music moments. Sometimes, everything comes together in this unspeakably perfect way. And then I remember why I don't entirely give up on going to shows.
I had one such experience a few days ago. A friend invited me to go see the band Elbow play live. I'd never heard of them before. Despite me being the music geek I am, and despite them having put out quite a few CDs already, they'd completely missed my radar. But after quickly checking out their website and MySpace page and listening to a few clips, I enthusiastically agreed to go. Something about their music grabbed me right away, and despite my wariness these days (based on the factors mentioned above) about paying to see bands I know nothing about, on hearing them I instantly thought "this is a band to see." I'm not even sure why, but that was the immediate gut response.
They always say you should follow your gut, and it turns out "they" are still damn well right. Because this show was easily one of the best and most remarkable live performances I've had the pleasure of seeing in a long while.
There were a number of factors that came together to make this so. First off, it turned out the show was being held in a historic synagogue right in the heart of the city I live in. A place I may have passed by dozens of times and yet have never noticed--and certainly didn't know showcased live bands. So that was the first surprise. We walked in, and were greeted with a completely gorgeous interior. A relatively intimate performance space, with beautiful antique wooden pews, carved with smooth, curved backs which were incredibly comfortable to sit in. Candelabras along the walls. Elaborate stained glass windows. And a stunning domed ceiling, painted with an intricate gold-leaf pattern and looking like a giant, semitic Fabergé egg. Just look at the photo to the right. That's what we sat under all night, evening light shimmering through the stained glass windows surrounding it, making it glow above us when the lights went low for the show. How can one not be moved to the expectancy of something great when sitting under a ceiling like that?
Even before the band started, it was clear the acoustics were going to be marvellous and that environs had an affect on the crowd. We could hear our voices amplified by the shape of the building in a way that foretold good things for a band being able to play. And have you ever noticed how when one walks into a beautiful place, one is naturally awed by it and wants to be beautiful IN it? Your behavior changes; you grow happier, more careful in how you treat yourself and others. You try to drink it all in and you look at your neighbors, both of you wide-eyed and say, "Isn't this amazing?" And then you smile and feel lucky. You don't want to let that feeling go. That's what it was like.
This, I believe, was amplified by the fact that there was no alcohol available. I didn't think of it until afterward, but I think it may possibly be the first show I've ever seen where no one was drinking and where I hadn't had at least one drink. I tend to associate shows with alcohol--whether I'm drinking or it's just the smell of it all around me. None of that here. Everyone was completely sober and AWAKE; and I think this lent to wanting to keep the respectful feeling of the beauty of the space going and the whole "love thy neighbor" vibe that was going on. Plus, it let all of us REALLY HEAR the music. It was such an unusual thing, experiencing a band with a crowd that was completely unaltered. People seemed far more riveted and connected to the performance and each other. It was truly spectacular. And all this time I thought alcohol contributed to a live experience--that it wasn't rock 'n' roll without the sex and drugs aspect. So much for that fallacy.
And yet, despite the more formal decorations around us, and the lack of a dive bar atmosphere, the crowd was incredibly charged. In fact, perhaps even more charged than normal, because everything was so different and special. You could feel how special everyone thought it was, just in the air. And the feeling certainly charged the band, too. From the moment the lights came down and they were able to walk THROUGH the waiting crowd, in between the pews and toward the stage, carrying horns in arms stretched high, and then stand in a line across the stage, blowing a huge cacophony of Wall-of-Jerhico sound over the backing track belting out over the speakers, the whole performance just seemed otherworldly in its perfection. The music was flawless, a wailing wall of swirling sound--sometimes painfully yearning, sometimes heartburstingly joyous, sometimes both together. There was guitar and bass and drums and hard on male rock 'n' roll attitude, but also backing tracks and live electric violins and female backing harmonies.
And that is how it is with a show like that. I stood there, falling in love with that band I'd never even heard of four days before.
I stood there, full of first-hand knowledge that, behind the lights and the swells of sound, this world of touring bands is, on paper, not much more than cigarettes and drink and addictions and long drives and boredom and bad food and schedules, schedules, schedules and arguments with industry stooges and each other, and a never-ending stream of anonymous, brief, disconnected meetings with people you may never see again, all of whom want something from you that you are too damn tired to give.
I stood there, knowing all that, and falling in love with the world of rock 'n' roll anyway. Getting drawn in, drawn closer, feeling heaven, saying, Yes, yes, I want that.
And that is why I don't stop seeing live shows.
---
A few videos below from Elbow to whet your appetite. It frustrates me to give you these, though, because they can't even remotely capture the feel or sound of their performance. This band is very good on CD, but they are, I think, one of those rare bands that's far, far better live than they even are recorded. Usually it's the opposite, so this is a rare thing. Go see them on tour if you can.
---
Guy Garvey photo courtesy of Glynis_F. All other photos copyright Sexeteria.
I've been doing some early spring cleaning this weekend and I've been dancing around the house to garage music a lot. It's all I can do to not throw things out the window, I'm so ready to just get rid of all my crap from miserable days past and just feel new and open and ready to start again fresh. It feels GREAT to purge all the old things I don't need anymore. And it feels even better to do it in a t-shirt and panties, with the window shades all the way up and sunlight coming in, screaming songs like this at the top of my lungs.
