A Live One

So yeah, the last two entries were a bit of an embarrassment. I had every intention of coming home from the concert last night and posting, but it takes a long time to get across the city and it truly was midnight and I decided to wait.

I'm actually glad I did, as it allowed me time to digest the show last night and really formulate a strong opinion. After all, it's not every day you see a show that started with a badly rhymed invocation by a pirate-cum-town-crier, and included the crew dressed as superheros, a balloon drop to rival New Year's Eve, the lead singer rolling around on the crowd in a big bubble, confetti cannons, confetti guns, confetti/balloon guns, strobe lights, smoke machines, more confetti, go-go dancers dressed like aliens, go-go dancers dressed like Santa Claus, a big blow-up bouncy alien, a big blow-up bouncy Santa Claus, singing nun puppets, extended audience sing-alongs, crazy videos, three disco balls, a number of increasingly uncomfortable (even for me!) potshots at George Bush, one guitarist dressed as a skeleton, the other guitarist singing through a megaphone, a roaring, rollicking, rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" to close the night, and a big round of applause from a pair of giant hands.

It was a good show.

Actually, it was a VERY good show. The entire spectacle - and it is a spectacle - manages to transcend the merely weird and wild to exist on an entirely different plane. The Lips' frontman Wayne Coyne posits himself a psychedelic ringmaster for a new millennium and he's largely successful. Charismatic, loquacious, and strangely compelling, he gives you the impression that this seemingly random mash of visual and musical elements has sprung from some deep belief. He has a world view that he's not afraid to share: liberal, hopeful, slightly twisted, kind of cheesy, but ultimately compelling. He behaves as if he truly believes that the sheer force of his will - coupled with the power of his music - can heal the world.

And it's hard not to respond to that. It's hard to ignore someone who puts out that much positive energy, especially when it's done in both a simply outrageous and slightly twisted fashion. It's hard to ignore the two laddish blokes behind us leaving the venue who linked arms and skipped to the "We're off to see the Wizard" exit music over the PA. It's hard to ignore an audience who comes in costume. And it's especially hard to ignore a band that has the venue staff giggling in the aisles as they try to abscond with giant balloons. In my experience, for a band to have that kind of transformative power is quite a gift. For them to recognize it and to use it for good is even cooler.

But (and this is a big, BIG, but)...

The music could have been better. A LOT better. The Flaming Lips are a brilliant band who make outstanding records, and who have - I believe - been known to put on a pretty good live show. Their albums are complete soundscapes built around the same storylines and world views that underpin their live shows. They're funky, poppy, pretty, layered, and ultimately elegant pieces of work, yet I heard very VERY little of that last night. Even their most anthemic songs - "Fight Test," "Yoshimi," and "Do You Realize" - despite being given the full treatment, just didn't resonate (literally and figuratively) to their fullest potential. Just because I'm a jamband fan doesn't mean I look for jams everywhere (case in point: Wilco), but I felt these songs needed stretching. There were beautiful visual moments that begged for musical atmosphere. There were beautiful musical moments that begged for more time. There were too many truncated endings to songs that begged for another verse. There was just too much left begging.

And so ultimately I just can't help thinking: When you have music that inspires a solo listener over headphones, and a stage show that inspires thousands of jaded Londoners, what would happen if theyreally worked together? What I saw last night was only one side of the equation, but what I can envision is a lot lot more.

You CAN heal the world through the force of will and the power of music. And you just may be the man to do it, Wayne Coyne. You've got the will thing down, you've just got to work on the music.

Posted by jmakunas at 06:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

...that technically my kitchen clock says 11:58 so I can set the timer on my computer back to get this post in under the deadline? We just returned from the Flaming Lips concert. More later. As you can see, it's nearly midnight, and I have to go to bed.

Posted by jmakunas at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stupid blog.

My so-called commitment to this thing is interrupting quite possibly one of my favorite weekend rituals of all time.

M and I are in the middle of cooking a somewhat elaborate dinner (Garlic, Lemon, and Caraway roast pork with apples, savoy cabbage, and mashed potatoes), drinking Lillet, and listening to music. More specifically, we're listening to WEFUNK Radio on the SqueezeBox at a volume that could probably be construed as a bit annoying to our downstairs neighbors, if we actually had downstairs neighbors on the weekends.

There are times when I think WEFUNK has kept me sane in London. It's a station out of Montreal that plays old and new school hip-hop, funk, and groove music, and constantly streams the best of their shows over the internet. I have always had an obsessive love for funk music (in spite of being a whiter-than-white girl from Chicago) and WEFUNK has taught me more about this style of music than any concert I've seen, book I've read, or CD I own. There's something truly comforting about being in our flat in the center of faddish, poppy, clubland in East London and listening to music that reminds me of the Boom Boom Room. In their own words:

WEFUNK celebrates a lineage of powerful, inspired music. The roots of soul, funk and rapping go back way further than the 70s, but something special began when James Brown gave the drummer some, Larry Graham hit the bass harder, Kool Herc gave the dancers breaks, DJ Hollywood worked the mic... and musicians worldwide found the funk seeping through their walls and into their music. Strong music gave a strong foundation to speak on social problems, relationships, politics and living conditions. And it made one hell of a party groove. Funk gave birth to hip-hop, and as the past grew into the present funk and hip-hop touched every modern music, leaving their mark—a swagger, a groove, mo' bounce... and something to twist your face and nod your head to. You know it when you hear it. And we play it on WEFUNK.

For example, right now I'm listening to Joe Bataan sing "Johnny." Who? Joe Bataan. "Johnny?" Yeah...I don't know either, but it's super-funky. It sounds a lot like Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, actually, and I'll bet Denson knows who Joe Bataan is.

About six months ago I was in the kitchen cooking dinner and M was working in the office. I had WEFUNK on and there was some excellent, deeply groovy, hip-hop song playing. The kind that made me rethink hip-hop in the first place. The kind that had me dancing - really dancing - in the kitchen. Like, getting down, spinning around, waving dishtowels dancing. M came out of the office, saw me in the kitchen getting my groove on and said, typically deadpan, "I didn't know you liked Public Enemy so much."

Well, hell. Neither did I.

Posted by jmakunas at 06:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're in the process of figuring out what to do for New Year's Eve this year.

I love NYE - it's by far my favorite day of the year, but it's been hard in the years since Phish (in the years since Big Cypress, actually, because Phish has only played 3 out of the last 6 New Years) to figure out how to get the music/party ratio just right. The trick is to ensure you have both quality music - nitty gritty down and dirty "this is what we came for" kind of stuff - and a great party. New Year's can't go off with a whimper, it's got to be a flying-hot-dog-dancing-bunnies-or-gorillas-Stanton-descending -in-a-cage-of-fire-shiny-silver-suit kind of thing.

TLG did a nice job last year, definitely. And Claypool and friends in ape suits in 2004 was also um, interesting. Galactic actually came the closest, though, with the above-linked Fire/Water shows in 2001. But there's nothing, of course, that will ever match Miami for sheer intensity.

I wrote in the entry about Miami that "12/30 was about the music. 12/31 was about the party" and to this day I think that's the ideal. Get all your demons out the night before. Be musically inspired. Expect something great. Then let it all go for New Year's. Pop a few balloons. Boogie. Kiss your husband and your friends. Wear sequins. Play more cowbell. Give free hugs.

So that's why we're thinking this year we'll see My Morning Jacket on the 30th and brave the Sea of Dreams on the 31st. We're not expecting great things from String Cheese, ALO, and Lotus, but we are from MMJ the night before. And that's as it should be, 'cause I just want to dance.

Posted by jmakunas at 07:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last weekend M and I spent a good deal of time watching "The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time" on Channel 4. It was a pretty entertaining show for something that was essentially Sunday night fluff, with lots of good music, artist interviews, and some pretty interesting factoids about the bands and the albums (Did you know The Clash's London Calling cover was based on an Elvis Presley album? Me neither.).

The albums were nominated by experts recruited by Channel 4 and the winners were determined by public vote. We started watching at #87 (Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis) and just three albums later we had our first hint that maybe – just maybe – the "public" needed a little help. Who in their right mind would shove Paul Simon's Graceland way back at #84, sandwiched in between an obscure Nick Drake album and an American psychedelic pop band called Love that we'd never even heard of ? ('Cause you know there aren't too many American psychedelic pop bands we haven't heard of).

It only got worse. Exile on Main Street was at #42. Pet Sounds was at #33. London Calling (LONDON CALLING, for Christ's sake) was at #44. And worst of all, Remain in Light Wasn't. Even. On. The. List.

At about #30, M and I paused the TV and quickly cobbled together our own Top 10. We didn't think too hard about the semantics of the word "Greatest" (Most important? Most influential? Best (whatever that means)?) because really – this is a stupid exercise. If we had really stopped to think about it we'd have come up with a dramatically different list – guaranteed. That said, we agreed on albums and ranking almost immediately. We then compared our list to Channel 4's...and...well...read both below, then tell me who you think has a better grasp on the 10 Greatest Albums of All Time. Heh.

Jenny and Michael's Top 10 Greatest albums:
10. Grateful Dead - American Beauty
9. U2 - The Joshua Tree
8. Radiohead - OK Computer
7. Nirvana - Nevermind
6. Talking Heads - Remain in Light
5. Led Zepplin - Led Zepplin IV
4. The Who - Quadrophenia
3. Michael Jackson - Thriller
2. The Beatles - The White Album
1. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

Channel 4's Top 10 Greatest albums:
10. The Beatles – Revolver
9. Guns N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction
8. Madonna - Like a Prayer
7. The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
6. Oasis - Definitely Maybe (I'll forgive the public this...everyone knows Liam and Noel are just crazy enough to actually kick someone's ass if they were left out.)
5. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
4. Michael Jackson -Thriller
3. Nirvana - Nevermind
2. U2 - The Joshua Tree
1. Radiohead - OK Computer

I mean...I love Madonna (see below), but seriously. And Radiohead could have never existed without Pink Floyd. And everyone knows that Use Your Illusion I and II outstripped Appetite for Destruction, "Sweet Child O' Mine" aside.

Don't they?

If you want to see the full list, check out the Channel 4 site.

Posted by jmakunas at 07:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yup, definitely worth it.

Posted by jmakunas at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just some random bits and pieces....

I am pleased to report that last night's dinner were the tartines that I am planning to write about for the "Is My Blog Burning?" event this coming Sunday. Not to give anything away, but they were actually yummy, and I think I've perfected what I'll submit as my final "recipe" on Sunday. 'Twas fun, though it will probably be my last adventure in the kitchen for a bit if my career fortune changes as I suspect it might in the next few days.

The cafe au lait bowls (discussed below) were fetched and are just lovely - the perfect size and shape for coffee (or just about anything, I guess). The woman at the store told me they're now making plates with the same stripe on them, which I didn't need to hear.

And finally, M and I are currently obsessed with Gerolsteiner sparkling water (or "sprudel" as my father correctly calls it). We've taste-tested many different sparkling waters and keep coming back to this one, which is interesting because it has a very distinctive mineral taste that I can imagine would be somewhat offputting if you weren't prepared. All those minerals are apparently supposed to be good for you, but honestly, we just like the taste. It pairs surprisingly well with food and it's on sale this week at Whole Foods (though Trader Joe's stocks it cheaply all the time). Go get you some!

Posted by jmakunas at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Even though it wasn't a part of my childhood (and, indeed, my parents taught me to drink my coffee black when I started drinking coffee), I have great affection for the comfort of a big bowl of cafe au lait, usually on a Sunday morning with the New York Times spread invitingly out in front of me.

A few months ago, M and I bought a stovetop milk steamer expressly for the purpose of using actual steamed (instead of boiled or heated) milk in our weekly cafes, and a few weeks ago, we went on a search for actual cafe au lait bowls. However, as is our wont, instead of purchasing actual cafe au lait bowls, we used our "search" as an excuse to buy a set of bowls from a company called Iittala that we'd been coveting for a long time. They're from the "Origo" line, and while they're truly multi-purpose pieces, they're shaped perfectly for a bowl of cafe au lait.

Of course, they had to be special ordered, and I've been waiting for them to arrive at the store for a while now. I just got a call yesterday telling me the bowls had come in, and I can't wait to run up there and retrieve them.

My obsession with dishes knows no bounds.

Posted by jmakunas at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everyone's always amazed when I say that I don't like chocolate. It's not that I don't enjoy really good chocolate now and then, it's that I don't crave chocolate that often and more likely than not I'll go for the non-chocolate option on any dessert menu.

It is surprising, then, that my favorite little gift from M - whether it be birthdays, anniversaries, or (as was the case on Saturday) Valentine's Day - is a little package of Champagne Truffles from Teuscher chocolates. Described as "A delicate milk chocolate shell wrapped around sinfully rich dark chocolate with a heart of French champagne crème," they manage to be simultaneously eye-rollingly rich and light and fizzy. The milk chocolate is creamy and crystalline, and the champagne cream hidden in the center isn't cloyingly sweet (just like good champagne).

In my opinion, they're three bites worth of perfection.

Posted by jmakunas at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Continuing yesterday's little discussion of appetizers and pre-meal munchies, I thought I'd share a bit about my very favorite aperitif, Lillet Rouge.

Michael first read about Lillet a few years ago in Jay McInerney's funny collection of wine essays, Bacchus and Me (highly recommended) and the next time we found a bottle in San Francisco, we had to try it. There are two kinds of Lillet, red and white, with the white being a little drier and the red a little deeper and muskier tasting. Both are blends of fruit and spice (such as orange peel and quinine) that has been macerated and fermented and wine. This mixture is then aged like a normal wine and different vintages are mixed together, giving the Lillet both its fruitiness and its depth.

Lillet is most often served chilled or over ice with a twist of lemon or orange. However, it seems that Lillet is experiencing a surge in popularity - at least in wine-crazy San Francisco - and I've seen Lillet cocktails popping up lately. In fact, I seem to remember a Lillet-infusted martini at the swanky bar at Azie down the street from us.

I mentioned before that I'm super excited that the new Whole Foods down the street is stocking both Lillet Rouge and Lillet Blanc. Indeed, we've had a bottle in our refrigerator consistently since the grocery opened. That bottle is currently open on my counter, and I'm just about to have another glass.

Posted by jmakunas at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As many of you know, M and I were lucky enough to spend two weeks in France last summer with my parents. One of the best parts of our stay was reconnecting with some old family friends who live outside of Paris (in Louveciennes, if I remember correctly) and enjoying a dinner at their beautiful house on a lovely summer evening towards the end of our trip.

The entire evening was - of course - delightful and delicious, but I came away from the dinner with yet another foodstuff that I had to bring back from France (in addition to the wine, cheese, and chocolate that I was already going to smuggle home, not to mention everything else I purchased during Les Soldes!). Along with a lovely glass of Sauternes, we were served little munchies called Twinuts which are (according to my translation of the back of the bag) "a crunchy peanut covered (actually the world is 'enrobed'...hee!) in a delicious, light, and crusty cracker" and they come in many different flavors. They're totally addictive, as I'm sure you can imagine, and our friend Judy said that her family loves them so much she often brings them with her when she visits the US. She kindly gave me a bag of the "Mexican" flavor to bring back with me.

Of course, I knew just one bag would hardly suffice, so I spent a few days in Paris popping in and out of every supermarket to find more Twinuts in all their possible flavor permutations. I finally found them on sale at Monoprix (of course), and brought home about 8 bags that varied between salt (plain flavor), tomato-basil, bacon and spices, chinese, and indian flavors.

Because of some compulsion similar to the last bite axiom, I'm sure, M and I have tried to carefully conserve our consumption of the Twinuts and we still have four bags left. However, we're now worried they're going to go stale soon, and have decided to dive into our stash. Yesterday, we enjoyed the Mexican flavor with a nice glass of Amontillado sherry, and they were still outstanding. It's amazing how such a silly little snack food can make you so happy. I will be truly sorry when they're gone.

Posted by jmakunas at 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

So it's finally here.

After years of promises and preparations, Whole Foods has finally opened another branch in the city and it happens to be right around the corner (quite literally!) two blocks from our apartment. It's the first supermarket in the South of Market neighborhood in 20 years, and I have admittedly high expectations...not only will it greatly enhance our quality of life (there's currently not a grocery store or market within walking distance), but I'm hoping it will bring some revitalization to an area that's sorely in need of improvement. Hopefully Whole Foods will treat the SOMA neighborhood with respect, because we're sure happy they're here.

But enough about urban renewal...let's get to the food. M and I made our first trip to the new store on Thursday night to do a full shopping trip for the next two weeks or so. I drove (which I'm hoping not to do very often) so I could check out the parking (small, tight, annoying...just like the WF on California) and M met me on his way home from work. On his way home from work! A grocery store! Finally!

I'm ashamed to admit that in my first trip through the store I was wholly intimidated (no pun intended). I love grocery stores, but I'm most efficient when I know my way around and I spent the good part of an hour feeling out of my element and annoyed at myself for feeling that way. This store is a classic city layout: simultaneously gigantic and compact with lots of little nooks and crannies that you don't want to miss. Since the store had only been open for one day, everyone was equally ill at ease, wheeling carts around aimlessly and moving in circles around each department trying to find the best way in and out of the aisles.

Part of this discombobulation extends from the fact that this store offers expanded cheese, seafood, and prepared food sections. The prepared food area is as large as some food-by-the-pound sections in New York delis with a ton of hot trays, a huge salad bar, and a gigantic display of sushi. The cheese case is by far the largest I've seen anywhere in the city, at least triple the size of the other WF store. And the seafood...well...let's just say the only places in the city I've seen as many whole fresh fish are Asian groceries and Chinatown.

Of course, despite being thoroughly overwhelmed and excited, I managed to fill my cart rather quickly. The store reveals itself to be beautifully laid out; one can move from produce to fish to meat and then to the inner aisles and then back to cheese and wine without backtracking once. The meats looked outstanding (we'll have to compare to our current favorite Golden Gate Meat Co. in the Ferry Plaza market), and the produce contained many more Asian vegetables (there's an Asian retirement community next door) which I hope will inspire some cooking experiments soon.

I managed to find everything M and I need to survive (heh), and was very pleasantly surprised to find a few rare favorites - mini Epoisses cheese wheels (yes...I know it's not real epoisses, but it's a good substitute until I can smuggle more in the country) and Lillet Rouge (very hard to find in SF...Lillet Blanc is everywhere, but Rouge - my preference - is scarce). They're also selling local, non-hormone fed (Clover) eggs cheaply, which is a nice change from spending $3 on eggs each week.

My only complaint is that the freezer cases are in the back of the store (I like to hit these last, so nothing melts) and I wasn't overwhelmed by the breads (though it was the end of the day, so I'll return in the morning and reevaluate). I was also a little unnerved by all the little old Chinese ladies puttering around and poking their fingers in everything, but since I'll probably putter and poke myself when I am their age, I'll survive.

Already the new store has inspired various cooking ideas which I'll be sure to detail as they happen. For example, this week will be "new foods week" where I attempt to cook/cook with ingredients that are underused in our kitchen. Also, inspired by Clotilde (when am I not inspired by Clotilde?), I've decided to find and buy and use small delicacies when I visit the grocery store. (The key word here being USE...I tend to buy interesting little items and then let them rot.) This week's purchase? Dried fig spread, bought to go with some lovely brie, and already used in another somewhat successful recipe (more tomorrow).

Our verdict? So far, so good. I'm sure once the store becomes more familiar to all shoppers it will be less chaotic and overwhelming. For now, though, I'm just so glad it's open that I'll forgive the chaos.

And now, I'm done. M has just informed me we're out of beer and so we're going to take a walk to Whole Foods to grab some more.

Posted by jmakunas at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A few quick notes on the structure of this blog, since I’m too Type-A not to have an actual “structure” for anything in my life.

First of all, the lovely little dots at the top of the page are a repeated image of a rug from the collection of the extremely artistic Angela Adams. I think her designs are fabulously stylish – simultaneously modern and retro – and I hope one day to have a rug from her Studio Collection in my house. Until then, I content myself with her paper goods - some of which I bought at LolaCon. I think she’s a truly unique talent.

All of my blog entries are song names. Many of them are names of Phish songs (like today's!) but not all. If you want to know what song I’m referencing, email me.

The name of the blog, “A Live One,” is the name of the first album Phish released that contained all live songs. I owned this album when I was in college, never listened to it, and then sold it. (GASP!) It’s the only CD I’ve sold that I truly regret. Luckily, M had a copy that he brought with him when we got married. And it's not like we're hurting for live Phish CDs now.

The little description “If you would only start to live/One moment at a time” is a line from one of Phish’s newest songs (and one of my favorites) called “Scents and Subtle Sounds.” It's pretty blatant for a Phish lyric, but I like it since it’s pretty much a description of how I hoped to learn to live my life during my year off. Appropriately, I heard this song 5 times in 13 shows this summer, and it's at Phish shows where I’m often the most successful in taking life one moment at a time. (33 days!)

And now you all know.

Posted by jmakunas at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)