Waking up to things that everyone else already seems to know

The Books are my personal musical, Oh, hello!, so far this year.

The Bottom Line presents New York On My Mind

Next Wednesday. River to River.  Friends will be there. Like a high school reunion if you went to school with Rosanne Cash, Marshall Crenshaw, The GrooveBarbers, Garland Jeffreys, Willie Nile, Martin Rivas, Suzzy and Lucy Wainwright Roche, Catherine Russell, Vin Scelsa, Loudon Wainwright III, Dar Williams,  John Leventhal, Mojo Mancini, Meg Griffin and a bunch of other people.  And, of course, Alan Pepper, the dude in the Ray Bans.

Freedom Riders

Tonight is Hal Willner's Freedom Riders project at Celebrate Brooklyn.

Gone to the country

We had a great time getting to hear Ray Allen talk about his book, then seeing & listening to John Cohen play with the Dustbusters, and then seeing Pete Stampfel's Ether Frolic mash up with the Dustbusters for the rest of the evening.  Thank you, Jalopy.

Hey, you say, Why don't you ever mention other folks in the Ether Frolic?  Hey, right, OK.  Jane Gilday.

Macinwi discovers the Avett Bros.

(@ NPR)

Stew & Heidi & The Negro Problem tonight @ BAM

Tonight.  See you there?

The Breaking Winds, in The Lady Gaga Saga

You go, Dakota!

The No Smoking Orchestra is totally smoking in every language

Bummer is that if you want to catch their next show you'll have to go to Latvia , but trust me it will be totally worth the trip.  The No Smoking Orchestra is pretty mind blowing.  The pics on their site of last night's show in NY don't do justice to the rocking intensity of the thing.  But I do see me and Lota in one or two of them.

Steroid Maximus

Well, JG Thirlwell was a lot of fun!

But Dr. Lonnie Smith - he was a whole lotta lov!

Breaking radio silence for duck confit, G.E. Smith, and David Broza

Which goes something like this:

Feb. 27: Birthday party in Chinatown, sat next to the hostess and on her other hand was G.E. Smith.  Our hostess has been to our place once or twice for our big summer celebrate-the-new-wine and putanesca parties, and has obviously wandered into my little room which is shamefully lined with instruments I can barely play, and she has confused the memory of me owning instruments with the idea that she's heard me play them and that I'm damned good.   She waxes poetic about my playing, while I stare into the eyes of one of the great contemporary studio guitarists and music directors, and I feel my weenie shrinking until it is werry werry smawl.  Mr. Smith is gracious, asks how many ukes I have, and when I say it's an embarrassing number he makes me feel part of the club.

March 1 through March 7: I dip in and out of Ruhlman and Polcyn's Charcuterie, and I decide to try my hand at duck confit.

March 8: I go up to Union Square at lunchtime, thinking I'll check out one of the bookstores.  The green market is in full swing - I hardly ever get there on a Monday - and I stumble into the fine people from Hudson Valley Duck Farm.  I don't buy a book.  I do buy 5 lb. of Moulard duck legs and thighs.

On the evening of the 8th I salt and season the duck (clove, black pepper, garlic).

March 9: I take half the day off, come home, wash and dry the duck, and at 1:35 put it in a 190 F stove in a dutch oven.  Goal is to keep it there for 10 hours, rendering all the fat and poaching the meat therein.  At 9 PM we're at City Winery to see G.E. Smith back David Broza.  (Broza has just released an album of songs that are Townes Van Zandt lyrics willed to Broza, that he's set to music - Night Dawn.)  At the end of the concert we boogie out and are home by 11:40.  The duck fat has fully rendered, the meat is tender and delicious.  I weight the meat under a plate to submerge it in the fat, and stick it in the cellar fridge.  Gonna let is sit for a month.  Then we'll crisp it in a hot oven and weep.  Maybe use the rendered fat to do up some taters to put the duck over, Nu?

Thank you, GE.  Thank you, Moe.  Thank you everybody in between.

Dear Diary, Dante and I share a smoke and everything is a little clearer now

Dear Diary, sorry to have been away so long.  I've been spending time with my friend, Lamy Vista, I think I mentioned her before.  You know how it is.  And helping out a bit somewhere else.  Sort of important.

Anyway, I shared a little smoke with Dante this morning and he remindid me I really ought to say something. So here I am:

Last weekend, at our place, after we'd returned home from our sojourns, James Guido, el zorro plateado, or, I guess, really la volpe argentata, cooked a beatiful tuna over carmelized onions and a balsamic vinegar reduction, and broccoli rabe and a dish his mother used to make that's like a pizza rustica without the pastry. Lori made a salad with green olives and sassy almonds and she made a monster goat-cheese cake with a crushed brittle topping, and I made mushroom & fontina pizza for everyone to start with. R&E brought fabu wines & chocolates & a special guest, P&K brought bubbles galore. It was a great night, but here's why I'm really mentioning it: there were fishetarians in the house, so I couldn't put any slices of my cured duck breast on the pizza. Bubububutttt, I'd made enough dough and prepared enough mushroom to make another pizza the next day & did & lavished it with deep dark duck which got deeper and darker after 7 minutes of hot hot hot. And the next day after that I made a side of Brussels sprouts & figs with cubed up little pancetta-like ducky.

There. Sometimes it's all about the duck. Because sometimes all the other stories go somewhere else.

Oh - one other thing. The Losers' Lounge 60th Birthday tribute to Karen Carpenter at Joes Pub was (and will be again tonight) absolutely killer. Killer.  Absolutely On Top Of The World.

Dear diary, give blood give blood, give blood give blood...

(Rain Machine - Give Blood - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.)

Dear diary, woof woof woof, January's going out like it came in, all action packed.  Joseph Arthur and Bobby Bare Jr. and Antipop Consortium and Kyp Malone's Rain Machine.  (I'd been singing Monk at the Disco in my head from the wee hours of Saturday morning until Mr. Malone blew it out of there last evening.)

Yes, Rain Machine blew my mind, but can we talk about something even more important?  At about 5 PM this evening I'll be going down to our cellar and pulling four half duck breasts (half breasts, not half duck) out from the case of salt I buried them in yesterday.  I'm going to wash them off, pat them dry, dust them all over with ground white pepper, wrap them in cheesecloth and tie them off.  Then I'm going to walk them to a secret place the mice don't know about that's cool and humid and I'm going to hang them there for a week.  During the week the duck breasts are hanging, I'll probably think about knives.  I'll think: do  I have the a knife that's really just right for what happens next?  I'll decide, No, I don't have a knife that's really just right for what happens next.  But what will I do about that?  I don't know.  I just don't know.  I'm not sure that listening to Give Blood or Smiling Black Faces over and over again will help me decide, but I'm probably gonna find out.

Golden Lips, Golden Fest, be there right now (we are)

I'll take the long road

One thing led to another, we ran into a good friend, and after the Unusual Creatures show last night we took in Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens.  What! (have you done, have you done).  And now, me no wanna go to work today!

Songs for Unusual Creatures

Songs For Unusual Creatures - The Robot Show from Michael Hearst on Vimeo.
Hey, clear your calendar for Monday night.  We're all going to Joe's Pub to see out neighbor Michael Hearst perform Songs for Unusual Creatures.  Descrip:

Michael Hearst (One Ring Zero, Songs For Ice Cream Trucks) celebrates some of the lesser-known creatures that roam the planet. From the Australian Bilby, to the deep-sea Magnopinna Squid, the songs are brought to life by a gaggle of bizarre sounds and instruments including theremin, claviola, stylophone, and musical instrument robots.

Song for Unusual Creatures is featuring Michael Hearst (theremin, claviola, stylophone), Ben Holmes (trumpet), Allyssa Lamb (piano), Ron Caswell (tuba), Kristin Meuller (drums), and gaggle of musical instrument robots provided by LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots.

Be there or be square.  Or be there and be square, but very, very happy. 7:00 PM - January 11.

Globalfest

Hey, kids, we're going to Globalfest NY this year @ Webster Hall, no fail.  Couldn't make it the last couple.  Coming with us?  Lineup includes:

- Alif Naaba, West African acoustic song (Burkina Faso)
- Cara Dillon, striking Celtic vocalist (Ireland)
- Caravan Palace, swingin’ electro manouche jazz (France)
- Cedric Watson & Bijou Creole, Creole Zydeco heir from Louisiana (USA)
- Federico Aubele, bolero and cumbia meets electro downtempo (Argentina/USA)
- François Ladrezo & Alka Omeka, Gwo-ka master (Guadalupe)
- La Cumbiamba eNeYé, music from the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of Colombia (Colombia/USA)
- La Excelencia, old-school salsa dura revivalists (USA)
- Meta and the Cornerstones, African roots reggae export (Senegal/USA)
- Namgar, Siberian shaman rock from the Central Asian steppes (Russia)
- Nguyên Lê’s Saiyuki, acclaimed French-Vietnamese guitarist leads a Pan-Asian jazz trio
(Vietnam/Japan/India/France)
- Nightlosers, Transylvanian blues-rock/Gypsy chameleons (Romania)

Remember the Bottom Line's Downtown Messiah?

Well, I do and it brings a tear to the eye.  Second best - come see David Johansen with us tonight at City Winery.

Roger & Dave: A Benefit For Yoko Ono

Yes, the lads are following last year's benefit for Warren Buffet with this year's Benefit for Yoko Ono.  Beatles complete on ukulele @ the Brooklyn Bowl.  Comeoncomeonnowbabaynow.  All about it on their blog.

Micro! (from MaLu)

Just in from MaLu, now of Oh Hi Oh, formerly of Hawaii, formerly of Seattle, formerly our downstairs neighbor, lo those many years ago, in the County of Kings:

As always, I have to recommend this gig. It will be a lot of fun, regardless of your music preferences.

xxx
M

What: The Microscopic Septet
Where: 92YTribeca, 200 Hudson St. New York, NY 10013
When: Saturday, December 5, 2009, two sets starting at 10PM
Price: $18/adv $20/door
http://www.92y.org/92yTribeca/

....

The music of The Microscopic Septet is the sound of jazz in 20th century America: all of it, from Ellington to Ayler, bebop to Zorn,  Dixieland  to experimental, captured in a microcosm.  It distills the essence of jazz as a popular music into a sound that swings, a music that is intelligent, sometimes smart-aleck,  and always good fun. [Joyce Nalewajk]

In 2009 Cuneiform Records released Lobster Leaps In, the first newly recorded Microscopic Septet CD since the late 1980s.             Here is what critics had to say:

Downbeat: “As always with the Micros, it’s gloriously, delightfully and inappropriately right. Welcome back.”

Jazziz: “…brings a renewed sense of fun to the often-humorless jazz milieu.”

AllAboutJazz: “Packed with soaring melodies, jubilant riffs, joyous shout choruses, infectious rhythms and incisive solos, Lobster Leaps In is the most fun one can have listening to contemporary jazz.”
 
The Philadelphia Inquirer: … swinging, infectious, and full of wit.”
  http://www.microscopicseptet.com
http://www.myspace.com/themicroscopicseptet
...

www.phillipjohnston.com
www.myspace.com/phillipjohnston88
www.microscopicseptet.com

I came so close to making another pizza for breakfast - BAM Next Wave

Had the oven fired up.  Was going to go super minimal - seasalt and olive oil.  Then I remembered, Dude, you don't eat breakfast...

Will have to console myself with looking forward to this evening's doo.  Hope to see you local yokels there.

The Long Count

Part of the 2009 Next Wave Festival

Oct 28, 30 & 31 at 8pm

Bryce Dessner, Aaron Dessner, and Matthew Ritchie

In an inspired collision of creative worlds, three inexhaustibly original artists—brothers Bryce Dessner and Aaron Dessner of indie rock band The National and omnivorous visual art phenomenon Matthew Ritchie—combine talents to create a song-filled myth about the beginning of time. A feast of images, instrumentals, and songs thick with primordial mystery, The Long Count pairs Ritchie's protean forms with a twelve-piece orchestra and the Dessners' gothic mix of electric and orchestral sounds.

Guest vocalists Kim and Kelley Deal (The Breeders, The Pixies), Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), and Matt Berninger (The National) round out the line-up in this visionary collaboration between music and art.