Frolic: jazz, books, food

Jazz, Books, Food, and the Writing Life

Blogging from New Orleans, La

27 April 2005

Along St. Charles, a block of streetcar tracks were being excavated and replaced. As we rolled past, our conductor started singing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”

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25 April 2005

The Washington Post reports on true love between first cousins. Fredrick Kunkle manages to almost keep a straight face:

They settled down in their blue-and-white mobile home with three dogs, a cat, two guinea pigs named Beavis and Butt-Head, and an iguana that loves to eat kiwi. Andrews collects disability payments from the government. Amrhein works at the courtesy desk at Wal-Mart. “I tell people I married her for the health benefits and the Wal-Mart discount card,” Andrews said, only half-joking. She slapped his thigh. “Yeah,” she said, eyes rolling.
They kid each other a lot and share many interests, such as camping and fishing. They agree to disagree on other things. He smokes Jacks 100’s; she prefers Marlboros. He hunts. She loves animals.

Talk about the love that dare not speak its name.

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20 April 2005

Some jazz bassists make the instrument sound nimble. Their walking bass lines seem to skip. They slide up and down the neck as easily as a guitarist. When William Parker, one of the leading avant-garde jazz musicians, plays the bass, you never forget that it’s a massive instrument with thick strings. There is nothing sluggish in his playing. He often keeps the music bouncing along in the midst of utter noise and chaos. He swings like it’s his natural state and his swinging beats feel like they’re backed by the weight of a sledgehammer. Luc’s Lantern (Thirsty Ear), his latest recording, is more intelligent than difficult, more accessible than avant-garde. Luc’s Lantern will hopefully attract new fans to one of the strongest jazz musicians working today.

Parker adopts a more traditional jazz trio format on this album. “Morning Sunshine” starts with Parker playing a swinging figure with a rakish gliding note at the end. As Parker and drummer Michael Thompson keep the beat steady, pianist Eri Yamamoto darts in and out and finally builds to a cacophonous conclusion. “Jaki” has an almost rolling, bluesy feel to it. A bouncing bass line and more bluesy chords from Yamamoto in “Phoenix” keep the rhythm jaunty.

Parker, as one of the leaders of the New York avant-garde jazz scene, has been at the center of some of jazz’s most challenging music. Luc’s Lantern, while eminently accessible, is far from mainstream. Songs like the spooky “Candlesticks on the Lake,” with its screeching, slow bow work from Parker, would confound many fans of the artists picked to play at Wynton Marsalis’ Jazz at the Lincoln Center. On Luc’s Lantern Parker creates beautiful and harmonious music that is more modern than most of the jazz recorded today.

Also posted at Blogcritics.org.

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19 April 2005

Housekeeping Note: Perceptive readers might have noticed that the title in the left column has changed. The blog is now about the “writing life” and not “life outside the academy.” When I filed my taxes, I listed “writer” as my occupation for the first time instead of “student.”

I never heard from either school that interviewed me at the MLA, but I can safely assume that someone else has been hired. Congratulations to them. Enjoy the tenure track. The academy seems so far away that I can’t apply the label of “non-academic” to my work and life. It feels good to be free of it. I’ll let you know what happens with my other plans. If you watch this space, you can find out for yourself.

Posted by Todd at 8:21 pm | Comments (1)

I’ve certainly been neglecting this blog, but I’ll try to do better.

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13 April 2005

Other People’s Prose:

The rain had ended, and a gentle mist was rising off the streets when we left. As we walked through the haze we could see that we shared the sidewalks with prostitutes wearing nothing but pantyhose and pumps. In any other city in the world this would have seemed surreal, but framed by Barcelona’s fantastic architecture, the women seemed to be appropriately dressed.
We were very hungry; we had worked all night and eaten nothing. But it was so late that even the bars had stopped serving food, and all we could find were flaccid french fries and pallid pizza in an all-night joint. It was out last night in Barcelona, and we had cooked one terrible meal and were eating a worse one. But somehow, we were happy. We had fought for it. We had done our best.

Ruth Reichl in Comfort Me with Apples.

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11 April 2005

In the Washington Post, Dana Milbank reports on the growing calls by leading conservatives for the impeachment of judges. Many suggest that violence against the judiciary might be justified.

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8 April 2005

Just because I’ve been quiet, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t been busy. Last weekend we ate crawfish almost every day. The Kingpin had a free crawfish boil Saturday, so Andrea and I walked down Prytania to drink and eat. The crawfish, pictured at left, were nice and spicy. We didn’t get our fill of mudbugs, so Sunday night we rushed over the Big Fisherman a few minutes before they closed, bought three pounds of crawfish, and took them across the street to eat with a pint of beer at the Bulldog.

This weekend is French Quarter Fest, and a few weeks from now Jazz Fest gets underway. I’ve been writing items this week for the Gambit’s Jazz Fest guide. Lots of good music. More food than I can eat. I’m already getting excited.

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At the Flaming Torch, Chef Peter Chan cooks pristine versions of contemporary French cuisine:

Just off Magazine Street, at the new French restaurant called The Flaming Torch, I caught a glimpse of how the upper crust lives. In the afternoons, the women eating lunch never look at their watches and rush back to the office. In the evenings, men wear suits and women wear pearls. Tables discuss their “journaling” or wonder if a Louis Vuitton bag from Saks was too cher. I was always the youngest person in the room who wasn’t either employed by the restaurant or accompanied by a parent.
Chef Peter Chan, who worked at the exclusive Sandals resort in St. Lucia before relocating to New Orleans, cooks contemporary French fare with a light touch — every ingredient is pristine and there are no heavy sauces. The wait staff attends to the guests without fuss or ceremony. The room, with warm orange walls, rustic tile and a large window looking out on Octavia Street, has an understated European elegance. It’s easy to see why the restaurant attracts a crowd who can afford the finer things. With dinner entrees at The Flaming Torch rarely more expensive than $20, for a few hours even people of more modest means can live like the other half without doubling their credit card debt.

You can read the full review at the New Orleans Gambit Weekly. And yes, the food really looks as good in person as it does in the photograph by Cheryl Gerber.

Is anyone wondering why the place is called the Flaming Torch? The planed to flambé desserts tableside, but the fire marshal nixed that plan.

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5 April 2005

In his quintet, bassist Dave Holland has created one of the most identifiable sounds in modern jazz. Muted horns bob and weave like prizefighters circling in a ring. Arpeggios on a vibraphone replace the piano chords that anchor most jazz groups. The accessible playing throws off plenty of sparks, but an intellectual reserve keeps the quintet from catching fire. In 2000, Holland expanded his group into a 13-piece ensemble for the Montreal Jazz Festival. That big band went on to record the Grammy winning What Goes Around (EMI, 2003) and the just released Overtime (Dare2, 2005).

Overtime begins with the four part “Monterey Suite,” commissioned for the Monterey Jazz Festival and first performed in 2001 just a few days 9/11. Holland’s writing for the big band shows the same limberness that marks his quintet, but the arrangements have a lushness that recalls Miles Davis’ work with Gil Evans. Listening to “Time Remember,” a nostalgic piece, you can imagine a couple dancing across th room to this music. “Happy Jammy,” the final piece in the “Monterey Suite,” lets Holland deploy some blazing, funky lines on his double bass and the rock oriented tune wouldn’t be out of place on an album by Ken Vandermark’s Spaceways Incorporated trio.

With this larger group, Holland seems to be still exploring how the history of big bands fits into contemporary jazz. “Ario” is a lovely throw back to the swing era. Holland’s regular trombonist, Robin Eubanks, contributes a tune, “Mental Images,” that fits the more cerebral sound of the quintet. And Overtime ends with the funky, almost pop sounding “Last Minutes Man.” It will be interesting to hear how the work with the big band affects Holland’s compositions when he next records with the quintet.

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4 April 2005

Paul Ford, the fine writer behind Ftrain, has a written a piece on the death of his cat. It’s sad and moving. I could quote some of it, but you’re better off just reading “The Thumb-sized Heart of TK the Cat.”

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3 April 2005

The week is over and I almost forgot to link to my column. I ate at Nardo’s Trattoria, a new neighborhood Italian restaurant in Uptown New Orleans:

Nardo’s Trattoria has settled comfortably into its Uptown residential neighborhood. From the outside, green and red neon strips — the colors of an Italian flag — distinguish Nardo’s from the surrounding homes. Inside, the former Norby’s Restaurant and Bar at Webster and Laurel streets has been lovingly rebuilt in a restrained retro fashion as a wide, polished expanse of blond wood. An impressive bar dominates the front room, and in the afternoons, well-dressed groups of older customers sit in the snug booths and linger over their lunches. You could almost believe that they’ve been eating at Nardo’s since they were young. When the veneer on the wood loses its sheen, someone could easily mistake Nardo’s for a local institution and not a recent addition.
The food at Nardo’s would also fit a long-established restaurant. The menu rarely strays from Italian classics: veal Oscar, chicken Marsala and lasagna. The kitchen decorates the plates with nothing more than a sprig of rosemary or a sprinkle of chopped parsley. Yet long-established restaurants, assured of a clientele that returns because of nostalgia or memories of near-perfect meals in the past, can sometimes be uneven. Despite the fact that Nardo’s opened its doors just last year, it sometimes suffers from this unevenness as well.

You can read the full review at the New Orleans Gambit Weekly.

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2 April 2005

Poking around some long forgotten blogs this morning, I noticed the ex-Gawer and current Media Bistro editor in chief Elizabeth Spiers has started posting again. Spiers reprints a profile of her in PR Week where she says, “I’ve always been an opportunist.”

Did she really say that? I wondered is she actually said, “I’ve always been opportunistic,” a phrase used frequently in the financial services industry with no pejorative connotations. Spiers put in several years as a financial analyst before taking the New York media world by storm and may not hear how odd that word sounds out of context.

Posted by Todd at 9:29 am | No Comments

1 April 2005

Poor Pat Buchanan was doused with salad dressing while delivering a speech at Western Michigan University, according to CNN. That seems like a lot of dressing, doesn’t it? If nothing else, maybe this incident will teach America to stop overdressing their greens.

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