Frolic: jazz, books, food

Jazz, Books, Food, and the Writing Life

Blogging from New Orleans, La

30 June 2005

I just did a phone interview with Roger Taylor of Duran Duran. How odd. He was perfectly nice. He was also calling from Iceland.

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29 June 2005

I’m late, I’m late. Last week I reviewed La Spiga, one of the leading proponent of artisanal baking in New Orleans:

The warm smell of baking can fill a house. Bread always tastes best the moment it leaves the oven, and people crowd around the kitchen to grab a slice from the baker. Bread instantly creates a community.
Across America, the artisanal bread movement converted many people raised on loaves of spongy white bread into connoisseurs of French batards and crusty country loaves. La Spiga is one of the main promoters of this movement in New Orleans. Dana Logsdon and her mother, Mary, who grew up in the German baking tradition of Wisconsin, began selling their breads and pastries at the Crescent City Farmers Market in 1997. At the Saturday market, I often munch on a savory galette, a flaky pastry filled with artichoke leaves and moist black olive tapenade, while shopping for my vegetables. On Thursday at the Mid-City market, I can always find at La Spiga’s booth a delicious afternoon snack, such as a ginger cookie with fresh, powdered and crystallized ginger that creates a rounded taste that lingers on the tongue.

As always, you can read the full story at the Gambit Weekly. While you are at the Gambit’s website, check out the fancy new design. Now there is no doubt that the Times Picayune has the worst web page of any publication in New Orleans.

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24 June 2005

Walking down Coliseum this afternoon, we saw a Garden District mansion with two roosters in the yard.

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Regina Spektor looked a little shy when she stepped onto the stage. Piles of amps, and guitars and drum kits that belonged to the headlining acts, Louis XIV and Keane, stood behind her. The crowd was still walking in and taking their seats. She grabbed the microphone and launched into a bluesy acopella version of “Eight Miles High.” She tapped her finger on the microphone to keep time. Her tough vocals occasionally had Russian inflected little girl moments, like a kittenish Cold War spy. After that act of bravery, she had the audience’s full attention.

Regina Spektor is an utterly self-assured performer. She came out of New York’s anti-folk scene with a repertoire of narrative songs. She can be ferocious. And she can be silly and still be cool. Her piano chops show her years of classical training. But even when she picked up a guitar and accompanied herself with single, unsteady note, she commands the stage.

As she worked through songs from Soviet Kitsch and her earlier albums, she won over an audience that had bought tickets to see hip pop acts instead an odd cabaret singer with a foreign accent. Spektor closed her set with “Poor Little Rich Boy,” a sneering portrait of a beautiful young boy with money. She played piano chords with left hand and with the right she pounded a drumstick against a stool to keep the beat. Spektor, unfortunately, was too punctual. She started on time and ended after exactly 30 minutes. I would have preferred that she play for hours.

Posted by Todd at 4:53 pm | No Comments

21 June 2005

I’m readjusting to Central Standard Time after a trip to the California desert. For five days, I was the guest of the boys of Deep Springs College. The college, the only inhabitant of a vast desert valley, is a two-year single-sex college where the students work the ranch in the morning before they attend classes.

The school is utterly isolated. To reach it, drive five hours from Las Vegas and hang a left at the Cottontail Brothel. After climbing a windy road over a steep pass, the valley opens up in front of you. A few trees in the distance mark the college.

The moon was nearly full, so the stars were hardly more visible than they were in New Orleans. One night we walked across the dessert. As the lights of the college faded behind us, we were utterly isolated. It was hard to realize an individual’s utter irrelevance to the wilderness. It was an oddly exhilarating feeling.

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14 June 2005

It’s last week’s review, but I don’t want to overlook One Restaurant and Lounge. Childhood friends Lee McCullough and Chef Scott Snodgrass have opened one of the best new restaurants in town:

My wife asked me, as she tasted the second course of her third excellent dinner at One Restaurant and Lounge, if I really had to write this review. It was Wednesday night, and the small room was tightly packed. When more people find out about One, would we ever be able to get another reservation?
Chef Scott Snodgrass gained enough fans at Clancy’s, where he was executive chef, that they could have collected dues and formed a club. They followed him to One, which he co-owns with his old friend Lee McCullough. Freed from the tethers of Creole conventions, Snodgrass gleefully pulls together a United Nations of culinary traditions ‘ Cajun and Creole, yes, but also French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese. The result is a menu stamped with his distinct personality.

As always, you can find the full review at the Gambit Weekly.

Posted by Todd at 2:34 pm | No Comments

12 June 2005

I caught a cab home Thursday night after the Iron and Wine show at House of Blues. The cabbie had two tickets to the Irma Thomas’s House of Blues show in his hand.

“That should be a good show,” I said.

“Yeah, these are for a friend, though,” he said.

“You’re not going?”

“I’ll be there. I’m the drummer,” he said.

After 9/11, many of their shows were canceled. Lots of European dates. He drives the cab when he’s not on the road with Irma.

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10 June 2005

Somebody found their way to my blog through a Google search for “exotic food, nervous breakdown.” That sounds like a great title for a book.

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8 June 2005

We thought it would be fun to wear beads on Bourbon Street. Ok, I thought it would be fun to wear beads on Bourbon Street and Kevin was easy to convince. In the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras, Kevin had gotten excited and bought $100 of beads. Buying your own beads violates the spirit of Carnival, but he didn’t know any better at the time. Now, months after everyone else dumped their plastic crap, he had hundreds of strands that he had bought and hundreds that he had caught.

Saturday nights, James and his brother were celebrating a joint bachelor’s party somewhere on Bourbon Street. When Kevin and I simultaneously received text messages with James’ location, we loaded up with a ridiculous amount of beads, including several sacks of unopened beads, and walked to the Quarter with Andrea and Jessie, who obviously weren’t invited.

Kevin lives on Esplanade, and I felt a little foolish as we walked from his apartment down the residential parts of Bourbon Street with our bead clanging with each step. By the time we hit the neon the looks of derision (or was it disgust?) from the locals became looks of envy from the tourists. I was chided for tossing entire bundles of beads towards the balconies. Kevin gave beads to the dozen of bachlorette parties that were clogging the streets. By the time we reached James and his friends, Kevin and I had pretty much thrown all but the biggest beads. We gave those to James, since it was his party after all.

Posted by Todd at 3:57 pm | Comments (2)

6 June 2005

The Chicago Luzern Exchange brings together three young Chicago avant-garde jazz players—cornetist Josh Berman, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, drummer Frank Rosaly—and a Swiss. The Swiss, tuba player Mark Unternahrer, met the Chicago musicians through a “sister cities” exchange in 2002. He returned to the U.S. to record the group’s excellent new album Several Lights (Delmark).

The Chicago Luzern Exchange creates their music as they play, and the first track “Slips” feels like the group is getting to know each other. They soon become a unit and play with unusual coherence for a free jazz ensemble. The Chicago Luzern Exchange often sounds like a single mind improvising. The group occasionally locks into an almost funky groove, for example when the horn players bounce lines back and forth like a sax quartet on “Our Thing.” “Soon Enough” sounds like two bop musicians playing runs in separate rooms, until Unternahrer enters with his tuba and string it all together.

Most tracks on Several Lights are shorter than a pop tune. The brief songs show the group’s desire to craft a coherent improvisation, rather than string together indulgent solos and howling horns. Although Several Lights may be initially forbidding, the complicated music becomes more melodic and lucid with each listening. Let’s hope that Unternahrer gets back to Chicago soon to record another album of intelligent free jazz with the local boys.

Also posted at Blogcritics.org.

Posted by Todd at 2:42 pm | No Comments

Before it disappears into the archives, here’s my review of Cellars’ Market:

I stood with the crowd of office workers in the front room at Cellars’ Market waiting to pick up my brown bag with a carryout order. As I stared at the elegant wood bar in front of me, I could almost imagine that I was lounging at a cafe in Rome instead of standing in line at a sandwich shop on the edge of the Warehouse District. The bar was fully stocked and surrounding it were refrigerated cases of beer, soda and bottles of white wine. A sign promised 62 different kinds of beer. Surely I wasn’t the only person who considered ordering a drink.

You can find the full review at the Gambit Weekly’s Web site.

Posted by Todd at 11:51 am | No Comments

3 June 2005

If you’ve got a strong stomach, watch of this clip of Celine Dion impersonating Michael Jackson. Who’s bad now?

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1 June 2005

I spent most of the weekend at the New Orleans Wine and Food Experience, where I really learned the value of spitting when you taste. I’d be falling on the floor if I drank tastes of several dozen wines.

In the grand American tradition, we planned to grill on Memorial Day. The weather was against us, unfortunately. Andrea got me a Weber kettle grill for my birthday. I’m still waiting to try it for the first time. Maybe next weekend.

Posted by Todd at 8:38 am | No Comments