Shaken & Heard

I’m pretty sure Leonard Cohen has always been an old man. In the...

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:31:16 -0500

I’m pretty sure Leonard Cohen has always been an old man. In the documentary Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen, he’s only thirty but already hunched over like he’s spent a lifetime walking into the wind, dropping weighty observations out of the side of his mouth, wondering if his soul has achieved its daily state of grace. It’s serious, high-minded stuff, so what better place to discover his music than an ice cream shop? I was working at one at the time, scooping cones for minimum wage, and someone had left a tape in the store’s boombox. When I hit play, a sparse, stoic sound started to mix with the hiss of the waffle cone iron and the hum of the hot fudge machine. The music was sad, but also comforting, like a sigh. The songs made the job more tolerable- filling orders for double chocolate and butter pecan were easier to bear. And I think Leonard Cohen would have appreciated the context- when you see him in the documentary, he’s always smiling, even when discussing his soul, like there’s some element of absurdity to the whole thing, this life, and always some joy to go with the sorrow. Stooped over, thinking his lofty thoughts, I bet he wouldn’t say no to an ice cream cone.

It’s the soul of an old man drink, with a little chocolate on top…

NEW SKIN FOR THE OLD CEREMONY:

1 ½ oz. Old Tom Gin*
¾ oz. Cynar
¾ oz. Lillet Blanc
2 dashes Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters

Stir all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

*if you don’t have Old Tom gin on hand, substitute with 1 ½ oz. London dry gin and ½ oz. simple syrup.

Sometimes not knowing what you’re doing is a good thing, and...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:43:03 -0400

Sometimes not knowing what you’re doing is a good thing, and when it comes to the creative stuff, it almost always is. When Talking Heads went into the studio to record their fourth album in 1980, they didn’t have any real songs to speak of, but producer Brian Eno hit record anyway, and the band just started improvising. The plan was to pull out the best bits of these jams and turn them into loops, layering pieces together like sonic bricks and mortar til they’d built the foundations of songs. It was a familiar approach for hip-hop (still in its infancy at the time), but not for a rock band, and no one really knew if it’d work. To add to the uncertainty, David Byrne hadn’t written any lyrics yet, unlike past sessions when he’d come into the studio prepared, overstuffed notebooks in hand. Like the rest of the band, he improvised, chewing over odd, oblique phrases til they found their own logic and finally sounded right. Did it work? From the viewpoint of the album charts, the result was a resounding no- Remain In Light was the band’s worst selling record to date. The loopy punk and funk concoction was a bit too bizarre for some ears. But it lingered in the minds of fans and musicians who’d heard it over the years, and by the time the new millennium hit a couple decades later, it was obvious that Talking Heads had created something special. It’s become a cornerstone of the indie dance sound bouncing out of DJ booths from Brooklyn to Paris and beyond, and its loop ‘n’ layer approach to songwriting is no longer the exception, but the norm. The band took a risk and tried something new, pushing themselves in unexpected directions. The results may have been a challenge to some, but they were also completely groundbreaking.

New elements (Cynar and celery bitters) led to new approaches with surprising results- pulling flavors together with a pinch of salt…

REMAIN IN LIGHT:

1 ½ oz. rye
¾ oz. Cynar
¾ oz. dry vermouth
2 dashes of celery bitters
a pinch of sea salt
a 2” piece of orange peel with as little pith as possible

Combine the liquid ingredients and salt with ice and stir well, straining into a chilled cocktail glass. Hold a lit match near the surface of the orange peel and, over the glass, squeeze the peel, producing a quick flame and releasing the caramelized oils into the drink (video example here). Rub the peel along the rim of the glass and drop it in the drink.

Sometimes, in the surge of steel, concrete and human bodies that...

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 18:18:00 -0400

Sometimes, in the surge of steel, concrete and human bodies that feed every vessel and pore of a city like New York with constant nerves and electricity, there are points when the claustrophobia occasionally breaks free. A train that’s been rumbling underground for miles might suddenly pierce the surface and keep going, rising above the sprawl of slouching rooftops and window constellations, each beaming some small flash of insight into an otherwise anonymous life. It’s moments like this when the city opens up and you no longer feel the crowds, just the sheer, utter vastness of this place.

Daydream Nation, the quintessential album by a quintessential New York band, is full of a something similar- points where tightly wound songs break free of their form and spill into open folds of texture, tone and melody. This was the sound that gripped me when I first heard it at 16, lying on my bedroom floor. Lights off, feeling the music peak and dissolve, then open into something new, looming larger and larger til it almost seemed unreal. Even in the dark of a suburban teenage bedroom, a sense of something sheerly and utterly vast.

A nice, long flavor profile here, with scents and tastes that dissolve, then turn into something new…

DAYDREAM NATION:

2 oz. bourbon
¾ oz. Campari
¼ oz. falernum
¼ oz. maraschino liqueur
2 dashes of Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters
orange twist for garnish

Stir all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled rocks glass with a large ice cube. Garnish with the orange twist.

Kind of a mess, being seventeen. Half-full of ideas and mostly...

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 20:38:00 -0400

Kind of a mess, being seventeen. Half-full of ideas and mostly full of hormonal clutter, with a serious crush on the girl in front of me in calculus class. She turned around one day and slid a cassette across my desk. “I read about this band in Raygun. I think you’ll like it.” The sticker on side A had one word, “Pavement,” and on side B, in the same graceful (but not too girly) script, “Slanted and Enchanted.” She’d taken time to record the album on both sides, which I should have taken as a sign (as if giving me the tape wasn’t enough), but still I didn’t act. Typical teenage frozen nerves. I walked home that afternoon, through northwest Indiana springtime, cars hissing quietly into driveways, oak trees sagging in the rain, wondering why I hadn’t said something, asked her to see a movie at least. The reedy voice of Steven Malkmus stumbled through the Walkman wires and up into my ears. It was a sloppy sound, with grab bag, cut-up lyrical slivers, occasional noise, and oddball melodies that, once they settled in my brain, stayed there. The band didn’t have much to work with, but made the best with what they had. Eventually, Pavement became a better band and I got better at talking to girls, but the charm of that first record, and the memories that go with it, linger stronger than much of what would follow. The sound of not exactly knowing what you’re doing, but figuring it out as you go along.

The fridge and liquor shelf were almost empty, but I made the best with what I had. This is what I figured out…

SLANTED AND ENCHANTED:

1 oz. tequila blanco
1 oz. Old Tom gin
½ oz. Aperol
½ oz. homemade triple sec or Cointreau
½ oz. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. cilantro

Muddle the cilantro with the triple sec in the bottom of a shaker. Add ice along with the remaining ingredients and shake, straining into a chilled cocktail glass.

I have a small memory of us once dancing in a cabin in the...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 15:02:01 -0400

I have a small memory of us once dancing in a cabin in the woods. The walls were scattered with scenes of running, faded horses and the curtains stirred like sleepy ghosts. No stereo, so we played songs out of my phone, chopping up an onion for dinner when a Gram Parsons song came on. The sound was thin and hazy, like frosted tin, but you took me by the shoulders and I pressed into your waist and we swayed. Back and forth, like those curtains, while the last skeletons of sunlight fell through the trees. I put my hands in your hair. We looked at each other and thrived. That’s what I remember most.

Pale like an angel, with the rustic scent of rosemary lingering on top…

GRIEVOUS ANGEL:

2 oz. bourbon
½ oz. homemade triple sec or Cointreau
½ oz. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. apricot preserves
a few dashes of Peychaud’s bitters
white of a small egg
1 sprig of rosemary, half for muddling and half for garnish

Muddle half of the rosemary sprig with the preserves and triple sec (or Cointreau) in the bottom of a shaker. Add the remaining ingredients and dry shake (shake without ice, that is) to emulsify the egg. Add ice and shake again, straining into a chilled cocktail glass. Float the remaining rosemary on top.

I remember wandering under a bunch of half-lit, sputtering...

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:56:46 -0400

I remember wandering under a bunch of half-lit, sputtering fluorescents in the music department of my neighborhood K-Mart, trying to help Mom find a graduation present for my babysitter, Marcia. I’d yet to blossom into a full-blown music geek, but whenever I was out on discount shopping errands and didn’t need to be on hand for a Wrangler’s fitting, I’d wander over to the record racks and judge the quality of bands I’d never heard based on their cover art alone. Iron Maiden ranked pretty high in those days, as did Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but when Mom asked for suggestions on what to get Marcia, I knew exactly where to head. I made a beeline for the E’s and pulled out a glimmering copy of Out of the Blue by ELO. Mom took a look, checked the song titles on the back and asked, “But does Marcia like The Electronic Light Orchestra?” And, while I don’t remember my exact response, I know I irrefutably pointed out with precise, ninja-swift logic that there was a spaceship flying into a gigantic Simon game on the cover, so how could she NOT like it? Mom looked again, noticed it qualified for the Nice Price, shrugged, put down the Air Supply LP she was also holding, and said, “Okay.” I did a little half-spin in the air, the fluorescents crackled and fizzed, and Mom gave me the ELO to carry to the register. I tucked it under the arm of my favorite Space Wars t-shirt, sauntered to the checkout line and handed it to the cashier with pride, knowing I’d made a wise choice on Marcia’s behalf. Listening to it now, with it’s sweet, sweet melodies, glittering production and all-around exuberance, I’d have to agree.

Sweet as a melody by ELO, cool as a spaceship flying into a giant Simon game…

OUT OF THE BLUE:

2 oz. aged rum
½ oz. fresh lime juice
½ oz. ginger syrup
¼ oz. Luxardo maraschino liqueur
a couple dashes of orange bitters
8 – 10 fresh blueberries, plus 3 for garnish
4 – 5 fresh basil leaves

Muddle the blueberries and basil with the syrup in the bottom of a shaker. Add the remaining ingredients with ice and shake, straining into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with 3 fresh blueberries on a toothpick.

In 2003, I spent enough time rolling my shoulders and jutting my...

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:11:00 -0400

In 2003, I spent enough time rolling my shoulders and jutting my elbows on sweatbox-frenzied dance floors to earn the moniker “Mr. Pop ‘n’ Lock.” Most of these nights were in the back room of a faceless Chicago bar called The Hideout, on an otherwise industrial block just down from a diesel refueling station, where the ceiling was always draped in low-slung Christmas lights and the walls populated with taxidermied fish. On the surface, it was a bad year- radios clogged with war reports, my own brain bogged down with the drone of existential mini-dramas looped on repeat (work life…dating life…blah blah blah). But it was a banner year for dance floors, speakers bouncing out beats by Timbaland, The Neptunes and DFA, all operating at their peak, and the invigorating swirl of genres starting to bubble and blend, exemplified by Outkast on their hip-hop-electro-pop-funk-and-then-some twin discs Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Off the dance floor, life was messy, crammed with stumbles and unknowns, but in that whirling vortex of bodies and bass and humidity-ridden, half-drunk stamina, when the DJ dropped a track like “Hey Ya,” the hardwood floor felt closer to a trampoline, and we all felt our spirits catch hold and burn a little brighter, remembering that, at least for now, it was pretty damn good to be alive.

Twin cocktails for twin albums, both completely spirit-based in the hopes of raising yours…

SPEAKERBOXXX:

1 ½ oz. rye
¾ oz. Aperol
½ oz. Lillet Blanc
½ oz. sweet vermouth
a few dashes of Angostura bitters
lemon twist for garnish

THE LOVE BELOW:

1 ½ oz. gin
¾ oz. Aperol
½ oz. Lillet Blanc
½ oz. sweet vermouth
a few dashes of Angostura bitters
lemon twist for garnish

For each cocktail, combine all ingredients with ice and stir, straining into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the lemon twist.

Nathan was the only kid at camp with a boombox and he’d sit all...

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:59:00 -0400

Nathan was the only kid at camp with a boombox and he’d sit all afternoon on his Dallas Cowboys beach towel, with aqua Chuck Taylors, rainbow OP boardshorts and a big cotton ball stuck in his ear, playing tapes and watching us try to nail backflips off the pier. He wasn’t allowed to swim (something about the ear), and was stuck with a few other burdens that didn’t help much with our adolescent camper crowd- scrawny, myopic, a retainer that didn’t fit his teeth quite right so he had a bit of a lisp, and a cowlick that bobbed like a tiny, half-open umbrella when we walked single file to the cafeteria. We’d make fun of him in the cabin, wait for him to fall asleep, then squeeze half a tube of Aquafresh in his palm, tickle his nose with floss and watch him smear toothpaste all over his sleeping face. But when that boombox was on, he was king. Once we got tired of backflips (or the girls stopped watching us), we’d circle around him, eat grape Laffy Taffys and listen to his tapes. Sometimes girls joined, too, and once Shoshana (of the purple two-piece and strawberry scented hair fame) picked a De La Soul tape from the stack, said she thought the flowers on the cover were pretty and asked him to play it. A few minutes in and Shoshana asked if he had the Dirty Dancing soundtrack instead, but I was sold. When I got home the following week I huffed it on my BMX to Scottsdale Mall, bunny hopped the curb at Musicland and dropped ten bucks of lawn mowing cash on a copy of 3 Feet High and Rising. It was my soundtrack the whole rest of that summer and it’s been there ever since, anytime the sky is hot and sun-streaked and I’m looking for a sound to fill the day.

If it sounds like summer, it should taste like summer, and this one definitely does…

3 FEET HIGH AND RISING:

5 oz. ginger beer
1 ½ oz. dark rum
½ oz. Aperol
½ oz. Velvet Falernum
½ oz. fresh lime juice
a few dashes of Angostura bitters
1 lime wheel for garnish

Shake the rum, Aperol, Falernum, lime and bitters with ice, then strain into a collins glass with ice. Top with the ginger beer, stir gently and garnish with the lime wheel.

“You said you’d love me forever!” a young woman shouted, her...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:56:00 -0400

“You said you’d love me forever!” a young woman shouted, her heart peeling apart. “Well, forever changes,” her now ex-boyfriend replied. So went an exchange Arthur Lee had heard about, salvaging a splinter of it for the title of his band’s third LP. The couple wasn’t alone- the whole Summer of Love was heading towards a nasty breakup and Mr. Lee had a clearer view than most, writing a foreboding set of songs in his house perched up in the Hollywood Hills. Released in the midst of the flowing hair and flowers of 1967, Forever Changes was one big party bummer. Naturally, it flopped. The way Love saw it, the sunshine was setting fast behind ash clouds on the horizon and, unfortunately, they were right. Within a year, the flower kids would start to wilt, and the beloved American soil they’d scattered with so many hopeful seeds would spit back bullets, gunning down MLK and RFK, and cracking open the skulls of the young with billy clubs in Chicago. Ominous as it is, though, this record’s also gorgeous, with lush strings and brass adding lift to Arthur Lee’s soaring tenor, lending a little hope to the whole affair. If forever can change, then maybe the bad times can, too.

Like clouds covering a setting sun, but with a little lift inside…

FOREVER CHANGES:

1 ½ oz. tequila
½ oz. fresh lemon juice
½ oz. simple syrup
¼ oz. Luxardo maraschino liqueur
5 fresh raspberries
4 fresh sage leaves + 1 for garnish
white of a small egg

Muddle the raspberries and 4 sage leaves with the syrup in the bottom of a shaker. Add the remaining ingredients and dry shake (shake without ice, that is) to emulsify the egg. Add ice and shake again, straining into a chilled cocktail glass. Float a sage leaf on top.

Mingus signed to Impulse in ‘63, but the label was a little slow...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:27:00 -0400

Mingus signed to Impulse in ‘63, but the label was a little slow to pay his advance, so one day he walked into the empty office of producer Bob Thiele, scrawled a note along the lines of “Pay me or else” and pinned it to the desk chair with a knife. Accounts payable scribbled out a hasty check and recording sessions began. What came out was a distillation of the man’s own psyche, or, as Mingus himself put it in the liner notes, his “living epitaph,” embodying all the bickering dualities that lunged inside him: masculine/feminine, African/American, lover/hater, crazy/sane (he’d gotten out of Bellevue not too long before), encapsulated in the two opposing figures looming in the title: Black Saint and Sinner Lady. The music follows suit, rolling between extremes of melody and noise, whimper and bombast, compositional control and improvisational fury. All these pairs of opposites, scraping together like sets of scissor blades, lashing out, getting white-hot from the friction, but never able to burn themselves free from the bond that links them at the core, the center inside each of us where all those spastic contradictions meet and make us fully human.

Speaking of dualities, the sweet and the bitter join forces in delicious unity here…

THE BLACK SAINT AND THE SINNER LADY:

2 oz. bourbon
1 oz. chocolate stout (I used a Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout)
½ oz. maple syrup
dashes of Angostura bitters
a 2” piece of orange peel with as little pith as possible

Combine the bourbon, syrup and bitters with ice and shake, straining into a chilled cocktail glass. Float the stout on top. Hold a lit match near the surface of the orange peel and, over the glass, squeeze the peel, producing a quick flame and releasing the caramelized oils into the drink (video example here). Rub the peel along the rim of the glass and drop it in the drink.

Who’d bother breaking into my car just to steal some dubbed...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:35:00 -0400

Who’d bother breaking into my car just to steal some dubbed cassettes? The jumper cables were worth a bit of cash, but there they sat, sprawled out in the back seat like knotted, smirking alligators, smug that they’d survived the raid. Gone were a couple of mixtapes, a hissy copy of Black Saint and the Sinner Lady by Mingus, and the one tape that never left my car- a self-selected compilation of all the best songs by The Smiths. Naturally, I was pissed, having lost this document I’d crafted with immaculate pause-button finesse, managing to distill the essence of one of my favorite bands into a 90 minute set. But why steal it? Cassettes were dead, and no pawn shop or record store would mistake my scratchy tracklist for actual artwork anyway. The only theory I could muster was that this guy, like me, was a desperate music freak. Possibly homeless, or at least pushing around a cart full of broken toasters and refrigerator parts, trying to find a bit of that old electric joy in hearing a song for the first time and losing himself in the sound. I wondered what he’d think when he first popped in The Smiths, batteries running low on the Walkman, Morrissey’s voice dropping to a basso drawl, and heard all those songs populated with melodramatic woe, characters wondering how quickly they’d die if they jumped from the top of carnival rides, sullen and smoking in hopes of early death. Whatever burdens they carried through life, they weren’t trading scrap metal for change or scouring supermarket loading docks for discarded lettuce and beans. And yet, whoever stole my tapes had found a reason to go on. Maybe the music was almost enough, and if he had to cop tapes from someone’s dashboard to satisfy the itch, so be it. If I were stuck behind a scrap cart, I’d probably do the same.

Respecting life in cocktail form, heavy on the fruits and vegetables…

MEAT IS MURDER:

2 oz. vodka
½ oz. dry vermouth
½ oz. fresh lemon juice
½ oz. agave syrup
2” piece of celery, cut into slices
1” piece of cucumber, cut into slices, plus an additional thin slice for garnish
5 basil leaves
a few drops of orange bitters

Rub a basil leaf around the rim of a chilled cocktail glass, then muddle with the rest of the basil, celery, cucumber and agave syrup in a shaker. Add the remaining ingredients and shake, straining into the glass. Garnish with the cucumber slice.

Once in the late 90s, I spent an entire night pacing back and...

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:56:00 -0400

Once in the late 90s, I spent an entire night pacing back and forth in my bedroom, trying to perfect a fake Australian accent. I’d developed an internet crush on a girl from Sydney, a painter/designer fond of cats and chamomile tea who played toy piano in a band and wanted to move to New York one day. We’d corresponded for months, through emails with ever-blossoming word counts, and now it was time to act. The plan seemed simple enough- call up her apartment (I’d found her number in an online phonebook), ask for her flatmate in my best Aussie brogue, and discuss the details of a surprise visit. I rehearsed one last “G’day” and dialed. Ring…ring…ring. A young woman answered. “’Ello!” I replied, nerves taking hold, my accent melting as soon as the first words fumbled out of my mouth, til I was more Ringo Starr with a head cold than Crocodile Dundee. I mumbled, stuttered and clumsily caved, finally revealing my true identity to the confused voice on the other end. Fortunately, she found the whole thing charming. A few months later I did make it to Sydney and, yes, the romance bloomed. Were we painfully naïve? Sure, but also wonderfully so, thinking we could find a way to make it work across the chasms of oceans and time zones and long distance phone bills. I have a mixtape she sent me when we were still trying to figure it out, still hoping she’d make it to the States one day. Each side has a Palace song, with Will Oldham’s creaky wooden voice there to remind me of a night in Sydney, lying in her bed draped over with a giant mosquito net. The windows were open, Palace was on the stereo, and we felt secure.

Sweet like a memory, cold like reality, with the hint of a mint julep from Will Oldham’s Kentucky home…

VIVA LAST BLUES:

1 oz. tequila blanco
1 oz. applejack
½ oz. fresh lemon juice
½ oz. honey syrup
¼ oz. velvet falernum
dashes of Peychaud’s bitters
6 mint leaves, plus 1 sprig for garnish

Muddle the mint leaves with the honey syrup in the bottom of a shaker. Add ice, along with the rest of the liquid ingredients and shake, straining into a rocks glass with ice. Garnish with the mint sprig.

Aretha sings about looking out on the morning rain and I’m right...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:12:00 -0400

Aretha sings about looking out on the morning rain and I’m right there, too. Not just the window full of clouds, the dripping coffee fumes and the hiss of wet tires in the street. Even more than the dull ache of un-inspiration she refers to in line two. There’s something larger here, some unnameable mass of feeling gathering beneath the surface, and when it starts to rise, I recognize it immediately, even if I can’t quite put it into words. Which is probably why I spend so much time obsessing over all this stuff in the first place- the records, the songs, the whole jumbled alchemy of shaping music out of sound- because when it gets going and it’s really, really good, those moments finally have a name. Not a name with words, but with that sound, the one drawn up from a deep, communal well and shared through some supreme vessel, a voice as all-knowing as Aretha’s.

A drink almost as rich as the voice of the Queen of Soul…

LADY SOUL:

1 ½ oz. dry gin
¾ oz heavy cream
½ oz. sweet vermouth
½ oz. homemade grenadine
¼ oz. Luxardo maraschino liqueur
3 brandied cherries for garnish

Combine all ingredients with ice and shake, straining into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the cherries on a toothpick.

It’s two in the afternoon and the girl on the album cover is...

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:37:00 -0400

It’s two in the afternoon and the girl on the album cover is still in bed, staring at her overcrowded nightstand. Ashtray, alarm clock, a plate of uneaten crackers, post-its with phone numbers, a reminder to buy shampoo, directions to a theatre to see about a job painting backdrops. Ask for Sam, the name’s underlined three times, and next to it a small drawing of a mouse sitting cross-legged on a chair. She lights a cigarette, picks up the book lying on her pillow, looks at the cover and puts it down again. The same thought keeps circling around in her brain, like someone taped her head to the ceiling fan. She leans to the floor, puts the record back on, then sits up again, staring out the window, quietly singing along. “How and why and when and where to go? Hmm hmm…” Kids are playing in the schoolyard across the street and one’s off by himself, tossing a stick in the air. It hits the dirt, he picks it up, tosses it again and watches it spin in the sky. Every time it reaches its peak he gets excited, hopping up and down on one leg. Maybe this time it’ll stay there, stuck in the clouds forever. It doesn’t, but he picks it up and tosses it again anyway. And maybe that’s just it. The girl stands, balancing her cigarette carefully on the edge of the ashtray, and opens her closet for something to wear.

It’s sweet, it’s dark, it’s Scottish, it’s a cocktail for Belle and Sebastian…

IF YOU’RE FEELING SINISTER:

2 oz. blended scotch
¾ oz. homemade allspice syrup
½ oz. fresh lime juice
dashes of Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients with ice in a shaker and shake, straining into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with candied ginger on a toothpick if you happen to have some.

I was watching roller coasters rise and fall on the horizon over...

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:37:00 -0400

I was watching roller coasters rise and fall on the horizon over I-94 as we passed Great America when Justin’s Fiero started chugging, sputtering, took a last breath and died. It was the summer of ’95, pre-cell phones, and we didn’t know a thing about cars except how to drive them and pull jammed cassettes from the tape deck with a butter knife. We took a guess, made a quick sign with a Sharpie - “ANTIFREEZE!” - and tried to wave someone down. Eventually we did, got the fluids topped off along with a jumpstart, and the Fiero crept along the shoulder til we got to a Wendy’s parking lot where it coughed, rattled up and died once more. Several payphone dials later, we knew we were stuck for the night, so we ordered burgers and headed back to the car. That’s when we met Scott, in a wilted sweater with a hole in the sleeve, and Randy, in a Clockwork Orange t-shirt and bright blue shorts. They were kicking around a hackey sack, killing time til the next Grateful Dead show in Chicago. We traded stories on the curb, ate Frosties and, several hours later with nothing else to do, climbed into our new friends’ Caprice Classic to listen to some tunes. Justin and Scott talked Buddhism and Quentin Tarantino in front, Randy read sci-fi, and I fell asleep in the back, the wordless voices at the end of “Ripple” sinking into my drowsing brain like a chorus of ghosts huddled round some ancient, fading campfire. Or maybe more like kids killing time under an orange-lit buzzing lamppost in a parking lot just past Great America.

This cocktail’s beautiful to look at and to sip, founded on American rye whiskey…

AMERICAN BEAUTY:

2 oz. rye
½ oz. simple syrup
½ oz. lemon juice
¼ tsp. rose water
dashes of Peychaud’s bitters
4 fresh strawberries, tops removed
4 large basil leaves

Muddle the strawberries and basil in the bottom of a shaker. Add ice and the remaining ingredients and shake, straining into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

LCD’s Sound of Silver is the last great record I got before...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:27:00 -0500

LCD’s Sound of Silver is the last great record I got before moving to New York and it’s forever etched in my brain as a soundtrack to transition. After ten years in Chicago and not enough to show, a girl had found my heart, carefully placed it next to her own, then told me she had to leave for NYC. Would I follow? My chest was full of bees. But sometimes you need a push, and in December ’08 I packed a van and hurled it into the future, past northwest Indiana smokestacks and slag, bouncing coins down the throats of damp Ohio toll booths, finally crossing the George Washington Bridge. James Murphy kept me company, dealing with his own transitions: losing friends, getting older, questioning his love for a city that was about to be mine. What would happen? Frost on the BQE, I lost track of streets, a box of pans rattling in the back. Excited, nervous, happy, a little scared, I parked it on a curb in Brooklyn and hoped for the best.

A clean refresher to toast new beginnings…

SOUND OF SILVER:

1 oz. tequila blanco
1 oz. dry gin
¾ oz. fresh lime juice
¾ oz. simple syrup
white of a small egg

Add all ingredients to a shaker and dry shake (shake without ice, that is) for 30 seconds to emulsify the egg. Add ice and shake again, straining into a chilled cocktail glass.

All it takes is one pinched blast from Bob Mould’s fretboard and...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:14:00 -0500

All it takes is one pinched blast from Bob Mould’s fretboard and all that tuneful midrange and lingering feedback haze sends me right back reeling to my Midwest teenage bedroom years. Walls sprawled with Thrasher ads I’d extracted with an X-Acto blade, bluelit with the afterglow of an 8-bit Nintendo screen. Hüsker Dü weren’t too far removed from this scene themselves- drummer Grant Hart was living with his parents in suburban St. Paul through the New Day Rising recording phase. Sitting late one night at the kitchen table, he tried to get the tracklisting right on the back of a used envelope, but it didn’t gel. Next morning he went to pour some Corn Flakes and saw his mother had added some preliminary liner notes: “Grant: Would appreciate it if you didn’t have a party while we were gone – we’ll be back Monday. Food in freezer. Love, Mom.” Perfect.

Mom always said to start each new day with some OJ…

NEW DAY RISING:

1 ½ oz. dry gin
¾ oz. dry vermouth
¾ oz. orange juice
½ oz. homemade grenadine

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake, straining into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Kids will always flock to NYC. Sure, the skyscrapers are cold...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:50:00 -0500

Kids will always flock to NYC. Sure, the skyscrapers are cold slabs full of deskjobs that barely squeeze out enough cash to make rent, but they’re also filled with allure- great, luminous masks the city wears to charm even the most jaded, broke-ass twenty-something with the promise of its myth. Blonde Redhead certainly felt the pull, from the far less glitzy but no less mythic downtown art rock scene. They landed by way of Italy and Japan, eager to promote their next show with a backpack full of Xeroxed flyers and a staple gun, biking down the tenement canyons of the Lower East Side, acrid with nameless fish supply warehouses and steaming rows of subway grates, wiping sweat on the sleeve of an old Sonic Youth tee. The sound on this first record is young, still fumbling for a voice, name checking the shrill metallics of 80s No Wave, a fog of detuned melodies fighting out of bent guitars. But the excitement bleeds through anyway, a band in love with their city where so much has happened and inevitably will again.

Like the band’s hometown of NYC, a tall, alluring glass with a little bitterness and bite…

BLONDE REDHEAD:

2 oz. limoncello
1 oz. Campari
5 oz. ginger beer
1 sliced lemon wheel for garnish

Stir the limoncello and Campari in a chilled collins glass. Fill with ice, then add the ginger beer and garnish with the lemon wheel.

Another basement Saturday night: guitar amp stacked on the...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:57:00 -0500

Another basement Saturday night: guitar amp stacked on the washing machine, mic taped to a milk crate and propped up on a broken stool. Ten years in and Guided By Voices was about to end, still stuck with the 4-track that liked to chew on tape, barely booking shows past the Ohio state line. They knocked off tunes in a take or two, dumped on some overdubs, left the creaks and hisses and missing beats, glued it all up with bubblegum melodics and capped the night with beer. But once Bee Thousand stumbled up those basement stairs and out into the daylight, a line of critics was already forming at the front porch door with open arms and puckered lips. The band just thought it was taking a last dying gasp. Instead, they exhaled a masterpiece.

Honey and fennel replace Drambuie in this lo-fi spin on the classic Rusty Nail…

BEE THOUSAND:

2 ½ oz. blended scotch
½ oz. honey syrup
1 tbsp. fennel fronds
2 inch slice of fennel
dashes of Peychaud’s bitters

Muddle the fennel and fennel fronds with the honey syrup. Add ice, along with the scotch and bitters and stir, straining into an ice filled rocks glass. Garnish with a sprig of fennel if you have it and you’re in the mood.

Isaac Hayes’ first record was a bellyflop and would’ve sent him...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:50:00 -0500

Isaac Hayes’ first record was a bellyflop and would’ve sent him back to the writer/producer bench had it not been for the jam his label Stax found themselves in. They’d gotten cozy with Atlantic, but the affair turned sour quick- Atlantic jumped the bed and took off running, taking the entire Stax back catalog with it. With nothing left to lose, label honcho Al Bell ordered his crew to reboot the catalog from scratch, dropping 27 albums and 30 singles in just 3 months. Mr. Hayes saw his chance. He pulled pop and country tunes from the AM dashboard and ran with them, stretching and twisting and cross-wiring each one into brooding, heavy-hearted soul, spilling his smoke and honey voice over four long tracks swirling with longing, sex and regret. It was a longshot, but it paid off- Hot Buttered Soul went platinum, hitting the upper rungs of the pop, R&B and jazz charts, and millions of converts followed Black Moses to a new plateau of sound and song and possibility.

The name of this drink says it all…

HOT BUTTERED SOUL:

1 oz. bourbon
1 oz. applejack
¾ oz. honey syrup
1 tbsp. softened butter
dash of cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
dash of cloves
dash of vanilla extract
6 oz. hot water
1 cinnamon stick for garnish

In a large mug, muddle the butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and vanilla. Add the bourbon, applejack, honey syrup and hot water and stir until well mixed. Garnish with a cinnamon stick.