Songs/Meals of the Year 2011 [pt. 1]

'Steak le Cheval' (southern France)

 Meals with selected tracks. Full track listing below. Full mix here.

Disco at Christmas pt 1

Disco at Christmas pt 2

Disco at Christmas pt 3


1/14 - Lobster Disco
 Felix - Tiger Stripes

Rock lobster!

Andy's annual birthday party involving intense food consumption. This past year it was lobster + an incredible amount of incredible other foods. I remember the deserts being the bomb too. For some reason we thought it would be smart to have a dance party after stuffing ourselves. We were right.

3/14 - Anniversary Eating Festival + Super Flu
Change - A Lover's Holiday

For Celia and I's annual anniversary we headed up to Sonoma and rented a room at a B&B in Jenner. I immediately came down with the Super Flu, which ended up lasting for two weeks. This happened in part because I lowered my body's defenses with a day of wine tasting, burritos, burgers and Blimey the Wanker at the Stumptown Brewery, and dessert and whiskey at the River's End. I was able to eat so much because my brain had disconnected from my body, so I was utterly impressed with Celia's ability to chow.


4/2 - 3 Cheesketeers Round 1
Dinosaur L - Clean on Your Bean #1

A series of emails resulted in the first of a rotating series of Beer and Cheese tastings with Nate and Gabe. I hosted the first on my landlord's second story porch with IPA and cheddar, Porter and Gruyere, and cherve and gueze. We talked about life and food. Rebecca Black had recently become a sensation and Nate alluded to a theory, a 'very dark' theory, about the hit song, but never revealed what the heck he was talking about. Subsequent tastings involved bringing cheese to Beer Revolution (Gabe) and hitting up a high end cheese cafe in the Mission before retiring to Nate's apartment (Nate).

4/20s - Spring Break Food/Brewery/Bike Tour
Wayne Wonder - Dreamland

Sign at defunct vineyard

Eric and I mounted our trusty steeds and headed first south to Santa Cruz to the Seabright Brewery and then a sumptuous Passover Feast. We were driven North and then departed from my house in West Oakland straight to Napa. We rode through the valley, hit a brewery there, camped. Headed to Healdsburg for Bear Republic: 3 beers each, giant burgers, appetizers, and then 15 miles through the rain to Santa Rosa. Russian River Brewing Co and pizza. Hop Kiln in Sebastapool on a great loop through Guerneville and the River Valley. Finally we rode south to SF, leaving Santa Rosa only to discover that Petaluma was very close and the Lagunitas brewery was closed?! They were persuaded to allow us to drink a big bottle of breakfast stout to fuel our legs for the 65 mile day. Descending into Nicasio Valley looked like the land before time!!

6/11 - Fried Chicken/Corn Dogs at Dirtfoot Farm
Indeep - Buffalo Bill

Ian getting ready to fry

The title more or less explains this. Ian didn't kill anyone or burn down anything with the deep fryer. I think the corn dogs were the best I have ever had. Nothing like fried good food walking around an urban farmstead.

7/? - French Dinner Parties
Chic - Est-ce que c'est Chic
El Coco - Dancing in Paradise

L to R: Catherine (UK), Bernhard (DE), ? (B)

Celia and I rode through much of Western Europe on our bikes. The food was good everywhere of course. In France we were treated to at least 3 dinner parties. Our various hosts planned ahead, invited bike friends and neighbors and served it up right. The highlight of every meal was the cheese, served after a couple of courses, and before dessert. To reprise a quote: "I'm sorry, but I must have wine with my cheese" (Pierre, after we had earlier decided to just drink beer).


Disco at Christmas Track List
weldon irvine - pogo stick
wayne wonder - dreamland
ponta de lonca africano - jorge ben
kid creole &coconuts - i'm a wonderful thing
tom tom club - genuis of love
yella - yella!!
disco 4 - he's santa claus
indeep - buffalo bill
tuneyards - powa
bernard wright - video generation
mean machine - disco dream
dhar braxton - jump back (set me free)
janet jackson - when i think of you
change - a lover's holiday
prince - boys and girls
el coco - mondo disco
chic- est-ce que c'est chic
dinosaur l - clean on your bean #1
katie kissoon - you're the one (you're my number one)
taana gardner - work that body
talking heads - making flippy floppy
donna summer - lucky
felix - tiger stripes
el coco - dancing in paradise

Mission: Unknown [Chinese]

???

It is thrilling the way a song or place pops up. It was something that we did not pay any mind, and then it has suddenly become immensely important. The transitional moment occurs in the rhythms of course. Walking city streets we have passed it many times, or at least passed its grave or its newest home. Later on we realize that it was there all along. Instead of being the last song on the New Year mixtape for Misson St. we had actually burned the CD backwards and it was put there as the first track, by some food god. We look around wondering if the genius who arranged this mix, intended for driving from New York City to New Haven, CT,  was messing with us. Rather than petering out the process becomes intensely focused, building, first numbing your tongue and body with distinct peppercorn rhythms, then burning the crap out of your face with its 1000 chili melody.

At Mission Chinese they play gangsta rap, and the ambiance feels like a positive version of a dark, red, enchilado hell. Everything is recommended and water is all you will need. Stay for the whole song.

Loui's Restaurant in Providence, RI

Darlene - Doc Box and B. Fresh, 12" (1990)
Easy Groove - B. T. O, 12" (1977)


The connection between popular music and popular breakfast joints works as follows: someone suggests a preference to you, you are hesitant, you go or listen, you are uncertain, you go or listen again, and after much uncertainty you find yourself more or less in a kind of love. Then it becomes your shared moment with your loved ones in turn.

That is all fine. Poker Face and a familiar breakfast have plenty in common. Far rarer is the restaurant that changes you in its changes. It is not so much that you become used to it, or that you accept the grease and the often-cigarette-laden toilet. Nor even that you find these things comforting, familiar, and reliable.

[You have to listen to the entirety of Darlene, by the way.]

There are the comfortable restaurants and songs, and then there are the ones that abruptly change you. Its not that hand-handled homefries are familiar, it is that you find yourself wanting them. Not that water with no ice in little school style plastic cups is appealing, but that you have to have it. Suddenly you burst forth, not lulled by the monotony of the normal, but freed by the strange. The dinner for breakfast option. The huevos rancheros covered with cold cheese and salsa. The hot dogs at 6:30am. The mimosas. The honeydew. The homemade granola, bread, muffins, hot sauce, and the Aunt Jemima's syrup.

It is the cornucopia of the first Thanksgiving briefly transformed into a Prince song, eaten, and then turned back into natural crap. It is country music written by George Clinton. Having eaten, and now leaving the restaurant, your feet fall heavily onto Brook St. and you realize you are a modern man, and that Loui's is the most modern food you have ever eaten.

Champagne When We Thirsty

A central concept of the French Laundry, a 3 Michelin starred restaurant in Napa, is that of diminishing returns. That is to say, your first bite is your best bite, and the rest of the course is rapidly driving your tastebuds into boring town. This means that they serve really small plates, and the flavors pop like the snares do.

This may be a scientific fact. A biological outcome that is derived from the enjoyment of difference. Sure, sure. Everything different is fun. Unfortunately, that means food is pretty boring stuff. It is the music-loving equivalent of a high school dance. The new, popping song comes on and the kids go wild with recognition, and because of the newness. The song is uncanny, in that it is the familiar made unfamiliar. It is something your mouth could make up, but did not so far here, on this dance floor, with these people.

Songs can be just the same. "Juicy" comes on and everybody puts it in their mouth like foie gras that is oh-so-familiar. Everybody raps about "when Christmas missed us" as though they ate things like this on the regular. Soon though, they realize that the beat is a little slow, nobody learned the words to the third verse, and super fatty liver is weird to chew on. The returns diminish.



Thomas Keller (owner/creator of the French Laundry) is like a DJ at a high school dance. He excites with snippets of the very best, and leaves you no time to drag your feet or your tongue. Conversely, a DJ who plays Arthur Russell's Dinosaur's "Kiss Me Again" (1978) is like a chef who feeds you things you have never heard of, and then when you eat them they do not stop tasting good, and in fact taste even better as you chew, so that by the end of the course you are dancing.

Experiencing even a high school dance of food is supposedly quite astonishing, as is listening to Dinosaur's 12" single on vinyl in the rustic French setting of a discotheque. May we all be so lucky as to do one, or the other, or both, in this new year.

What I mean to say is that there is something that resonates in "Juicy" for all of us, just in the same way that anyone could be awed by the pate at the FL. There are things in life that represent the distance between where we started and where are. $700 dinners. Champagne. Rare disco. It was all a dream...

Ho ho ho, yo!

Download the annual year-in-review mixtape from Some Quality and me, Rich JC.

Coolin' at Christmas

--Track List --

toni tone and tone - coolin at christmas

sista nancy- bam bah

billy preston - gold finger

sly and the family stone - run, run, run

edwin starr- ca soul

roy ayers ubiquity - better days

cookie and henry monster- circles

bobby marchan - disco rabbit

naughty by nature - holidaze remix

bto - easy groove

missy elliot - i can't stand the rain

rose royce- ooh boy i'm into you

lmfao - i'm in miami bitch

humpback interlude

eastbound expressway- never let go

idris muhammed - see saw

marvin gaye-a funky space reincarnation

raydio-you can't change that

impressions - i saw mommy kissing santa claus

bill summers - straight to the bank

betty padgett- sugar daddy

electric man lionel davis - electric man

ramsey lewis - soul man

m i a - mango pickle down river

ramsey lewis - up tight

cerrone - black is black

Grilled Lobster

Mary Jane - Stonefire Band, Grilled Lobster (1984)

2:30 AM on the streets of the Mission in SF California.

Bacon wrapped hot dog.

You see what I'm getting at?

The BWHD, as we quickly learned to call it, was as light on its feet in the mouth as the persistent drums, 'roaming all over the place'. The grilled onions and jalapenos the horn hit progression found only on the downbeat. The lines of mustard, mayo, and ketchup the unfailing chorus. Uncomplicated. Complete. Some would say perfect... The contents unGoogleable, the experience unforgettable.

Slipping into Sandwiches

I've always been afraid of delis. Being raised vegetarian, I didn't end up in one very often. The one we did frequent occasionally was rarely busy, and not too intimidating. These facts meant I never developed the assertive nature necessary to stride boldly up to the counter and order something. Anything. Especially not in a big city style deli, with fifteen runners behind the counter making 10-second sandwiches. At Genova Delicatessen and Ravioli in Temescal I, unsurprisingly, felt afraid. Especially afraid when I saw that my friend had already taken a number and was gesturing that I grab my own. Couldn't we order together? I wondered. We talked about the options non stop for the next ten minutes, waiting to be served. The Olympic Team behind the counter did 24 numbers in that time, finally coming to us. I ordered a specialty sandwich and then acquiesced to every suggestion made by my sandwich maker. She spent another ten minutes making it, and I leaned nervously against the counter wondering if you could buy a beer 'for here'. I steeled myself when she returned and asked - you could - and then got a mondo pickle to boot. I had made it through the fog into the groovy joy of a Panchetta, fresh Mozarella, and Sundried Tomato (PMT). It was like finally figuring out where you are slipping, when you are slipping into darkness. The pickle was that grandly echoing rim shot.

Slipping into Darkness - The Ramsey Lewis Trio, Upendo Ni Pamoja (1972)


As a bonus, the woman who took 10 minutes making my sandwich (I think she was new) somehow beat me to the bathroom. Having already waited so long, navigated the perils of the deli, and been so hungry, I felt I had to use it before eating, to cleanse myself of the anxieties of bladder holding and on-the-spot ordering. The at this point unknown person in the bathroom took another 8 minutes, and when I had given up and returned to my seat to do my best to enjoy the first bite of cured funky pig, I noticed the last place sandwich lady, sneaking past. It certainly topped everything off. I peed away my worries, and returned to the stylings of the Ramsey Lewis Sandwich Trio: cured ham, fresh moz, and oily tomatoes.

People Make the World Go Round - The Ramsey Lewis Trio, Upendo Ni Pamoja (1972)


(Originally written by The Stylistics, also recorded in '72 by MJ and Lenny Williams. Sampled in Swan Lake by DJ Shadow.)