The Fate of the Best of 2002

From the Food Vault Dept.: Metroland magazine published a “Best of” issue at the end of every year – or the beginning of the subsequent one – for which I contributed my notion of what restaurants literally and figuratively served me well during the preceding twelvemonth. Here we go back two decades, to what I considered the Best of 2002. And then I’m going to rejoin you at the end of the piece to learn what’s become of these eateries.

                                                                                          

IT’S EASY TO SEE MY PREJUDICES AT WORK when looking over the best of the past twelve months’ worth of restaurant visits. I like them plain; I like them fancy. Less obvious is that I like them to be original, to offer something nobody else provides. Or, if it’s the same old fare, to offer it in an appealing manner.

O'Leary's Pub & Grill
Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Consider first the fancy joints. What are they offering that’s so unique? In the case of the absolute best – Chez Sophie Bistro and the Cambridge Hotel – it’s a combination of food, service and ambiance that makes dining a transcendent experience. And that’s usually the result of the personalities involved.

In the case of Chez Sophie Bistro (2853 Route 9, Malta Ridge), it’s the confluence of the skills of chef Tonya Mahar and owners Paul Parker and Cheryl Clark. As I noted in the earlier review, Mahar has captured the spirit of Sophie Parker’s food and eased it into a direction that I think would please Sophie, who was not an easy-to-please person. The food is inspired by classic French cooking, the setting – a classic silver diner – adds a note of delightful incongruity to the picture. And the newsletter, e-mailed weekly, is always joyous, as anything to do with food should be.

The Last Laugh

 We're back on stage! Malcolm Kogut and I will tread the boards at Steamer No. 10 Theatre (500 Western Avenue, Albany, NY) at 7 PM on New Year's Eve. Below is a promo video we made to celebrate the season. More info? Go to our Songs to Amuse website.

The Staff of Life

From the Cookbook Shelf Dept.: Every December, for many years, Metroland magazine would court advertisers by putting out buying guides. As the house restaurant reviewer, I chose my favorite cookbooks of the waning year, trying to avoid the excessively celebrity-driven. Here’s what was on my plate, so to speak, a decade ago.

                                                                              

STAFF MEAL TELLS all you need to know about a restaurant. When the employees are fed with care and respect, when a family spirit is celebrated, a sense of well-being embraces everything about the places, and you feel it as a customer. This is why a chain restaurant feels like a Dickensian orphanage. Christine Carroll and Jody Eddy had the excellent idea of taking us behind the scenes to visit a couple of dozen staff dinners – with recipes – in Come In, We’re Closed (Running Press), although the first one, at Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc, is a once-a-week staff banquet with a ritual requirement of paying compliments to one another, reminding me why I’ll never live in northern California. All of the chosen eateries are somewhat rarefied; thus, from Montreal’s Au Pied de Cochcon, for instance, comes “creamy smoked sturgeon pappardelle,” but that’s redeemed by McCrady’s, in South Carolina, and its offerings of a double-stack cheeseburger and beef-fat fries. Excellent narrative content, with insightful chef interviews as well.

Going Whole Hog

EVER CONTEMPLATED “CHUCKING IT ALL” and moving to a farm? Shrugging off the heavy mantle of living and working in the corporate world in order to get back to the earth sounds wonderfully noble and romantic, allowing you to glory in the knowledge that you’re providing healthy food for yourself and your neighbors. I know people who have done this. They knew they were in for a work schedule unlike anything they’d known in the nine-to-five world. They just didn’t anticipate how punishing it would be.

Ellyn Gaydos chronicles three years of active farm work in Pig Years, a poetic, insightful memoir that skillfully balances her personal growth with an honest account of the toil and turmoil of farm life. By the time the book begins, in the spring of 2017, she was no stranger to the challenges: At 18 she worked on a beef and dairy farm; the following year, on a berry farm. From there she went to another dairy farm, then to a vegetable farm. But, as Pig Years begins, “I had just turned twenty-four and fallen deeply in love, I had little money, was a transient worker, and was increasingly afflicted with the desire to have a child. All of this became like a conversation with the fields, animals, and various towns that surrounded me.”

I’m no fan of the type of memoir in which an eager diarist with little self-awareness chronicles an egocentric journey through what usually turns out to be the scorn of an unsympathetic world. This is emphatically not that kind of book. There’s no hand-wringing; likewise, there’s no feel-good cliché-mongering or strident preaching. But it is a story of growth and revelation. Gaydos tells it in a deceptively simple, matter-of-fact manner, her first-person perspective giving a sense of immediacy to the story.

Breaking the Silence

TRY TO RECALL a dinner or other social event at which you felt entranced, uplifted. You either were falling in love or listening to a fascinating party guest, the kind who has captivating stories to tell and knows how to deliver a punch line.

Susan Fleming Marx was clearly that kind of party guest. She quit a mediocre but promising movie career to wed Harpo Marx, and they had one of those marriages that defies statistics (and the matrimonial track records of Harpo’s brothers).

“To my mother’s lasting mortification, I was born in Brooklyn, New York. That was not classy,” is how she begins her well-told tale. She was born in 1908. As a teenager, she enrolled in Ned Wayburn’s School of Dance where she and her new friend Paulette Goddard were the favorites. Both were tapped to be in the chorus of a Ziegfeld unit that opened in Florida in January 1926, and by June of hat year, she was in a Broadway edition of the revue titled “No Foolin’” (which ran in a theater just down the street from “The Cocoanuts,” starring the Marx Brothers).

Just as quickly, she entered the movies. “There had to be at least a half-dozen girls in that chorus with a burning ambition to act. I was not one of them.” Nevertheless, she was selected by Adolph Menjou to star with him in his movie “The Ace of Cads.” “I’ve since learned that (it) is now a lot film. Well, thank heaven for small miracles! I’d shudder to think of anyone actually seeing me in this thing.”

Some Like It Hot

It’s not as if we were pandemic-demoralized; far from it. We’ve learned to live reclusively and are quite happy in this social cocoon. However, Thanksgiving invited us to re-think the holiday menu and treat our handful of guests to something rather unprecedented for this event: Szechuan Hot Pot, also known as Steamboat or Shabu-Shabu. The menu is below; our slide show of Thanksgiving menus past is here.

Making the Most of Mozart

From the Theater Vault Dept.: Back in 1984, when the University at Albany had a theater department of some standing, they offered an ambitious series of productions. Amadeus was still something of an undiscovered item until the movie came out that year, which coincided with the production described below, first in an eager advance, then in a disappointed review.

                                                                                   

PIANIST ALFRED BRENDEL, a world-class performer of Mozart's music, dismissed the hit play Amadeus quite simply: “It’s not an accurate portrait of the man. The playwright took his material from a few letters Mozart wrote to his sister, letters that were very playful, and very scatological.”

Saltzmann and Strolle in Amadeus

Much of the music world, which isn’t known for restrained opinions, has come down hard on this theatrical depiction of one of the gods of music; the recent release of the movie has fanned the flames of controversy, with the dowdy New York Times leading the pack of throat-clearers.

On the other hand, a friend of mine who has long insisted that she’d rather be boiled in oil than listen to opera confessed that the opera sequences in the film of Amadeus weren’t bad at all! That kind of influence is worth the whinnying of a dozen stuffy newspapers.

There’s no doubt that the film plays up Mozart’s manic side, and it’s that very quality that SUNYA’s Bill Leone thinks needn’t be overdone for the theater: “Mozart is a man who knew his society, he just had moments of insensitivity.” Leone is following his recent success with Shakespeare at SUNYA with a production of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, which Leone will direct and (for half of the run) act in. Leone has described the themes of the play as ‘being about “uniqueness and irresponsibility of talent. The struggle between a man and his god.” It opens at SUNYA’s Lab Theater on Tuesday for a two-week run.

The New Fable of the Speedy Sprite

Guest Blogger Dept.: We have heard your cries: “More Ade! More Ade!” And here he is, with one of the longer fables he was pleased to write following the great success of their too-brief predecessors. He got some extra mileage out of this one, as it also appeared in the Indianapolis Star under the title The New Fable of the Sprightly Sprite.

                                                                                            

ONE MONDAY MORNING a rangy and well-conditioned Elfin of the Young Unmarried Set, yclept Loretta, emerged into the Sunlight and hit the Concrete Path with a ringing Heel. This uncrowned Empress of the 18th Ward was a she-Progressive assaying 98 per cent. pure Ginger. Instead of trailing the ever onward Parade, she juggled the Baton at the head of the Push.

In the crisp introductory hours of the Wash-Day already woven into the Plot, Loretta trolleyed herself down into the Noise Belt.

She went to the office of the exclusive Kennel Club and entered the Chow Ki-Yi for the next Bench Show. At the Clearing House for K. M.'s she filed a loud call for a Cook who could cook. Then she cashed a check, ordered a pound of Salted Nuts (to be delivered by Special Wagon at once), enveloped a ball of Ice Cream gooed with Chocolate, and soon, greatly refreshed, swept down on a Department Store.

A Chenille Massacre was in full swing on the 3d floor, just between the Porch Furniture and Special Clothing for Airmen. Loretta took a run and jump into the heaving mass of the gentler Division. She came out at 10.53 with her Sky Piece badly listed to Port and her toes flattened out, but she was 17 cents to the Good. Three hearty Cheers!

Hubbard of (Blue) Note

WHICH ARTIST IS BEST? Which album? Which movie? The lamentable practice of ranking artistic achievements one against the other has boomed in the Internet Age, with Top Ten lists swelling into the hundreds as paid-by-the-word scribblers duck the process of actual criticism and offer up rankings instead. Thus with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard: How does he rank against Clifford Brown or Miles Davis? The answer: Stop ranking. He is a giant who sits alongside those other giants in his own original way.

Mosaic Records has collected the ten albums recorded under Hubbard’s name as leader for Blue Note and Impulse between 1960 and 1966, a varied array of sessions and sidemen showcasing the amazing versatility of Hubbard’s tone and technique. He was 22 during the first of these sessions, already making a name for himself in New York through performances with Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy, among others. And he would soon nab a steady gig with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

The first session on this set, for the Blue Note release “Open Sesame,” serves as a kind of launching pad for what’s to follow. “But Beautiful” gives us Hubbard’s sleek, soulful ballad sound, while “Hub’s Nub” is all about Hub’s bop voice, his cascading lines nicely supported by a rhythm section of pianist McCoy Tyner, Clifford Jarvis (drums), and Sam Jones (bass). “Gypsy Blue” settles into an amiable Latin groove, with Hubbard in harmony with saxist Tina Brooks for the theme statements, and swapping solos with him elsewhere (and throughout the five other selections).

Dan Levinson: A Profile

IF IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE for a virtuoso reedman to step out of a jazz 78 in a kind of “Purple Rose of Cairo” move, that person would be clarinetist Dan Levinson. He has been performing for over 30 years, but he has been performing music that dates back to the ‘teens (the 1910s, that is), faithfully recreating the original styles even as he adds his own original voice to the mix. That’s why the New York-based musician has been in international demand, a jewel in any ensemble that hires him.

Dan Levinson
Photo by Dino Petrocelli

He’s also a leader in his own right, his versatility proved by recordings with his Canary Cottage Dance Orchestra, specializing in “rag-a-jazz’ from the early 1900s; the Roof Garden Jass Band, saluting the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the Louisiana Five, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and others from that era; “At the Codfish Ball,” with a Swing-Era reminiscent of Tommy Dorsey’s Clambake Seven; and CDs saluting Bix Beiderbecke, Artie Shaw, and other notables. Many of these recordings feature vocalist Molly Ryan, whose deft way with a song is also in keeping with vintage jazz traditions. But let’s let Dan tell that story:

“Molly is from Roseville, California, which is about 20 minutes outside of Sacramento. And I was performing with the Reynolds Brothers Rhythm Rascals, which was led by Ralf Reynolds and John Reynolds, who are the grandchildren of Zasu Pitts. I performed with them from the late 80s to the early 2000s. This was at the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, where Molly’s father was a volunteer sound engineer. She’d been coming to that festival since she was about ten years old. And the Reynolds brothers knew her and had invited her to sing with the band. So I met her when she was sitting in with them.

Waste Not . . .

SO DISGUSTING AND PERVASIVE is the odor of hog waste that a researcher who was hired to take measurements of particulate evidence in and around a number of massive hog barns is still exuding the noxious stink for many days after he returned home. He obsessively washes himself and his clothing, but even after two weeks there’s a lingering smell. Until he realizes it’s clinging to his eyeglasses, which he then has to throw away.

Novelist Corban Addison turned to non-fiction in his recent book Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial, but it has all the edge-of-your-seat pacing of a crime thriller. Which, in effect, it is, although you know the outcome if you’ve paid attention to agricultural news during the past couple of years. Even so, you’ll find yourself sharing the uncertainty of the participants as you’re taken through a series of some of the most momentous trials Big Ag has gone through.

By rights, a story like this should be shaded in greys. Few human conflicts ever can be seen as purely black and white, yet this one, pitting pork giant Smithfield against a group of North Carolina residents, not only clearly marks its villains as such, but also reveals that the lawsuits divide plaintiffs and defendants by race.

Four counties in southern North Carolina – Bladen, Duplin, Pender, and Sampson – have a human population of about 200,000, most of them poor and Black. As the state’s hog-farming industry grew and consolidated during the ‘80s and ‘90s, this became the livestock epicenter, cramming some five million hogs into the area. 

Touching the Classics

TENOR SAX ICON SCOTT HAMILTON seems to lead as relaxed a life as his playing suggests. He’s based in Florence, Italy, playing festivals and club dates throughout Europe, occasionally visiting the U.S., where he was born in 1954. By the time he hit Manhattan in the 1970s, you’d have sworn he was born a few decades earlier, so much did his sound conjure the world of Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins. He took up residence at Eddie Condon’s on 54th Street, recording on Chiaroscuro and Famous Door before being swept up by Concord Jazz both as leader and sideman.

He worked alongside so many jazz greats that it’s unnecessary to list them – it’s a history of the last half-century of jazz with some seeming anachronisms, like Scott’s stint with a late-career Benny Goodman band. But he’s always sounded at his best in a small-group setting, and that’s where he is in “Classics,” his latest international release. Pianist Jan Lundgren and bassist Hans Backenroth are both from Sweden; bassist Kristian Leth is Danish, as is the Stunt Records label. And the title acknowledges the fact that each of the nine numbers is based on a tune from the classical-music world.

As “Theme from Swan Lake” swings into a dark-hued, agitated beat, you’d swear it was a 40s standard, in the vein of “On Green Dolphin Street.” But it is, in fact, a familiar tune drawn from the Tchaikovsky ballet. After some ominous bass build-up, courtesy Backenroth, Hamilton states the theme in his trademark dark, breathy tone, giving the bridge to pianist Lundgren. Then it’s a nearly seven-minute exploration of the variation possibilities, including some bop-tinged choruses by Lundgren before Backenroth gets out his bow and channels his inner Paul Chambers.

Digging Further

WHAT’S MOST REMARKABLE about Jonathan Ward’s Excavated Shellac collection – a project he began on his website and which now has been issued as a four-CD, 100-track collection by Dust-to-Digital – is the familiarity of the music. Mind you, this is typically lo-fi material, recorded and pressed in countries untroubled by pop-market best-seller lists. Which means that the familiarity is scant to nil. Yet these songs were somebody’s favorites, and they’ll soon be yours.

The recordings have stories to tell, and, as an extra layer, Ward’s excellent liner notes tell fascinating stories about the recordings. The set kicks off with Reuben Caluza’s Double Quartet, a South African ensemble that was recorded in London in 1930, which Ward describes as “(a) sublime combination of traditional South African choral song, ragtime piano, and American-influenced minstrelsy ... from one of the first substantial sessions of black South African music ever recorded to disc.” Even more remarkably, considering the repression building in that country at the time, it’s a protest song, penned by Caluza, complaining of the brutality of the white South African police force.

From there we travel to central Mexico for Huasteco music, thence to Okinawa for a 1957 harvest song. Most of the songs have translated lyrics; all bear study for the internationally appropriate poetry and passions. Mozambique was still a Portuguese colony in 1953, when “O Ta Nikona” (“Come, I’m Available”) was recorded, a courtship song celebrating the accompanying music.

There in Black & White

MOSAIC RECORDS’ NEW COLLECTION of jazz sessions from the Black & White label nominally covers 1942-49, but a couple of Petrillo-led musicians-union strikes shut down so much recording activity that the real date range is 1944-47. Chronologically, it’s not a wide span. Musically, it was a time of amazing growth and changes in jazz styles, and this eleven-disc set charts those changes on two coasts (and a little in-between) featuring well-known players and should-have-been stars.

Black & White was founded in Brooklyn in 1942 but soon moved to Los Angeles as changes in ownership shifted its base. It also became a label that moved far beyond the precincts of jazz, listing hillbilly, novelty, polkas, spiritual, semi-classical, and even children's records among its offerings.

Part of the challenge was moot: the label already issued the work of T-Bone Walker, Black & White's biggest star, in 1990. Here we get the rest of it, on 11 richly populated CDs. The rest of it, that is, as chosen by Mosaic producer Scott Wenzel, who, in the detailed accompanying booklet, notes the difficulties he faced “since many sides fall in a grey area between pop vocals backed by jazz musicians (in a strictly accompaniment role) and those sessions in a rhythm and blues context.” With no single artist to focus on, they had to hand-pick their way through a huge amount of material, and then see if they could even find a copy of each record selected.

USDA Lays an Egg

IN AUGUST 2022, the US Department of Agriculture released a new draft rule which they insist will bring organic egg and livestock companies into stricter compliance with the rules while assuring a level playing field for competitors.

Mark Kastel, co-founder and executive director of Wisconsin-based advocacy group Organic Eye, cries foul. And he has a history with this process. At a recent press conference, he said, “When we lobbied Congress to pass the Organic Foods Production Act as part of the 1990 Farm Bill, the USDA testified against the bill. They didn’t want any part of regulating organics. What we had envisioned as a unique public-private partnership has devolved into an adversarial relationship and it has been this way during every administration since the laws passed, Republican and Democrat.”

Mark Kastel

Looking at organic egg production, the majority takes place on commercial operations – commonly with 20,000-30,000 birds per building – and with some of the largest operating certified organic houses with as many as 200,000 chickens per building and over a million birds on individual “farms.” Alternative sources are the family-scale farms.

As Kastel notes, “The big shots at Bayer, Monsanto, and Syngenta don’t really like organics and their – I don’t want to say minions, but their partners at the USDA have created a hostile situation. At first, corporate agribusiness attacked organics. Then they bought organics, bought most of the major brands, and they produce most of the ‘organic’ eggs.”

The Social Life of the Newt

Guest Blogger Dept.: As we near the end of summer, let’s remind ourselves that this year’s disastrous attempts at muscling into what passes for the Smart Set in our various communities, with those starry-eyed hopes of love attached, are put to shame by our slithery friends, as described below by Robert Benchley.

                                                                                       

IT IS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN that the newt, although one of the smallest of our North American animals, has an extremely happy home-life. It is just one of those facts which never get bruited about.

Prof. Otto Strudlehoff

I first became interested in the social phenomena of newt life early in the spring of 1913, shortly after I had finished my researches in sexual differentiation among amœba. Since that time I have practically lived among newts, jotting down observations, making lantern-slides, watching them in their work and in their play (and you may rest assured that the little rogues have their play—as who does not?) until, from much lying in a research posture on my stomach, over the inclosure in which they were confined, I found myself developing what I feared might be rudimentary creepers. And so, late this autumn, I stood erect and walked into my house, where I immediately set about the compilation of the notes I had made.

So much for the non-technical introduction. The remainder of this article bids fair to be fairly scientific.

In studying the more intimate phases of newt life, one is chiefly impressed with the methods by means of which the males force their attentions upon the females, with matrimony as an object. For the newt is, after all, only a newt, and has his weaknesses just as any of the rest of us. And I, for one, would not have it different. There is little enough fun in the world as it is.

The Threat of Perfection

From the Classical Vault Dept.: I’m guessing that Julia Fischer is now priced out of the range of small-city chamber-music programs, so I hang on to the treasured memory of the three performances of hers I saw at Schenectady’s Union College. (And here’s a link to my reviews of the other two.)

                                                                                              

I HEARD VIOLINIST JULIA FISCHER play one wrong note – and only one – during her recital last week at Union College’s Memorial Chapel. It was during a busy section of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 1, and it was a small and unremarkable moment. Nevertheless, it should suffice to satisfy George Bernard Shaw’s advice to the young Jascha Heifetz, in 1920, that he should play one wrong note every night before going to bed to appease a jealous god.

Julia Fischer and Milana Chernyavska

Fischer’s playing is similarly faultless. She is daunted by no technical difficulty; her interpretive depth – she’s only 26! – is similarly astonishing. Chief among the many recordings she has issued is a version of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, the most interpretively forbidding works in the repertory, that displays a sense of heartbreak and nuance far beyond her years.

For her third Union College Concert Series appearance, with her equally amazing pianist Milana Chernyavska, Fischer performed four sonatas that complemented one another beautifully.

Prokofiev’s classical-era roots resonated nicely with the Mozart and Beethoven sonatas flanking his piece; Bohuslav Martinů’s Sonata No. 3, which concluded the concert, is like the Prokofiev on steroids.

Cuisine of the Sun

From the Food Vault Dept.: To have chef Roger Vergé visit Albany in 1987 was a Very Big Deal. I was already a fan by way of his book Cuisine of the South of France, and was delighted to cover that visit in the piece below. As you’ll notice, I also got to taste some excellent food and wine into the bargain.

                                                                                                 

WHEN ROGER VERGÉ was five years old, his aunt Celestine bought him a small bench so that he could see over the top of the kitchen counter. It’s a view – and a point of view – that stayed with him for the next half-century.

Roger Vergé

Vergé – one of the very few chefs with a three-star rating from France’s prestigious Michelin guide – was at the Desmond Americana Saturday to introduce a new line of wine that bears his name, an occasion honored with a dinner by the local chapter of the Chaine des Rotisseurs.

“It is very important to have kids in the kitchen,” says Vergé, who cites tales of his own children’s cookery. “My daughter was eight and we were preparing some dessert tarts. I watched as she filled a tart with honey and then sprinkled sugar on top. ‘Why did you do that?’ I asked her. ‘How else are you going to cook the sugar?’ she said.”

He calls his cooking “Cuisine of the Sun.” He emphasizes freshness and creative seasoning. “I like to cook with herbs,” be explains, “and it is very important to have a mixture of fresh vegetables on the table, too. These are all sun products.” At his restaurant in France, Le Moulin de Mougins, he offers a menu not only crafted around what’s available and fresh any given day, but one that also stresses a harmonious blend of food and wine.

Not-So-North of the Border

A MOLCAJETE IS A THREE-LEGGED BOWL, traditionally made of basalt, which has been used as a mortar for food-grinding for thousands of years in Mesoamerican cultures. Because it retains heat for a very long time, it’s also used for food presentation, and you’ll find it as the centerpiece of a spectacular entrée at Greenane Farms in Meredith, NY.

Your molcajete arrives bubbling, earning its nickname of “volcano.” Ringed around its edge are strips of cactus and cheese, next to green onions, Mexican rice, and, hidden in the salsa verde, slices of very hot potatoes. Order the Volcan Vegetariano ($23) and there’s also grilled tofu in the mix, while the Volcan de Pollo ($25) features strips of chicken and a link of homemade chorizo.

At a recent visit, I ordered the Volcan de Res ($29), so the lip of my steaming molcajete sported strips of grilled Angus beef, still red in the center even as the heat kicked in to brown them some more. There’s a fresh, grassy flavor to pasture-raised beef that the elders among us still remember as the way beef is supposed to taste, and it becomes the joyous centerpiece of an array of complementary flavors, from the smoky bite of the chorizo to the mellow ease of those cactus strips.

Not only will you get one of the finest Mexican-cuisine meals you’ve ever enjoyed when you dine at Greenane Farms, but you’ll also have the satisfaction of knowing you’re dining on their own pasture-raised meats. This has been a passion of farm owner Patrick Rider – whose family has been in the area for eight generations – since he purchased the property in 2003. Now he owns 400 acres and leases over a thousand more, on which he raises 250 head of grass-fed Angus cattle as well as pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, and more.

Sardonic Salute

From the Classical Vault Dept.: William Bolcom’s Piano Concerto No. 2 was premiered in April of this year, by Igor Levit and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra conducted by Elim Chan. “Don’t bother asking whether the premiere took place in the United States,” wrote Seth Colter Walls in the New York Times, “where major presentations of music by Bolcom, an American, have fallen out of fashion. Instead, this new concerto was presented in Germany, at the Heidelberger Frühling Festival.” It wasn’t always that way. I first heard Bolcom’s first piano concerto in Saratoga in 1987, when Bolcom was composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Those days are long, long gone. Here’s my review of the evening.

                                                                                         

WILLIAM BOLCOM’S PIANO CONCERTO, performed Friday night by soloist Emanuel Ax with the Philadelphia Orchestra, is a piece calculated to amuse and to offend. The last of a series of works by Bolcom performed at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center to honor him as composer-in-residence, it’s a piece you can point to and shout, “There! That’s a truly American work!”

William Bolcom
Photo by Peter Smith

Written in 1976, it reflects Bolcom’s concern with the bicentennial mania growing throughout the country, and manages to be critical and celebratory at the same time.

He is one of the very few contemporary American composers able to speak a native musical language without sounding condescending, which is in itself very refreshing and certainly prompts some nationalistic pride in the listening.

The work also closely examines the role of the piano in the concerto form, experimenting with different angles and settings. At times it was the aural equivalent of that old optical illusion of a drawing of a cube that points towards or away from you: Was the pianist dominating the orchestra or vice-versa? Coming as this piece did right after a Mozart concerto (No. 25 in C Major), it offered a stunning contrast to Mozart’s antique sweetness. Listening to the older work was an exercise in nostalgia; Bolcom’s concerto made a statement about our country, our century, and us as listeners.

Listening to the Land

AGRICULTURE IS NOW INEXTRICABLY LINKED TO CLIMATE CHANGE. The evidence is incontrovertible; the damage is already taking place. As Laura Lengnick observes in the opening pages of her updated and expanded book Resilient Agriculture, “Climate change is happening now. Climate change is changing everything.”

The first version of her book was written seven years ago, which turns out to be an eternity where climate effects are concerned. She profiled over two dozen farms in the U.S. that were coping not only with climate change but also with the transition of corporate agriculture to a style that’s more environmentally sound. In the new book you’ll find the stories of even more farmers and ranchers pursuing sustainable practices.

Even before she began researching the book, Lengnick worked on a USDA report recommending ways to cope with the new challenges of agriculture. It sounded an alarm many were unhappy to hear. But dramatic changes in the recent past persuaded her to re-interview original subjects, talk to even more, and add more climate-specific information. As she puts it, “It is difficult to grasp the reality of these times. That the weather changes we’ve experienced in the last decade are going to continue to grow more damaging. That the weather is not going to settle down into some new normal. It isn’t easy to fully understand the fact that spring and fall weather will continue to grow more variable, that both flooding rains and drought will grow more intense and will happen more often, and that record-breaking weather will become common. It’s even harder to realize what this means for the people who feed us.”

In Search of Salvation

MATTERS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH inform the two one-act operas comprising “Double Bill” at the Glimmerglass Festival, productions that show how effectively a small cast, a versatile set, and a virtuoso orchestra can convey the emotionally fraught content of these pieces.

Michael Mayes and Jacquelyn Matava
Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

“Taking up Serpents” is rooted in a rural charismatic church in Alabama, from which 25-year-old Kayla (Mary-Hollis Hundley) has fled. She's now working at a Save Mart drug store, where she gets the news that her preacher father has been bitten by a snake, perhaps fatally. This is her chance to say goodbye.

The relationship was too complicated for an easy farewell, as we learn in flashback scenes where the younger Kayla (a very effective Carly R. Carillo in a non-singing role) learns, from her father's aggressive efforts to impart fearlessness, to be anything but. As Daddy, Michael Mayes is appropriately flamboyant, sporting a big voice and shaking with frightening ecstasy in his shiny suit as he exhorts his congregants.

Although his wife, Nelda (Jacquelyn Matava) has learned to submit to his bullying, Kayla has rebelled. But her rebellion is emotionally incomplete, as the flashbacks reveal. This is where the tools of opera are most effective. Jerre Dye’s libretto is drawn from his own experience growing up amongst rural holy rollers, and offers a clear-eyed view of the consequences of that kind of cultish inculcation, where love becomes a bargaining unit.

Rossini Afloat

THE IDEA OF A JUKEBOX OPERA using Rossini’s music is a terrific one – so good, in fact, that the world-premiere production of Tenor Overboard at the Glimmerglass Festival left me wishing for more. I don’t think the piece went at all far enough in exploring the possibilities, yet it’s a good-enough production that it may seem sufficient to many.

Fran Daniel Laucerica as Dante, Jasmine
Habersham as Mimi, Reilly Nelson
as Gianna and Armando Contreras
as Luca. Photo: Karli Cadel/
The Glimmerglass Festival

The conceit is to get a handful of quarrelsome characters aboard a steamship bound for Italy, so that they may sort their differences in this classically confined space. Thus daughters Gianna (Reilly Nelson) and Mimi (Jasmine Habersham) are fleeing their overbearing father, Petronio (Stefano de Peppo) and end up winning places in a vocal quartet suddenly (and way too conveniently) shy a pair of members.

We began with a rousing version of the overture from La scala di seta, proving again that music director Joseph Colaneri and the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra are potent forces, sending a rich, focused sound into the acoustically benevolent Alice Busch Opera Theater – and an especially great treat after last season’s lawn performances with piped-in music.

As an opera recital, Tenor Overboard succeeds brilliantly. Giving singers with excellent voices a best-of menu of Rossini arias and ensemble pieces all but guarantees a lovely experience. But there were two shows going on here, each in a different language. The plot, such as it was, was performed in English; the musical portions switched to Italian. Thus, as we learn of Petronio’s frustration with his independence-seeking daughters, he sings an aria (“Il lamento di Petronio”) drawn from the Thieving Magpie’s “M’affretto di mandarvi i contrassegni,” but re-lyricked for the occasion.

An Experiment With Policeman Hogan

Guest Blogger Dept.: Stephen Leacock insists that he’s been overlooked. No longer shall I allow this indignity to continue, so here’s one of his Literary Lapses, drawn from his first collection of essays. It also ties in with one of my most-consulted blog pieces, wherein I described my brush with noted graphologist Carlos Pedregal.

                                                                                          

MR. SCALPER SITS WRITING in the reporters’ room of The Daily Eclipse. The paper has gone to press and he is alone; a wayward talented gentleman, this Mr. Scalper, and employed by The Eclipse as a delineator of character from handwriting. Any subscriber who forwards a specimen of his handwriting is treated to a prompt analysis of his character from Mr. Scalper’s facile pen. The literary genius has a little pile of correspondence beside him, and is engaged in the practice of his art. 

Outside the night is dark and rainy. The clock on the City Hall marks the hour of two. In front of the newspaper office Policeman Hogan walks drearily up and down his beat. The damp misery of Hogan is intense. A belated gentleman in clerical attire, returning home from a bed of sickness, gives him a side-look of timid pity and shivers past. Hogan follows the retreating figure with his eye; then draws forth a notebook and sits down on the steps of The Eclipse building to write in the light of the gas lamp. Gentlemen of nocturnal habits have often wondered what it is that Policeman Hogan and his brethren write in their little books. Here are the words that are fashioned by the big fist of the policeman:

“Two o’clock. All is well. There is a light in Mr. Scalper’s room above. The night is very wet and I am unhappy and cannot sleep—my fourth night of insomnia. Suspicious-looking individual just passed. Alas, how melancholy is my life! Will the dawn never break! Oh, moist, moist stone.”

Summer Sides

From the Food Vault: It’s outdoor dining weather, and Metroland magazine used to devote an annual issue to the topic, wheedling ad dollars from businesses with any possible association to that topic. Here’s my contribution to a 2000 issue.

                                                                                            

OUTDOOR DINING AT MY HOUSE invariably revolves around the grill, but we don't limit our party meals to the traditional menus of chicken and ribs, burgers and dogs. Sometimes the sides can steal the show.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Good side dishes require preparation. Anyone can slop mayo onto a mound of macaroni and call it salad, but why not enjoy a dish that lights up the palate? Here's the first tip: Make your own mayonnaise. There's no comparison between homemade and store-bought.

At heart, it's an oil and water emulsion, the water derived from an egg yolk, and lemon juice or vinegar. The egg yolk is also the emulsifier, binding the oil and water. And what your mayonnaise will include, unlike commercial types, is good olive oil (or, at the least, canola oil – try to stick with a monounsaturated oil, which is better for your health).

Food processor mayo is a dream to make. You drop in ingredients, whirr, and it's done. I get my eggs from a private source, and don't worry about salmonella; if you're concerned, do the first part of this over a stove to get the yolk mixture to a salmonella-killing 160 degrees for one minute.

Why Your Food Ate That Stuff

From the Very Soil Dept.: This is a companion piece to my review of What Your Food Ate, the incredibly compelling new book by David Montgomery and Anne Biklé, a piece you can read here. Then come back to this interview for more insight into their thoughts and processes.

                                                                                                   

What Your Food Ate, the new book by David Montgomery and Anne Biklé, is so self-explanatory that there’s not much left to say to them, aside from “You must have put a hell of a lot of work into this” and “Do you think it’ll help?” But I caught up with the busy authors, who are married, by phone at their Seattle-area home, and spent a pleasant half-hour in conversation.

David Montgomery and Anne Biklé

“It’s an inspirational and depressing book,” I suggested, noting that I had reviewed their earlier books, The Hidden Half of Nature and Growing a Revolution, I was somewhat prepared for the journey from deep inside the soil to deep inside your body, following the path of vital micronutrients. But this is a carefully reasoned study, supported by source material that spills from the back of the back over to the book’s website.

“We read a ton of stuff, literally,” says David. “There are about a thousand articles that were source material. And for the final version of the book, we decided to put that material online. There was a lot of homework that went into this. I think you can understand why. In contrast to the other two books you mentioned, we believed that this book really had to be underpinned with documentation of how we arrived at these ideas and how arrived at what we're saying. Because the ideas and the information in this book isn’t going to be flattering to everybody.” Could he be referring to the big chemical fertilizer companies. David laughs. “I’m not sure they’re gonna love this book.”

The Pit of Deliciousness

From the Food Vault Dept.: Things have been getting a little too healthy around here, so here’s a review I wrote in 2013 about a barbecue joint in nearby Cohoes. I revisited the place a few times – it really was the best in the area – but I’m saddened that it closed earlier this year.

                                                                                                    

TRANSPLANTED TEXAN DAVID FRAZIER has seen a considerable amount of change where barbecue is concerned. He moved to the Capital Region in 1992, when grilled meat was incorrectly termed barbecue.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

I last wrote about him in 1995, when he had a joint on Colvin Ave. and was trying to bring true religion to the area masses. “Good barbecue is more than just a well-wrought recipe,” I wrote back then. “It’s a sociological phenomenon.” The challenge has eased considerably since then as a succession of eateries have fired up the smokers and offered varying shades of barbecue, and Frazier particularly welcomed the arrival of Dinosaur BBQ in Troy two years ago.

“Business has gone way up since they opened,” he says, noting also that he was helped by his move three years ago from downtown Cohoes to a larger, easy-to-find building just off 787.

Frazier grew up in Texas and thus was nicknamed “Tex,” and got a masters in marketing from University of Texas. But barbecue was a way of life down there that he wasn’t prepared to leave behind.

What’s Eating You Is What You’re Eating

WHAT YOUR FOOD ATE is the startlingly portentous title of a new study by the married team of David Montgomery and Anne Biklé, a book that takes a remarkably thorough look at how and why humans interact with food and how that food interacts with other substances. Folk wisdom declares that the dirt you inadvertently consume serves to keep you healthier; this book reveals that there’s more truth in that than you might suspect.

Except that you don’t have to eat dirt to get those benefits – you just have to eat minimally processed food that has been allowed to grow in a healthy, natural environment. Trouble is, that food is becoming ever more difficult to find.

Montgomery, who is a professor of Geomorphology, and Biklé, a biologist, have covered these topics in their previous books, The Hidden Half of Nature, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back To Life, each of which has been reviewed on this site. But their new book not only weaves together a more complete overview of those topics, it also provides sound scientific study to support their conclusions, enough, I hope, to persuade those who might still be skeptical about the conclusions found herein.

The conclusions are simple. And profound. Our bodies have an innate nutritional wisdom. We figured out, through the trial-and-error that informs evolution, what kind of diet is needed to maintain health and fight disease. We began farming and penning animals ten thousand years ago and our bodies adapted to the dietary changes. Now, in this most modern of modern ages, we’re more likely to suffer from micronutrient malnutrition and resultant disease.

Rags Are Riches

WILLIAM BOLCOM’S INTEREST IN RAGTIME began in 1967, when he learned of a vanished ragtime opera by Scott Joplin – a name he’d never heard – and discovered that Queens College associate Rudi Blesch had a vocal score of it. Blesch was co-author of They All Played Ragtime, the definitive book on the topic, and soon Bolcom was learning and performing the ragtime repertory. I think we can credit him with planting the seed that grew into the ragtime revival: he played some Joplin for Joshua Rifkin, who went on to record excellent interpretations of Joplin rags on Nonesuch LPs. The records sold well, and when film director George Roy Hill heard one of them, he decided to use Joplin’s music in the “The Sting” in 1973. The world became ragtime-suffused, to the point where I saw Benny Goodman mock “The Entertainer” at a late-‘70s Carnegie Hall concert.

Even as he was performing classic ragtime pieces, Bolcom began writing his own take on the genre, joining a number of fellow composers in the late ’60s to renew the literature of this engaging form. At first, he pieces were Joplin-like, but very soon he branched out into more Bolcom-esque works.

A somewhat heavy-handed recording of the then-complete Bolcom rags played by John Murphy came out in 1998; Spencer Myer released a single-disc collection of 16 Bolcom rags in 2017, and it’s a fine recording, but Marc-André Hamelin has just released a two-CD set that not only gives you everything Bolcom considers a rag but also presents them in a thoroughly idiomatic way. Hamelin sounds like he’s channeling Joplin by way of Bolcom, a testament to the skill both of composer and performer.

The 27 pieces included on these discs were written between 1968 and 2015, the majority of them before 1972. “Incineratorag,” one of the earliest, could pass for a 1902 piece except for some of the unusual (for that time) harmonies. In keeping with Joplin’s own admonitions, the sheet music for this one is headed, “For Heaven’s sake, not too fast!”

I’ve Got a Secret

RUSS WALTER’S BUSINESS MODEL probably would send an economics consultant screaming out of the room. Walter has been writing and selling The Secret Guide to Computers for 50 years, revising it frequently to keep up with changing technology. But he doesn’t sell it through the usual outlets – he sells it himself. And he gives exponential discounts when you buy multiple copies, and lets go of earlier editions for a song. And he offers free tech support. Like the big companies, it’s available any time of the day or night; unlike them, he takes the calls himself.

The book itself is packed with text, laid out on a two-column page with little of the usual relief for the eye. But you’ll want it by your computer or your bedside or somewhere very convenient. Let me tell you how invaluable this book is.

I got pushed into the world of personal computers in 1985. The magazine I was writing for no longer wished to transcript typescript, so the publisher worked up a deal to get his staff and writers a discount on the purchase of an Epson machine running the latest iteration of the Intel 8088 chip and offering two 5 1/4-inch floppy disk drives. If this means nothing to you, you’re in good company. It meant nothing to me at the time, and, because the damn thing just sat there blinking its stupid green “A:” prompt, I decided to get rid of it.

“Other people have learned to use these things,” my wife observed. “Why can’t you?” With my intelligence thus impugned, I sought help. From books, my usual educational conduit, and computer-oriented magazines that lately had been appearing on the newsstands. In one such magazine, I read a review of The Secret Guide to Computers, a review noting that Walter sold the book himself, alongside offering free tech support by phone any time of the day or night. I called and ordered the book.

The Fable of Paducah’s Favorite Comedians and the Mildewed Stunt

 Guest Blogger Dept.: It’s George Ade again, a regular visitor to these e-pages, with another fable in slang. It describes details of the vaudeville era, and names some of its stars. I’ll save you the trouble of looking them up: Francis Wilson was a singer and comedian who started in minstrel shows. He was founding president of Actors Equity. Nat Goodwin moved between stage shows and vaudeville, and played Fagin in a 1912 film of “Oliver Twist.” British-born Richard Mansfield was renowned for his Shakespeare performances, and his too-convincing portrayal of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” in 1888 led people to suspect he could be Jack the Ripper. And a burgoo picnic remains a popular Kentucky outing, in which a free-form stew is the culinary center of the event.

                                                                                             

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a Specialty Team doing Seventeen Minutes. The Props used in the Act included a Hatchet, a Brick, a Seltzer Bottle, two inflated Bladders and a Slap-Stick. The Name of the Team was Zoroaster and Zendavesta.

These two Troupers began their Professional Career with a Road Circus, working on Canvas in the Morning, and then doing a Refined Knockabout in the Grand Concert or Afterpiece taking place in the Main Arena immediately after the big Show is over.

When each of them could Kick Himself in the Eye and Slattery had pickled his Face so that Stebbins could walk on it, they decided that they were too good to show under a Round Top, so they became Artists. They wanted a Swell Name for the Team, so the Side-Show Announcer, who was something of a Kidder and had attended a Unitarian College, gave them Zoroaster and Zendavesta. They were Stuck on it, and had a Job Printer do some Cards for them.

By utilizing two of Pat Rooney’s Songs and stealing a few Gags, they put together Seventeen Minutes and began to play Dates and Combinations.

Zoroaster bought a Cane with a Silver Dog’s Head on it, and Zendavesta had a Watch Charm that pulled the Buttonholes out of his Vest.

57 Channels and Nothin’ On

From the End of Humanity As We Know It Vault: Bill McKibben is best known for his prophetic and tireless fight to promote climate awareness, but he also explored an area close to my heart: television. Specifically, the toxic nature of the medium, which he and I discussed in 1992 to welcome the publication of his book The Age of Missing Information.

                                                                                          

A CHILLY MIST shrouds the tops of the mountains surrounding Bill McKibben's Warren County home. As is true of most large old rural houses, his has a front door as well as a door that everybody uses. That one’s around the back.

Bill McKibben

Tall and wiry, with close-cropped hair and an high forehead, he looks like any area farmer. Boots, jeans and a plaid flannel shirt added a touch of North Country ease. “Didn’t expect it to be so cold out today,” he says. “I’m sorry you can’t see the mountains. Come on in and have some soup with me.”

McKibben, once a staff writer for The New Yorker who also ran a small homeless shelter in Manhattan, has now spent several years in what might seem like rural seclusion. But it was logical and necessary choice, explained in his books The End of Nature and, just recently, The Age of Missing Information.

“I had to do this experiment,” he explains, “and see what came of it. I was hoping for a book, but I had very few preconceptions, fewer than usual.” The experiment placed him in front of a television set for several months, auditing over a thousand hours of television programming – everything that was available on each of the hundred cable stations in Fairfax, Virginia, during the 24 hours of May 3, 1990.

In the Soup

STUNG WITH AN ATTACK of middle-class guilt, Stephen Henderson sought to expiate by helping to cook meals at a variety of soup kitchens around the world. Bringing a home-gourmet sensibility to these excursions, when placed in charge he designed menus not necessarily conducive to catering or soup-kitchen tastes, so his home-cooking-based efforts tended to throw him into high-pressure on-the-job training. But as his catering-kitchen skills grew, so did his self-awareness. And he tells his stories so endearingly that The 24-Hour Soup Kitchen will win your heart. It’s an entertaining and enlightening book.

The genesis is straightforward enough. Henderson is a travel writer who likes to cook. He’s living well enough to acquire an aging co-op in New York City. It needs a new kitchen. So he buys a new stove, a top-of-the-line Lacanche. He’s too tasteful to mention a price, but those ranges run at least $10,000 today. Henderson visits the manufacturing facility in France, and, while dining with its director, learns about Alexis Soyer, a famous chef during the 19th century, a man renowned both for his lavish way of life and his invention of the soup-kitchen concept.

It’s a concept that seems more necessary than ever, and Soyer’s life (and lingering Lacanche guilt) inspired him to travel around the world to a variety of soup kitchens, large and small, and learn about them by working at them.

Henderson’s odyssey begins at Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, a massive Sikh temple in Delhi that grew from a 17th-century bungalow to the large, ornate structure you’ll find today. He was there to help with langar, a tradition among Sufi Muslims that offers food, served in a communal dining area, to anyone of any religion who wishes to partake. Gurdwara Bangla Sahib feeds about 20,000 people a day, 600 at a time, and those who work or eat there are required to do so barefoot. Biswajit Singh, the only paid employee at the kitchen, organizes the prep and cooking with no foreknowledge of the supplies he’d be working with – they are donations that arrive based on the whim of the benefactor, such as a flatbed truck loaded with cauliflower.

A Bridge Not Far Enough

From the Theater Vault Dept.: After seeing an incredible performance by Michael Fischetti in “Glengarry Glen Ross” at Capital Rep the season before, I was eager to see what he’d do with the challenging lead in “A View from the Bridge.” He did excellently, but the rest of the production seemed a little limp, almost as if the production team wasn’t prepared to fully commit to the play’s place and time. Here’s what I wrote about it, taking us back to a chilly night in 1987.

                                                                                                    

THE BRIDGE IN QUESTION is one of those gloriously metaphorical items that spans the literal and metaphysical: it joins boroughs, countries; it joins aspects of law and aspects of morality.

Arthur Miller wrote “A View from the Bridge” in 1955 as a one-acter and expanded it when it proved successful. As with so much of the playwright's work, there is a strong central character in the process of conflict and self-discovery who nevertheless is doomed.

Michael Fischetti and Sully Boyer

With Eddie Carbone, it is a conflict between loyalty and sexual feeling that brings him down. He is attracted to his just-come-of-age niece; he also is attracted to the man she wants to marry.

This is in Brooklyn of the late '40s, so Eddie, a longshoreman, doesn't have a very sophisticated language with which to express his varied feelings, never mind that he's dealing with such great taboos.

Such subjects are now the stuff of television soap operas, so today there isn’t a lot of shock value in Eddie’s dilemma. What keeps a production of “Bridge” interesting are rich portraits of Eddie, his friends and family.

Jazzing the Menu

From the Food Vault Dept.: It’s difficult to tell what’s going on at Schenectady’s Van Dyck Restaurant these days. It turned into the Mad Jack Brewing Co. a few years ago, and seems to have weathered Covid in that guise, but the only menu offerings on the website are a few pizzas and, even though its Facebook page sports the famous “Great Day in Harlem” photograph, there hasn’t been any significant jazz near the place in many years. Here’s one of five reviews I wrote of the place over the years, this one from 25 years ago. There’s a more current one, from 2009, that I’ll post in the weeks to come.

                                                                                          

BESIDES BEING A CHARMING BUILDING in Schenectady’s Stockade area, the Van Dyck has also hosted appearances by legendary jazz musicians. During my own time in Schenectady, I’ve seen Earl Hines and Red Norvo at the club, among many others. It was sad to see the business close a few years ago, but the decline had been steady and apparent. With a fresh emphasis on food, a new brewery component, and extensive remodeling, the restaurant reopened under new ownership in late March.

One of the shrewdest moves was to lure chef Dimitri Cruz from Siro’s, the seasonal Saratoga gourmet restaurant. Cruz, a Round Lake native, brings a wealth of commendable experience to the job, with a special love of Asian cookery learned during a stint at Manhattan’s Noho Star restaurant.

Other good ideas include a refurbished bar twice the size of the old one, yet still comfortable and intimate, and moving the jazz room to the second floor. The lineup of players, including upcoming appearances by Marian McPartland and Mose Allison, also gives the reassuring message that music is being taken seriously here again.

A Re-Sounding Success

From the Tech Vault Dept.: There can’t possibly be a more technologically dated piece in my files than this one. Here I am, in 1995, telling you how to hook up your computer’s audio output to your home stereo system. Who does that any more? As a matter of fact, I do. If there’s an indignity involved, it’s the horrific rewrite some subeditor put my piece through, so I’m satisfying my still-bruised ego by posting it here in its original form. (Photos by John Popplewell.)

                                                                                        

MY IDEA OF AUDIO HELL is the multimedia section of any computer show. There’s something about the output of all those tiny, tinny speakers that makes my back teeth think of fingernails on a chalkboard. Because most of those loudspeakers sound terrible. When it comes to any multimedia enterprise – I’m thinking especially of television now – audio tends to get short-shrifted. A few manufacturers are offering terrific computer speakers, but they’re not cheap. And chances are that right now you’re listening to a possible solution to the computer audio problem.

Let’s say that you recently picked up a multimedia kit for your computer. Which means you probably did what I did: shopped around for the right CD-ROM player and sound card combo, and then went along with whatever speakers were thrown in. Try this simple test: Heft one of the speakers in your hand. If it weighs about the same as this magazine, don’t look for your audiophile friends to swoon at the sound of it..

There are alternatives at hand. First and easiest is a pair of headphones. They sound better than those cheap speakers, and they bother nobody else. But headphones will always be a secondary technique, because nothing takes the place of being able to crank that music! You’ve got a good stereo system playing – so route the sound from that sound card into your stereo and enjoy the assault of real amplifier muscle. Or fire up a round of Doom and enjoy the assault.

Our Hungry Hera

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

 

I’ll Give You a Camera

I’VE NEVER LIKED having my picture taken. Of course, it’s required when pursuing and promoting entertainment gigs, but I’ve learned to endure it much the same way as I endure dental work. When I was five years old, my family lived in the northern New Jersey town of Glen Rock in what seemed to be a large house on South Maple Avenue. It turned out that Duncan Butler, our next-door neighbor had a photography studio in town, where my younger brother and I had our portraits taken, attired in little-boy suits and 60s-thin bow ties. Even – or perhaps especially – at that age, I was embarrassed by my visage.

I believe that the middle photo on the right
is a Dunc Butler shot. There are more in
the LP set's booklet, which I no longer own.

All of this I mentioned in a piece I posted here a decade ago, and it appears to be the only mention you’ll internet-find when searching for the photographer. (You can also find a few credits here at discogs.com, but they don’t show up on general searches.) As a result of that blog post, I recently heard from a man who, while researching writer-composer Paul Bowles, came across a Discogs listing for a ten-inch Atlantic LP titled “Haiti Dances,” for which Bowles wrote liner notes. And Butler is credited for the cover photo. Imagine the poor researcher’s bafflement when all he could discover was that old blog post of mine! He sent me a message, and I told him the rest of the story, which I’ll now tell you.

In my teens, I liberated myself away from the pop-music hits and discovered the wonders of classical and jazz, among other poorly named styles, and began obsessively collecting records. Records, mind you, those 12 by 12-inch long-playing marvels that captured wonderful music in their grooves and offered an education on their rear covers.

The Tariff Unmasked

It’s the Taxman Dept.: As you struggle to meet the IRS deadline today (actually, the deadline is next Monday, but today’s date has a mystical ethos about it), consider the hidden taxes we must pay, particularly the result of tariffs imposed on imported goods. When Robert Benchley wrote the piece below in 1922, the country was still reeling from the effects of World War I, during which President Wilson lowered or eliminated many tariffs, even while creating the Federal Reserve in order to centralize banking. His tariff-lowering Underwood-Simmons Act also re-established the federal income tax. By 1919, the Republicans had regained control of the House and Senate, and made news with their Emergency Tariff of 1921. No doubt this was on Benchley’s mind when he penned this essay. Still to come from the Republicans was the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which helped worsen the Great Depression. Just thought you’d like to know.

                                                                                           

LET US GET THIS TARIFF THING cleared up, once and for all. An explanation is due the American people, and obviously this is the place to make it.

Viewing the whole thing, schedule by schedule, we find it indefensible. In Schedule A alone the list of necessities on which the tax is to be raised includes Persian berries, extract of nutgalls and isinglass. Take isinglass alone. With prices shooting up in this market, what is to become of our picture post-cards? Where once for a nickel you could get a picture of the Woolworth Building ablaze with lights with the sun setting and the moon rising in the background, under the proposed tariff it will easily set you back fifteen cents. This is all very well for the rich who can get their picture post-cards at wholesale, but how are the poor to get their art?