RevJATB's Xanga

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 21:14:09 GMT

Attention Know Tea Readers:

I am blowing this fire trap!

Please update your blogrolls, bookmarks, etc.

http://www.knowtea.com

In other words, I've moved. The posts on Xanga are gradually being taken down as they are moved to the new site above. Please come visit the new site.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:07:45 GMT

Ig-nunt!

Just pure D ole IGNUNT!

Can you believe this sign?

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 22:51:42 GMT

Mamma Mia!

No, I'm not blogging about the lavish Broadway musical which features the songs of Swedish supergroup ABBA. I'm not blogging about any lavish Broadway musical, as a matter of fact. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

No, in this case, the Mamma mia! in question is due to the aroma wafting from the kitchen right now. Bolognese sauce. One of the few things I can make "off by heart," as they say. (Who are they? I don't know.)

One substitution, however. For the soffritto I like to use the traditional combination of diced onion, diced celery, and shredded carrots (what the French would call a mirepoix). Alas, no carrots. So instead of the traditional mirepoix I used the "Cajun trinity" of onion, celery, and bell pepper. Carrots would be better. Carrots are sweeter than bell pepper and balance the acidity of the tomatoes better. Ah, well, it's not like I went to the store or anything. I just opened the refrigerator and started to throw things together.

Some people put butter in with the bacon, prosciutto, or pancetta. I like to use EVOO (I said that just to annoy you, pr1ma_d0nna), and since we didn't have pancetta or prosciutto lying around, it was four slices of good ol' Wright Smoked Bacon that got the ball rolling.

Bit o' irony: after I'd rendered the bacon in the olive oil, I was about to add the onion, but I decided it needed a little more salt to make the onions sweat, so I turned to Buster and said, "Would you go to the pantry and get me the kosher salt?"

So if you mix kosher salt and bacon, do they cancel each other out?

Monday, January 16, 2006

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:29:36 GMT

And now a random fact about Mr. T.

I pity the fool who don't click on that link.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 02:27:57 GMT

Kind of Blue

No, that's not how I feel. That's the album by Miles Davis I'm listening to. They used to say that if you want to hear where music will be in ten years, listen to what Miles is doing now. Well, Miles hasn't been with us for some time, but his music is still incredibly forward-thinking.

A lot of people will probably tell you that if you've never listened to jazz before, starting with Miles Davis would be too much of a shock to the system. Some think you should start with earlier stuff, such as early Louis Armstrong, and progress from there. I think beginning your jazz listening experience with Louis Armstrong is similar to beginning a classical listening journey with Leonin and Perotin (two Medieval composers). With classical music, we usually tell people to pick someone from a later period than that (often Mozart and Beethoven) and then move backward from there (Bach and Handel, Palestrina, Josquin) as well as forward (Brahms, Mahler, Debussy, Stravinsky).

In the same way, I think Miles is a great place to start in listening to jazz, provided you know some basics of American music (and most of us do, even if we don't realize it). For example, you know the structure of a basic 12-bar blues, whether you know you do or not. You hear it in songs as diverse as "Hound Dog" and "Route 66." The 12-bar blues is a foundation for much of 20th century (and 21st century) American music. Knowing what that sounds like, what it feels like, take a listen to "Freddie Freeloader" on Kind of Blue and see how Miles gently plays with the form, taking us where we don't expect to go. Then listen as each of the soloists takes an incredible improvisational journey over this unconventional blues (if one can still call it that). John Coltrane, Cannoball Adderly, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly . . . every musician on this album is absolutely incredible.

Miles introduces modalism into jazz with this album, and thereby broadens the scope of what a musician could do with a solo in a jazz number. Imagine it this way: before Kind of Blue one could either play in black and white or sepia tone (major or minor). After Kind of Blue, a musician had all the colors of the spectrum available to him.

So what is jazz? It's easier to give examples of it than it is to define it. But an attempt at a definition would be: jazz is a uniquely American form of music, birthed in New Orleans through a great amalgam of sources, combining the melodic and harmonic sophistication of European art music (what we call "classical music", but it is much broader than the classical period alone), African rhythms, Gospel, blues, and many other influences. An essential feature of jazz is improvisation. Jazz is improvisational. Without improvization, you don't have jazz. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is a heavily jazz-influenced piece, but it is completely scripted, so strictly speaking it is not jazz. The music of Debussy and Poulenc at many points are very "jazzy", but they are not jazz. Charlie Parker is jazz. James Moody is jazz. McCoy Tyner is jazz.

And, in a more profound way, Miles Davis is jazz. Miles Davis is jazz.

Now, how to listen to jazz. First of all, jazz requires active listening. This is not music that you can just have going on in the background (well, you can, but it's kind of like trying to find a Kandinsky that matches the sofa). Neither is this good "car music". Neither is classical music, for that matter. Engine noise and road noise do not produce an environment that is conducive to listen to music with subtleties or big dynamic contrasts (which both jazz and classical music have). This is music to put on when you can concentrate on listening. And if you've never done that--listened to music for listening's sake--try it: it's a great exercise in attention. Throughout a typical day, we rarely have to focus on something so abstract for so long. It will make you exercise brain "muscles" you never knew you had.

OK, so you've got a quiet room and you've got the CD in. Now what? Typically, you'll first hear a statement of the melody or theme of the piece, sometimes called the "head." Often in jazz this will be a standard (say, something like "Autumn Leaves" or "I'm in the Mood for Love"). With Miles, it usually isn't a standard: it's more often an original composition. Still, listen to the melody and sort of hold it in your mind. After the melody is stated one time through (often by the whole ensemble), listen as each player (or many of the players) in the ensemble takes a turn playing an improvised solo or "ride" on that stated theme. No, you won't hear the melody. But listen to the bass. It will keep you anchored in the harmonic structure of the piece. Then listen as the soloist has a sort of internal conversation between himself and the melody, only you won't hear the melody. You'll only hear the soloist's side of the conversation. Listen to each note he plays as if you were hearing him speak, and you're hanging on his every word. Listen as he explores the harmonic space created by the melody, and even as he pushes the boundaries of that space, as his improvised melodies suggest harmonies which create layers on top of the original melody and harmonies as overlapping fabrics create a moire effect.

Almost inevitably, the last two solos are the bass and the drums. Bass solos in jazz are one of the reasons that jazz is not good car music. In jazz, the bass is a bass, it is not (as many jazz musicians say) "the electric paddle". And a bass is a quiet instrument. A bass solo requires you either to strain to hear it, or to turn up your stereo so loud that when the ensemble comes back in, you suffer hearing loss. The drum solo is a place where a lot of people get lost. Try to count your way through it and see how the drummer lays multiple patterns of rhythm on top of the basic beat of the piece (which he will often keep in the cymbals, while everything else goes far afield). Sometimes the rest of the rhythm section (piano and bass) will keep you abreast of where we are on the map: not always. Just listen, and wonder.

Eventually, everyone will come back in for a final statement of the head, with some kind of coda at the end. Jazz, by its nature as an improvisational art form, is a live medium, so there is typically no "repeat and fade" (and how worn out is that little studio trick by now anyway?).

Give Kind of Blue a listen. After that, check out The Birth of the Cool, Miles Ahead, and Miles Smiles.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 03:11:56 GMT

Appreciable Beauty

There is a great deal of music that I like very much. There is also a great deal of music for which I don't care very much. But I can appreciate it. Probably one of the most important things I learned in college (as a music major) was that there is perceived beauty, and there is appreciable beauty. Even if a piece of music (or, indeed, a composer's entire oevre) doesn't do much for me, nevertheless I can (and should) appreciate the talent, skill, creativity, etc., that went into composing that music and that must go into rehearsing and performing that music. I can appreciate the composer's and the performer's art, even if I don't personally enjoy the work of art in question.

How sad when we assume that if we don't perceive beauty in a work of art (be it music, paintings, sculpture, literature, etc.), then there must be no beauty in it whatsoever. This is not right. How much sadder when we pass these prejudices along to our children. I will never forget one day when our oldest was about three. I was going somehwere in the car with her and I had the radio on. There was a piece by Schoenberg playing. (And not early Schoenberg, such as Transfigured Night. This was fully-formed 12-tone Schoenberg). My little girl, from the back seat, said, "Papa, I like this music!" I said, "Good, sweetheart. I'm glad you like it." I didn't say anything else. Deep inside, I wanted to say, "Why would you like this?", but I didn't. Why pass that prejudice on to her? You see, when I was her age, all I heard about 20th Century music was "oh, it's so dissonant!" It wasn't until I was much older that I learned that there were positive terms to describe the very same sounds that, in my youth, were always dismissed as dissonant. Words like polytonal, quartal, pandiatonic, and serial. Words that indicated that composers weren't writing music this way "so that it would sound ugly." They were enlarging their palette of colors to express things that 19th Century concepts of beauty could not contain. My three-year-old heard something in just such a piece of 20th Century music: in this case, serial (twelve-tone) music. She got it. And she made me listen to it in a different way. In a way that was looking for positive things to appreciate about it, not ways to dismiss it. Now when I hear Schoenberg, I smile, because I think of that moment. I love listening to Schoenberg now. (OK, so I always loved Pierrot Lunaire, especially when Cleo Laine recorded it, but now I like the instrumental stuff too.)

Maybe that's why people on so many blogs like to post what they're listening to. They want everyone else to know what music they enjoy listening to and why they like it. And by doing that, others can learn what is appreciable in that music, and maybe learn something about that person too.

Personal anecdote: not long ago, I lent one of my favorite CDs to someone. When it was returned, the borrower informed me that he/she had found it "annoying." I have to admit to you, this hurt my feelings deeply. Why? I didn't produce the album. I didn't write any of the songs. It wasn't my voice on that CD. Or was it? I believe most of us like the music that we do because it resonates with something deep inside us. It helps us sort through things. It helps us celebrate, contemplate, or reflect. It shows us something within ourselves, either something we like about ourselves, or something we don't like and know we need to change. In other words, our music is our voice. We need to find that which is appreciable in other people's music, because it tells them we're finding what is appreciable in them. When you dismiss someone's music out of hand, you are dismissing that person out of hand.

When it comes to worship music, often times we take pot shots at other people's music without giving it a second thought, because we may feel we have the theological "high ground" to do so. I've done that many, many times. Too many times than I care to admit. I repent of that. Deeply. I've hurt many people's feelings every bit as much as my feelings were hurt in the story above, even more. I can't take back the insulting things I've said in the past about other people's music, and in the process the insulting things I've insinuated about the people who listen to that music. I will always regret that. We may believe we have every theological reason for preferring some types of music in worship over others, and that's fine, but we don't need to insult someone in the process. That person has gravitated to that "style" (oh how I loathe that word in this context) of worship for the same reason he/she gravitates to a certain section of the music store: that worship resonates with something deep inside. In order to discuss such things meaningfully, we need to ask (honestly, not cynically), "What is it that this person sees in this music?"

Appreciable beauty.

I wonder what such an approach would do to our "worship wars"?

(BTW you're listening to Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross singing "Cloudburst." It's been on this blog before, but I've found a clip with the whole song on it. And it's one of my favorites, so I want to share it with you.)

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:08:13 GMT

Funniest Blond Joke Ever

Have you heard this blond joke yet? I thought I'd heard them all (and also thought very few were funny), but this one is great!

HT to The Fat Triplets

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 01:23:13 GMT

Same song . . .

Different clip. This clip follows the one that was on this blog since Epiphany. Wish I could find the whole thing to play for you. (If anyone is interested, I would LOVE the CD from which this comes, "We Three Kings," before next Christmas. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more.)

Yes, that's Maggie, Terre, and Suzzy to whom you are listening. Probably best known for their three-part, a cappella renditions of the "Hallelujah Chorus" and "For Unto Us a Child is Born." Oh yeah, and that song about "The Married Men" (not exactly in the same category), which was memorably (at least for me) covered by Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow (a great singer who deserves to be a lot more famous than she is) on SNL many years ago. And Monsieur Bourgeois can no doubt tell you that they sang backup on "Airplane" on this album.

So, I guess that makes this a Roche clip? (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 03:58:40 GMT

Epiphany

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. It's the day we commemorate the arrival of the Magi (also known as the Wise Men, traditionally known as the Three Kings, although we don't really know how many they were, nor do we know that they were kings). The Magi probably arrived a couple of years after Jesus was born, but the Church celebrates their arrival twelve days after Christmas. Since they were the first Gentiles to see and worship the child Jesus, this is a significant occasion for the church.

It's also the first day to eat King Cake! Since finding good King Cakes is more difficult in North Louisiana than South Louisiana (or South Mississippi, for that matter: Paul's Pastry Shop in Picayune makes some of the best), we will actually be attempting to make one of our own this year. Stay tuned to find out how that goes. The King Cake tradition keeps the celebration of Christ's Epiphany going right up until the beginning of Lent.

Hope your Epiphany was bright, and that the season to follow will be full of bright spots.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 22:06:07 GMT

OK so here's the deal . . .

Supposedly, this recipe should replicate the Popeye's biscuit experience. Not that anyone reading this will try it as we're all trying to eat healthy. Right? Right. For entertainment purposes only. Must be 18 or older to call. Actual results may vary. Not valid in Arizona or New Mexico or where prohibited by law. Consult a physician before trying any new recipes. Have a nice day.

Copycat Recipe - Popeye's Biscuits

4 cups baking mix (such as Bisquick or Pioneer)
3/4 cup club soda (some I've seen actually call for 7-Up or Sprite. I don't believe it. If you want to try that, let us know how it goes.)
8 ounces sour cream
1/4 cup melted butter

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Melt butter in a pan. Mix the baking mix, club soda, and sour cream together. Roll out the biscuits and cut with a 3-inch biscuit cutter. Dip each biscuit in the melted butter before placing in a pan. Pour remaining melted butter over the biscuits. (Of course, when you melt the butter the fat completely dissipates.)

Bake for 10-15 minutes.