Tuesday, November 29, 2011

PETER NARVAEZ



I have been very saddened to learn of the death, earlier this month, of folklorist, blues musician and cultural historian of Newfoundland, Peter Narváez. He died of lung cancer, aged 69, on November 11.

He was an important figure on the music scene, as this Globe and Mail obituary describes. He was also proud to be able to say that he had played music with Skip James, Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachell, Big Joe Williams, Bukka White, Victoria Spivey, Johnny Shines, Fred McDowell and others, and it was his resourceful recording of Skip James’ concert in Bloomington IN in March 1968 that was given official release in 1999.

He was also a good friend to innumerable people - in my case initially and especially in the mid-1980s when I spent three months in Newfoundland and got to know him almost immediately I arrived.

Peter introduced me to the several invaluable 1000-pages-each hardbacks Blues Lyric Poetry: A Concordance and Blues Lyric Poetry: An Anthology by Michael Taft  -  from which I came to realise how enormously Bob Dylan had drawn upon, and must have known inside-out, that great ocean of pre-war blues work. Without Peter’s lead, the huge chapter on Dylan and the blues in my book Song & Dance Man III could not have happened  -  nor the many talks on Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues I have given in recent years.

Peter also gave me a great deal of other material about, and intelligent, enthusiastic comment on, the pre-war blues, including photocopying for me the sleevenotes of many rare vinyl albums that featured Blind Willie McTell - an invaluable help when, 20 years later, I was writing Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell. I owe Peter a great deal.

He shared his time very generously  -  at his home, at the Ship Inn in St.Johns (a live-music pub still numinous in my memory) and in showing me rural outposts he loved. He visited us in England a couple of times in later years, endearing himself immediately to our then-small children, and always sent me advance copies of his CDs. (The photo above is of the front cover of the most recent.)

He last wrote to me, as cheerfully as ever, four days after his birthday this year. We have all lost a first-rate guitarist and a distinguished folklorist; some of us have also lost a gregarious, warm-hearted, shrewd-minded friend.


Sunday, November 27, 2011

DON DeVITO



Harold Lepidus, of Dylan Examiner, has published (online) a (possibly unconfirmed) report that Don DeVito, producer of Desire album and several other Dylan albums, has died. The report is here.


JEROME ARNOLD: HAPPY 75th BIRTHDAY



 Jerome Arnold, bass-player for Howlin Wolf and in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band - and thereby the man who played bass at Newport 1965 for Bob Dylan's debute electric performance - turned 75 yesterday. An interesting man, who subsequently changed his name to Julio Finn (which Wikipedia still doesn't seem to know), here's his entry in my Bob Dylan Encyclopedia:

Arnold, Jerome [1936 - ]
Jerome Arnold, a year younger than his more famous harmonica-playing brother Billy Boy Arnold, was born in Chicago on November 26, 1936. He was playing bass guitar in the city in the 1950s and from around 1957 played in HOWLIN WOLF’s band (though he didn’t play on Wolf’s records till the 1962 session that yielded ‘Tail Dragger’, to which the lyric of Dylan’s 1990 blues ‘Cat’s In The Well’ slyly alludes.) He and SAM LAY were poached from Wolf in 1963 by PAUL BUTTERFIELD, who was forming the pioneering Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Arnold and Lay were the bi-racial band’s black members, and the authentic Chicago blues rhythm section on which the band’s white soloists built. Arnold kept things solid when MIKE BLOOMFIELD introduced Indian music into the band on their second album, East-West, yet while reportedly uneasy with the ‘progressive’ organ-playing of Mark Naftalin (who joined in 1964), he was more than capable of laying down jazz-rooted bass lines flowing around behind Bloomfield on the 8-minute-long ‘Work Song’, which emerged on the Bloomfield compilation Don’t Say That I Ain’t Your Man: Essential Blues 1964-1969. He continued to play on Howlin’ Wolf records after joining the Butterfield outfit.

Arnold, described by Butterfield Blues Band enthusiast Charles Sawyer as ‘quiet and unassuming; a conservative dresser given to double knits and loafers’, was nevertheless one of those who played behind Dylan - with Bloomfield, AL KOOPER, BARRY GOLDBERG and Sam Lay - at Dylan’s controversial electric début at the 1965 NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL. It was the only time he played behind Dylan; he continued with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which Butterfield disbanded in 1972.

By 1978 he had changed his name to Julio Finn and moved to London. Now playing more harmonica than bass, he played with jazz acts, including Archie Shepp (for instance on the album Black Gipsy) and the Art Ensemble of Chicago (Certain Blacks, recorded in Paris in 1970). On the 1970 eponymously-titled album by Archie Shepp & Philly Joe Jones, Finn is credited as composer of the 21-minute-long ‘Howling in the Silence’, on which he contributes vocals as well as harmonica.

In 1981 he was asked to write the sleevenotes for the UK label Charley’s album Crying and Pleading, by his brother Billy Boy Arnold. He agreed, mentioned their relationship in his notes but still signed as Julio Finn. Interested in gay rights and in black history, he wrote the 1986 book The Blues Man: The Musical Heritage of Black Men and Women in the Americas, which was published in London by Quartet Books.

Finn / Arnold still keeps open his playing and academic options, and still ranges widely without abandoning the blues. In 1998 he played harmonica on the Linton Kwesi Johnson album Independent Intavenshan; in 2000 he was the respondent at a panel discussion on ‘The Blues as Individual and Collective History’ at a conference on ‘The Blues Tradition’ at Penn State University.

[Bob Dylan with Jerome Arnold et al: ‘Maggie’s Farm’, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ & ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry’, Newport RI, 25 Jul 1965. Charles Sawyer quote from ‘Blues With A Feeling: A Biography of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’, 1994, online Jul 2 2005 at www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~sawyer/bwf.html.]














Thursday, November 24, 2011

TWO NIGHTS AT HAMMERSMITH: GUEST POST BY NIGEL HINTON

I'm delighted to give over this post to the writer Nigel Hinton. It seems to me to encompass all the pros and cons of current Bob Dylan  -  and to be full of humanity and verve:


Of course, so much of how one reacts to a live show can depend on circumstances and mood. My c + m on Saturday were not very good. I’m the same age as Bob and it was hard  work standing, still and squashed, for 3 and a half hours. I was surrounded by newbies agog at seeing Knopfler and Bob - "You know that Denzel Washington film about a boxer? You know, he's accused of murder. Well, Dylan made a song about him. It's eight minutes long!" "Eight? He's a legend, innit.". I also fell into brief conversation with a Norwegian guy in his fifties who had seen him over a hundred times and admitted that 60% of those shows had been mediocre at best. "But it is when he is great that makes it worth it. I think tonight he will be great."

After about four songs of Dylan's set, a young guy in his early twenties and his fat little girlfriend came back towards us - probably because, being so short, the girl hadn't been able to see where they had been - and peremptorily displaced us. The Norwegian was edged sideways to behind a tall guy where he couldn't see and me back a couple of steps where I could still see. The Norwegian leaned in and said something to the guy - I can't imagine it could have been anything other than a mild rebuke. Whereupon the young guy grabbed hold of the Norwegian by his jacket, pulled him close and said, "What? Don't fucking speak like that to me. You fucking hear? Speak nice or I'll tear your fucking throat out!" Then he pushed the guy who staggered into some other people before righting himself and trying to go on listening to the show. A couple of songs later the young guy turned again to the Norwegian who had said and done nothing and twice repeated his threat to "Fucking tear your fucking throat out". This was the end of the exchanges and the young guy continued to appear to be enraptured by the music when not necking his girlfriend who twice spent some longish time reading her text messages. He particularly responded to those crowd-pleasing, climactic build-ups that Bob understands gets the audience going and feeling that they are seeing something good and powerfully significant rather than the primitive rabble rousing which it is.

So, I was not really in the mood to enter into the spirit of what all those people round me obviously thought was so wonderful that they were obliged to record it for posterity on their annoyingly, distractingly, held-aloft mobile phones. I was feeling misanthropic. So, tough on Bob. I thought the show started reasonably - the voice was not too phlegmy and it seemed strong. Don't Think Twice was OK-ish. Things Have Changed was OK too but a bit of a blur. I was happy to hear Mississippi live and it was respectable. Then it all started to go downhill for me. Honest With Me was forceful but I dislike the song and could hardly hear a word. Then he seriously started to get into that find-a-doodle-on-the-organ-and-then-adapt-the-melody-of-the-song-to-it mode, especially on Hattie Carroll and Hard Rain. I actually was less offended by Hattie Carroll , because I thought the silly melody he found was quite pretty, though obviously inappropriate. The nadir for me was Hard Rain, where the three note baby fairground nursery jingle was completely inane. People round me went apeshit. And even madder when he whipped them into a frenzy with Highway 61. Then came Thin Man and its echo which I found sad and cheap - though he delivers it with some force. I can't even be bothered to remember the rest. Although I did notice the "Oh I am so bored" hand on hip while I play a few silly doodles with two fingers on my organ stance which I suppose other people take as charming or amusing.

So, you can imagine I was not expecting much for Monday, and Bob goes and confounds me again.

Was it me? Mood and circumstances? I was seated, so easier on my hips, but a long, long way back in the balcony and only able to get close through the use of binoculars. And seated or not, I was still depressed by much of humanity, and still prey to murderous thoughts as people bobbed up and down and shuffled along rows to get their drinks - is it because they were demand fed as babies that they can't last 90 minutes without shoving something down their throat? And seemingly more intent on talking to their neighbour, or texting to absent friends - "Hi I'm on the train. Oh no I'm not - I'm at a rock concert. Freaking Bob Dylan for chrissakes", or waving their phones around recording the moment rather than living it.

Or was it him? Certainly there were none of the more grotesque manglings like Hattie Carroll and Hard Rain and much less of that doodle riff becomes doodle sung melody. And he sang Forgetful Heart and Man In the Long Black Coat and It's All Over Now Baby Blue and Desolation Row and Forever Young - and I like all those songs and haven't had them done to death.

Me? Him? I honestly don't know. But whatever, all I can report is the effect of whatever it was, and I wasn't alone: my wife and the two friends who came with us had the same reaction, I felt privileged to be there. It was as if all the failings and inconsistencies which were still indubitably there did not matter. Somehow the overall effect reached out and touched me and evaded my critical mind. And moved me. And filled me with love and gratitude to the guy standing on stage, for all he has given me over the years.

I genuinely don't know if the show was a good show and perhaps recordings of it will sound awful and give the lie to my reaction. All I can say is how it felt for me. My heart opened. And everything – this time his gauche movements seemed to make him look like a toreador: stylish arrogant hand on hip like the imagined young bridegroom in Romance in Durango with his new boots and an earring of gold; his clumsy keyboard playing; his sudden darting leg movements; the stuttering and tentative harmonica playing; even the rabble rousing band thrashes; everything - came together and made sense (and that is definitely not the right phrase but as close as I can get). Fitted, perhaps. It came together and took me into its embrace and made me feel the vulnerablity and transience of song, and me, and Bob, and Life. The first five songs softened me - yes, even Honest With Me, yes, even Spirit on the Water from that album I dislike - then Forgetful Heart undid me and I was there with him, engaged, uncritical, open. So that by the time we got to Forever Young I was trembling with emotion and as Mark Knopfler sang the line "May your song always be sung" and gestured towards Bob, tears sprang and I was overcome with love and gratitude.

Perhaps I was in the grip of some kind of semi-religious delusion. I honestly can't explain it. And maybe someone else would have thought it was a shit show and I wouldn't be able to argue with them. All I can say is that I have reported accurately what, inexplicably, happened to me. He's done it to me before, of course, in whole shows in 78 and 90, in some songs on other tours, and so many times on disc - lifted me to somewhere that is not ordinary, into a kind of ecstatic state. Where involuntary moans or sighs or little bubbles of joy are jolted out of you because he has touched you with his genius, a touch of genius which has, you suspect but can’t be sure, given you a glimpse of something beyond. Truth and Beauty. Something ineffable.

But who would have thought he could do it to me now? Not me.

So, him or me? Perhaps it was both of us. For,compared to those other times in the past, I've not known before such a feeling of fragility and kinship with him.

Like two old men, I guess.

MUCH BETTER VIDEO OF THAT TOUR-END FOREVER YOUNG

Here's a better video version of the final song of the final night of Dylan's European tour, thanks to YouTube user Knopflermania:

,

And I'm about to post a superlative piece about Two Nights At Hammersmith by the wonderful Nigel Hinton.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

How To Finish Your Feast: Sandwiches

It is nearly impossible to eat all the food available on Thanksgiving. So just because the Thursday festivity has come and passed, it doesn't mean we can't keep eating. For some, the best part of Thanksgiving is the food left over!

Thanksgiving is the one time of year you really buy/prepare food in bulk. It is a waste not to continue eating, especially with our tight food budgets. Plus, what luxury is there but having an excuse to eat as much food as possible? I say it's got to go somewhere.

The best way I have found putting Thanksgiving leftovers in my stomach has been by means of the sandwich. The sandwich is a revolutionary invention of its time, with the ability to be loaded with a sizeable chunk of food in a relatively small amount of space. This equates to more food in your belly and less food sitting uselessly in the refrigerator.

In honor of this November holiday, please use Carla Emery's sandwich recipes as inspiration for your own. The list might have just the thing for your post-Thanksgiving meals.

Sandwich Mixes

These sandwich fillings are meant to be spread on homemade bread. Store-bought bread is too salty and generally "strong"-tasting for them. Any leftover meat can be made into a fine sandwich filling. Just remove bone and fat (except for old-time potted ham). Slice or grind the meat. Moisten the grindings with a salad dressing, such as mayonnaise or tartar sauce. You can make plain meat fillings this way or with the variations that follow. Croquettes are another good way to use meat leftovers. So is sliced meat warmed up in leftover gravy and served with rice or sliced boiled spuds that have been sautŽed in a little butter with some chopped fresh green onion.

Ham and Egg

Grind the ham with chopped hard cooked egg. Moisten with mayonnaise or cream dressing. Add finely chopped red or green pepper and mustard.

Ham and Pickle

Grind 2 c. ham. Mix smooth with 1 small ground pickle, 2 t. prepared mustard, 2 T. butter, and 1Ú2 t. pepper.

Ham and Everything

Mix together 1 c. chopped ham, 1 chopped hard-cooked egg, 2 T. chopped green pepper, 2 T. chopped sour pickle, and a pinch of pepper. Moisten with mayonnaise. Add thin pickle slices and strips of green pepper, if desired.

Old-Time Potted Ham

Grind one-third fat and two-thirds lean meat to a smooth paste. Add salt and cayenne pepper to taste. Heat and pack in small pots.

Ham and Chicken

Grind 1 c. cooked chicken meat, white or dark, and 1Ú2 c. cooked ham. Mince 1Ú2 c. celery and 1 T. green pepper, and mix with meat. Moisten with about 1Ú2 c. mayonnaise.

Chicken Salad Sandwich Filling

Grind cooked chicken and moisten with mayonnaise. Add crumbled crisp bacon or chopped celery.

Chopped Veal

Grind about 11Ú2 c. veal and season with 1 t. salt, 1 T. lemon juice, and a little pepper and mustard, if desired.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

BOB DYLAN, MICK GOLD, PAOLO BRILLO AT HAMMERSMITH

Mick Gold has sent me (and others, it must be said) his review of / thoughts on Bob at Hammersmith last night. And I'm pleased to say that Paolo Brillo has sent me more of his truly exceptional photos from the same venue. Here they are:

Bob-cats pushed relentlessly forward against the bar at the front of the former Hammersmith Odeon, hats on their heads. Mark Knopfler was caressing liquid guitar solos from his Stratocaster. On Brothers In Arms, the notes flowed down his fretboard like drops of sonic quicksilver.



A random cross-section of the audience (i.e. two men standing next to me) told me their main motive for coming to see Bob was “He may not be back again”. One of them said, “Once we came to listen to him. Now we come to be in his presence.” There was plenty of presence tonight.


Bob and the band kicked of with Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat, with Mark Knopfler and Charlie crouching and strutting in gun-slinger guitar poses. It’s All Over Now Baby Blue had a staccato vocal rhythm, with fluid guitar breaks from Knopfler holding things together. On Things Have Changed, Bob delivered high, keening harp solos, his notes cutting across Knopfler’s guitar. George Recile played a racket at the end, banging the sides of the drums, churning up the rhythm.

Forgetful Heart was one of the highlights of the evening, a lovely, simple tune bouncing off Donnie’s fiddle. Those haunting last words, “The door has closed forever more, If indeed there ever was a door” were delivered with a dying fall. One of my favourites, Man In The Long Black Coat, was enlivened by a slick, faster rhythm which suited the song. As Bob sang, “When she stopped him to ask if he wanted to dance, He had a face like a mask”, a self-deprecating grin flitted across his face. All evening there were a series of grins and frowns and little laughs, like micro-emotions scurrying over that face.


Another highlight was Desolation Row, delivered in waltz time, with practically every verse present and correct. Ballad of a Thin Man was done with great panache, electronic echoes giving extra bite to words like “lepers and crooks”, Bob’s voice positively caressing the lines “you’re very well read, it’s well known”. There were only a few songs when his voice sounded like a hoarse bark; Honest With Me was one, and Thunder On The Mountain was another. All Along The Watchtower managed to sound both staccato and lyrical. Like A Rolling Stone was slow, stately and sorrowful, with no hint of derision in the vocal delivery.



Then there was a flurry on the stage and suddenly Mark Knopfler was back in the spotlight centre stage, beaming and waving to the audience, as they launched into Forever Young. Knopfler took over the vocal on the second verse, “May you grow up to be righteous…” with Knopfler and Charlie both injecting elegant guitar lines between the words, conjuring up memories of Robbie Robertson at The Last Waltz. On the third verse, Bob began singing "May your hands always be busy..." and then Knopfler’s voice rose up to take over the lead, and as he sang, “May your heart always be joyful, May your song always be sung”, he lifted his arm and gestured towards Bob, and the audience roared with approval and devotion. It was a memorable ending.

main text © Mick Gold, all photos © Paolo Brillo

BOB DYLAN'S PHOTO LOCATIONS: NEW STUFF


This morning I've seen Bob Egan's latest detective-work in hunting down previously-unidentified locations for well-known Bob Dylan photo-shoots. I blogged before about his establishing of where the cover shot of Highway 61 Revisited was done. Now he's posted some new results here. I think the work he does on this is rather brilliant, and that he's admirable for both the originality of the task he's set himself and the ingenuity he brings to it. I think it's a pity he calls his site PopSpots  -  RockSpots would sound a little less quaint/gagafied  -  but more power to him anyway.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Crontab: premature EOF

If you get crontab error like this:

$ crontab -e
no crontab for flexman - using an empty one
crontab: installing new crontab
"/tmp/crontab.XXXXyiIUqY":1: premature EOF
errors in crontab file, can't install.
Do you want to retry the same edit? n
crontab: edits left in /tmp/crontab.XXXXyiIUqY

you cannt solve using crontab -e "userid" but you need to enter the carriage return at the end of the line.
cron is actually looking for end of the line after each cron.

Small things took me 10mins to identify the issue

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Special Recipes for a Special Holiday

It's that time of year again.

Thanksgiving. The time of year when we gather with our families, give thanks, love each other, and stuff our faces full of whatever food we can get our hands on.

I love this holiday. It's the one time of year I can eat any amount of food and not one person will judge me for it. I have a tremendous appetite, especially when there is enough food being served to feed a village of Hobbits.

For those of you who have as big of an appetite as I do, you know what it's like. We deserve to have a day of deliciousness every year. In a world where we sometimes feel frowned upon for occasional self-gratification and gluttony, Thanksgiving wipes the whole slate clean and gives us one whole day to eat! To me, that is amazing.

You know what else is amazing? Thanksgiving recipes, and that is exactly what Carla Emery has written in a portion of her book The Encyclopedia of Country Living. Sure -- turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy are all great, but perhaps you have been pondering some alternative Thanksgiving ideas this autumn season. Well, Carla has provided recipes from her unique Thanksgivings in 1972 and '73, years she claims were her "banner years for home growing and good cooking." Yes, her recipes are a bit unorthodox by American standards, but they are every bit as delicious. Here are her menus from these special years:

Thanksgiving 1972

Gander (the turkey that bit our son Danny twice) stuffed with sage dressing; sliced tomatoes (last of the fresh ones - picked green just before frost and stored to ripen gradually)

Cooked pumpkin mashed with butter

Boiled green beans with onion and bacon

Boiled potatoes with giblet gravy

Sweet crock pickles

Bread and cheese;

Brandied peaches (buried in September and dug up for Thanksgiving)

Root beer.

Thanksgiving 1973

Roast goose stuffed with sauerkraut

Giblet gravy

Mashed potatoes

Baked acorn squash halves (a dab of butter and honey cooked in the heart)

Boiled Swiss chard

Brandied peaches

Mincemeat pie.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

MORE BOB DYLAN PHOTOS BY PAOLO BRILLO

Thanks to Paolo Brillo for permission to blog these. I think he takes the best NET photos of anyone who's tried:





And best of all:


I think I like the pictures better than the sound . . .

Thursday, November 10, 2011

NEAR-SUBLIME VERSION OF A FAVOURITE SONG

I found this on YouTube today, not long after putting up the previous post. I thought it was wondrous (and the song itself is one I loved when Ray Charles released it 50 years ago)  -  and I couldn't help but experience it as a strong riposte to the argument that it's OK to sing the songs badly as long as you're hamming up a song & dance man routine. But don't hold it against Richard Manuel that this is how I'm feeling:



Chopping Wood The Right Way

Its officially fall. You can see it in the trees, which have stripped themselves of their bountiful vegetation. While trees are now missing their most lustrous beauty, they offer us an opportunity to use them.

Chopping wood is an essential task if one is living outdoors. It is also a more adventurous way to warm oneself than simply turning up the temperature. Whether chopping wood to build a fire or house, this activity offers a great opportunity to learn about living off the land. It is also a great father-son bonding experience; there isn't a dad out there who hasn't attempted to teach "survival man" tactics to their son or daughter. At least with this particular task, it is a practical activity that can be applied to many situations, especially as we approach winter.

When chopping wood, it is essential to know proper technique. But more important than chopping technique is safety. When using a sharp, heavy tool like an ax, it is important to remember you are wielding a dangerous object. Carla Emery chopped wood all her adolescence, and details her knowledge of chopping technique and safety in the Encyclopedia of Country Living.

Chopping Safety.

Strive for accuracy before you strive for force - at least enough so that you don't hit your foot. Then, once you're sure you can put the blade onto the wood, you want to give it all the power you can. Use a good big ax, a heavy one, because you can get a lot more force with it. Wear heavy boots in case you miss. Chips can fly up into an eye or the ax blade can hit a knot and be deflected, so don't let children, or anybody, stand near when you're chopping. If you want to be really safe, wear goggles, a hard hat, and steel-toed boots!

Chopping Technique.

Everybody's got his or her own way of chopping. A friend of ours only lifts the ax to shoulder height, then brings it down with a big grunt and the wood splits. Another friend raises it straight over his head. He holds the ax strong in his left hand, loose in his right hand, and then brings it down kind of pulling with the left hand and pushing with the right hand. The best stroke for me uses both hands on the ax - as if you were holding a baseball bat, only farther apart. To do it my way, if you're right-handed, start the ax out back of your right shoulder behind your head with your back arched backwards just a trifle (or you can alternate shoulders with every swing) and then bring it forward and down, moving your shoulder and chest forward at the same time. Try to hit your block of wood right in the center. You don't want the ax absolutely perpendicular to the stump when it strikes. I aim to get it square on. If your wood doesn't split from the center you can try taking slabs off the edge awhile before you tackle the heart. If you can get your ax into the tree but not out the other side, pull it out and try again. Look for a natural crack to strike into. There usually is one in old wood. If you're still finding it hard, use wedges and a wood-splitting maul or sledgehammer instead of the ax.

HOW DYLAN CONCERT EXPECTATIONS HAVE CHANGED

I was listening, the other day, to 'Sugar Baby' from Hanover  -  and it was terrible: just terrible. So bad I felt almost bereft. And then I said so, in private, to the estimable Rainer Vesely of Vienna, and he sent me this response, which seemed to me so admirably expressed that I asked (and obtained) his permission to reprint it here. He wrote this:

Back from Innsbruck and all the way on the road I was thinking about how to describe for you why I really liked the concert. Even more: why I was deeply impressed... I think what he is doing now, and maybe since 2010  -  since he crawled out from his hiding place behind the keyboard, where he ducked away from 2005-2009  -  is staging a 90-100 minute drama, in which he puts much, much more emphasis on his physical presence than ever before. He really acts(!) and recites, gestures, mimicks, uses – very consciously!! – his weird way of walking, knee-bending, staring, half-closing or wide-opening his eyes etc. and not only when being center stage but also behind the keyboards. And this presence is so overwhelming, especially since he looks so trim and fit again, that you (well, me and many others) just don’t mind the bellowing and raspy sounds coming out of his mouth.
             I understand very well that just listening to a CD or mp3 of the concert can make one shiver with embarrassment. The thing is: where in years long gone the singing, real singing, has been the main attraction, the recitation now is just part of the whole experience. There’s no use any more in recording it: you have to see it, have to be there. Also, the moments that stick in one's mind after the show, and that are exchanged with friends, have shifted from “Oh, when he stretched those vowels over five bars …” to “ Oh, when he pressed both fists to his chest when singing ‘Don’t get up gentlemen’ and then opened his arms and eyes wide for ‘I’m only passing through’”. I dare say, Michael, that even you would have loved it if you haad been with us in the front.
             So I guess we really (once again) have to change our expectations and our views of what a Bob Dylan concert is.


Thursday, November 3, 2011

A Post-Halloween Pumpkin Treat

As children are stuffing their faces with candy and goodies, we can now acknowledge this year’s ghostly tradition has passed. Over are the trips to the doorsteps of neighbors for handfuls of candy. Done with are the costumes that frighten us, and so, some say, is the usefulness of our festive pumpkins.

Halloween may be over, but the usefulness of our pumpkins is just beginning! While pumpkins have served us well in acting as canvases for our carving delight, I refuse to believe we should simply toss them into our yard wastes! Like yard waste, this would be a waste.

Each year, we make a visit to the pumpkin patch and purchase these orange fruits to decorate our porch. They are plants that perfectly fit our spooky fall season, but by no means are they useless carcasses just because the month has changed. So if you have a pumpkin sitting on your porch, why not use it for a post-Halloween feast? Give this Pumpkream Pie recipe a taste.

Baking.

Arrange your peeled pieces cut side down in some sort of baking pan. Bake about an hour at 400˚F. Then scoop out the part that stayed soft and mashable. Another system is in Ruth’s Vegan Squash Pie recipe a bit later on. Of that one, Lane Morgan says, “That’s how I always prepare my pumpkins for pies, except I scrape out the seeds before I bake because I don’t know how good they’d be for roasting after being cooked in all that moisture. You don’t have to peel or chunk the pumpkin, and I hate peeling pumpkin. Don’t use a rimless baking surface because the pumpkins will ‘weep’ as they cook. I save that liquid to get the puree going in the blender.”

Pumpkream Pie

Mix together 1 c. granulated sugar, a pinch of salt, 1 t. cinnamon, 1⁄4 t. cloves, and 1⁄4 t. nutmeg. Beat in 2 eggs. Then add 1 c. wellcooked–down (cooked-dry) pumpkin. Add 1 c. thick cream or whipping cream. Bake in an 8-inch pie pan, which will be full, for 20 minutes at 425˚F. Then reduce to 375˚F and bake until it rises and then makes small cracks around the edge.