A Few Words About Robyn In Piermont

I got to see Robyn Hitchcock at Piermont, New York's The Turning Point last night.  Showtime was 7:30 PM; it was still light outside, and Robyn joked about pretending that it was a lunchtime show at the opening of the gig.  Although I have seen Robyn Hitchcock perform in the bright sunshine at a couple of West Coast outdoor concerts back in the 90's, this time it seemed odd to be witnessing his show before twilight. Robyn performed acoustically and solo, delivering an intense set punctuated with his usual surreal between-the-songs patter. My favorite of those was a tale of prisoners who were nightly returned to their jails by blimps to which they were tethered at their ankles.  He steamed on through to the end of the show, taking no breaks. 

The Turning Point is a great room in which to see someone like Robyn.  It's in the basement of an early 19th-century house: a little dark, heavily air conditioned, and oddly cozy.  It's also so small that the effect of seeing a show there is like being entertained at the private party of someone very fortunate.  The sound and the sightlines are excellent.   

The local Robyn Hitchcock faithful were out in force, singing along and keeping set lists.  I make a point of NOT keeping a set list at shows by musicians I really love.  I don't sneak in digital recorders or take pics on my cell phone, either.  I like to just listen, and let the evening wash over me.  And indeed, my choice to do so was rewarded last night.  Still, it was nice being in the presence of other folks who express their pleasure at being present in other ways, though--a homecoming of sorts. 

Robyn played two of my favorite songs: "Mr. Kennedy" and "Only The Stones Remain"  "Ole Tarantula" worked fine unplugged.   His intro to "Victorian Squid" was another example of the man's ability to prop open the door to his subconscious pretty much at will--and it's a great song, too.

I liked hearing "Adventure Rocketship," a bunch also.  OK, I'll admit it: I was one of the folks who ponyed up to Yep Roc and put it as the ringtone on my cell.  (And here I am bragging about being too cool to make set lists!)  Honestly, though, the only reason I downloaded it was because I never figured out how to get the clip I grabbed of the opening guitar work from  Element of Light's "Airscape"onto my phone instead.  But let me be clear: I really like "Adventure Rocketship."  I read somewhere that "The Yip Yip Song" is the theme to a childrens' TV show in the UK.  "Adventure Rocketship" is the show I'd have really wanted to see as a little girl.

The crucifixion of Jesus seemed to be much on Robyn's mind last night.  He mentioned it several times in  his song intros, finally comparing it to the little toy penguin he had stood on the miniature green road cone beside him onstage.  I don't know anyone else who could a) get away with that or b) get a laugh from doing so.   

Hitchcock also mentioned Storefront Hitchcock , the Jonathan Demme concert flick of about ten years back, and got a round of applause for it.  Demme was sitting at the table next to me, with his family; one of Demme's younger kids got the final benediction of the show from Robyn:"have a great time at camp." I liked that.  Who gets a send-off from Robyn Hitchcock for summer camp??  Wonderful--kind of like getting to hear Robyn in a tiny room with the sun going down unnoticed on the Hudson River across the street.  

After the show, I gave Robyn a RandoRadio T-shirt and suggested he put off doing his laundry for another day.  Told him we play plenty of his music.  I was too flummoxed to do my usual handshake and "Chris Potter from RandoRadio" routine; I'll admit it.  I mean heck--it was Robyn Hitchcock I was talking to!!  He said he could use a shirt as he'd lost a bag on the tour.   I'd be honored if our own Adventure Rocketship T helped fill in the gap.

He's playing again tonight, Wednesday  the 16th of July.   OK, so I'm a true believer.  But if you can, GO.

 

Juliet, My Fairy Goddaughter

My pal Nancy calls me the Fairy Godmother of her two daughters Juliet and Alyssum.  Alyssum's off in Italy this summer, almost all grown-up (junior year in high school come September!) but Jules is just going into 9th grade.  Which means I get to have her around for a while longer, and that's a good thing.

The daughter of two artists (a painter and a glass artist), Jules has also always loved music with a passion.  That and Japanese graphic arts of all descriptions.  Did I tell you she also gets more in the way of royalties for a poem she wrote back in grade school than I have ever gotten for a single poem in my whole life?  She does.  It got picked up as a reading comp question in one of those dreaded standardized tests; it originally ran in Stone Soup.  The kid's got talent.

And so she's taping a show with me today which will run in August in place of a Cocktails with Chris.  There have been noises made about Japanese rap.  I intend to play some of my usual tunes if I can get away with it.  Will Jules be into playing some of Lou's amazing Warner Brothers loss leaders?  The Shadow knows.

So stay tuned.

I'll be live on the air at my usual time this week: Friday 5 to 7, right after My Mid-life Crisis with Glenn.   I'm going to see Robyn Hitchcock at The Turning Point tonight, so I'll have my thoughts on that concert.  

See you real soon.  Why?  Because we LIKE you.

My Husband and the Hawk

There is no Nora without Nick.  That's just a fact.  And so, before I go to the studio tomorrow to record a couple of new Roots 'n' Ruckus shows with Ed & Greg, I will let you in on a little true story from high atop the Potter building (in a swanky neighborhood near you)...

...Our swimming pool works again.  It was out of commission during various renovations last year, but it's lovely and clear and inviting this summer, and Tom Jones had just finished his show on Randoradio about an hour before all this happened.  Tom and Ken and I were bobbing in the warm water, chatting about Tom's latest Logovore project (the one about the private family words for stuff).  Overhead, the sky was heading for sunset.  The creek that runs by our house was burbling in the background and a member of the duck community that lives here was scarfing up the cracked corn we leave out for them under our apple tree.  

Suddenly, the biggest red-tailed hawk I have ever seen swooped down and attempted to make a meal of the poor duck.  Frantic quacking ensued.  It was a female duck--not the mama that had marched her ducklings through our place this spring, but one we'd seen before.  The hawk was trying to get its talons into her and she was not doing well at fighting the raptor off.  

It was an ugly situation.  No hawk can take a duck.  Hawks eat their prey in the trees.  The hawk could have horribly hurt or killed the duck, but couldn't have flown away with it.  

Ken sprang out of the pool and ran at the hawk with his hands stretched high over his head.

"BLEEEAHHHH!  BLAAAAAAA!  BLEAAAH!" he bellowed.

The hawk cast a baleful eye at him.  The duck stopped screaming.

"BLEEEAH!!!!  BLAAAAAAAAA!" shouted Ken.

The hawk dropped the duck and flew across the creek.  The duck began to quack again and flew into the creek.  She swam upstream, seemingly uninjured.  

Another crisis averted.  Ken slid back into the pool to our applause.  

I have no idea what music I will play or what drink I will mix on my Friday show to honor Ken's rescue of the innocent duck.  I'll think of something.  But I wanted to make note of my dear mate, who is not afraid of looking utterly ridiculous in order to save a critter who would have died needlessly.  

Any suggestions for an appropriate set?  

The Glorious Fourth

I've been trying to figure out why someone with my cranky old-Lefty politics loves the big American holidays as much as I do.  I mean, don't get me wrong; Christmas is great, but I'm a big Independence Day fan.  Thanksgiving usually rocks, too.

July 4th, the better part of twenty years ago, I was ending one period of my life and beginning another, speeding down the road in my car with three vintage sundresses and my Robyn Hitchcock LP's, the only things I initially rescued from a relationship that had just died that evening.  It was the only time in my life I'd ever traveled that light, but what I'd grabbed pretty much summed me up.  I've long since forgiven my poor ex, and I hope he has me--but that Independence Day was the beginning of who I am now, and everything I've done with my life since.   So I'm planning on lighting a sparkler for my country as well as myself this Friday. 

And I'm going to be on the air at Rando, from 4 to 6 Eastern, streaming live.  I'm thinking I'll read a little Twain, perhaps, and play a lot of American music of course.  It'll be good.

You know, when I started writing this blog entry, I mentioned Thanksgiving and July 4th in the same breath.  And now that I consider it, there's a reason for that.  There's something to be thankful for on July 4th for all of us in this battered, confused, and suddenly hopeful nation.  July 4th is really a holiday of gratitude, and I am grateful.  

Let's make some potato salad together on Friday, dear listener--you and me.  And some white sangria, I think.  I'll give you my recipe on the air.  It's great at a picnic, with fireworks.

  

A Perfect Dinner

Why does it always come down to food and drink with me?

Well, it does.  I 'spect it does with a lot of us.  So I'll give you a preview of my tomorrow's show, and tell you about the ultimate comforting dinner.

Did you see the thing in the NY Times about blender cocktails being OK again?  I was beginning to think they might be, as we make a couple of them that aren't spring break swill, and here on top of the Potter Building, we are very very cool.  So I made the Cherry Flip out of that article. Twice. It's dern good: fresh cherries, bourbon, bitters, lemon juice, and just a little sugar.  Blend with ice, garnish with mint.  We did it for Tom Jones (check out HIS show on Rando--a true delight!!!) last night, but tonight, we realized what the author of that Good Grey article had neglected: a splash of maraschino.  Cut back on the sugar if you do that, and maybe amp up the lemon juice just an eensy bit.  You've heard me go on and on and on about maraschino on the air...it's not the juice in the cherry jar, etc. etc.  'Tis a clear, not overly-sweet liqueur found in a well-stocked booze store, or on the net if your place of residence allows you to buy alcohol that way. 

I'm here to tell you that Cherry Flips rock.  I'll have more to say on my show.

And here's (believe it or not) what I made for dinner:

From scratch Tuna-Noodle Casserole (mostly organic ingredients and shut up 'till I explain), and...

Salad from our garden with homemade pseudo-Thousand Island dressing.  Pseudo-Thousand Island is mayo, a little buttermilk to thin it, ketchup, horseradish to taste, and a shake of dill weed.

From Scratch Tuna-Noodle:

1/2 pound decent pasta in a penne, rotini, or macaroni shape (can use Dreamfield's if you're low carbing it)

A big handful of chopped mushrooms--can be exotic or plain old

A smaller handful of finely chopped celery

5 tablespoons sweet  butter

4 tablespoons flour

2 cups milk warmed in the nuker

a pouch of mass market tuna (better than the cans)

about four ounces of grated cheddar cheese

a small handful of decent grated parmesan cheese

a few shakes of hot sauce

salt and pepper to taste

worcestershire sauce to taste

a shake of sweet or hot paprika

In a good-sized saucepan over low heat, sweat the onions and mushrooms in the butter, which you will have melted.  Add the flour when the veg are soft, and stir with a rubbermaid spatula until evenly distributed.  Cook a minute or two, still on a gentle flame.  Add the warm milk, turn up the heat to medium, and stir until thickened.  Add parmesan, tuna, & salt & pepper. Season with worcestershire sauce and hot sauce.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta.  Drain when just short of being cooked.

Mix the pasta and the white sauce mixture  in the pot in which you cooked the white sauce. Turn into buttered casserole dish, sprinkle with grated cheddar, add a shake of paprika and maybe another grind of black pepper. Bake in a 350 oven, covered (with lid or tin foil), for about twenty minutes.  Serve hot with salad.

OK, sneer.  It's middle 'murican food.  But the trick here is no fake ingredients--no cream of mushroom soup.  We fake that by making what the soup was in the recipe to fake in the first place: a white sauce.  It's easily enough made.  But it's so tasty I defy you to not eat thirds.

And a Cherry Flip is just the thing before it--sorta like a Squishee from the Quickie Mart, only really really good.  

I'm not heavily into irony unless you can eat it.

See you on the internet version of the airwaves tomorrow.

We Have Lifted Off

So, denizens of the Randosphere--

We have achieved lift-off.

RandoRadio is officially LAUNCHED.  The stream is running 24/7, we're readying new shows to upload, and all sorts of delightful treats are in store!

Want to know what it was like at the GaGa Arts Festival this weekend, sending our rocketship of a freeform internet radio station up?  It was hot.  I mean really hot--and not in the rock 'n' roll, sexy garments sense.  I mean good old-fashioned Hudson River Valley heat & humidity.  Lethal ozone levels.  The kind of hellish blast that one associates with...um...well, how about Hell?  As in "it was hotter than the hinges of Hell."  It was.

True RandoRadio fact: our beloved station lives in a very groovy (very basic in terms of luxuries like AC and such) arts center north of NYC, on the west bank of the Hudson.  We're in loftspace at GaGa, an old factory complex.  Think Soho before it gentrified, or Mass MOCA before they restored it.  It's cheap 'n' cheerful, and the company is great.  Our control room is thoroughly air conditioned.  But we needed to keep our office doors open to attract visitors during our launch party.  The result?  Lordy Lord.

How hot was it?

It was so hot that Ed Croft & Greg Schettino were actually slowed down, just a weeny, tiny bit.   Which meant that normal human beings could almost comprehend their energy levels.  Ed & Greg are, of course, the 17-year-old stars of Roots 'n' Ruckus, the one-hour live performance/oddball scratchy 78 rpm/rare C&W record show on Rando.  Think of that--two young guys, not even old enough to vote, who channel Hank Williams.  We've got 'em at Rando, and we're glad, even though it takes three of us oldsters to wrangle them when they come up for a show.  File under: herding cats.   Really talented cats, that is.  

Ed, Greg, and their electric band, The Moonshiners, opened the GaGa Arts Festival with a set of early Dylan, Hank Williams, and some rootsy/reggae-inflected original music.  They played outside under the music tent noontime this past Saturday.  They were astonishingly, dazzlingly good.  We have recorded evidence that they peeled the red paint off the old Haverstraw brick buildings surrounding them.   Stay tuned for it on RandoRadio!

Throughout the weekend, we streamed all our shows live, with video at Ustream. Saturday was Glenn Carella with My Midlife Crisis,  Kenny Pearson with The Black Coffee Hour (plus a bonus hour of Kenny performing his original songs and some great covers, too), Gus Mason's Lament, and The Father Of Us All, Lou Cannizzaro, with Random Madness.   Sunday opened up with Giacomo Servetti's G Train, and steamed down the tracks pulling along Cocktails with Chris (starring moi), Treavor Hastings' Sonic Streamz, and the long-awaited debut of Tom Jones, better known back in the FM heyday as WRNW's Duke of Darkness.  Treavor's fixing up the recordings of that rich stew right now.  It'll be rerun on our stream very soon.

Visitors dripping sweat drifted through, waving at the DJ's behind the glass window. Temperatures in our offices hovered around about 90 degrees.  It was meat-locker-ish in the control room though, and blessedly so, keeping radio hosts and computers from melting down.  Glenn inaugurated the weekend with a fanfare that summed up the whole affair perfectly: The Portsmith Symphonia's utter demoliton of  "Also Sprach Zarathustra".    

The rest of us, eagerly awaiting our turn at the frosty & refreshing mic, alternately laid our heads on the desks and whimpered, drinking oceans of sugar-free ginger ale (courtesy of Lou), and bothering one another by singing the refrain to "B Double E  Double Are You In?  Beer Run!  Beer Run!" Gus Mason completed the dreaded ear worm effect by playing the cursed thing on his show.  He was locked in the control room so we didn't kill him.

But we also managed to meet lots of folks who love the idea of free form radio that includes what we include: Edith Piaf, Robyn Hitchcock, Psychedelic bands no one has ever heard of,  Sun Ra, Kenny Young and the Eggplants...the list goes on...If one of those visitors was you, dear reader, welcome, welcome!

I spun all thirteen minutes of The Incredible String Band's "White Bird" on my show, along with my fave track from the Sex, Food, Death & Tarantulas (do I have the order right there?) Robyn Hitchcock CD.  My old pal Sheila from Summit School stuck her head in--and then my god kid, Juliet.  I'd cut down my RandoRadio T-shirt to a sleeveless Flash-dance sorta thing by then, which might not be quite the look for me, but at least I was cool enough to focus.

The video stream revealed me getting my hair caught in the headphones, getting the gauzy Grateful-Dead-concert-skirt I'd worn caught in the rolling chair, and exposing the side of my midriff to the world at large.  I'll tell you, Ladies and Gentlemen, that's entertainment!!  The audio stream was pretty darned good, though, if I do say so.  And what a cool thing it was to actually be a little nervous on the air because LOTS OF FOLKS WERE WATCHING AND LISTENING.

God, I love this station.

You should have been there.

Most of the Rando DJ's ended up back at my house later that night, drinking the Mojitos we'd been so cruelly deprived of in our effort to be coherent for station visitors that weekend.  

Friends, there is great joy in the Randosphere today.  Keep listening!  Keep listening!

  

Retro Lasagna

Unreconstructed, 1960's variety Lasagna!!

There are a number of dinner recipes that work very well with listening to Cocktails With Chris, and in fact that just plain work well with cocktails & friends over for dinner.

I made lasagna for the first time in maybe twenty years tonight, and it rocked.  Lasagna is something I used to make for my friends Back In the Day.  What I'd forgotten about it is that you can get it all tucked into the oven to bake and have plenty of time for a drink with your pals who have shown up for dinner or your mate before sitting down to something that (let's face it) everyone really, really likes.  

Here's what you need to make what I made tonight:

A box of good dried lasagna--Italian imported is best, but if you're counting carbs, Dreamfield's is pretty darned good, too.

2 big cans of decent crushed tomatoes.  I like Muir Glen fire-roasted, organic.

2 medium sized onions, diced

7 cloves fresh garlic, chopped or run through a press

a few tablespoons of olive oil

a shake of crushed red pepper

a shake of fennel seeds

2/3-3/4 pound bulk sweet Italian sausage (or links)

about a cup of fresh sliced mushrooms (any variety)

One fifteen ounce container of ricotta

One egg

A pinch or about ten gratings of fresh nutmeg

One one pound ball of fresh mozzarella

either dried or fresh basil, to taste

a good handful of fresh parsley, chopped

a splash of leftover dry red wine

Sautee the onions in enough olive oil to keep them from sticking (2 tablespoons or a little more).  When they begin to soften, throw in the sausage and the mushrooms.  Add the garlic.  If you're using bulk sausage, break it up with the spatula and saute.   If you had to buy links, add them sliced, and cook them that way.   Add crushed red pepper and fennel seeds. When the sausage and 'shrooms are mostly cooked, deglaze the pan with the red wine, dump in the tomatoes and cook for about ten minutes on medium/medium low heat.  Taste and correct the seasoning.  You may need a pinch of sugar (no more) if the sauce tastes acidy.  Throw in the handful of parsley.  Season with basil to taste.

Meanwhile, cook 12-14 pieces of dried lasagna in boiling water, using the largest pot you own.  When it just begins to soften, drain and rinse with cool water.   Grate or cut the mozarella cheese into tiny pieces.  Beat the ricotta in a bowl with one egg and a few gratings of fresh nutmeg, or a pinch of the pre-grated.  

Start to make the lasagna by ladling a bit of the sauce into the bottom of a long, shallow casserole dish.  Top with three lasagne noodles and begin to layer sauce, ricotta mixture, and mozarella with the noodles until you use up the lasagna noodles.  Top with a layer of sauce and a healthy scattering of mozarella and basil.  Bake at 350 for about a half an hour.

*****************

The glory of this dish is that you can get it done before anyone shows up for dinner, and enjoy having a drink or just some good conversation with your company while it bakes.  If you're an organized person, you can even have all the pots and knives and such that you used to prepare this meal cleaned before you put the lasagna in the oven.

This meal is good with a green salad and some good Italian bread, after just about any cocktail except the Tiki silliness ones (which have their other uses).