Scratch Crib

11:10 a.m. Sept. 19

I've been a Nick Lowe fan since his 1977 solo debut "Pure Pop For Now People," a vinyl copy of which I am now holding in one hand. What a great record. Side one begins with the high octane rock anthem "So It Goes," it includes "Marie Provost," a ditty about a hungry dachshund devouring an aging starlet and concludes with a glam rock parody on the Bay City Rollers.
I have been to London twice in the past 30 years and each time I have combed record stores for similar compact pop in the style of Lowe, a native of Woodchurch, Suffolk. One of my best finds was Dodgy's engaging "Staying Out For The Summer' 95." All this is part of my quest to merge music with travel.
Lowe looks at things in a similar light............

...."I love American music and all musicians of my generation did," Lowe told me when we were talking about a slightly cheesey 1960s's Nashville/Floyd Cramer piano riff on his current album "At My Age." "All of us looked at the U.S. and I see no reason to change my mind. Although I love what happens to American music when it crosses back over the Atlantic to the U.K. The Beatles, the Stones, the Who, we all had no concept of the different areas the music came from until we came to America. We didn't understand how huge this country was.
"So we've always found it easy to mix up influences: a little bit of Cajun here, with a bit of soul there. Nowadays its an instinctual thing. You cut the track and sort of leave the session with your jacket hooked over your shoulder and say to the piano guy to fiddle around at the top. You'll get this world-weary mood. We're not slavish in a copy of something. We just go with the instinct."
It wasn't always so for Lowe.
As in-house prodcuer at Stiff Records, Lowe was on the periphery of the 1970s punk movement. Lowe was behind the wheels of the Damned's first album. He produced Elvis Costello's sterling "My Aim Is True" debut as well as the Pretenders "Stop Your Sobbing" 1979 debut.
"I'm one of those people who thought that punk rock was the end of pop music," Lowe said. "We were all dancing around the corpse, giving it a kick. We'd all be back in the biscuit factory and doing our proper jobs by the end of the year. In fact, I've had a very lucrative career since then. But I'm not very interested in much music that's been recorded after 1975. I don't know quite why that is. I never liked what they called punk rock music. I liked 'garage rock.."
Lowe has matured into a minimalist, organic songwriter who gets to the point. In 2001 he told me, "I try to get to a place where the song sounds like I didn't have anything to do with it. When you see your little tricks and skills, it gets on your nerves. You don't think 'How clever I am.' What you really want is to be direct-to-the-source where you can't see interference in it at all. The older I get the less I know what I'm doing. I'll discard what I've heard before."
A few weeks ago Lowe talked about punk rock with tones of a survivalist's disdain. "The music I listen to is the stuff that punk rock was supposed to have swept away," he said. "At the moment I'm listening to a lot of (trad Nashville songwriter) Don Gibson (who wrote Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams" and the Ray Charles hit "I Can't Stop Loving You"). There seems to be an inexahustable supply of new stuff that was recorded between the end of the second world war and 1975.
"And then something happened."

Posted by David Hoekstra at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

6:15 p.m. Sept. 12

Over the weekend I picked up a dusty '45 of soul stylist Jack Hammer singing "Obviously I Love You" at A Repeat Performance resale shop, 156 First Avenue in New York. There is no date on the record, but when I got home and played it, Jack sounded like Frankie Lymon meets early Grandmaster Flash. The record label is EXPERIENCE in Brooklyn, N.Y. It was a NICE souvenir of my trip.
Jack Hammer sounded like New York.
I grew up on a diet of regional '45s with the Buckinghams on U.S.A., the New Colony Six on Mercury, both out of Chicago, James Brown on King from Cincinnati, Lee Dorsey on Fury in New Orleans and so on. The colorful label logos and the diverse music took me places far beyond suburban Chicago.
I enjoy exploring regional music as much as I like regional food. Before I left town I put that notion to Diane Hatz, Founder/Director of Sustainable Table, the New York-based group that promotes sustainable agriculture. Her roots are in rock music.........

..... "Food is music," Hatz said on the Sustainable Table 45-foot long biodiesel rock n roll tour bus as it stopped in Chicago on its "Eat Well Guided Tour of America." "When we were in California we were actually given sickles, went out in the field, harvested our wheat, milled our wheat, made our crust, harvested the berries. We stepped out on the farm, baked the pie and ate it. We went from start to finish. It was a symphony. There's a choreography involved to it. I don't know if I'm stretching it, but for me, it is like a really good Who show or a Springsteen show."
Hatz stopped for some food for thought. Then she said, "I must say these are questions I've never been asked before."
Hatz, 45, co-founded, wrote and published The Relay, an independent music magazine on The Who, which is archived in the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. "The band was cool about it," she said. "They gave me backstage passes and I'd interview (Pete) Townshends's mother and brothers." She also worked in marketing at Epic Records in New York City and managed the indy band Rubber Ugly. Hatz is also a student of Tibetan Buddhism and The Dalai Lama.
"When you're eating real good food you can taste subtle differences," she continued. "Listening to Miles Davis and the difference with other trumpet players is the same thing. I'm surprised there aren't food fan clubs. There probably are through blogs and it could be like fan clubs for bands."
Let me start the Mountain Dew Rags.
"With the Who (Decca Records) I took my passion and channeled it into something positive," Hatz said. "It opened so many doors for me. Even if you're not into food, but if it's diving.....go for it. Because you will find a way to create a life that is sustainable through a sincere passion."

For more, please visit www.sustainabletable.org in my archives.

Posted by David Hoekstra at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

9:30 p.m. (eastern)
JERSEY CITY, N.J.-----As one who has celebrated the spirit of tequila on a tequila cruise and on a tequila train through Mexico, I had to break away from my other duties to check out the Oaxaca Old Fashioned at the new Death & Co. bar on East 6th Street in the Lower East Side.
The Oaxaca Old-Fashioned has 1 1/2 ounces of El Tesoro Reposado (tequila), 1/2 ounce of mezcal, a teaspoon of amber agave nectar, a dash of bitters and a orange twist. The orange is peeled and the slice is flamed a few inches above the drink and spread around the lips of the glass. Each of my bartenders had devlish hipster goatees that acccented the Hades feel of the pyrogenics as well as the Gothic atmosphere of the small bar........

The drink was served in a mid-sized cocktail glass with a chunk of ice that could have sunk the Titanic. It cost me $12. It had a rich and silky taste, but I get more kick for less money with Colleen and Jackie's Snortin' Whores at the Matchbox.
I went to Death & Co. just after it opened at 7 p.m. [The name comes from an anti-alcohol Prohibtion era placard.] I read it was one of those places where during prime time they pick customers out of the line waiting outside. I'm too old to play that game and besides I have Farm Aid tomorrow.
By the time I left around 7:45, the windowless place was already starting to fill up. Customers pass through a thick black curtain to get inside. They drink in a dimly lit room accented only by a few chandeliers and candles on the tables and bar. Most everyone had to use candles to read the drink menu. It was like drinking on Lower Wacker Drive. It was so dark I made a mistake and ordered an original Old Fashioned as my first choice, but like the Oaxaca Old-Fashioned the ice was so damn big (and the drink was not topped off), I felt ripped off.
I'm pretty sure I'm the only Farm Aid fan who ventured into Death & Co. Saturday night. And I know I was the only one among the dozen or so in the bar who brought in a copy of the current issue of "Mob Candy [The Underworld Magazine of Mafia Politics Pleasure and Power]" with a pull out poster of John Gotti and a sexy pictoral of Mercedes Maia. Featuring Gambiing/Nightclubs/Girls/Estates/Guns/Scores/Cigars, I found "Mob Candy:" at a newsstand on 1st Avenue and when you get right down to it it makes perfect drinkside reading at "Death & Co."

Posted by David Hoekstra at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)