Wine, Physics, and Song

Recently read Chris Salewicz’ biography of Joe Strummer (titled “Redemption Song”).  Good read.  Long swathes of quotes from Strummer’s friends, family, and acquaintances are often illuminating, sometimes repetitive.  Interesting to have different people’s perspectives, and insights.  In some ways, this gives a real “you are there” feel of how things really were that would be hard to get out of a more conventionally discursive authorial biography.  On the other hand, this also means that one doesn’t get quite as coherent an image of how the man did what he did, and one is left with unanswered questions about, and contradictory perspectives on, some matters.  in some ways, a biography in which the author took more of a position, made clearer statements about the subject, might be more satisfying.  Or maybe just an easier read.  This biography makes you think about who this really was, and what his impact was on the people in his life—clearly intense, as was his impact on our culture and music.  And the choice to write it this way avoids the possibility of presenting a partly-false picture of Strummer as told by the author to himself.

I like to read biographies of artists to see how it’s done, how it happens.  And yes, I’ll admit that this is in part because I wonder if I can use these lessons to help me do something great, or at least satisfying.  My only real complaint about the book is that analysis of the music and especially, how it was made and the musical interaction between Strummer and the other Clash members, especially Mick Jones, is somewhat, though not totally, lacking.  It’s clear Strummer and Jones needed each other artistically, were a fantastically synergetic combination, and it also seems clear that Strummer’s decision to “fire” Jones, breaking up the Clash, deprived us of some fantastic music they still could have made.

Listening to the posthumous “Streetcore” by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, mixed by Martin Slattery and Scott Shields in part from guide vocals by Strummer and preliminary tracks.  Really excellent, even so.  Perhaps because some of the vocals weren’t necessarily intended as the final versions, Strummer sounds relaxed, to good effect, but still reminiscent of the more discursive, rambling, poetic Clash lyrics at times.  “Coma girl” and “Arms Aloft” feature the kind of 16/8 or 8/8 even guitar chinking out the same chord that is almost an alt.cliche by this point (see Snow Patrol…)… but nice stuff.  Arms Aloft goes into a more bouncy guitar-rock chorus on “..arms aloft in Aberdeen”.  No wonder I like this bit… I now realize that this is a close relative to the riff to which the Kinks set the words “I believe that you and me…” [last forever] in “All Day and All of the Night”, i.e. one of the catchiest, most insistent guitar riffs of all time.  That in itself is a lesson about how musical creation can work—you don’t necessarily need to be afraid when bits of something else find their way, perhaps transmuted, into your work…it happens to everyone, including the best of the best.  Of  course, “Arms Aloft” is no “All Day…”, but it’s nice, the Kinksy bit is tucked into the song naturally and the song doesn’t sound like (and isn’t) a Kinks ripoff at all.  Get Down Moses is an excellent reggae-drenched song; “Long Shadow” is like Neil Young and Leonard Cohen channeled through Joe.  Midnight Jam, mellow almost psychedelic, slowly swinging guitar-jam (the main hook reminiscent of a particular song from Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow”, with a little dub influence on the vocals.  Silver and Gold is Joe doing an acoustic version of what sounds like a classic country/cowby song.  Nice closer.  Must check out his other albums with this configuration, I guess (there are two).

Another late-career Strummer endeavor was his collaboration with the sui generis kick-out-the-jams rave/soul/house/funk/jam band Black Grape (formed from crucial remnants Shaun Ryder and Bez of the Happy Mondays).  Typified by their hit single for the Euro 96 football tournament, the freaky anthem England’s Irie, here live at Top of the Pops (Strummer’s first appearance there; the Clash promised never to play the show).

Black Grape’s first of two albums, It’s Great to be Straight, Yeah! is weird but very good in a loose and slightly cheesy way.  Every track seems to be on Youtube.  Not-quite-randomly dipping into the craziness (warning, expect profanity and irreverence, and even (gasp!) bad taste), here’s In the Name of the Father.  Prime candidate for any list of Top Ten Songs with Sitar Intro.  Another top track, the reggae-and-soul tinged Shake Your Money.  The Grapes take on a late 60’s/early 70’s guitar-jam kind of riff in Submarine (with allusions to A Day in the Life).   (If you can figure out what they mean when they sing “and the boy was so proud / of the crocodile on his sock / someone had to tell him / it was planet Reebok”, you’re thinking too hard.)  One of their better B-sides is Straight out of Trumpton.  But doesn’t compare to It’s a Big Day in the North… as near as they get to mellow, Balearic-isles house, a genre that I don’t listen to much, but that I’m not surprised is improved by convex combination with something like the Grape’s hyper-energetic punk/funk craziness.

On Wednesday (March 24), English cellist Steven Isserlis and Hungarian pianist Dénes Várjon gave a concert at Perimeter Institute.  It was fascinating to hear and compare four major sonatas in a broadly Romantic idiom, in one concert, rather than the usual eclectic mix of styles.  The program consisted of Samuel Barber’s Opus 6 (1932); Frederyk Chopin’s Opus 65 in G minor (1845-6), Robert Schumann’s posthumous Violin Sonata No. 3 in A minor (1853), and Ernö Dohnányi’s Opus 8 in B flat minor (1899).  Varjon’s playing was excellent, reaching the tempest-tossed craggy heights peculiar to Romantic piano writing at appropriate times, but retaining a certain control and clarity, also a rounded percussiveness that I, probably deludedly, think of as particularly Hungarian (evinced in the piano music of Bartok, or the piano of Sandor Vegh).  Isserlis playing was superb, at times sublime.   His expressiveness, his mastery of phrasing and range of moods lit up music that in the hands of lesser players can seem a bit formless in those passages when the main melodies aren’t singing out.  The Barber is a work I’ve not heard much, and would like to hear again.  This Chopin abounds in delightful, soulful melodies, the kind you recognize when you hear them and say to yourself “I’ve heard that before…so that’s where it’s from” but for some reason is not a piece I’ve sought out outside of concerts, to listen to over and over again.  This performance was the best I can recall, and I’m going to go out and find Isserlis’ recording of it.  The slow movement was transcendent and sublime.

Another highlight was Isserlis’ own transcription of a Schumann violin sonata.  The last two movements in particular had a lot of the folksy, happy, festival-of-song character that is particular to the brighter (but not necessarily less profound) side of Schumann’s music.  Images popped into my head of Brahms staying with Clara and Robert at their country place in the Rhine valley, busts of Classical Greeks and Classical musicians decorating drawing rooms, making music subtly and equally infused with folk tunes and Classical elegance, to honor the muses of the gentle side of Romanticism, who dance, clad in long robes and garlanded with flowers, in verdant fields in paintings on the wall.  That kind of thing, but good.  (And no, I hadn’t been smoking anything.)

Not the Leonard Cohen song. The Happy Mondays, from Madchester Rave On:

One amazing thing about this olympics was that most of the athletes’ gold medal performances were as enthralling and moving, in their distinct ways, as k. d. lang singing fellow-Canadian Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah at the opening ceremonies.

Some interesting links:

Jayson Bryant’s Wine Vault TV, which looks to have almost daily short video tastings of New Zealand and other wines—good stuff.

Jancis Robinson on Le Clos Jordanne and Closson Chase, her favorite Ontario wineries, both of a Burgundian (Pinot Noir and Chardonnay) orientation.  She likes Closson Chase for their Chardonnay and Clos Jordanne for both, especially their Pinots.  I tasted some CJ’s last week at Jackson Trigg’s splashy (but tasteful) Niagara-on-the-Lake facility; will post about them soon.

Cherries and Clay, a wine blog whose name summons taste memories of good Niagara Peninsula wines, though I think these guys are from BC.

Via Cherries and Clay, an interview with young winemaker Matt Dees of Jonata Wines in the Santa Ynez valley (near Santa Barbara, CA).

Countertenor Daniel Gundlach has an interesting, but apparently dormant for the last year, blog Counterleben, especially good on great and sometimes obscure sopranos.  It’s where I learned about Snowball (TM) the Dancing Cockatoo.  (If that’s not enough, another one bites the dust.)

I think this might actually be for real…

Bob Dylan—Must Be Santa (via Ben Greenman at the New Yorker).  “Ho ho ho” at 1:01…yeah, it’s for real.

And this might be too:

An excerpt from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, via Alex Ross at the New Yorker.

Here’s a find from LCBO:  Chateau Suau Sauternes, 2eme cru, produced by the SARL des Vignobles Famille DuBourdieu at Illats.  This is now $13.95 Canadian at LCBO for 375ml (on “bin-end” sale, down from $17.70, as it’s not from the most recent delivery).  It has a nice balance, veering to the sweeter, more syrupy side of the Sauternes spectrum but still elegant, slightly racy but, with what seems lowish acidity, not hugely so.  Excellent balance between subtle fruit flavors (hints of pineapple and orange) and a definite caramelized-sugar aspect, hinting at tobacco.  The fruits predominate in the nose and early on, and the caramelized aspects are more prominent on the finish, and also, it seemed to me on Thanksgiving, as the wine gets more air.  The predominant flavor might be characterized as Seville orange marmalade, with a characteristic hint of bitterness.  The low acidity might suggest that the wine is not as ageworthy as some more acidic Sauternes, but that’s far from predictable, and the good flavor intensity, caramelized and tobacco elements, and high sugar could yield fantastic results on aging.  They remind me a bit of a botrytised late-harvest 1985 Peter Lehmann Barossa Valley Semillon-Sauternes—a fairly reasonably priced Aussie wine that I bought as a grad student in the late 80’s and that, drunk in November 2005, was a truly great wine.  The Suau has a very similar set of tastes even now—it is absolutely and deliciously drinkable now, but also worth saving for a few years or a decade or two to it to see if they will meld and intensify with age.  Good Sauternes is expensive to produce, and even at the initial price of $17.70 this is a good deal, at least by North American standards, for a wine of this quality, but at $13.95 it’s a steal.  This (along with some other wines I’ll post about soon) goes a long way toward making me take back my grumblings about LCBO.

New Wine Review Feature Implemented:  If this wine were an opera singer it would be:

Marina Poplavskaya as Elizabeth of Valois in Verdi’s Don Carlo, stated by the poster to be from the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, 23 Sept. 2009.  Well, maybe not quite.  But her voice is elegant, sweet with a hint of bitterness, pure but with hints of complexity…

Here’s a wine available (as of a few weeks ago) at LCBO that I can wholeheartedly recommend:  the 2006 Nipozzano  Chianti Rufina Riserva, produced by the Marchesi de Frescobaldi.  (Don’t know what LCBO is?  Lucky you.  But they deserve some credit for stocking this.)  This is the third vintage I’ve had of this wine, and I’ve been happy with all of them, but this one’s the best.  Dark fruits, soft full flavors but definite tannic backbone to keep it together, some nice chalky minerality behind it all showing up on the longish finish with some slight hints of mintiness, and hints of bitterness.  A clear, clean, leafy version of  “Tuscan funk” lurks barely perceptible behind this, perhaps ready to contribute some heady, perfumy, but unpredictable, notes with age.  In short, fairly complex, and mixing classic Chianti characteristics with notes–including the slightest, but pleasant, hints of greenness or vegetality—that are definitely characteristic of Cabernet.  I could imagine this wine repaying 5, perhaps even 10, years of cellaring by evolving into something stunning, but this is always unpredictable, the more so as I don’t have any experience cellaring this wine.  (Comments invited from anyone who does.)

Chianti Rufina is, if I recall correctly, one of three main zones for higher-end Chiantis, the largest being Chianti Classico covering a hilly area between Florence and Siena, with Chianti Montalbano and Chianti Rufina, each much smaller than the Classico area, being the other significant DOCG’s. (I’ve also had very good Chianti from the Colli Fiorentini, i.e. the “Florentine Hills”.)

Victor Hazan’s superb, extremely well written and observed 1982 book “Italian Wine” (yes, he’s Marcella’s husband) reports Frescobaldi as “the most celebrated producer” of the area, with the Nipozzano Chianti “nearly as fine” as their single-vineyard, limited production Montesodi, but “much more accessible in price and quantity”.  At $21.55 Canadian at LCBO, that “accessible in price” still seems right 27 years on, given the quality of the wine.  I acknowledge that’s a heck of a lot to pay for a bottle if you’re not a wine geek like me, but I’m much happier paying it for this wine than the $15 to $20 CDN I’ve paid for many a mediocre bottle from LCBO (or the $10-15 US I’ve paid for some mediocre bottles in the States).

I’ll probably raise expectations too high if I quote Victor Hazan further on Chianti Rufina: “A choice Rufina can match in authority, and sometimes surpass, Chianti Classico at its finest.    In character it is closest to a Chianti from Radda [...], making forceful first impressions that precede layer after layer of unfolding flavor.” One of my best wine experiences ever (involving quantum physics, as well, so perhaps I’ll post about it at some point) involved a wine from Radda, the Monte Vertine Riserva (I don’t even recall seeing the word Chianti on the bottle), from the early 1980s.  1981 sticks in mind but at this remove—I had the wine in Turin in 1995 or so—who knows.  And this wine, though less aged, reminds me of how that Monte Vertine might have tasted in its youth.  So I think Hazan is right on in this comparison, and it says good things.  Now this is just wine, for chrissake—if you want revelation, for less money you could go out and buy the remastered deluxe edition of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.   But still, good stuff.  If you have the money, and the inclination, and you’ve already got a copy of A Love Supreme, give it a try.  OK, try it even if you don’t have a copy of A Love Supreme—but you really should get one of those, too.

Notes on previous editions of this wine:

2001, half bottle with dinner at Mövenpick, Zurich airport, August 2005:  “Excellent—has dark fruits and some complexity/silkiness.  Balanced.”

2002 (tasted 2004 or 2005): “Even better than the 2001, probably.  Velvety, fairly rich, notes of cocoa in the nose.  Good with George’s deep fried “little pizzas” from Campania, with red pepper, cayenne, tomato sauce.  Stands up to it.  Hints of minerality.  Superb!”  George is my son;  he likes to cook on occasion, especially Italian.  Perhaps it’s his Italian heritage from my wife, who is 100 percent Italian-American; perhaps it’s  his food-obsessed (though not more so than your average Italian) heritage from my side of the family.

After a late dinner at Stella! on Chartres (yeah, do it, Papa Scott!! Cook that funky tasting menu thang the way you do!), I headed for nearby Frenchmen Street to catch the James Westfall Trio which was playing for free at one of the better jazz venues in the Crescent City, Snug Harbor.  Free means playing for tips, of course, but you don’t often find a combo of such quality playing for tips.  But at a place like Snug Harbor you do (or the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, where they played the previous afternoon, presumably paid a decent sum by the NPS and relieved of the need for a tip kitty though you never know)—and they were excellent.  Westfall on vibraphone was fast, precise, creative—reminded me somehow of McCoy Tyner’s piano playing.  He put a lot into his playing and he got excellent support on bass and drums—the bass player in particular played some excellent solos (and I’m no automatic fan of bass solos).  Afterward, I hit the Apple Barrel across the street for a small blues/country/rock/folk combo that was pretty darn good for another playing-the-late-show-for-tips band.  Even one of the two Dylan covers was good.  Then hit the Cafe Negril for a solid reggae band.  I guess I was making up for a week of evenings spent hanging out with quantum types in bars that didn’t feature live music.  Actually, Friday night Jamie Vicary (postdoc at Oxford in Samson Abramsky and Bob Coecke’s group), Johnny Feng  (postdoc at NRL in Keye Martin’s group) and I finally left Keye and friends at the Napoleon bar in the quarter, and went on over to Frenchmens only to find it blacked out and everyone hanging out on the street waiting for the lights to get turned back on.  We waited too, for 45 minutes or so, listening to an excellent trombone/sousaphone/banjo trio sitting in the doorway of a closed cafe playing some pretty traditional-sounding New Orleans stuff quite well, and then left.  Bottom line: if you’re in New Orleans, check out the music calendars at:

Livewire WWOZ music calendar,

but if you don’t know what else to do head for Frenchmen and see what’s going down at Snug Harbor.  Other places to check out include (for jazz) Sweet Lorraine’s; and whoever’s playing at the Maple Leaf is always worth checking out online to see if you want to go down and hear them.  On Saturday, I decided to eat at Stella rather than spend the evening at the Maple Leaf, but was strongly tempted to go for the blues band that was playing, Jason Ricci and New Blood.

To enjoy it

You have to let it fade.

Ukiyo-e