Paper bird et al.

Seine Hand, die hinter seinem Rücken flachliegend an der Gürtel gedrückt war, bewegte sich, langsam, etwas zitternd und völlig unbeachtet. Die Finger schlossen sich, ballten sich, um sich wieder aus der Faust zu entspannen. Langsam schritt er voran, die eine Hand selbstbewegend. In der anderen hielt er ein Buch vor sich, den Flur entlang langsam lesend und schreitend, verträumt und vom Buch verfangen.

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It must have been around 11, or close enough that you wouldn't care. The place was pretty packed, surprising perhaps for this time of night. It was Friday, after all, but it was also a restaurant and not just a bar. Happy hour are two of the best words out there, and our happy hour took the form of four expertly prepared and discretely decorated rolls, four divided by eight divided by three. Pickeled gourd, rock shrimp, salmon, avocado, and cucumber, shielded in rice and carefully wrapped in nori, dunked in wasabi soy and separated by slices of pickled ginger. Each one a mouthful, a mix of tastes both strong and subtle, sensations and textures to tease the tongue.

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On my way to breakfast this morning I almost fell down the stairs, and did something to my ankle. It's got two hours to get better before I go for my run :(

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For the measely price of $5, we went to a concert at the University. The first band was already playing as we walked in. They were good, but they were bad. I won't make any claims about my musical knowledge, so forgive my somewhat uncertain definition. The band played something I guess you could call electric blues or light jazz, but to me it sounded like elevator music meets guitar hero. The guitarist and bassist were both excellent musicians, but for one of the few times in my life, their music just left me cold. We were happy when it ended, as it had literally actually almost put us to sleep.

The next band was a quartet called Golden Brown, consisting of a doghouse bass, guitar, cello and lap steel guitar. They sounded a bit like the Be Good Tanyas with new-age influences, had lovely vocals and basically did a beautiful job.

After much staging and rearranging, sound checks and dial-twisting, we were treated to the unique music of Laura Goldhammer (see video below). She's a one-woman show--though this time she played with the bassist and guitarist of the previous band--who makes animations to which she performs live. She reminds me vocally a bit of Joanna Newstrom, but also did a smashing version of Feist's Secret Heart. She switches off between guitar and banjo, with or without her own percussion. It was, simply put, amazing. Watch the videos.







The last band, and the headliners for the evening, was a Denver group called Paper Bird. While you're reading this, go open THIS PAGE in another window and listen to their music. I'm pretty sure I saw these guys playing outside on the lawn one of the days this week; it's not that often you hear absolutely stunning vocals paired with banjo and trombone. They entered with fanfare and proceeded to do an a capella piece. Phenomenal singers, all three. Their music is a mix of a capella, barbershop, swing, and folk. Listening to them just put me in absolute awe of these girls and guys. Their singing and harmonies are impeccable, their style and musicality simply astounding.

As soon as they began to play, someone down the row from me began twitching wildly in his seat, throwing himself backwards and forwards as if traumitized. The band, who is apparently familiar with him, invited him and anyone else who wanted to dance to come up to the front and he leapt from his seat where he proceeded to take the entire right-hand aisle. His arms windmilling, he danced--well, I might add--in apparent total ecstacy, flinging all limbs in all directly, wildly and spinning, caught completely by the music.



Live music, for me, just transports me off to somewhere distant and I kind of drift away on a little mental raft.

The battle of sushi fields

I had a small altercation with a piece of sushi yesterday. Middle of nowhere on a bike, somewhere between the Rhine and home, I get a call from A., who is back from a fabulous concert in Zürich and up for dinner. With a bit of effort I tracked down another friend who, plus her boyfriend, mine, his brother, my roommate, A., and the two friends she ended up bringing with, resulted in quite a crowd.

For a shared flat I have a big kitchen, enough for six to comfortably cook and eat. The nine of us had a bit of problem fitting everyone in, but sushi is work-intensive, and our particular economy had a comparative advantage in labor. So, knives flashing my faithful fellow cooks evicerated the vegetables, reduced the rice to a defenseless mass, and turned a tower of lettuce into a mustardly masterpiece. I myself went to battle against three bricks of spinach and a can of tomatoes, which, pitted against the pitiful three layers of lasagne noodles on hand resulted in something resembling a casserole but without aspirations of ever becoming a lasagne.

So, sushi. Cook rice, cool down rice, mince vegetables (carrots, radishes, cucumber, bamboo sprouts, baby corns, avacado), spread rice on nori (yes, it is seaweed), line up the vegetables neatly and carefully (the heretics added fish), and...roll. Someone pointed out the apparent affinity of my menues to tend towards "rolling". Freud would probably have something to say to that but I'd rather not speculate; suffice to say the evidence is against me (sushi, spring rolls, an attempt at soft tacos).

But I digress. We roll and we slice, we lift, we dip, we eat. For those brave of heart and tongue or devoid of taste buds, there is the evil green drug known as wasabi, cunningly addictive, leaving us red in the face, noses burning, coming back again and again for our next fix.


The opposing army...

Sometime later in the evening, after I had already eaten two or three hundred pieces of sushi and my ration of casserole and salad I went for another sushi piece, dunked it liberally in wasabi (I, ever the modest one, brag of my ability to eat it plain, with a spoon--not just idle chatter). And the bloody piece of sushi attacked me, getting stuck somewhere between chewing and swallowing; the wasabi, sensing weakness, moved in for the kill and in a brilliant flanking manoeuvre, managed to incapacitate me completely. I sat rigid in my chair, slowly turning red, gasping like a lifetime pack-a-day smoker mountain climbing, trying to swallow, or spit out, or do something, anything, but the persistant piece will not release its hold, going for the jugular like a bulldog. As my distress becomes obvious I am surrounded by a ring of horrified-looking dinner guests, probably looking like the unholy cross between a tomato and a fish out of water.

But I rallied the troops and counterattacked, managing to force the sushi into retreat and eventually into my stomach. The wasabi relinquished extremely unwillingly, and I was left with the last vestiges of the rearguard in my nose, giving me the appearance and the stuffy nose of a serious allergy sufferer with a headcol; these battle wounds would remain with me throughout the remainder of the evening.

My victory meal of apple sauce and crêpes was not the least diminished by my uncooperative olfactory organ, though I imagine I could have appreciated the taste as well as the consistancy had I been more astute or graceful in my initial sushi sortie.