For many a Black Sabbath fan, the band ended in spirit, if not in name, when Ozzy Osbourne was fired in 1979. However, plenty of fans took to the Ronnie James Dio fronted version of the band in the early 1980s. But fewer were enamored of the incarnation featuring former Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan and it seems that most fans jumped ship after what was intended to be a Tony Iommi solo album, Seventh Star, was released as a Sabbath effort in 1986.
The following year the Sabs were back with The Eternal Idol. Iommi was the sole remaining member of any line-up prior to 1985 and he had originally hired Ray Gillen to sing but, when that didn't pan out, Tony Martin was brought in as his replacement. But he wasn't just replacing Gillen; he also had to fill the shoes of Ozzy and Dio.
While I am not sure when I first heard The Eternal Idol, I suspect it was sometime in 1988. Much to my surprise, I found that I rather liked the album. This was partly due to a sound that bore some resemblance to the Dio era with that early 80s metal feel. Another reason was that Martin emulated some of Dio's vocal dramatics as opposed to Ozzy's more blunt style. While the album sounds of its time with a metallic sheen to the mix and the drums front and center, Iommi's riffing skills are reenergized here. I suppose another concession to the cock rock era is that his guitar tone isn't as sludgy sounding as it was in days past, but he builds dense walls of guitar that are highly melodic and get the songs moving.
"Nightmare" has a big, fuzzy riff with a vague blues feel to it which is classic Iommi. It gives this sense of falling as the ominous chord fades into the distance. The lyrics speak of an unknown power in the narrator's dreams with Satan and The Reaper making appearances as well. Gillen's only performance to be spared after Martin's arrival was the evil laughter here which heightens the song's horror film dramatics.
The song is a fine example of Iommi blending classic Sabbath with contemporary metal mores.
A few months ago, I sampled a nut brown ale from South Shore Brewery which lies up north on the shore of Lake Superior. Founded in 1995, it's an elder statesman of the Wisconsin craft brewing scene and that they merrily brew a nut brown ale for year-round consumption might make one believe they are stuck in the mid-1990s. Those were the days before the ascendancy of the IPA and there was only a handful of Citra hop plants in the whole world and they were hidden away at a top secret lupulin lab somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. It would be years before American craft brewers innovated by adding Butterfinger candy bars to their brews and laughed all the way to the bank as some cans of their fruited beers exploded. Brown ales were quite popular, e.g. – Pete's Wicked Ale, and I reminisced in my post about drinking them with some frequency.
Over the past several months, I've found myself seeking out imported beers so I can compare and contrast them with their American analogues. Most recently, I tried a Baltic porter from the country that invented it, Poland, after having had a local one that didn't appeal to me. It has become more difficult to find a variety of imported beers here in Madison. Cooler space devoted to them has noticeably declined and been given over to crafty domestic beers, hard seltzers, et al. Finding a Gose brewed in Germany is, perhaps, all but impossible in this town. I don't see any Fuller's to be had either. Back in the spring I did not see a single Maibock that was brewed in Germany. Maybe I am simply going to the wrong liquor stores.Thankfully there is one nut brown ale from the UK that I have seen around town: the one from Samuel Smith Old Brewery.
In an age when drinking Sierra Nevada Pale Ale almost makes me feel like a monk of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz, Samuel Smith's may come across like that poindexter of a co-worker many of us have who spends their weekends at SCA events. But, while many American craft brewers invoke age-old traditions in their marketing materials as they click a button to brew a batch, the folks at Samuel Smith's take tradition quite seriously, if their marketing materials, a.k.a. – webpage, is anything to go by.
The brewery was founded in 1758 and it looks like their labels were last updated around the time of The Charge of the Light Brigade. Beer is still delivered around the brewery's hometown, Tadcaster, via a wagon drawn by draft horses. (I don't know how to pronounce "Tadcaster" – it's probably Tad-kuh-sheer – but I always think of electric guitars when I see it. I envision some guy clad in powdered wig and tights jamming on "Greensleeves".) They proudly proclaim that they use slate squares instead of stainless steel for much of their fermentation, use a 19th century yeast strain, and have a full-time cooper.
Information about Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale is not exactly easy to come by. Most sites I've found merely repeat the brewery's description. I did, however, find one site that claims it was first brewed around 1900. With Tadcaster being in northern England, I suppose this beer counts as a Northern Brown Ale. The major difference between the northern and southern varieties appears to be sweetness with brewers in the south preferring more caramel flavor. One site lists Sam Smith's and Newcastle's Brown Ale as examples of the boreal brown. I believe these are the only brown ales from the UK regularly available here in Madison which means the southern flavor goes unrepresented in these parts.
My vigorous poor produced a big, off-white head of loose
foam. This nut brown was clear and colored a gorgeous deep copper. I spied a fair
number of bubbles inside. I immediately smelled caramel with a large dose of
pecan right behind it. Underneath all of that my nose caught a faint earthy-herbal
hoppiness with "herbal" meaning something in the same ballpark as mint/pine.
This is one of those classic beers that is happy to defy
your expectations. With such a dark color, one might think it'd be on the heavy
side and rather sweet but this was not the case. It had a medium-light body and,
while there was a little caramel taste to be had, it was not particularly sweet.
Instead, the flavor featured a rich, earthy nuttiness which was complemented by
some nice fizz and more of that vaguely minty hop taste. I also discerned a
faint fruitiness in the background.
The caramel and nutty flavors seeped away after I swallowed
leaving the hops to take on a slightly sharper taste. I would describe the
resulting bitterness and dryness as being in the medium range.
This is an effin' great beer! More dry than sweet with that rich
nutty taste and those herbal hops. I had a flashback to the mid-90s at the Come
Back In here in Madison. With a rather light body and 5% A.B.V., it is a
fitting brew for most any occasion. And those English hop flavors – we need
more of those. What a shame they've fallen so far out of favor here.
Junk food pairing: To go with your Nut Brown Ale, bust open a bag of Krunchers! Sweet Hawaiian Onion Kettle Cooked Potato Chips. Hawaii is an island just like England so you know they go well together.
As the previous couple entries revealed, I’ve spent some quite welcome and extremely missed time at concerts recently. But there’s been more to this spring than live music.
When the Frau and I got home from Minneapolis, it wasn’t long before a record-breaking heatwave settled upon us. It was 90+ degrees for 4 days in a row which surely violates some part of the Geneva Conventions. I was hoping not to turn the air conditioning on until June but was forced to by day 2 of the heatwave. Thankfully, the intense heat only lasted a week or so.
One evening when it was still scorching outside, I took a nicely air-conditioned bus downtown to see the English physicist Brian Cox give a presentation. With him was his partner or sidekick, perhaps, Robin Ince, an English comic. They host the wonderful radio show and podcast, The Infinite Monkey Cage, a panel program that focuses on science and delves into such weighty topics as the lives of our hominid ancestors and what ancient rocks can tell us as well as airs intense arguments about whether strawberries, once picked, are still alive.
Madison was a stop on Cox's tour called “Horizons: A 21st Century Odyssey” and we were treated to explanations of Einstein's Theories, the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, the mysteries of black holes, and lots of big pictures of outer space.
Behind him were slides, videos, and animations to illustrate his lecture. I came out of it understanding quantum mechanics and black holes more than going in. But I still don't understand them. Ince would come onstage periodically to give us a brief respite from the big concepts by throwing in his own brand of humor. Cox is funny is his own right, don't get me wrong, but Ince had more of an everyman approach.
Things got fuzzy when Cox explained the black hole information paradox, though it was a really neat conundrum. So there's this thing called quantum entanglement which stipulates that particles can be affected remotely when something acts on another particle even if they are separated by great distances. I think that's correct, anyway. The paradox comes in when one particle in that pair gets destroyed when it’s home, inside a black hole, goes POOF! as the black hole "evaporates" and the particle is no more. If one particle in that entangled pair no longer exists, then the remaining particle would lose certain characteristics thought to be immutable.
Or something like that.
At another point, the screen was filled with, not to sound like Bush, Sr. here, countless of points of light. Cox explained that this was a computer animation of the entire visible universe and that each tiny speck of light was a galaxy. Now that really made me feel small and insignificant. A bit like being in the Total Perspective Vortex, I would guess.
A couple days after being flummoxed by physics, I headed north, back to the Black River State Forest where I would do a little camping with some friends. I was there last autumn, as you may recall, so this time I would get to see it in the spring.
After a brief stop at the camp site, I headed to Wildcat Ridge for a hike. It is a bit northwest of the trails I walked last time I was up in Black River. "Norway Pine" sounded like a fine name for a trail with the promise of green trees and that fresh pine scent. Before long I discovered that the DNR ranger who put up the trail signs had a wicked sense of humor as it was only after you get a little ways along are you told that it's not just difficult terrain, but the "MOST DIFFICULT".
At least it was a beautiful day for a walk. Sunny for the most part, but not too hot. At one point atop the ridge, I saw dark clouds and heard thunder to the north but the rain stayed away. The woods were simply wonderful.
Pines and oaks were all around me and it was quite peaceful. I loved the silence. Well, I loved the absence of internal combustion engines and being immersed in bird song, the wind in the trees, and the occasional sound of a squirrel scurrying about.
There were some spectacular views to be had as I hiked along the top of the ridge, a few hundred feet above the land below.
I ended up walking a little over 6 miles in total. At about the 5 mile point I started down a different trail which was only rated as intermediate difficulty. Perhaps I was simply tired but I could not tell the difference between the trails. This new one seemed no easier to me as the hills had the same steep inclines.
Eventually I found myself back at the trailhead and my car with sore feet and a deep thirst. I returned to camp, pitched my tent, and settled in next to the fire with a beer in hand surrounded by good company. Just down a small slope from the site was the Black River.
It was calm and quiet along the shore - unlike our camp site which was continuously regaled by birds. I find it marvelous how the soundscape changes from city to country – from cars to birds. As I've gotten older, camping/spending time in the country has gone from a nice change of scenery to something more necessary. The change in my mindset in going from city to country now is more drastic than it was in years past and spending time in the great outdoors has a greater restorative effect. A palpable sense of calm descends upon me after being in the country a short time and part of my brain wonders if the invention of the city was really a good thing.
At one point I looked up to see an oriole flying overhead. Then I saw a blue bird sitting in a nearby tree.
Me, excitedly: Look! There's an indigo bunting in that tree.
Friend, incredulously: How can you tell it's an indigo bunting?
Me, donning an invisible deerstalker hat: Well, I only know of two blue birds in these parts: the blue jay and the indigo bunting. And that's no blue jay so, by process of elimination, it must therefore be an indigo bunting.
I don't have a great camera so there were times when I'd see a bird up in a tree and I would just zoom in all the way and take a snap hoping that I'd gotten a photograph of a bird and not just branches and leaves. Sometimes I get a decent picture like this one of what I think is a sparrow of some kind.
Other times I am not so lucky and I end up with an out of focus photo of a bird's butt.
I think this is the bottom of a goldfinch.
We also had a woodcock wander through our campsite. Cute little thing.
We cooked dinner, drank beer, and bantered until the wee hours. There is something deeply satisfying about sitting around a fire and staring at it. I don't know what it is about flames that captures our attention and imagination so, but I thoroughly enjoy letting it. When we hit the sack, the full moon was out from behind the clouds and I laid there with my tent aglow. So aglow, in fact, that I thought for a moment that someone's headlights were on but, no, it was just the moon.
The next morning was chilly and there was a haze on the river.
The birds were up too so I was greeted with their dawn chorus as I poked around my cooler for my can of iced coffee which was to tide me over until we could brew the fresh stuff.
My friends are smart and all have cots or an air mattress to sleep on while I am still making do with just my sleeping bag. Ergo my back was a bit sore. While I don't begrudge them their cots and cushions, I still prefer sleeping close to the earth. There's just something primitive about it, something atavistic about being close to the soil. It's where we come from, it's where most of the things we eat to sustain ourselves come from, and it is where we all return to in the end. Aside from a minor backache, I find sleeping close to the ground the perfect complement to being hypnotized by fire until deep into the night. Add in the fresh air and a river just 20 feet away and you've got all of the elements covered.
There's also something incredibly humbling thinking about how, as Brian Cox
related in his presentation, the ground beneath your feet and your body and everyone else's body and the ground beneath their feet are all made of stuff created billions of years ago by stars doing their thing and churning out the matter that comprises pretty much everything we know of. That's made of matter, that is.
After having downed some coffee, I stretched a bit and went for a walk to loosen up the old back muscles.
There is a short hiking path that starts at the end of the road that the camp sites are on so I took a stroll. While I encountered lots of birds, none of them could be bothered to sit still so I could take a photograph. A quarter mile or thereabouts up the path I began to hear the rush of water and soon came upon a stretch of rapids.
After my quite pleasant walk, I arrived back at camp to find everyone in some stage of waking up. A couple people were up and about while muffled words emanated from another tent. Eventually some folks went fishing/paddling on the river while the rest of us stayed on land to chat and watch the birds some more. Breakfast followed and then more BSing before we packed up our gear and hit road. Our stay was all too short.
********
"So," I hear you ask, "what do you do when you're not going to a concert or camping?"
In addition to procrastinating on tearing my deck down, I go to the cinema.
I was looking forward to seeing The Northman as I really enjoyed director Robert Eggers' first two films, The Witch and The Lighthouse. His latest was based on the old Scandinavian tale about a fellow named Amleth. His father was murdered by his uncle who then proceeded to marry Amleth's mother. The boy grows into a man but never loses his desire for homicidal revenge. His life's mission becomes to seek out his uncle and loose his wrath upon him. Shakespeare moved the H from the end of the name to the beginning and ended up with one of his most popular plays.
It was good. Not as good as Eggers' previous films but good. I especially liked the scenes with the seers. And the twist when Amleth meets his mother after many years took me by surprise. I suppose the moral of the story is that fratricide just doesn't pay. Although historians that specialize in Viking history were consulted, I have to wonder if Viking rites of passage really involved all that farting.
********
Bonus photo. Here's an old photograph of Grabby cleaning a young Piper.
There is no better antidote to happiness, no greater engine of grief, nothing better able to transform a calm and peaceful demeanor into a fight or flight response than Twitter. It is a wicked place. Virtual bands of brigands roam the site hurling insults at any and everyone. Iniquitous toads lie in wait to vent their spleens at the innocent like lambs to the slaughter. Perfidious keyboard warriors don the cloak of anonymity and revel in being the nemesis of people who merely want to look at cat pictures. Dante himself could never have conceived a circle of Hell that approaches the sheer evil that is Twitter.
The latest trespass against my pure heart came the other day when I was happily scrolling along and Twitter’s algorithm – talk about banality of evil – showed me some tweets by a total stranger who was vacationing in Germany.
“Oh, look! Here I am on the shore of the river Regnitz!” one proudly announced. “Check out the lovely old town hall!” said another. “Here I am in the alt stadt!”
Of Bamberg. The guy was smack dab in the middle of Rauchbier paradise and I was not.
I could feel the anger build inside of me. Jealousy seethed through my veins and if I’d just been given an injection of malice. Why was I not in Bamberg enjoying a fine Rauchbier or 10?! Who was this guy to have all the fun?! I want to go to the Schlenkerla brewery and drink a Rauchbier while dining on a Bamberg Onion yet there I was, sitting at home leading a life of quiet desperation.
Someday I will go there and I too shall walk along the river Regnitz. I too shall stroll the alt stadt and stop in at Schlenkerla where I will suckle at the oaken teat of life, to be nourished by its Rauchbier. But until that day comes, I must make do with the Rauchbier presented to me.
In Bamberg, I believe there are 2 breweries that specialize in Rauchbier: the aforementioned Schlenkerla and Spezial. It is my understanding that some of the other breweries in town also brew one although they make a variety of other styles that lack smokiness. Here in Madison we have zero breweries that specialize in Rauchbier but, thankfully, there are brewers around that will occasionally deviate from the hazy, fruity norm and whip up a batch of smoky beer.
One such brewery is Working Draft. It seems like they brew a smoke beer of some kind 2 or 3 times a year. While I’ve seen their Rauch Helles mentioned before, I’d never actually tried it until recently. One time Isthmus beer scribe Robin Shepard even tweeted at me that it was on tap and I dutifully put it on my to-do list but, sadly, never got around to heading down to the brewery to give it a go. My suspicion is that it’s made in fairly small batches and that the brewers at Working Draft drink most of it. I mean, if Clint Lohman, his minions, and a few epicurean customers weren’t the only ones enjoying it, you’d think it'd be brewed more often.
The most recent batch was canned. I am unsure if previous batches were but I suspect not. This made things easier for me and I was totally unsurprised to find several 4-packs in the cooler as if I was the first to purchase the stuff. The bottom of the can noted that the beer was canned on 6/15/22 so it was quite fresh.
Smoked Helles poured a gorgeous light gold. (Or was it a deep yellow?) It was clear as day and topped with a modest head of loose, white foam that lasted what I think of as an average amount of time. There was a smattering of bubbles inside. The aroma got me drooling with its luscious smokiness which was accompanied by bread, a faint honeyed sweetness, and just a hint of spicy hops.
That first sip revealed a good, firm fizz before my tongue was awash in a sea of smoke. I am not sure, but it tasted like the traditional German beechwood smoke. The medium-light body also had some tasty bread flavor with spicy hops underneath. It had a firm astringency which gave it some bite. On the finish, the bready taste faded quickly but the smokiness lingered a short time before the hops added more of that spiciness with green notes that made for a firm bitterness and a pretty dry finish.
A friend of mine who has been making beer in the craft beer industry for a long time has sung the praises of Working Draft's lagering capabilities. "If you see their lager, you know it's going to be good," he once remarked. I agree. They have an excellent Rauchbier on their hands. There's smokiness in spades yet the bready and hoppy tastes get their due. It's clean and crisp and the savory malt flavors take center stage. My only gripe here is that I wish it was a little more smooth with less of an acidic bite. But this does not diminish the beer's deliciousness.
The light body is perfect for our summer weather so, when autumn arrives and it gets cooler outside, methinks we deserve a Rauch Festbier.
Junk food pairing: At 4.7% A.B.V, this is a fairly sessionable beer and I suggest pairing it with your 3 course junk food meal. Start with a bag of sour plum potato chips for your Vorspeise. The main course will be pork rinds with a bacon horseradish dip. (Heluva Good! makes a fine dip of this flavor.) For dessert, serve up a big slice of Dr. Pepper cake. You will find that Smoked Helles is the perfect complement to every one of these fine comestibles.
But no. Instead the bloodshed reached a fever pitch as some poor Geats became the plat du jour at Grendel's grisly table before Beowolf relieved the chef himself of one of his arms followed by his life. Heeding the Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye, Grendel's mother sets out to exact revenge but ends up losing her life too. A truly ghastly affair.
Luckily I can enjoy mead today without fear that some hideous, bloodthirsty monster is going to burst in and start eating my kith and kin.
I think I have some kind of atavistic impulse to drink the stuff with all of my Central and Eastern European blood. With the odd exception, I don't drink wine but rather enjoy mead. I do, however, feel bad for the bees. I mean, those bee ladies spend all this time and effort risking life and limb to gather nectar and make honey only to have some human hork it all. Let's hope honey bees never read Marx and learn about workers controlling the means of production or Locke and discover that the fruits of one's labors are your own or we could be in serious trouble.
While I don't doubt that mead's popularity has benefitted from the slow food and craft beer movements, the Boston Beer Company does not have a subsidiary dedicated to it so I think the venerable beverage has a long row to hoe before it finds wide appeal.
Although it's a niche product, there is still a fair amount of mead to be found on store shelves here in Madison. And much of it is made right here in Wisconsin. No doubt people have fermenting honey for ages here in the Land of Cheese but the progenitor of the modern meadery in our fair state is surely White Winter Winery up north in Iron River. I believe theirs was the first mead I ever tasted and I visited the place once back in 2005 returning with a large cache of fine honey wine.
Founded in 1996, they began by offering mead, dry & sweet, fruited and not, with what appears to be Boreas' face on the label just to remind everyone of how cold it gets up by Lake Superior. They have since added less wine-like meads that have less alcohol and a generous dose of fizz to their portfolio. At some point, they got into the cider business as well.
For our purposes here, I am going to blather on about their dry mead.
Looking at it, the mead is nearly colorless with only a faint yellow tint. It was crystal clear and, as they say in meady circles, still, i.e. - not fizzy. Would you believe that it smelled like honey? I know that the scent and taste of honeys will vary depending on the flowers from which the nectar was drawn but I have no idea where the honey that made this mead came from. (Is there a word like "terroir" but for flowers?) It smelled like honey, mainly. There was a mild floral sent too along with strawberry. I could also smell that astringent alcohol scent, but it wasn't unpleasant.
This stuff was smooth with a medium-light body. Light sweetness was balanced by firm dryness. It tasted like honey with its floral/earthy flavors that included something vanilla-like. The sweetness lingered a long time after swallowing but a tannin dryness eventually swept it away.
I adore this mead with its fairly light, mild taste. It's dry but not mouth puckeringly so like a red wine, but it's also not cloyingly sweet. The label says that natural flavors were added but I have no idea what they were. It simply has a lovely honey flavor and is dangerously drinkable.
Junk food pairing: a light, dry mead like this one will pair well with white meats and mild cheeses so get yourself a box of Chicken in a Bisket crackers and dose them with the American cheese flavored Easy Cheese.
While Yes' 2014 album Heaven & Earth will never be held in the same regard as the likes of Fragile or Going For the One, I think it is better than it's usually given credit for. Despite the frozen landscape of the album's cover, it was released in July (its 8th anniversary was just a couple days ago) and I think that I shall forever hear the lazy, hazy days of summer in its music. The songs have an easy going, West Coast feel to them.
Some may scoff at the man taking Jon Anderson's spot (or was he Benoît David's replacement?), Jon Davison, but he has a beautiful voice and he certainly brings on the New Age, hippie vibes. When I saw Yes in concert here in Madison just a few days after the release of Heaven & Earth, I felt Davison came across as a bit more down to earth than his legendary predecessor and just thrilled to be fronting a band that he surely grew up listening to. He did a fine job on the older material which made up the bulk of the set as older bands seem to have little to no confidence in their new songs these days.
Heaven & Earth's main failing, to my ears, is the drumming. Alan White (R.I.P.) generally kept everything at an often times enjoyable but ultimately monotonous mid-tempo. It's hard to believe that this was the same guy who maniacally propelled songs like "Ritual" and "Sound Chaser" forward as if they were primitive rites upon which the band members lives depended on. And it was his bass drum lick that made "Shoot High Aim Low" such a memorable piece of neo-Yes. Most of the songs on Heaven & Earth have a demo-like quality to them in that White's beats seem like placeholders and that the band just ran out of time to replace them with the real drum parts.
Having said this, Yes managed to eek out at least a couple great songs on Heaven & Earth and one of those is "Step Beyond". While it's not one of the songs that veers towards the band's proggy past, it does have some Yes trademarks as well as the virtue of being incredibly catchy. It was written by Steve Howe and Jon Davison but I don't know if there was a strict division between writing the music and the lyrics or not.
It begins with a springy synth line from Geoff Downes that bounces from channel to channel and sounds really neat on headphones. A couple hits on the snare and the rest of the band come in. Howe's guitar introduces the melody Davison uses for his vocals. The lyrics feel very much like those of old - "If I don't let go/I'd never know/The joy freedom brings" - but are more direct. Davison doesn't seem to throw in words strictly because of their sonorous qualities as Anderson did.
While I do wish White's playing was more dynamic, Howe's guitar work is tasteful and melodic and he and Chris Squire (R.I.P.) team up with Davison for those trademark Yes vocal harmonies that make the second half of the song such a joy. And it is always a pleasure to hear Squire's bass step away from rhythm duties and play its own melody.
For a business named "Boston Beer Company", they
sure do produce a lot of boozy drinks that are not beer. It appears that their
Truly hard seltzers are all the rage these days and make up the bulk of their
sales. This taken together with their also popular Twisted hard iced teas and
Angry Orchard hard ciders means that poor Sam Adams beers make up a rather
small percentage of total sales for the company. And now they're making alcoholic Mountain Dew which is apparently rather popular.
While beer isn't the big performer, I don't know if Boston
Beer is brewing less of it or if they're simply brewing a lot more seltzer and
whatnot.
Their beery line-up is in near constant flux seemingly
because of a need to jump on every craft beer bandwagon. I don't keep a sharp
eye on their offerings but it feels like every time a particular variation of an
IPA becomes popular, Sam Adams is all over it like a fly on shit and releases 3
or 4 versions. Beyond IPAs, Sam Adams has some fine beers. I like Boston Lager
quite a bit, though I've heard they have tweaked it. Sam ’76 (which
appears to be called Wicked Easy now) led me onto the path of refreshment a few summers ago when I was in Indianapolis and it was quite balmy out. I
suppose my favorites, though, are their winter seasonals. Winter Lager and Alpine
Lager are fine brews for snowy days. The former as well as the white ales they
offer in the colder months feature the fruits and spices we associate with
Christmas cookies and mulling and so they have that holiday taste which offers
a nice break from hops.
But those beers are months away and 80+ degree highs are here. That means it is time to drink Oktoberfests. Ha! I keed, I
keed. I recently took a break from my summer standards (mainly Bubbler and Kid Kölsch) and bought some Sam
Adams' Summer Ale for the first time in a while.
Summer Ale, a wheat ale, is like the younger sibling of their
winter seasonal Cold Snap, also a wheat ale, which features a whole host of ingredients
beyond the ones we usually think of when we think of beer. It has citrus zests,
bits of flowers, and spices such as the highly uncommon Grains of Paradise.
Summer Ale pares the unusual ingredients list down to the citrus zests plus some Grains of Paradise.
Grains of Paradise are the seeds of a West African plant that
is a member of the ginger family. They taste a bit like ginger but with more of
a woody component, to my tongue. I've purchased them at The Spice House in the
Milwaukee Public Market but have never seen them for sale in Madison, though they must be around somewhere.
There is much about beer chemistry that escapes me. I
learned way back in the olden times that wheat, as a rule of thumb, produces a
bigger head than barley. Proteins or some such thing. And so, with that little tidbit of knowledge I have
since gone on and assumed every wheat beer will have this big fluffy pillow of
foam on top and, without fail, I am shocked – SHOCKED! – when a wheat beer
doesn't despite it having happened countless times.
Well, count Summer Ale in this group that shocks. The head was naught but a small, white disc of foam. ☹ Otherwise, the beer looked delightful with its
refulgent yellow hue that had a slight haziness to it. For me, the beer smelled
of wheat and the woody bit of Grains of Paradise with a little citrus
underneath.
As expected from a summer beer, it had a fairly light body
along with ample fizz. Again, wheat and Grains of Paradise were most noticeable
with the spice having a more gingery flavor to them in addition to the woody/earthy
aspect. The citrus was more prominent than in the aroma with an emphasis on the
lime. I didn't taste much in the way of hops until the finish when a little
peppery hop flavor was joined by a mild bitterness. The citrus came closer to
the front and gave my sip a bit of tartness at the end.
I quite like this stuff. It's mellow and refreshing with the
citrus being an accent flavor instead of sitting front and center. And the
Grains of Paradise are novel and tasty and they work well with the wheat and
fruit. I like it that there's something different here that isn't simply a
tropical fruit pulled from obscurity on some island for the sake of novelty.
Refreshing restraint at its finest.
Junk food pairing: Pair Sam Adams Summer Ale with a bag of Flamin'
Hot Cheetos.
April went out on a rather loud, headbangy note as a friend and I went to Milwaukee to catch the Swedish progressive/death metal band, Opeth. As I noted in my last entry, I have started attending concerts again and the trend would continue into May.
Well, Opeth started out as a death metal band in the mid-90s but, by 2011, their sound had morphed into something less deathy and more heavy. There are now acoustic passages that sit nicely against loud, fuzzy guitars and the vocals are clean instead of being growly. I hear a lot of Deep Purple in them these days. ("Slither" has mid-70s Purple all over it, for example, as if it were a Burn outtake.)
While I am not the biggest Opeth fan in all of Christendom, I very much enjoy their albums post-death metal growl starting with Heritage.
There's great melodies, dynamics, some really nice vocal performances,
et al. I felt badly as a friend who is a huge fan of theirs had come
down with Covid and was unable to attend. Seeing Opeth is a bucket list
item for him. Hopefully they'll be round again soon.
A band called Khemmis opened the evening and they came across as a mix of death metal and old school thrash. They were OK, I guess. Mastodon played next. I've heard some of their stuff and like a song here and there. But, that night, aside from a song or two, I just couldn't get it into it. Too dense, too sludgy.
Opeth's set focused on newer material - say from the last 10 years or so but they dipped into their way back catalogue as well. While the sound wasn't the greatest where we were standing, live music is live music. Things really kicked in for me when "The Devil's Orchard" began. The volume, the kinetic playing, and seeing the body passing down front all made for a really intense experience. "Sorceress" and "Cusp of Eternity" are other songs that stood out for me from that night. Luckily someone captured the latter and posted it online.
The show was at the Eagles Ballroom, a gorgeous old space, and it was my first time seeing a show there. As I stood in the center of the floor looking at the pre-war interior, I envisioned the likes of Glenn Miller gracing the stage as Milwaukee’s socialites drank, danced, and drank even more. Now that I look up the venue’s history, I see that Glenn Miller did indeed perform there as did Guy Lombardo. And the building was designed by Russell Barr Williamson, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.
A few days after the Opeth gig, the Frau and I had a date planned at the lovely Stoughton Opera House – Stoughton is a town just south of Madison – for a performance by Aimee Mann. My Frau adores her contributions to the Magnolia soundtrack while I know nothing of her work beyond "Voices Carry" from her days in 'Til Tuesday. Before Covid, I probably would have passed on the show and let my Frau go with a friend of hers. But it was spring - both winter and the lockdown restrictions were over and I wanted to get out and do stuff. Plus, I think that the lockdown (and its end) helped me shake off some middle age complacency, to break some habits, and do things I wouldn't have just a couple years earlier. Rather than retreat inwards and repeat the same old, same old, I wanted to expand outwards and engage the new.
Unfortunately, the show was cancelled due to Covid. D'oh!
Luckily we had another concert planned for the following weekend. And so on a lovely Saturday morning she and I hit the road for Minneapolis where we were to see Steve Hackett play.
I hadn’t been to the Twin Cities since the early 2000’s, I think, when I attended a wedding there. About 10 years before that, I accompanied a roommate or 2 there to visit a friend of one of them in Dinkytown, a neighborhood near the University of Minnesota.
After swinging into town, we stopped at Surly Brewing for a bite to eat and some barleypop. It is a pretty large facility that brews about 80,000 barrels of beer a year and can handle 1,800 thirsty patrons. We chose to eat inside as it was a bit windy out. But it wasn't really a cloistered atmosphere as most of a wall was open to the beer garden out back.
The Frau enjoyed her tacos and I my bahn mi salad. We both enjoyed the beer as well.
She had a black IPA while I went with an Italian-style pilsner. Crisp and refreshing with a hefty dose of spicy, bracing hops.
Despite the brewery being located in an industrial area, they managed to make a rather nice beer garden out back.
It was spacious with a fair amount of greenery so, if you faced the right direction, you’d forget there was a giant, disused grain silo there. At least I think that’s what it was. The Twin Cities were all about timber and flour back in the day so I just assume any old industrial building that doesn’t look like a sawmill had to do with flour milling.
At one point I thought to myself, "You know, this is what Ale Asylum aspired to be." Ale Asylum is a Madison brewery and it shares a lot in common with Surly. Their breweries have that metallic, industrial vibe to them and they both brew lots of trendy, hop-forward beers. Also, both try to portray themselves as edgy and slightly rebellious. Or at least not stodgy or in any way beholden to tradition.
The show was at the Pantages Theatre, a lovely old venue downtown with our hotel only a block away. It dates back to 1916 and has a lovely Beaux Arts interior (yes I looked that up) and no doubt many Scandinavian-descended denizens of the Twin Cities back in the day came to the theatre to enjoy the greatest hits of Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius.
After checking in at the hotel, I wandered around the area on what was a fairly warm afternoon.
I came across a Bob Dylan mural just a few blocks away.
There were plenty of new buildings around including this skyscraper.
There are skywalks everywhere so you can avoid the Arctic cold in the winter months. Or, I suppose, oppressive heat in the summer.
We had noticed that Surly wasn’t too far from the Green line train and on my walk I saw that it ran just a couple blocks from the hotel.
I was rather jealous as I’d love to have light rail in here Madison. Not only that, I also found myself wishing we had Amtrak service too because that 270 mile trip up from Madison would have been so much nicer on a train than me having to drive it.
Next, I wandered over to the Warehouse District where there appeared to be plenty of old buildings and we all know what old buildings mean: ghost signs!
I came across several. My father was from Minneapolis and I wondered how many of these long-gone businesses were still around when he growing up there.
Before long it was evening and I headed back to the hotel to freshen up for the concert.
Steve Hackett was the guitarist in the band Genesis from 1970-77 and he has been a solo artist ever since. His music has had many influences over the years but he’s primarily known for his rock music that has something of a symphonic bent to it as well as his classical guitar stylings. He sings the praises of The Beatles and Bach in equal measure.
It was a fantastic show featuring solo material as well as old Genesis songs. I was particularly impressed by the drummer, Craig Blundell, who propelled the songs forward in a way that was always interesting and busy but never got in the way. His performance on "Shadow of the Hierophant" was stunning. I sat there, my mouth (m)agog at how he seemed to never repeat a fill as he thrust the song forward with ever increasing intensity. "Brilliant!" as they say over there in the UK.
My one complaint is that Hackett shortchanged his own material. He played about 45 minutes of solo stuff for the first set before proceeding to play all of Genesis' 1977 double live album, Seconds Out. I give him a boatload of credit for celebrating early Genesis by playing the songs of that era instead of writing most of those songs off as embarrassing relics of pretentious youth, as some of his former bandmates do. However, he has been regularly recording solo albums since 1975 and has a country ton of great material to choose from. How about dusting off "Camino Royale"? Or putting "Loving Sea", a later period classic from 2015, back into the set? Oh well. What can you do?
I was pleased when I heard my Frau singing along to "Carpet Crawlers". I haven't found any recordings, audio or video, from this show but clips from other dates on the tour are plentiful.
We woke up the next morning and went in search of breakfast early. It was Mother’s Day so restaurants would be packed to the gills with ravenous families seeking holiday brunch. The Frau had made a reservation at some place near the hotel downtown but I thought it would be more fun to head across the Mississippi River to The Finnish Bistro. We beat the holiday hordes and settled in with coffee and a slice of almond kringle.
To make sure we had our Nordic bases covered, my Frau ordered a Lefse Scrambler which was scrambled eggs, vegetables, and reindeer sausage wrapped in a large piece of lefse. Lefse being a Nordic potato flatbread.
I had a reindeer sausage omelet which contained a lot of Swiss cheese. Both of our meals were delicious. So how does reindeer sausage taste? Think beef ring bologna with a faint gamey taste.On the way out, I snagged some items from the bakery. Our plan was to stop and visit my youngest stepson and his girlfriend on the way home in Eau Claire so I figured I should bring them some pastries as they'd probably still be waking up when we arrived. Plus, I brought a few treats home for our use.
You may recall a previous entry in which I failed to buy Swedish limpa bread while up in Chetek. Not wanting to miss out on Scandinavian treats yet again, I made sure to get some of the Finnish pulla bread that was on offer.
It was a light, fluffy bread with almond and a generous dose of cardamom. When we got to Eau Claire I opened the box that contained all of the treats and my nose was greeted with a wave of that luscious, aromatic spice. Delicious!Arriving back in Madison, it was as if spring had sprung overnight. Everything was just verdant and full of leaves. When we had left for the Twin Cities, the green was coming on and buds were everywhere but it was like coming home to a new place.
It went from this:
To this:
I think we have a red maple here.
Spring had well and truly sprung!
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Bonus photo! Nature is red in tooth and claw. The Frau and I came home from a restaurant one evening and, pulling into the driveway, we watched a hawk (red-tailed?) zip over the yard with something dangling from its talons. It landed on a tree across the street and ate dinner. Methinks that rabbit was on the menu.
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