The Mirror Always Lies

(Photo by John Vinson.)

Although I had heard and enjoyed Rush's classic rock radio staples such as "Tom Sawyer" and "Spirit of Radio" for a few years (or more), it wasn't until 1987 that I bought the ticket and took the ride. During the summer of that year, ads touting the impending release of their newest album, Hold Your Fire, appeared in Kerrang! and they got me thinking that I ought to really investigate their music beyond what I had heard on the radio. 8 September rolled around and I went out and bought a copy. I found that I loved it as much as their older, riffier material.

A couple years later they gave us Presto. I was a bit ambivalent upon hearing of its release. Part of me loved (and still does) their previous 3 albums that made generous use of synthesizers and saw Alex Lifeson's guitar add more color than heavy riffs to the songs. Another part was hoping that Lifeson would bring back those big, fuzzy chords. When I finally heard Presto, I was heartened to hear that the lead off track, "Show Don't Tell" was heavier than anything on Hold Your Fire, even if it wasn't a return to their roots. As the album progressed, it became clear that, "Superconductor" aside, this would not be the return of the riffs.

Regardless of the keyboard-guitar ratio, Presto proved to be a great album. I went to see them with a group of friends at Alpine Valley in the summer of 1990, the first of several times I would catch them in concert. As luck would have it, someone recorded the show so I can relive that experience without having to sink into the mud as we did in our lawn seats that night.

"War Paint" is one of my favorites from the album. It comes charging out of the gates as though it were a camera quickly zooming in on the subject of the first verse - a girl before the mirror. The song slows for the verse where she appraises her amateurish maquillage. I don't know that Neil Peart ever explained his lyrics here but I've long wondered if he had read something by Erving Goffman that provided inspiration. For me, it's a commentary on how we choose to present ourselves to others along with a dose of mild cynicism with the observation that we have a seemingly infinite capacity to delude ourselves.

The verse featuring the boy before the mirror is a bit faster than its counterpart, with more tension. Just as Geddy Lee begins to sing "Boys and girls together/Mistake conceit for pride" the song kicks into overdrive with a fast beat and Lifeson's guitar propelling the song forward as a chorus of voices repeats the couplet "Paint the mirror black/the mirror always lies" to the end.

Presto may not be a perfect album but its joys are many and they certainly include "War Paint".

The Corona Diaries Vol. 60 - Prelude: Fluvial

(Sail on over to entry #60.)

When You're Older and You're Thinking Back: 41 Years of Abacab

Earlier this month Twitter reminded me of the 41st anniversary of Abacab by Genesis. (Wikipedia says it was released on 18 September.)  While many a prog fan dismisses the album as being too poppy or perhaps tainted by New Wave, I simply adore it for this is the album that got me into Genesis and set me on a course to be progressive rock fan/nerd. I even have the copy of the album that did the deed:

It belonged to my brother who passed away several years ago. Going through his possessions I was pleasantly surprised to find that he had kept the cassette all these years, though the discovery was bittersweet.

Judging by the songs on the reverse side, I’d say the tape was made in the spring of 1982. The flip side has some songs from The J. Geils Band’s Freeze Frame, which was released in October 1981, as well as tracks from Blackout by Scorpions which came out in March 1982. However, it is certainly possible that most of the tape was assembled in the autumn of '81 with the Scorpions material added later to fill up the remaining time.

It was at this time that I began to find myself alone after school. Not wanting to do homework and eager to explore, at some point my brother’s tape collection fell victim to my plundering. I recall listening to Led Zeppelin IV, a tape which had a mix of songs by The Doors and The Rolling Stones, and several other bands. Somewhere along the way I came across his copy of Abacab and threw it on the stereo. (No MP3s and no tiny little earbuds then.) It was wholly unlike anything I’d heard before.

My mother harbored (and continues to do so) a love for Johnny Mathis and Genesis stood in stark contrast to his anodyne crooning. My father’s taste ran more towards folkier sounds with a good dose of soft rock as well – I’m talking Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac of the mid- to late-70s, etc. Again, Genesis were nothing like that. But they were also different from the bluesy inflections of the Stones, the heaviness of Led Zeppelin, and the more poppy songs by The Doors. I think it was partly due to the lack of heavy riffs on the part of Mike Rutherford but mostly because of Tony Banks’ synthesizers. They just sounded unworldly to my young ears.

Another element that set Genesis apart was the lyrics. I mean, what the hell is an “abacab” anyway? This was before the Internet so I had no way of getting the lyrics. As you can see, it was a pirated copy of the album so I didn’t even know the names of the songs. Later I found out that the album did not have the lyrics on the inner sleeve so, even if my brother hadn’t been a scofflaw, I’d still have been flummoxed. I came to believe that “Me and Sarah Jane” was about Doctor Who while “Dodo/Lurker” was sheer nonsense as far as I could tell. Even now 41 years later and knowing what Phil Collins is singing, I still can make neither heads nor tails of that song.

I played this tape over and over and over until I ruined it. While I cannot recall when this happened exactly, I do remember the sheer horror of humming along to the album only to suddenly hear that the music from the other side had bled through all mangled and muffled. Presumably the playback head on the tape deck needed to be demagnetized and cleaned. Oops.

Fast forward to 1984. A radio station in Chicago, where I grew up, announced that they were going to be broadcasting a multi-hour Genesis documentary. I remember well listening to it and still have it on tape. At the time I was only familiar with Abacab, the single “Paperlate” (an Abacab outtake), and some of the songs from the band’s eponymous album. I was floored when I heard the Peter Gabriel stuff – a completely different voice than I was used to, Mellotrons, and lyrics about giant hogweeds and lambs lying down on Broadway. I can still hear Mike Rutherford saying, "...talk about it in such glowing terms as The Lamb" just before the cymbals herald the arrival of Gabriel's opening line on that albums title song. Unfortunately the program never played any Gabriel-era track in its entirety. Just as I was really getting into the music, they’d fade out and let someone bitch about Peter Gabriel’s costumes.

The first tune to avoid being unceremoniously truncated was “Squonk”. The song crashes in and then settles into a strong, steady beat. Collins’ drums have never sounded better. I had absolutely no idea what was a squonk was or why it was melting into a pool of tears but, nonetheless, it was love at first listen. I was off to the record store as soon as I was able to find the album that contained this magical song. A Trick of the Tail has been a favorite album of mine ever since.

Years later I found out that both “Squonk” and ATotT were favorites of my brother. Going through his CD collection after his death, I found that he had only one album from the band’s remix/remaster campaign from the late 2000s and it was ATotT. He came up here to Madison many years ago as I was throwing a party in honor of our father who had died a few months earlier. I was busy at work in the kitchen preparing food while “Squonk” was playing when he came in to grab a soda or sample the vittles and he was “singing” along. I use the scare quotes because he could not sing. Neither can I for that matter. However out of tune he may have been, that’s one of those memories that I shall treasure forever.

Sorry about ruining your tape, bro.

Take the Summer Off: Festbier by Sprecher Brewing Co.

Back in the summer Sprecher Brewery released Festbier, a…um…festbier, I guess. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time Milwaukee’s oldest microbrewery has brewed this type of beer. So what exactly is a festbier?

Bueller? Bueller?

“Oktoberfestbier” seems to be a trademarked appellation, not unlike Kölsch, Champagne, and Bubbler, for the brews made by the 6 Munich breweries that have the right to serve their beers at the festival. Or are Oktoberfestbiers the only beers allowed to be served in a certain part of the festival grounds? It’s not clear to me. Festbier, on the other hand, appears to have a more nebulous meaning.

Here’s what I have been able to piece together after years¹ of research:

If you take a little trip back to Bavaria in the mid-16th century, you will find that the brewers there decreed that one could brew only between 29 September and 23 April. Or it was Duke Albrecht V that issued this edict? Why would whoever it was do such a thing? Well, the main reason cited by all the sources I found was because brewing beer involved boiling and boiling means fire and fire means Danger, Will Robinson! - as in your whole town with its fine wooden buildings could burn down.

While I can understand the summer months being of particular concern for fire hazards, the German love of beer runs deep. The Roman historian Tacitus noted this proclivity back in the first century C.E. so those Bavarian public awareness campaigns must have been hardcore and/or ubiquitous. I am picturing Smokey Bär dressed in Lederhosen – “Nur Sie can prevent the whole town from burning down!”

Presumably this fire hazard existed long before this brewing decree so why did they wait so long? The mills of Bavarian bureaucracy ground slowly but exceedingly fine, apparently.

The new brewing restrictions gave way to a new beer. If you brewed a whole lot of bier in, say, Märzen (March) and let it age the requisite 8 weeks or so, you will have liquid refreshment available just as the season of no brewing kicks in and the biergartens open. And if you made it a bit stronger, the stuff could last until the autumn where it would be quaffed by revelers at autumnal festivals. Hopefully you’d have enough to last until fresh batches could be made. I bet every brewery started brewing at exactly midnight on 29 September with whole towns aglow from the boilers firing up.

These Märzen beers became the standard at Oktoberfest at some point because, well, they were available...? I guess they started out with very dark due to the kilning technology of the age but eventually became the amber and the new standard. In 1953, Augustiner, one of the 6 official Oktoberfest breweries, introduced a pale Oktoberfestbier which has gone on to replace the amber colored one. According to Ron Pattinson, it’s the beer’s strength that makes a Märzen a Märzen. So today you’d be served a Helles Märzen at Oktoberfest whereas prior to 195X you’d have gotten a Bernstein (amber) Märzen.

I haven’t found anything explaining why Augustiner decided to go with a Helles Märzen after decades of the Bernstein stuff. Was it cheaper to make? Maybe they just wanted to shake things up after 100 years.
 
It seems that here in the United States, we think of the Märzen/Oktoberfest as being a strong amber lager and a style unto itself with the festbier being Märzen-like with a strong malt flavor but more of a golden color and in its own stylistic category.

Festbier – Sprecher’s brew, that is – was a welcome surprise. After I learned of the brewery’s sale back in early 2020, I was filled with trepidation. One article had some quotes that sounded like they came from a venture capital Krampus ready to beat the poor brewmaster until every mash tun and brite tank was filled with IPA. It was all money man talk of growing the brand with the goal of making a lot more product within a few years or some such thing. Then Refresh Button IPA came out and it seemed like my worst fears were coming true. "Soon there’ll be exploding cans of fruited sours and ad copy that used the word 'crushable'," I lamented.

Thusly seeing Festbier in the cooler was a delightful surprise. Sadly, it seems that Festbier has replaced the excellent Summer Pils as their summer seasonal. You can’t have everything.

Festbier is a lovely deep gold color and clear as day. My pour had a smallish disc of loose, white foam on top. A larger head would have been nice but the paucity of foam was probably due to bad pouring skillz on my part. On the plus side, the foam lasted quite a while. I spied a goodly number of bubbles inside. The aroma was largely honey-like and sweet but the hops were present too adding a little grass here and something floral there.

For a summer brew, it was heavier than I expected. Not the liquid bread of a doppelbock but medium-heavy. While there were definitely honey and caramel flavors here, the beer wasn't overly sweet. A faint roastiness stayed in the background along with some spicy, Saaz hoppiness. Perhaps those hops were meant for a summer pils and just had to be used up when plans were changed. The fizz was firm and gave a noticeable astringent bite.

All of that malty sweetness slowly faded for the finish allowing the spicy hop flavors to come to the fore. They offered a solid dose of bitterness and sturdy dryness.

My experience with Helles Märzen is limited to Paulaner's Oktoberfest Wiesn which is now called Oktoberfest Bier, at least here in the States. Think of it as a bigger Helles - in malt, hops, and alcohol. Sprecher's Festbier is 5.3% A.B.V. so it's between a Helles and Helles Märzen on that front. I think. It also tastes less bready than Paulaner's brew. Still, Sprecher has made a very tasty beer here. A bit too heavy on the mouthfeel for my summer drinking taste when it's 90 degrees out, but it has the virtue of not being too sweet. And the malty flavors are well complemented by those spicy Saaz hops. A fine late summer treat.

Junk food pairing: Sprecher's Festbier pairs well with pretzels and I found gustatory nirvana by snacking on some Snyder's Snyderfest Beer Cheese Pretzel Pieces.
 

¹ i.e. - minutes

Watch the Old World Melt Away

 

I remember the moment I found out that Marillion had lost their singer, Fish, very well. It was, I think, the spring of 1988 and the sad news came in a letter – the handwritten type sent via the U.S. Post Office – from a woman with whom I traded bootlegs. The teenage me was in shock, at first, as I read the words while seated at the kitchen table. Shock then led to me feeling devastated. How would I get my fix of prolix, poetic lyrics about personal struggles and the achingly beautiful guitar solos that brought them to life musically? What would happen to the band? Was it really the end?

Not by a long shot.

Marillion smartly brought in a new singer who was much shorter than Fish, had a completely different voice than the Scotsman, and wrote very different lyrics. I didn’t envy Steve Hogarth having to fill Fish’s shoes but history has proven he was more than capable of being the band’s front man.

I recall well buying the first album of this new incarnation of Marillion, Seasons End, in the fall of 1989. Although the cover featured the old logo, it did not sport the very colorful imagery of Mark Wilkinson who had painted the artwork for the band’s previous album covers which were dense tableaus of Fish's lyrical world. Instead it was more spartan, featuring a series of small photographs that represented the four elements set on a larger backdrop of ocean waves. Each of the smaller pictures had a reference to the band’s previous era with Fish.
 
The one representing earth has a feather which may be a magpie feather; in the air panel we see the tip of a jester cap not unlike the one seen on the Clutching at Straws cover; a chameleon sits on a branch while in the background a fire roars; and lastly the picture of a clown seen on the Fugazi album cover is seen sinking into a pond or lake.

I couldn’t wait to get home and listen to it.

I suspect the band decided to play a trick on fans with the lead-off song, “The King of Sunset Town”. Here we all were, eager to hear the new singer in action. We hit play or drop the needle and are forced to wait two and half minutes before Hogarth sings a note. But a glorious two and a half minutes they are.

Mark Kelly conjures a wash of synths that slowly builds. He adorns the swirling mix of string-like and chorus sounds with some other bits that, along with Steve Rothery’s guitar, add mood to the gently churning aural wave. Pete Trawavas’ bass eventually joins and some subtle cymbals from Ian Mosely are thrown in for good measure. Then a glassy whoosh of those cymbals ushers in the drums which skip along as Rothery gives us a gorgeous solo full of his trademark sustained notes. I love this solo’s cadence which starts with high notes and then descends. Then it’s back to the higher ones and down low once more.

Things slow down with a few plucked guitar notes and a wandering bass providing the backdrop for Hogarth’s entry. He has a kindler, gentler voice than Fish. “The King of Sunset Town” is about the poor and the rich, the powerful and the weak, filtered through the lens of the events of the Tiananmen Square protests of that summer. Had Fish tackled this topic, he surely would have made the lyrics a screed angrily denouncing the Chinese authorities and bitterly lamenting the deaths of those killed by the army.

But Hogarth (and lyrical co-writer John Helmer) write a broader, more humanistic tale. One that perhaps focuses less on the violence and deaths, and more on the power of that nameless man who stood in front of a line of tanks causing them to halt. Hogarth’s voice is no less powerful or emotive than Fish’s, but he tacks the seas of human experience via a different course than his predecessor.

The music sounds fresh and dynamic here and on the rest of Seasons End. Instead of another round of plumbing the depths of despair and marshaling anger, Marillion seek out the good in the world, however well-hidden, and tease out hope even if the situation seems hopeless. The balance between opening one’s heart and venting one’s spleen tips decisively towards the former.

Going Up the Country: House Lager by Jack's Abby

My initial encounter with the lagers of Jack's Abby was a bust but it was my own fault. I should have known better than to drink an India Pale something that wasn't brewed in the UK. While it says "Hoppy Lager" across the front of cans of Hoponius Union, I believe it is actually referred to as an India Pale Lager elsewhere on the label. That's what I get for going off script, for stepping out from my beer comfort zone and trying something new - a steinkrug full of disappointment and sorrow.

The hop flavors were strong in that beer with an entire taiga of sharp, bracing piney taste paired with an orchard's worth of tropical fruitiness to make a heady brew that I found quite disharmonious. It was as if that couple from those old Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercials were on my tongue but, rather than finding choco-peanut eudaimonia, they came to blows.

So I went back to basics and bought a 4-pack of Jack's House Lager, the brewery's self-proclaimed specialty. It is billed as a Helles Landbier with "Landbier" being German for "country beer". My understanding is that they're brewed to satisfy the brewer's predilictions and aren't about adhering to style guidelines. It is also my understanding that the term, as used in Germany, generally refers to beers made in rural areas and small towns, not large suburbs of major metropolitan areas. It's the stuff you find when you're out in the Podunkreich and stumble upon a rural hole in the wall where the the regulars don't speak English and just drink the Teutonic tonic on offer.

The only other domestic Landbier that I know of available here in the Madison area is Two Women from New Glarus, located in the small town of the same name which is nestled in the hills of southern Wisconsin. Both biers are pale lagers with an emphasis on malt instead of trying to kill you with hops.

Jack's House Lager is a lovely gold and quite clear yet the can notes that the beer is unfiltered. How'd they pull that off? Did they use some kind of esoteric brewing diablerie to clarify it? My pour produced a fairly small head of white foam that lasted an average amount of time. There was a goodly number of bubbles inside this aureate elixir. Despite the aroma being as expected, it was still a great pleasure to take a whiff and get a noseful of lightly toasted bread and dough. The Maillard is strong in this one! There was also a little grassy hoppiness.

I think I was salivating by this time, my whole body tightening just a bit in anticipation of that first sip. Oh, it was glorious! Maillardy malt goodness ran in torrents over my tongue with the flavors of fresh bread and toast leaving no tastebud untouched. A touch of honeyed sweetness lurked beneath all the bready tastes. Some peppery hops kept things balanced while a nice fizz kept the beer's body on the lighter side and provided some astringency.

For the finish, those malty/bready flavors slowly faded which allowed more of that peppery hop taste to come to the fore where they added moderate bitterness and firm dryness.

Ausgezichnet! I have Mayor Quimby's voice in my head right now saying, "This is a, uh, fine Landbier!" All these wonderful malt flavors, a fairly light body - this is easy drinking at its finest.

Junk food pairing: Jack's House Lager pairs well with Takis Nitro. These spicy taquito snacks bring the heat that satisfies and House Lager will put those flames out.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 59 - Tracking With Closeups: The Original, You Might Say

(Read more about "The Waiting Room".)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 59: The Unaesthete in the Gallery

(late June 2022)

Most artists attend the opening of their shows and not the closing. (I assume they generally don't attend the closing, anyway.) But local artist/electrician Chris Murphy was unable to be at Dark Horse Art Bar when his "Repurposed Dreams" exhibit opened. Instead, he was there at the end of May to bid farewell to the show and celebrate its run there. The Frau and I attended as she knows Chris and, since I've tagged along to enough functions where he was present, he and I recognize one another.

Before long a veritable who's who of Madison artists had stepped through the door. Well, a couple that I knew, anyway. Metal artist Erika Koivunen showed up as did goldsmith Missy Howard who made our wedding bands and did a wonderful job, I will add. So good, in fact, I lost my first band and had her strike a second for me.

I felt a bit hoity-toity going to an art exhibit, especially one at a gallery located in a fancy-schmancy 14 storey high rise that features apartments, the smallest of which, go for more than my mortgage payment. I don't frequent art galleries much and, when I do, I feel like a fish out of water. Think Allan Felix from Play It Again, Sam in that scene where he hits on the woman at the gallery looking at a Jackson Pollock painting and ends up getting an epic nihilistic analysis of the work. I don't have an artistic bone in my body and simply know what I like.

Much to my surprise and delight, Dark Horse was, well, darker and much less trendy than I expected it to be considering its upstairs neighbors were mostly young and flush with disposable income, i.e. – trendy types. Or perhaps it was simply trendy in a different way.

An electrician by day, Chris incorporates the tools of his trade into his art – wires, diodes, resistors, etc. I cannot recall the name of this piece:

When you turn a dial, the lighting changes:

We also ran into various other folks we knew including the woman who officiated our wedding. The three of us sat down and had a nice chat. I hadn't seen her in quite a while so it was a nice to catch up.

I might have to go to more of these art galleries, especially if they have a good beer selection like Dark Horse.

********

A couple weekends ago I took a nice, long bike ride. It had a similar route to one I took and chronicled in one of these diary entries last year but I made it shorter in the hope that there would be fewer steep hills. Also, I wanted to travel farther down a particular road to see what I could see.

I was on my bike around 7:30 A.M. so not super early but early enough to beat the heat for a good chunk of the ride.

It was a gorgeous morning. Everything was verdant and smelled so fresh. And, thankfully, there weren’t too many cars on the first leg. At one point I noticed something on the side of the road up ahead that I thought was a mama racoon and its kit. It was only later when I got a chance to look at my photographs did I see that I was right.

Before long I again stopped but this time it was because I spied a splotch of yellow just off of to the side of the road. There was a yellow bird sitting on the branch of a bush or sapling. I consulted my Birds of Wisconsin book when I got home and learned that this was an American Goldfinch.

I was surprised at how long it stayed on that branch. Maybe it was just ready for its close-up. Regardless, I managed to get a few nice photos of it.

A short time after my bird sighting, I came to a fairly steep hill that seemed to go on forever. About half way up, I pulled over and took a breather. When I can feel and hear my heart pounding, it gets disconcerting really quickly. After the whole cardiac situation settled down, I was back on my bike and up and over that hill. From there I had a nice downhill stretch.

As I neared the intersection where I was to turn, I found myself going by an old country cemetery and decided to go take a look. It was the Hope Cemetery and I figured that Hope was a ghost town because just a few hundred feet before the cemetery's entrance, there was a sign announcing that I was entering the Town of Cottage Grove and please don’t park on the streets overnight. The grave markers could be seen on the top of a hill so I walked up the path and left my bike against a tree.

As I got to the top, close to a disused mausoleum, I heard a shuffling noise from above and saw a shape fly across the cemetery and land in a tree on the other side. I had disturbed a red-tailed hawk!

I zoomed in and took a snap.

It appears that I caught it in the middle of building or remodeling a nest as it looks to have some vegetation in its mouth as opposed to a critter part.

The path up the hill went around the perimeter of the cemetery and it had been mowed fairly recently. But it didn’t look like any other maintenance or upkeep was done lately. No matter. It was a lovely, peaceful place.

When I got home I looked up Hope and found that it is a small unincorporated area. Just up the road from the cemetery is Hope Lutheran Church and my next destination was Hope Road so there were some evidence of the area but Hope must be mighty small.

With my visit with the dead over, I was riding once again. Within 5-7 minutes I was on Hope Road. Although pretty, I was dreading a hill about a mile away. It’s one of those inclines that makes me feel like I am going to go into cardiac arrest. About 2/3 of the way up I ran out of steam and pulled into a dirt driveway to catch my breath. As I was standing there, I heard a branch break and some leaves rustle. Something was in the woods in front of me.

And then a deer popped out of the trees onto the driveway.

It crossed over to the other side of the driveway and disappeared into the woods for about 10 seconds before crossing back and going from whence it had come.

I eventually caught my breath and pedaled up the rest of the hill. The road took a turn to the north and I would stay on this route for a while.

I passed by the horse farm that I mentioned in a previous diary entry and found that the pair were out in a field having a late breakfast. I moved up close to the fence and started snapping pictures.

As I stood there, the horses came closer…

…and closer until they were just out of petting range.

They gave me a once-over before getting back to their meal and ignoring the human. I had no food and was of no use to them, I guess.

I biked several more miles but no flora or fauna of note, just beautiful countryside and fresh air. When I was a few miles from home, my legs started cramping something fierce and I thought I might have to have my Frau come and get me. But onwards I plowed and eventually I pulled into my driveway. However, I did have very sore legs for a few hours.

********

Earlier this month I made another trek down to the western exurbs of Chicago where I met up with a group of friends and went to see The Musical Box.

The Musical Box are a Canadian band that recreate the concerts of the rock group Genesis from c.1972-1977. This involves dressing like Genesis did back then, using the same slide shows, same costumes, same props, and the same instruments.

This time around, the band were recreating the shows from 1974-75 when Genesis were touring in support of their new album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. (The tour started in Chicago at the Auditorium Theater on 20 November.) The album is a double and tells the story of a Puerto Rican kid named Rael who finds himself transported from the hustle, bustle, and urban decay of New York City to another realm where he goes on a surreal hero’s journey.

I’m not sure Joseph Campbell would have recognized the scenario, though. Judging by the comments of singer Peter Gabriel, it’s more John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim's Progress filtered through Alejandro Jodorowsky’s surreal Western El Topo.

There were 9 or 10 of us in our party and we had seats fairly close to the stage. It was a hoot! The Slipperman costume always makes me smile.

During the song “The Lamia”, a plastic sheath thingy adorned with images of snakes surrounds our hero/singer and spins.

I have been genuinely frightened at a concert twice in my life and both times were courtesy of The Musical Box. The first came at one of these The Lamb Lies Down… shows during an instrumental song called “The Waiting Room”. The preceding song, "Lilywhite Lilith", ends with the couplet "Two golden globes float into the room/And a blaze of white light fills the air."

"The Waiting Room" picks up on this as it transitions from a weird, atonal section to a more melodic one. Some stage lights that are pointed directly at the audience come on and a blaze of white light literally fills the air. They genuinely make it hard to see. I was squinting and averting my gaze briefly in an attempt to see what was happening onstage when a demonic figure suddenly appeared in the center screen at the back of the stage and started slashing the air with its talons.

Getting caught up in the music as it swelled to a climax and feeling a certain primal sense of anxiety in the reptilian part of my brain because the bright lights had rendered me unable to clearly take in all of my surroundings combinedly took me off guard and that ominous figure rising up startled me to the point of being genuinely frightened for a moment. Fantastic stuff!

The costumes and slides make these shows a kind of rock concert/theatrical hybrid and was just great fun.

********

Bonus photo! Here’s Grabby relaxing on the couch and looking cute.

Raised in the jungles I quickly learned to read the trees

Back in the spring/summer of 1987 a friend of my older brother caught wind that I was a Genesis fan of epic proportions and, as good elders do, gave me the "If you like Genesis, you should check out..." speech familiar to many a proghead. A tape was also included. While I cannot recall the whole spiel, Marillion was on the list as the accompanying tape, which I still have, contained the 12" single for the band's "Market Square Heroes". The b-sides were "Three Boats Down from the Candy" and "Grendel", the 17 minute epic that lovingly borrowed a bit from Genesis' own epic, "Supper's Ready".

A friend of mine whom I'd suckered into being a Genesis/prog fan a couple years earlier and I went out on a mission to find more Marillion. While I'm not sure, I'd bet we made our way to the Rolling Stones music store out by the HIP (Harlem Irving Plaza). Chicago music lovers know where I am talking about. I don't recall what Marillion album my friend bought but I went home with their fourth album, Clutching at Straws. The anguish and melancholy of Fish's lyrics (along with some angry and sorrowful music) were perfect for a disconsolate teenager who had just a couple months previously been uprooted from Chicago to the backwoods of Wisconsin.

Roughly a year later I was shocked to hear that Fish had left the band. And so my proggy path had been riven in twain. I still had Marillion to follow with their new singer, Steve Hogarth, but also Fish's solo career.

A few years ago Fish announced that he was to retire from music after a final solo album and a farewell tour. The album, Weltschmerz, was released in 2020 while the tour was, like most things, delayed by Covid. Endings invariably give way to reminiscence and reflection and with 30+ years of fandom under my belt, I joyously looked back at his career.

One thing that has made his solo work so interesting is that Fish is not much of a composer so he collaborates with others who can devise musical accompaniment to his lyrical musings. Some collaborators stuck around for multiple albums while others worked on one before moving on. This means that there is some continuity but also plenty of variation in his solo work.

I am loathe to label any of Fish's albums as my favorite although I do feel some are better than others but find that each has its place. Listening to a YouTube playlist recently, a live version of "Jungle Ride" came on and I was reminded again what a fantastic song it is.

The song appears on his fifth solo album, Sunsets on Empire, from 1997 which is famous in proggy circles for being the one where Fish collaborated with Steve Wilson of Porcupine Tree. Wilson produced it, played on it, and co-wrote 6 of the 10 songs. "Jungle Ride", however, was co-written with guitarist Robin Boult who had been one of Fish's co-conspirators since his second album, Internal Exile.

As with a lot of music in my collection, Sunsets on Empire is inexorably intertwined with a period in my life, in this case it's my misbegotten mid-20s. My friendship with my roommate had become frayed to the point of being irreconcilable and there was, unsurprisingly, a woman involved. Fish was having marital problems when he wrote the lyrics for Sunsets on Empire and it was hard not to feel a sense of connection.

But "Jungle Ride" is more concerned with one of the other themes of the album, manhood. Sunsets on Empire isn't a concept album focusing on all things masculine but it is a motif that appears every so often.

The theme is most overtly expressed in the song "Brother 52", about an American biker and Fish fanatic who felt that the collapse of society was nigh and so he started stockpiling weapons. This drew the attention of the federal government and ended in a shootout with ATF agents. The refrain of "We are lover, warrior, magician kings" is a reference to the book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. The authors use Jungian theory to explore masculinity via the four titular roles/archetypes. It's been ages since I've read the book but I think the gist of it is that healthy masculinity involves balancing "mature" expressions of these impulses, which are the primary ones in men.

Elsewhere on the album Fish is a loving and protective father to his daughter Tara on the song bearing her name. "Goldfish and Clowns" chronicles an incident in which Fish had a tryst, of sorts, with a woman who wasn't his wife that he met at a party. And so we get a song about being a husband and the things that go along with that role - love, fidelity, etc.

"Jungle Ride" takes the listener back to the fairs of the singer's youth and the ride that gives us the title. Therein we find men-in-training awkwardly jockeying for the attention of pretty girls as gangs of boys/young men prowl the midway looking to stir up trouble and get into fights. This was an era

Where men don't cry and husbands lie and you never have to justify a kickin'
When mates jump in to save your skin if a chib is ever pulled out in a square go

It's a song about immaturity/boyishness on various fronts. It is also a stunning song musically. After Fish's spoken word intro, Robin Boult's melodic acoustic guitar sits atop a tom-heavy beat from drummer Dave Stewart that is joined by the extra percussion of Dave Haswell. (Conga? Djembe?) The air is thick in the dream-like atmosphere here. Just shy of the halfway mark, the band fall into a hypnotic groove while a violin solos and sultry, wordless vocals weave from left to right like a beautiful woman tempting and teasing.

A true highlight of a career with many.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 59 - The Camera Eye: Waiting

 

There Must Be Some Kind of Way Outta Here

This post is sponsored by Old Thompson Blended Whiskey. An excellent value.

It is sometimes hard for me to separate the legend that is Bob Dylan from a time in the mid-90s when I was often to be found hanging out with a friend of mine drinking Old Tennis Shoe, er, Old Thompson whiskey and listening to Dylan's back catalogue. My friend was a dedicated fan while I was a neophyte and it was a lot of fun moving beyond the songs I'd heard on the radio such as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Tangled Up in Blue". For someone so prolific and so influential, it's an indictment of classic rock radio that it managed to only keep 3 or 4 of his songs in rotation.

We would joyously put the work day behind us and laugh as "I Shall Be Free" blared on the stereo. At other times we'd mourn our failed relationships and drown the attendant loneliness as we plumbed the depths of 1975's Blood on the Tracks, as if we were commiserating with Dylan himself. I came to really enjoy his music and understand his outsized influence on the direction of pop music in that latter half of the 1960s.

While I too love the 3 albums he did after he went electric and recognize Blood on the Tracks as a masterpiece, I became quite partial to the albums that came after these two legendary periods in his career: 1976's Desire and John Wesley Harding from 1967.

John Wesley Harding came out with psychedelia in full swing and after Dylan had helped transform rock'n'roll into rock music over the course of his previous 3 albums. Gone was Al Kooper's organ and that wild, mercurial sound of 1965-66. Instead, John Wesley Harding is mainly Dylan's acoustic guitar, voice, and harmonica accompanied by bass and drums. A very stripped back affair.

I came to the album at a remove of nearly 30 years from its release and going in knew only that it featured "All Along the Watchtower", the song that Jimi Hendrix had made his own. I would soon learn that Hendrix had also covered another song from John Wesley Harding - "Drifter's Escape".

"Drifter's Escape" is less than 3 minutes long but it packs a lot into that time. It's got an insistent beat with Charlie McCoy's bass just careering along beside it. Meanwhile the lyrics relate the plight of the drifter who is caught in a weird, Kafka-esque snafu. He has been found guilty, but of what?

"And I still do not know/What it was that I’ve done wrong"

But Fate intervenes before punishment is applied as a bolt of lightning hits the courthouse: "And while everybody knelt to pray/The drifter did escape". The song has no chorus so Dylan can fit his bite-sized passion play into the time allotted.

The song barrels along at a good clip and I love how Dylan opens his story in media res. It's as catchy as it is enigmatic.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 58 - Postlude: The Chinese Roots of Peru's National Dish

(Read entry #58.)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 58: Gastronomical

(late June 2022)

(listen to this entry's prelude)

One thing the Frau and I have done a lot this month is eat well. Don't get me wrong, we're not exactly gourmets - more like gormandizers.

For me, the gustatory festivities kicked off when my boss took my work team out for our annual holiday lunch a couple weeks ago. The holiday celebrated here was Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Saturnalia, Yule - whatever holiday we wanted that occurred at the end of 2021 and, while he is normally not very timely with these lunches, being 6 months late set a new record. We went to a Middle Eastern/pan-Mediterranean place called Petra Bakery and Restaurant. Everyone enjoyed their meals and I was particularly struck by the stuffed falafel. (It also happens to be the only dish I have a photograph of.)

The ball of chickpea was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside with an injection of chili paste and onion and just a dash of sumac adding extra flavor. My fattoush salad w/ shawarma was the perfect lunch for a day of sweltering heat.

After eating this fine meal, I lost the will to cook for a few days and figured, if it’s going to be extremely hot, let us dine out and enjoy the cuisines of cultures from warmer climes. I'll admit that I had an ulterior motive: I didn't want to heat the house by using the stove. Plus I was happy to let someone else stand over a bed of red hot coals in a grill.

 

OK, OK, OK.

 

I was feeling lazy too. High temps make me lethargic.

I noticed that there was a new(ish) Peruvian restaurant not far from home called Mishqui. One hot and humid evening my Frau and I decided the time was right try it out. She had lomo saltado while I had pollo saltado. A side order of sweet plantain could not be filled as they were out. My Frau was disappointed as she had inexplicably acquired a craving for them recently.

With the potato having originated in Peru, I knew enough to expect every dish to have some kind of spud. One thing I didn’t expect was for Peruvian cuisine to have a large Cantonese influence. Thusly I was surprised to read on the menu that saltado is a kind of stir fry. I presume Chinese laborers emigrated there at some point and subsequently left their mark.

It was really tasty. Simple but delicious. For dessert, I brought home a chocolate chip empanada which our cat Grabby found intriguing while I found it chocolicious!

Having eaten Peruvian, I thought that the next logical step would be to keep the South American theme going and eat at the Venezuelan restaurant, La Taguara, that we’d not been to since a year or 2 before Covid.

The place had been upgraded slightly with the counter area now featuring monitors displaying a colorful electronic menu but the smallish dining area was the same as far as we could tell. The Frau and I both thought that the menu had been expanded but weren’t certain as it could have been our memories fooling us after a few years. There were only a couple other customers when we got there so it was nice to see a few people come in for takeout as the dining room began to fill up.

My Frau had the pabellón which the menu describes as the Venezuelan national dish. Shredded beef is accompanied by black beans, sweet plantain, rice, and an arepita which is small cornmeal pancake.

Having eaten their pabellón before, I will attest to its tastiness. As I noted above, the Frau had been craving plantain and was pleased as punch to finally have some tender nuggets of sweet, starchy goodness on a plate before her. She proceeded to consume them with all the gusto of Donald Trump at a beauty pageant. I did a little sampling (to ensure that my Frau had been served only the choicest delectables, mind you) and really liked the black beans. The identities of all of the seasonings involved proved elusive but these legumes were done just right and tasted excellent. Probably the best I’ve had in town.

I ordered the churrasco criollo which was a steak accompanied by a link of chorizo, yucca sticks, rice, and picadillo salad which consisted of diced tomato, onion, and chili.

The meal was served with a cilantro sauce that I wish ran out of my faucets at home, it was that good. They normally give you guasacaca or Venezuelan guacamole but there was no avocado here – vinegar and lime juice-based instead.

Despite having eaten plenty, we still had sweet teeth. On our way home we stopped for ice cream at Chocolate Shoppe on Atwood Avenue figuring that the cool, creamy spoonfuls would melt and find a home in the nooks and crannies in our otherwise full bellies. The ice cream parlor has a seated area out back which abuts a tree-lined bike path and so offers some shade. I had peach instead of my usual Zanzibar chocolate but cannot recall which flavor my Frau ordered.

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When not overeating, I have spent some time at the movies. Likely in emulation of my grandparents, I go to the movies not only to see a fine film but also because of the air conditioning. One theater here likes to crank it up and it’s a pleasure to sit in the near Arctic conditions watching a flick.

One film I saw was Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story. Shot in 2019, it is a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. The movie chronicles the history of the festival and its importance to New Orleans.

We learn about the prominence of music in New Orleans culture beginning with Congo Square where slaves would gather to drum and dance together. This look back proceeds with second line bands, Mardi Gras Indians – music is everywhere down in Nawlins. Louis Armstrong was born and started his career there.

And so we get generous doses of music on the stages of the festival. But some time is also devoted to the city's cuisine – shrimp, crawfish, po’ boys, gumbo, etc. Seeing all of that food on the big screen gave me an appetite. And not just a healthy one. I mean I would have killed anyone that got between me and a plate of shrimp étouffée. So, when I got home, I immediately put my Frau in the car and we drove to our local Cajun restaurant, North of the Bayou. I kid you not.

With all of the great music, history, and food, I couldn’t help but enjoy the movie. My only gripe is that it was more than a little hagiographic and a bit too by the numbers with the obligatory descent into darkness that was Hurricane Katrina followed by the festival bringing light to the grim situation and helping the city heal. Despite essentially being a feature length commercial for New Orleans (in addition to being a potent hunger inducer), I really enjoyed it.

I took another recent trek to the cinema to see the latest film by director David Cronenberg, Crimes of the Future.

 

Cronenberg goes back to his body horror roots here with a future dystopian world where most people cannot feel physical pain and biotechnology has advanced to the point of machines being able to connect to our bodies and do…things…

The film opens with a disturbing scene of a young boy eating a plastic garbage can. We then meet Saul Tenser and Caprice played by Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux, respectively. They are a couple who does performance art together. Tenser’s body has an ability whereby it grows new vestigial organs and the performances involve them being surgically removed.

While it was a weird, disconcerting, and often times gross movie, I found it strangely captivating - perhaps in a rubbernecking kind of way like you experience when driving by a car accident hoping to get a fleeting glimpse of a body. Medical science doesn’t seem to be too far away from brain implants that would allow people to use computers by simply thinking certain things so computer-human flesh interfaces are coming. Plus, I think the movie pokes fun at artistic pretension which can be good for a laugh.

Crimes of the Future certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I found it engaging in a peculiar way and enjoyably odd.

 

********

 
Bonus photo: cats!

 

The Corona Diaries Vol. 58 - Prelude: El Cóndor Pasa

The Corona Diaries Vol. 57 - Postlude: All Wood and a Yard Long

(Head to 48:30...)

(Read entry #57.)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 57: To the Land of Limburger

I suppose that, for my summer entries, we should just take it as read that I took a bike ride down to Acewood Park. On my most recent one I saw that the algae and weeds were coming in.

So it goes.

It was a bit louder than my previous visit. More birds chirping and trilling away. Unfortunately, the only decent bird photograph I managed to get was this one:

This is a killdeer. I’ve seen quite a few this summer but don’t recall doing so in years past. They been hanging out near the building I work at as well as by the water runoff retention creek thingy along the Capital City Trail. Did I simply not notice or are they more common these days?

Here are a couple mallard drakes that I spied across the pond.

At one point when I was wandering through the woods, I noticed a chipmunk watching me.

It was just a lovely day, if a bit overcast, to just hang out in nature.

 

********

I took the day of my Frau's birthday off from work (she had taken the whole week off) and we headed south to New Glarus as she wanted to grab lunch at Glarner Stube and soak in the old school Swiss vibe of the town. Although she said that she wasn’t in the mood for fondue, I was going to order it anyway.

She discovered that it wasn’t open that day but further internet sleuthing resulted in a restaurant in Monroe, about 15 miles to the south, that appealed to her. Away we went.

While Wisconsin is known for cheese generally, caseiculture is the lifeblood of Monroe. Curds are to be found everywhere you go and the streets run with whey. There are several cheesemakers in the area and it’s home to the only maker of limburger in the United States, Chalet Cheese Cooperative.

It being summer, the town was beset by road construction and we ended up driving through the town square. I remarked to the Frau that Baumgartner’s was close by and she had an instant change of mind and said that we should go there for lunch.

Baumgartner’s is a genuine slice of Wisconsin being both a tavern and a cheese store. In fact, the cheesemongers there claim that it's the oldest cheese store in the state. It’s claim to fame is its cheese sandwiches which consist of your choice of cheese, including limburger, along with salami or braunschweiger on rye. I hadn’t been there in ages so I was happy to make its acquaintance once more.

The mural above the bar portrays the war between beer (the steins) and wine (bottles). It is a replica of a mural at the UW-Madison’s Memorial Union with a few changes. For instance, instead of castles in the background, it is Monroe’s old Blumer brewery that looks down upon the boozy belligerents from afar.

While neither of us opted for the house specialty, we still had plenty of fine cheese with our meals. The Frau’s sandwich came garnished, not just with a pickle, but also a slab of the stuff.

With lunch we had Vienna lagers from the Lena Brewing Company in Lena, IL. I don’t think I’d ever had their beer before as they don’t appear to distribute to Madison.

Once we had finished lunch, we traversed a part of the square where there was a series of wedge-shaped works of art.

I do believe this one was made by the same person who did the mural inside Baumgartner’s.

After stopping at a confectionery store, we headed back home as the Frau had plans with friends that evening.

********

I recently saw Memoria, the latest movie by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. This was the first of his films that I have seen although his Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives from 2010 is on my to-watch list.

Memoria is a long, slow, dreamy film concerning a Scottish expat named Jessica, played by Tilda Swinton, who lives in Columbia. She is awoken one night by a loud boom that no one else is seemingly able to hear. In pursuit of identifying the noise, she approaches a sound engineer named Hernán and asks him to recreate the crashing sound she heard that night.

Later, Jessica wanders into the country and meets a gentleman who mysteriously is also named Hernán. They talk and, at one point, it is revealed that they share some of the same memories.

I won’t spoil things in case anyone is able to see it but we do learn what the boom was that woke Jessica and it was absolutely not what I was expecting at all.

Weerasethakul’s style is deliberate and dreamlike. Shots linger with little action on screen as if we’re being invited to ponder mysteries just like the characters do. This is not everyone’s cup of tea but I really enjoyed this slowly unfolding enigma and wish that someone I knew had also seen the film so that we could discuss it. Memoria is one of those movies that can be processed by my brain more fully if I talk about it. I also wish to see it a second time but heard that, for some reason, the movie will not have a streaming nor home video release. Hopefully this is merely gossip.

 ********

As a coffee lover, I’d been meaning to read about the stuff for some time now. Well, I finally did so and read Uncommon Grounds by Mark Pendergrast. While the subtitle is “The History of Coffee and How it Transformed the World”, the focus is really the United States as it's the biggest market for java.

Since we don’t grow coffee, other countries have large roles in the story and the book pulls no punches in describing the often times horrible circumstances under which we Americans get our fix. There are many accounts of farmers who grow the stuff being bullied by large corporations as well as being killed by blood thirsty dictatorships.

When wholesale coffee prices got expensive or someone’s claims of coffee’s ill effects gained traction with the public, Folgers, Maxwell House, etc. engaged in all manner of chicanery to keep people drinking. Coffee was cut with chicory, less coffee was put into the same sized containers to fool customers, and ridiculous claims of being able to use less coffee to achieve the same strength of flavor abounded.

I laughed out loud while reading the book on the bus when I read a section about Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy shilling for Chase & Sanborn coffee on the radio show Amateur Hour. Mae West was the guest on the 12 December 1937 episode and she threw the censors into fits of outrage.

Chicago is featured in the book. It was the first destination east of the Mississippi River for west coast roasters such as Folger’s and Hills Brothers in the 1930s. Nearly 60 years later, Chicago was the first city not on the west coast to have Starbucks cafes starting in 1987.

I wish that the book delved into the early history of coffee a bit more as it glossed over its emergence in Ethiopia and how it migrated north into the Middle East in the late Middle Ages. Still, it was very interesting and entertaining and I got the itch to travel when reading about how different cultures prepare and consume coffee differently.

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Bonus photo time! The house of a local artist has all kinds of things adorning it including this knight out front.