Author: cultureguru

Old music in shiny new packages

I had some quiet days off after Christmas, during which I had the time to enjoy my newly acquired music. Though the “new” should perhaps be put in quotes…

Lowest of the Low – Shakespeare My Butt Deluxe Edition

First of all, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since this was first released. I guess I can’t continue to refer to Lowest as one of the “new” bands that I like.

The core of this reissue is a remastering of the original CD.  But though I played it through my best available sound system, I couldn’t actually tell if it the sound quality was noticeably improved. I suspect that’s because I couldn’t help singing along with every track at the top of my lungs. (Yes, I was home alone at the time. Cats didn’t seem to mind.)

What remains apparent, though, is that this is a damn good album. Nearly 65 minutes long, with no bad songs. It’s an irresistible mix of super-catchy tunes and really intelligent lyrics. So you like the album on first listen, and don’t hate yourself for it later on repeat listens.

Below is an audio-only video of “Rosy and Grey” from Shakespeare My Butt—it appears they never made proper videos for these tunes…

The reissue also includes a DVD, where the same visuals come with two soundtrack options: Interviews and Soundtrack. On Interviews, you get various band interviews that were all news to me, because for a band I like so much, I actually knew nothing about them. Like, the band members’ names, or anything. Now, I’m better informed, and they do come across as thoughtful and decent guys. On the Soundtrack portion, you get these alternate versions of the Shakespeare songs on variety of instruments, including a kazoo! It’s pretty cool, actually, and I’ll probably replay that version more.

And finally, you get liner notes, mainly by Dave Bookman of 102.1 The Edge (so it really strikes me that in the interview segment, the band says they can’t get their newer stuff played on The Edge anymore, because they’re not on the corporate playlist) and British novelist John Donoghue, for whom this album inspired a novel of the same name.

Ray Davies: See My Friends

While this CD does consist of all new recordings, it is of older songs, redone as duets between composer Ray Davies and various artists: Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Jackson Browne, Lucinda Williams, and so on. A lot of long-time Kinks fans hate this thing, some complaining so vociferously about it that I was almost afraid to play it.

But now I think they’re just being grumpy and close-minded. True, not everything is great here: Bon Jovi doesn’t exactly improve on the original “Celluloid Heroes”, and while I’m all for women tackling songs originally interpreted by men, Paloma’s version of “Lola” just comes across as weird.

But other things work really well. There’s just a rightness to Metallica, one of the best metal bands ever, interpreting the song widely credited as the original metal song, “You Really Got Me”. And Amy McDonald made a great choice in covering “Dead End Street”, a 1965 song that unfortunately sounds like it’s describing today’s conditions. The interaction between her and Ray is also quite charming.

I also enjoyed the creative mashing of certain songs: “Days” with “This Time Tomorrow” by Ray with Mumford & Sons, and “All Day and All of the Night” with “Destroyer” by Ray with Billy Corgan. The slightly less-known songs “Long Way from Home” and “This Is Where I Belong” are nicely interpreted by Lucinda Williams and Black Francis. And if Jackson Brown doesn’t really improve on the Kinks original “Waterloo Sunset”—who could?—at least he doesn’t wreck it.

The Who – Live at Leeds Deluxe 40th Anniversary Edition

This one was my Boxing Day gift from me to me, as Amazon.ca put it on sale from $79 to $49 Christmas Day. UPS delivered it to me on December 29. (I see it’s now back to $79, plus you have to wait 3-4 weeks for it.)

I’ve read a lot of reviews of this that basically boiled down to:

  1. Damn! I’m tired of buying this same album over and over!
  2. Wasn’t the original six-track album perfect in itself? Why keep adding stuff?

To point 1., I sympathize, but I’m not really in that boat. OK, I did buy Leeds once before, but only once, and that was as an iTunes download. I’d since been kind of regretting that, since iTunes downloads don’t have quite the full audio quality of a CD. Plus, I’d been feeling that this was one case where having the LP would be fun too, if I could find one with all the original inserts and such.

So, this package, a mondo thing that includes the original LP, a hardcover book with all the originals inserts (and other stuff), the deluxe CDs, plus another two CDs  of the previously unreleased Hull concert, and even a 45 of Summertime Blues / Heaven and Hell, was perfect for me.

And point 2—why keep adding stuff?—I thought was just stupid. I mean, if The Who had sucked that night except for the original six songs, then you might have a point, but they didn’t. The whole concert was amazing. So why wouldn’t you want it all? If you’re that nostalgic for the six songs, create a playlist of just those ones.

Nevertheless, the LP is the first thing I played when I got the set. Apparently it preserves the original cracks and ticks that were excised from the digital version, but I can’t say I found them that noticeable. And it’s good, of course, but man, is it ever short. I will say that it is impressive that the original made such an impact, despite its brevity.

And the other add-ons? Well the book is a nice collection of Leeds-related information, some of which I’d read before, some I hadn’t. Along with reproduction of album inserts, it has some great photos, and a play-by-play of each song on deluxe CD.

I’ve listened to the Hull concert a couple times. Though they did an admirable job of restoring the sound to this (in particular, bass was missing from the first six tracks and had to be Frankenstein-ed in from Leeds), there’s no doubt that Leeds sounds better overall. Hull also has a lot less of the between-song patter you get on Leeds, and I miss that, since Townshend and Moon are hilarious. But it is a great one for admiring Moon’s druming, as that’s really forward in the mix. It’s also interesting how two concerts, with identical song line-ups, two nights apart, can nevertheless have quite a few differences in interpretation. This was not a band that just went through the motions. Therefore, to me, it’s worth having both (even though I also have Isle of Wight, and Tanglewood, and some of Woodstock, all of from this same period).

I do find it slightly annoying that we get both concerts not in the original order, for the purpose of keeping all of Tommy on one CD. But that’s easy enough to rectify manually.

So, the only thing missing from this package? Video. Herewith I gave you the only footage released from the concert so far, from a Japanese release of Leeds, apparently. (This was pulled down from YouTube a while ago, but seems to be back.)

Striking to me how tiny the stage was. This was one of the biggest bands in the world at that time, and they were playing at a university hall. That doesn’t happen anymore, and that’s partly why we no longer get live albums as good as Live at Leeds.

Movie review: Love and Other Drugs

***½ Love and Other Drugs (November 2010) – Theatre
Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway. Aspiring Pfizer drug rep meets early-onset Parkinson’s patient. Romance and other complications ensue.

He says: OK, I really liked that movie. It was very good. And not just because Anne Hathaway looks great naked (although she really does). It had a lot of complexity. It sure didn’t paint the pharmaceutical industry in a good light. The medical industry didn’t come off that great, either.
She says: Yeah, I liked it also. And not just because Jake Gyllenhaal looks great naked (although he really does). I don’t really agree with the criticism that the romantic story didn’t fit well with the medical industry story. I thought it all made sense together, and made the movie more layered.

And a foodie new year

Our annual new year gourmet dinner was held January 2, giving us a day’s break from New Year’s Eve dinner, and the day following (today) to rest up before heading back to work.

First course: Wild mushroom toasts

Originally my idea was to have lobster bisque as the first course, but I changed my mind based on:

  1. Feeling that soup might be too heavy a starter for also fairly heavy main course.
  2. A sense that I didn’t really want to kill anything to ring in the new year, but that frozen lobster might be sub-par.

So, we went back to a fairly standard item at these dinners, wild mushrooms. But a new recipe, from Fine Cooking magazine.

The one ingredient I wasn’t able to find was crème fraîche. But I did find instructions on how to make your own. Basically, it’s this:

  1. Add 1 Tablespoon buttermilk to 1 cup slightly warm whipping cream.
  2. Let that sit on your kitchen for about a day and half, stirring every once in a while, til it’s thick.
  3. Put it in the fridge.

Isn’t that weird? You’d think leaving dairy products out at room temperature for so long would be a bad thing, but we did eat that yesterday with no ill effects, so I guess not. (I also don’t understand why that’s called crème fraîche, which literally means fresh cream.) It didn’t seem to impart that much taste to the dish, which mostly tasted of mushrooms. I think it was more about adding texture.

Adding crème fraîche to the mushrooms:

The wine we had with this course was a 2007 California Beringer Pinot Noir. We’d bought it that same day, in the “last chance” bin, just on the thought that Pinot would be good with mushrooms. Turned out to be a very nice wine.

The soundtrack for this course was my Get Happy! playlist. Looks like it worked:

Dining on mushrooms and Pinot

Second course: Seared Scallops with Spiced Mango Coulis

The recipe we used here was from the New England Culinary Institute, and we picked it up while on vacation in Vermont. It was super-easy, though; the most challenging part, which Jean took on, was peeling and slicing the mango. Half a mango decorated the plates, and the rest was blended with ingredients like ginger, white wine, and clove, to make a coulis.

Happily, we were able to find some beautiful, large sea scallops at Sobey’s, and then you don’t have to do much to them. Salt, pepper, sear in a bit of grapeseed oil, then drizzle on a bit of olive oil.

Scallops and Chardonnay

The result was just delicious… My second-favorite dish of the night. (And Jean’s number 1.)

Zoe, me, and scallops

The wine was a French Chardonnay we had on hand, that wasn’t spectacular in itself, but went quite nicely with this food (which you really didn’t want to upstage). Moments after this shot, a bit of an accident occurred. It made us really happy this was a white wine:

Tower of wine

I guess the soundtrack for this portion—the Thoughtful playlist—wasn’t quite as effective.

Third course: Venison Osso Bucco with side of Vegetable Barley

This was the one course planned well ahead, when I spotted the venison osso bucco cuts at Brady’s. I then scoured the Internet for recipes, since I’d never made any kind 0f osso bucco before. I finally settled on a recipe from cdkitchen.com, which involved cooking it with lemons, oranges, carrot juice, red wine, juniper berries (which I couldn’t find, so I substituted gin), chicken broth, and various veggies. It wasn’t too hard at all.

Unfortunately, the results were disappointing. For whatever reason—having to scale down the recipe size, not using the best pots, whatever—the meat just wasn’t tender enough. It was tasty, but lacked that “falling off the bone” quality. If I try it again, I think I’ll go for a slow cooker method.

Osso bucco and Zinfandel

The barley side dish, though deliberately unexciting, was quite nice. I started with a recipe from Taste of Home, but made some changes: Cooked it in chicken broth instead of just water, used carrots instead of red peppers, and reduced the amount of green onion.

The California Zinfandel wine we had with this was a Christmas gift this year, and man, that was a lot of wine. Big and fruity. Nice, though.

Soundtrack was an old standby for dining, my Beautiful Ones playlist.

Dessert: Chocolate soufflé

I wanted a light (tasting) dessert to round things off, and what could be lighter than soufflé? I’d never made it before, either, so again I had to search online for recipes. I ended up with a highly recommended one from Epicurious.com, which had the added bonus of being fine with making everything ahead and just baking it right before eating.

The ingredients were really simple: eggs, milk, sugar, and 10.5 ounces of “extra-bittersweet chocolate”. It was easily the most fun dish to prepare, starting with the need to round up six soufflé ramekins when we had no idea what those were. And the word just struck us as really funny, so we were giggling the whole time we gathered a dog’s breakfast of custard dishes, small corningware, and oven-safe storage containers we figured could substitute for ramekins.

Then it was all beating egg whites and melting chocolate and buttering and sugaring the faux ramekins, not to mention really enjoying licking all the bowls and spoons.

After baking, the moment of truth: Would the soufflés rise? But, they did, they did! (The photo is of them inside the oven.)

Souffles in oven

While we considered port, we decided to open a Cabernet France ice wine from Stratus (a gift we received last Christmas) to serve with the soufflé. It was lovely.

Souffle and ice wine

What I wasn’t expecting, and loved, was the molten chocolate pool lying under the floating soufflé top:

Inside the souffle

This (unsurprisingly for me) was my favorite dish of the night. (And Jean’s #2.) The soundtrack for this portion of the evening was, of course, “Love, the sweetest thing” (that is, romantic songs).

Happy 2011, all.

Movie reviews: Secret Lives

The similarity in Jean’s reviews here are both due to the same cause: His looking more at the computer than the TV screen. Star ratings are therefore mine, since I actually watched both movies in full.

*** The Secret Life of Bees (October 2008) – Rental
Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah. Young teenage girl leaves her abusive father to explore her late mother’s past with a group of bee-keeping sisters.

She says: A pretty good adaptation of the novel. Performances were good and though the “critical consensus” said it was too sentimental, I didn’t find that to be the case. And I hate sentimental.
He says: I didn’t pay enough attention to have an opinion of this one.

***½ My Kid Could Paint That (October 2007) – Rental
Documentary look at four-year-old painting sensation Marla Olmstead.

She says: Really fascinating documentary. Starts off as a look at the nature of abstract art, taking as a given that even a four-year-old can produce works in high demand. Then a 60 Minutes report on the young artist changes the story: is this really her work, or has her father assisted? Finally, the documentarian, realizing he hasn’t really captured any great footage of her painting (despite months of work on the film) reluctantly becomes part of the story himself, and the story evolves again, to his role and the appropriateness of such a young child getting so much adult attention. So many layers. The DVD includes a worthwhile additional set of follow-up footage, scenes deleted from the original, and additional discussions about the many questions raised by the film.
He says: It didn’t quite hold my interest.

By the way, Marla continues to sell her paintings (she’s now 8), and the movie continues to inspire debate. And more debate.

My Christmas vacation

In this Christmas of such amazingly bad weather for so many would-be travelers, I guess I will start by saying that our travels couldn’t have been smoother. Crowds not that bad, all flights right on time, drives to and from airports not daunting.

And Timmins itself was really a winter wonderland this year. Not too cold (-8 C was the lowest we experienced), and this freezing “mist” followed by light snow and sun just caused all the trees to be beautifully coated in white.

This one may be the prettiest shot:

Trees against blue skies

But this one shows the tree “frosting” more:

In front of Frosted trees

Of course, the visit was about family, and we certainly got to see many of the local relatives. Christmas Eve we first attended my cousin’s Réveillon (as did my parents and my brother’s family), so I was able to see a number of cousins, aunts, uncles, second cousins, and such that I hadn’t seen in a while.

It was then off to the Lefebvre family Réveillon, which had a good turnout of all of Jean’s siblings and partners, and most of the nieces and nephews and their kids. The gift theme this year was food, and I think this was the funniest item that came out of the wrapped box:

Edible gift

(You can also get an idea of the delicious array of food available in non-gift form as well.)

Christmas morning was relatively quiet at McNair’s—just Jean and I and my parents doing our exchange, and talking to the Toronto sisters by phone. Though our gifts were not themed, there was still funny food to be had, in the form of these chocolates labeled Better Than Sex:

Chocolate gift

Jean went off for a family skate, then came back in time to see my brother’s kids tear into their stockings and gifts from grandparents and aunts. It was the usual fun chaos and major haul, leaving Neal to mutter something about how we’re definitely “picking names” for the kids next year. We’ll see.

Family visits, at this house, at that house, continued for the rest of our Timmins time. We also got out for some walks, and to see some friends. We did no Boxing Day shopping, except a bit in online form. (Although one bit was rather large, as we’re now booked onto a European River Cruise with my parents. But more on that another time.)

I’ll just conclude on a few more of Jean’s shots that I especially like.

Seth at arena

Nephew (great-Nephew, actually…) Seth at the arena

Mine shaft and Christmas ribbon

Timmins icon, all dolled up for Christmas.

Bird feeder

The very active bird feeder at my parent’s place.

Snowman

Jean’s fave Christmas shot.

Reno, part 1

The downstairs renovation planned out nearly a year ago finally resulted in concrete action: installation of fireplace. Isn’t it beautiful?

The fireplace itself is actually pretty attractive. The surroundings, at this point… Well…

But we are indeed pleased with how quiet the new fireplace is. We rarely used the old because the fan was too loud. Not an issue here. And now we have proof that the downstairs gets 1 degree C colder than the main floor, so a little extra heat down there is welcome this time of year.

And whatever the funny-looking results, we paid for the installation of this, so the effort on our part was zero. That won’t be true of the next step, which is to put in new flooring. We’ll be picking something like laminate (though not wood-style), which isn’t supposed to be too hard to put down. What does seem nightmarishly hard? Moving everything out of that room. All those books? The treadmill? The TV, PVR, stereo equipment? The computers? Where the heck will it all that go in the meantime?

But that still lies ahead. First, to actually select the flooring…

Movie review: Fair Game

Fair Game poster***½ Fair Game (November 2010) – Theatre

Naomi Watts, Sean Penn. The story of Valerie Plame, who status as an undercover CIA operative was leaked by Bush administration officials after her husband publicly questioned their intelligence on Iraq.

She says: Seeing all the Bush-ites at work again, building their phony case against Iraq, is infuriating. The story of  Valerie Plame’s work before the leak and the effect it has afterward, on those she worked with, and on her marriage, is riveting. It makes me curious to read her book, though I guess it’s heavily censored. (Speaking of which, look at the credits at the end…)

He says: Well, that was frightening. Hard to believe that actually happened.

Movie review: Nowhere Boy

*** Nowhere Boy (October 2010) – Theatre
Aaron Johnson, Kristin Scott Thomas. A look at the early life of John Lennon, when he was getting to know both his mother Julia and a boy named Paul.

She says: Well cast and acted; a fairly intense look at this tumultuous time in John Lennon’s life. Lots of passion burning below the reserved British surface, which occasionally erupts.
He says: I think you have to care about The Beatles more than I do to really get into this movie.

I’m not a charity case

Unsolicited free items I have received from registered national charities:

  • Christmas cards and envelopes (enough to open my own little Hallmark store)
  • Address labels (enough to last me the rest of my life, I think)
  • Notepads
  • Pens
  • Christmas CD
  • Money (generally in coin form)
  • Reusable shopping bags
  • Calendars (and to think I used to enjoy buying those for myself)
  • Gift bags
  • Wrapping paper and bows
  • Organic fair trade tea
  • Birthday, symphathy, and “any occasion” cards and envelopes (for my expanding Hallmark store, I guess)
  • Scarf
  • T-shirt

And that’s just what I can remember off the top of my head. And in most cases, not even from charities I donate to.

Whatever surprise or delight I might have once felt in getting something for nothing is now lost under the sheer quantity of stuff coming in. It’s tipping toward making me feel punished rather than rewarded for donating regularly.

It must work, or they wouldn’t do it. But damn. How much more good could be done if they didn’t have to bribe people into donating?

Charities see alarming trend as donors become older, fewer

And I can’t even blame this one all on Stephen Harper

This kinds of pisses me off:

Federal parties agree to scrap bill correcting voting inequalities

The Harper government and the opposition parties have agreed to quietly sink legislation that would have given Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta more seats in the House of Commons. As a result, urban and visible-minority voters will continue to be discriminated against in Parliament.

Under the legislation, Ontario would have received 18 new seats, British Columbia seven, and Alberta five, bringing all three provinces up to the level of representation in the House warranted by their populations.

Though the above is denied by the government, the bill has been given one day of debate so far, so it’s not exactly speeding on its way to passage. The fear, apparently, is of angering Quebec and Maritime voters.

So fellow Ontarians, BCers, and Albertans, if you really want to have an impact on the next federal election, you’d best move to another province, where your vote will actually have weight.

Because in Canada, everyone is equal. Only, some of us are more equal than others.