One Train Later (Andy Summers)

Zoot Money and the Big Roll Band at the entrance of the Flamingo, 33-37 Wardour Street, Soho, London.  (George "Zoot" Money, left; Andy Summers, second from left; ca. 1965)

        London, with its speed, noise, dirt, concrete, and multiracial society, is shocking.  I wander around Soho through streets filled with prostitutes, betting shops, bars, private drinking clubs, and exotic food smells, trying to get used to the idea that this fast, cynical place is now my home. Security comes from being in the band, coming from the same town, and having moved here together.   But gradually we settle into it and after a while I can't imagine being anywhere else.

        As we gain popularity from our steady gig at the Flamingo we play six or seven nights a week and are able to add a couple of saxophones to the band.   This regular work eventually provides enough money for Zoot to move upstairs to the ground-floor flat with his new girlfriend, Ronni, a tough and outspoken little Scot who acts as the voice of sanity, the shaper of events, and the mother hen in the madness of the next few years.

        Our show, Zoot Money and the Big Roll Band, is a fast-paced rabble-rousing set of R&B featuring the songs of Ray Charles, the Isley Brothers, Rufus Thomas and James Brown.  Zoot is a great blues shouter/R&B singer with a natural flair for comedy and showmanship.  From the stage he heckles the audience with insults and jibes about playing in the graveyard, etc., until he goads them into a full and heated response.  At this point being in a band is about having a good time rather than being moody, artistic and introspective.  We are supposed to be entertainers, and the idea of calling ourselves artists is not on the dial yet.  Artists are referred to as "arteeeests" with a French accent, and with a smirk you think of Mr. Teezy Weezy -- hairdresser to the stars.

Raymond Bessone, an Englishman better known as Mr. Teasy Weasy, was one of the most famous stylists of the 50's and 60's. Also known as Raymond of Mayfair, for his salon in the elegant London neighborhood, he created the popular "bouffant" hairstyle, which was worn by many movie actresses, like Diana Dors. At that time he had a TV show and was dedicated to the racehorses. His horses wore permed hair. 

    As our reputation grows we begin playing around the country and start an endless round of gigs that have us locked up in a Commer van, criss-crossing England on a daily basis.  But we always return to the Flamingo and the sessions known as all-nighters.  These run from eleven P.M. till seven A.M. on the weekends and are almost Shakespearean in the way that tragedy and comedy play out in front of the stage and the dark recesses of the club.  They become the fixed point, the true north of our universe.

The Beatles inside their Commer van, 1963

Notes:   

[1]       I have wanted to post an excerpt from Andy Summers' memoir One Train Later, which is now several years old (its publication preceded the extremely successful 2007-8 Police reunion tour by about 18 months) for some time now because it is one of the very few books about rock and roll that is actually worth reading. (Having read an inordinately large number, I can attest to this and provide tedious detail why I think this is.)  

              It is odd and surprising that such a colorful and exciting art form, which has inspired so many, has produced so few high-quality biographies, autobiographies or good, business-oriented books (Fred Goodman's Mansion on the Hill and Fortune's Fool being particularly notable exceptions in the last category) detailing its inner workings and, it seems to me, absolutely no decent full-length works of critical commentary.  

              Of the first-person life accounts, Summers' book, Dave Davies' Kink and Stewart "Dinky" Dawson's Life On The Road stand out because each is written in a consistent, recognizable authorial (not ghost-authorial) voice and all are marked with sincerity and a clear desire to communicate with the reader.  None of these writers is a great prose stylist, but their reach is commensurate with their grasp, something that failed Ray Davies in his noble, but ultimately unsuccessful "unauthorized autobiography" X-Ray.  Bob Dylan's marvelous Chronicle remains a chimera - a Dylanesque artifact that future generations may ultimately unravel.

Jenny Fabian, author of the famous rock novel, Groupie, photographed by Michael Ward in 1969. Fabian was Andy Summers' inconstant girlfriend after the Big Roll Band transmogrified into the psychedelic group Dantalian's Chariot.  Summer's is "Dave" in the book; Dantalian's Chariot is renamed "Transfer Project".

          Although One Train Later provides enough anecdotal, behind-the-scenes detail to satisfy Summers' Police fan-base and reward them sufficiently for purchasing the book, it is mainly a story of a serious young musician growing up in post-World War II Britain trying to discern and develop his individual artistic voice and then doggedly insisting that this was the voice he would speak with and be known by.   For those who followed Summers' development and pre-Police career, it's an inspiring and revelatory supplement to his guitar playing, where he is much more articulate and eloquent than in his occasionally overlabored, but always honest and informative, prose.

[2]  Zoot Money and the Big Roll Band -- The Cat (Columbia Records, 1966)

[3]  Zoot Money and the Big Roll Band -- Uncle Willie  (Decca Records, 1964)

[4]  Kevin Coyne Band (with Andy Summers) -- Strange Locomotion (OGWT performance 1975)

[5]  The Police - Roxanne (live at PinkPop Festival, Holland, 1979)

Quaker Testimony of Integrity (Let Your Yeah Be Yeah)

 

You keep telling me Yes

But you don't mean it.

You keep telling me No

And try to lean it.

You're giving me Buts and Maybe.

You know this will drive me crazy.

Why can't you tell it like it is?

Let your Yeah be Yeah And your No be No.

Let your Yeah be Yeah and your No be No.

Because I'm on my guard 

And I'm watching you from head to toe --

You better let your Yeah be Yeah and your No be No.

You wear a plastic smile

I know by your eyes

You speak with indefinite style

You're telling me lies.

You've got to face reality

What is wrong with you and me?

Why can't you free your honesty?

Top Image:  George Fox

Center Image: The Pioneers

Lower Image:  Let Your Yeah Be Yeah 45 rpm Trojan single

Let Your Yeah Be Yeah (Pioneers): LINK!!

Linnaeus in Lapland (1957) -- Lorine Niedecker

Nothing worth noting

except and Andromeda

with quadrangular shoots--

              the boots

of the people

wet inside:  they must swim

to church thru the floods

or be taxed--the blossoms

             from the bosoms

of the leaves

J.F. Kennedy After the Bay of Pigs (Lorine Niedecker, 1967)

To stand up

black-marked tulip

not snapped by the storm

"I've been duped by the experts"

--and walk

the South Lawn

Cooking For Madam 2 (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Summer Recipes)

         

        Feeling a little parched and somewhat blue, I thought it would be a restorative and cheerful thing to supplement the recent entry concerning cuisine chez Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis with this recipe for Peches Cardinal.

        It is meant to serve 4 and to be paired with the Raspberry Sauce found in the earlier post  (which should, of course be re-viewed in its entirety and circulated to friends).  

        This is dedicated to Elizabeth Jeffords of Bangalore, India and Jane Roberts, currently of Denmark, Maine.

        Stay cool – it’s HOT here.

Peches Cardinal

8 ripe peaches

1 ½ cups sugar

Juice of ½ lemon

1 cinammon stick

2 tablespoons coarsely chopped pistachio nuts

        Choose a pot wide enough that all the  peaches can be in one layer and deep enough that they can be covered by liquid.  Using the pot as a pattern, cut out a circle of waxed paper the size of the inner circumference.

        Arrange the unpeeled peaches in the pot.  Add the sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon stick.  Pour in cold water to cover, then place the waxed paper disk over the top and bring to a boil.  Lower the heat, cover the pot, and simmer 15 to 20 minutes until the peaches are soft enough to be pierced easily with the point of a sharp knife.

        Let the peaches cool in the liquid.

        When they are cool, slip the skins off with the help of a small knife.

        To serve, pour some Raspberry Sauce (please click on link) into the bottom of a serving bowl or a platter with a high rim.  Arrange the peaches on the sauce and dribble more over  the tops, then sprinkle with the pistachios.

        Serve at room temperature with the rest of the Raspberry Sauce in a bowl passed at the table.

Notes:  

[1]  All Jacqueline Kennedy photos taken during her March, 1962 visit to India.  

[2]  Peche Cardinal recipe from:  Marta Sgubin, Cooking For Madam: Recipes and Reminiscences from the Home of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. (New York, Scribner, 1998) 

Salt To Taste

Cane rat aka grasscutter aka ground-pig


I.     "Cane Rat (Thryonomys Swinderianus), a large African rodent which also goes by the name grasscutter (especially in W. Africa) and ground-pig (a misnomer which has been current in S. Africa, perhaps because of its bristly hairs).  It can live in various environments, mostly but not always in damp areas; enjoys an excellent vegetarian diet (roots, young shoots, bark, etc.) and is capable of causing havoc in some crops such as sugar cane.

        The cane rat may reach a length, not including the tail, of nearly 60 cm (24") and provides a substantial amount of good meat.  It is eaten on a large scale in sub-Saharan Africa." 

From:  Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food.  Oxford, Oxford University Press,  1999.

Millet beer




II.    In Native Stranger: A Black American's Journey into the Heart of Africa (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), Eddy L. Harris provides this account of cane rat stew in the Ivory Coast:

   "Denis asked if I was hungry and took me to the home of a woman making stew. He was tired and so was I. It had been a very long day. We would rest awhile and have something to eat with her before going home..

       We sat outside and drank millet beer, frothy and sweet. Then we ate this woman's strange stew. Denis watched me carefully -- too carefully, it seemed.

   "What's the matter?" I asked.

   "Nothing, " he said. "How do you like the stew?"

   "It's different," I said. "But it's good."

    He was playful again.

   "Did you ever eat a rat before?"

    I kept eating. Nothing surprised me anymore.

   "Don't worry," he said. "It's not like a rat in the sewer. It's more like a field rat."

   "Oh, I wasn't worried," I said, glad that he had explained the difference.

    The stew was vaguely sweet, pungent, a new taste.

    We drank more millet beer and the evening began to glow. Denis smiled. He became for me then all that was right about Africa, the warmth, the generosity, the laughter."

III.         A long, happy (it seems to me now as it seemed to me then) time ago, during my first visit to Mallorca,  I purchased (as I usually do when I travel) a local recipe book so that I could remember my vacation and the many new and wonderful things I ate after I had returned home.  In this case, I also wanted to remember the sounds and spelling of  Mallorquin, Mallorca's unique and remarkable language.  The book contained the following recipe, which I have never tried (and am unlikely to):

        Frito de Ratas (Rat Fry): 

      "The rats are skinned, well cleaned and given a good boiling.  Drain and cut into little pieces.  These are fried in a frying pan with a lot of oil seasoned beforehand with salt and pepper.

      When cooked, add a good quantity of garlic, leeks and tomato, and if in season, one or two chilis.

        In La Puebla (in the northern part of Majorca), where this dish is general, they always advise you to "lift the elbow", that is to say, wash it down with plenty of good red wine.

        Needless to explain that the rats in question are the ones called "ratas de campo" or field rats, which abound in the area of La Albufera (bordering the Bay of Alcudia), and in the surroundings of La Puebla."

From Luis Ripoll, 125 Cookery Recipes of Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza (translated by William Kirkbride).  Palma de Mallorca, 1975.

IV.        Also from Ripoll's book, and highly recommended, is the following recipe, which no visitor to Mallorca, especially one who had been a guest in a private home, would fail to recognize:

Pamboli

Pamboli (Bread and Olive Oil)

        "Bread and olive oil is maybe the plainest item of food in Majorcan cuisine; but that doesn't prevent it from being one of the most widely eaten.

        Pamboli is nothing more or less than slices of bread -- brown or white -- dressed with a little good quality olive oil and, if desired, a dash of vinegar.

        If we want to make it more succulent, we can include, before dressing it, some slices of tomato.  Would then have in the Majorcan language "pamboli tomatiga".  We can improve this item of food further by adding green or black olive, whole or cut up, and a spoonful of capers, as well as some samphire (an aromatic cliff plant used in pickles).  Salt to taste."

Pamboli -- grisaille view

V.        What connects all this is the following: 

          The other day, while consulting Alan Davidson's magnificent Oxford Companion on another subject, I encountered his entry on the curiously-named Cane Rat and became interested in the history and lore surrounding this rodent.  (For instance, did you know that calling someone a "cane rat" is a mild term of disapprobation in South Africa?)   I learned that this charming, herbivorous field creature is a standard item of "bush fare" and considered a valuable, fairly inexpensive food source in Africa.  But one thing led to another, as usually happens, and I eventually ended up learning about Eddy Harris's fascinating volume and  remembering my Mallorquin cookbook and its odd-seeming "rat fry" recipe.  It had been years since I opened Ripoll's book, which is really more of a pamphlet that conveys great authenticity in the rusticity of its paper, printing and graphics.  Opening to the Frito de Ratas page, I discovered a pink phone message slip dating from the early 1980s alerting me that an ambulance chasing lawyer in Manhattan wanted to speak to me about a pending case.  The message bore the date of Caroline's birthday.  Curious.  I then began writing this mini-semi-survey.

       I consider it propitious and not an accident that this ends with the excellent, healthy and humane Pamboli, the quintessential Mallorquin foodstuff. 

       The message to me -- the clear and unequivocal message -- is that we need to leave the cane rat and other animals alone and to eat more Pamboli.

        This post is dedicated to the memory of Cy Twombly.

Cy Twombly: Roman and New York Notes

Cy Twombly, Roman Notes, 1970

From the New York Times obituary by Randy Kennedy, July 5, 2011:

        "In the only written statement that Mr. Twombly ever made about his work, a short essay in an Italian art journal in 1957, he tried to make clear that his intentions were not subversive but elementally human. Each line he made, he said, was “the actual experience” of making the line, adding:  'It does not illustrate. It is the sensation of its own realization.'  Years later he described this more plainly. 'It’s more like I’m having an experience than making a picture.'  The process stood in stark contrast to the detached, effete image that often clung to Mr. Twombly.  After completing a work, in a kind of ecstatic state, it was as if the painting existed and he barely did anymore: 'I usually have to go to bed for a couple of days.'"

Cy Twombly, from "On The Bowery" series, 1969-71