Lockhart, TX

Just before I returned to Buffalo for the school year, G-D and I took an old friend and an Austin Newbie (a pig-roasting friend from North Carolina!) out to Lockhart for dinner at Kreuz's Market. Kreuz's makes up one pole of the debate that has solidified Lockhart as the Barbecue Capital of Texas. That is, by the way, a bona fide title, bestowed upon Lockhart by the Texas State Legislator, House Resolution No. 1024, 76th Legislature, Regular Session (1999). Anyway, Smitty's Market rests at the other pole of the debate and, to be honest, has persuaded me of its superiority. We ended up at Kreuz's because it stays open later. Not to say that Kreuz's ain't good. It is. Probably it's better than all but one other barbecue place in Texas, and that place happens to be the ghost of its own father.

Let me explain.

Kreuz's, sort of pronounced "Krites's," started out on South Commerce Street circa 1900. Charles Kreuz opened it as a meat market and, like many other market owners did at week's end, he cooked the leftover meat over low heat with lots of smoke. The slow cooking process and abundant wood smoke helped cover up any week-old funk the meat might have acquired. Tougher and fattier cuts, brisket especially, worked well because they stayed juicy and tender for the eight to twenty-four hours it might take to finish cooking. Thus, the central Texas style of barbecue developed, and Mr. Kreuz was one of the first to serve the stuff to weekend shoppers at the back door of his shop.

In 1948 Edgar "Smitty" Schmidt bought the place from the Kreuz family, having worked there for over a decade. He kept the name, for business purposes or out of respect I do not know, but Kreuz's carried on in the same location for an entire century. In 1999, after something of a family disagreement, Kreuz's moved down the street and Smitty's opened in the original location. Apparently Edgar left the business to his sons Don, who retired in 1996, and Rick, who still runs Kreuz's in its new location. So the story goes, Rick owned the business but Don owned the building and, after the disagreement, Don apparently drove rent up so high that Rick had to move out--to a much larger and undoubtedly more expensive place. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but that's how I heard it. In any case, Nina Schmidt-Sells opened Smitty's, a tribute to her by-then-dead father, in the original location and her son John Fullilove still cooks barbecue on the same pits his grandfather, and Charles Kreuz before him, used all those years ago.

That's why I like Smitty's, really, because you can still see those barbecue pits, you can see the chains that used to secure butcher knives to the tables, you can see the soot that's built up over a hundred years of use. It is the living ghost of the displaced Kreuz's Market. And Smitty's isn't so big that you feel like the cattle their serving while you wait in line. Still, as I say, Kreuz's ain't bad. Here's what we ate during this last visit:

That red butcher's paper is the only plate you get. Those plastic knives the only utensils. The meat comes with either white bread or saltine crackers, but they won't serve you a sandwich. You pay for the meat by the pound. Here we have four pork ribs, two links of sausage and four thick slices of brisket. The bags of dill pickle slices and fresh white onion come free upon request and if you want to pay for additional sides you can get cheddar cheese, jalapeno, German potatoes. We got the potatoes and a six pack of Lonestar.

I paid my first visit to Kreuz's in 2004, after it had moved to its new location. I don't think it was the first time I'd had central Texas barbecue. It may not even have been my first visit to Lockhart. It was, however, the first time I realized that, oh yeah, this ain't the same stuff they got in Tennessee. Well, almost six years later, I can say the same thing with a little more confidence. Under the name "barbecue" exists an entire complex of cultures and tastes. For our purposes here, however, I'll simplify it with this quote from Rick Schmidt, the current owner of Kreuz's: “Some people seem disappointed. They say, ‘How can it be barbecue without beans and potato salad and sauce?’ We just tell ’em this place was here before all that came along.”

Obviously there's more than a bit of Texas pride in that explanation, but I do believe it gets to the crass generalization that I want to put forward. There's barbecue with sauce (and slaw) and then there's barbecue that's just meat. Texas, in fact, has both. East Texas has a tradition of sauces and sandwiches, much like most of the Deep South, although I don't think anyone in Texas puts slaw on their meat. In any case, there exist separate traditions that often seem distantly related at best and no one knows exactly how to map the family tree. While I hesitate to make any assertions beyond the sauce/no sauce divide, some of the speculation on why that divide exists is fairly interesting.

In a Texas Monthly article from 1973, Griffin Smith Jr. offers a theory that begins with etymology and ends with race. Apparently even the origin of the word barbecue is under dispute. Does it come from the Mexican barbacoa, which, even while it shares some characteristics with barbecue, is an entirely different meat cooking tradition? Or does it come from the French "barbe" (beard) and "queue" (tail), suggesting an orthodoxy of whole-body cooking by which we no longer abide? Perhaps it comes from some forgotten native American language? No one knew in 1973 when Smith was writing and no one knows now.

One of the more generally accepted theories, however, hinges on socio-economic status, which in America demographically means racial status, too. Smith explains the idea in more detail but it's pretty easily summarized this way: The dominant class of white folks had access to better meat and didn't need any sauce while the subordinated class of black folks had poorer quality meats and used sauces to compensate. Thus, Czech and German immigrants developed the central Texas style while slaves and their ancestors developed the east Texas and Deep South tradition.

While I'm impressed by the class and race awareness the 1973 article expresses, a sophistication most modern magazines lack, that theory doesn't quite square with the explanation of Czech and German store owners barbecuing their older, tougher meats. Nor does it acknowledge the fact that white people owned slaves, whose labor they controlled and whose "ingenious" labors they no doubt adapted for their own purposes. I don't have the resources to lay out a competing theory here, but it does seem that the historical circumstances suggest a more complicated explanation of divergent barbecuing cultures. In Lockhart, however, the general theory holds; both Kreuz's and Smitty's are owned and operated by whites, as are the other two reputable barbecue places, the Chisholm Trail and, ironically, Black's.

Those last two certainly add to Lockhart's status as Barbecue Capital, but they represent a second tier legacy. Black's employs too many qualifiers, advertising itself as "Texas' oldest and best major barbecue restaurant continuously owned by the same family." Who'd dispute it? Similarly, they have too many menu options. And Chisholm Trail, well, it's still better than anything within Austin City Limits. At least the name recognizes Lockhart's economic roots as a the oldest and best major northward post on the continuously infamous Chisholm Trail whose runners included members of LBJ's family. Did I mention that LBJ loved Black's? Ha!

We didn't stick around long enough to sightsee during this past visit, but Lockhart also has a really neat jail. The first floor has been converted into a history museum, primarily about the city's history with the cattle trade, while everything above it remains more or less untouched and open for viewing. Then, if after the barbecue there's stomach-room for a drink, I like to visit Lilly's elephant themed bar. Here's what Aasim Syed has to say about it:

As you can see, it's cooler than Fredericksburg.

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San Soo Gab San

There's a lot out there on the Internet about San Soo Gab San, a 24-hour Korean BBQ restaurant in North Chicago. If you're curious, check out this dorky-ass debate style video from Check Please. Or this homophobic dude-review from those ingratiating, fine fare loving douche bags at Chicago Gluttons. Or, for a little contrast, take a look at this explanatory note from Examiner. I don't have much to add to the various accounts of the place. I agree with them all. But I'll post some pictures I took while there recently just so that nobody has to go searching for better ones.

Despite the excellent food and exciting table-grill, it's sort of a depressing scene.


They will really serve you raw meat if you ask for it. Here's the beef.


And here's the beef next to nearly finished pork ribs.


G-D had a delicious Kirin Ichiban Shibori. I ordered an OB because I thought it was the Korean thing to drink. If you look closely, though, it's much less specific than that. OB stands for Oriental Brewery.


And finally, the best part of the meal... All the side dishes.

Hatch Chili

It's Hatch Chili season. Every year in September the city of Hatch, New Mexico celebrates with a festival. Suddenly, the small town in southern New Mexico swells from a population of 2,000 to about 30,000. Foodies and chili fans congregate to taste the fruit in various forms (sauces, jams, powdered, candied, roasted and stuffed with anything delicious) and to enjoy the carnival events.


I've never attended the festival, but one of Austin's fancy schmancy grocery stores imports plenty of chilies to go around and even hosts a miniature version of Hatch's festival in the parking lot. Come to think of it, though, I don't think I've ever attended that festival either. I learned about Hatch from my Auntie, who makes the meanest pork and chili pepper stew I've ever tasted. Actually, "meanest" probably isn't the right word. Hatch chilies are fairly mild as far as chilies go. Once roasted, they have a complex flavor that blends sweet, tangy and picante. That perfect combination has encouraged the well-deserved adulation, not only because the wonderful flavor, but also because eating Hatch chilies doesn't wreck the taste buds. I admit, though, that Auntie's stew has given me the hiccups on a couple of occasions. I think maybe she added some spice, but it could be that she got a lively batch. Individual chilies can vary a bit on the Scoville scale and green Hatch chilies tend to vary more than most.

I picked up some mild Hatch Chilies a couple weeks ago because I got excited for the season. But when I got home I realized I hadn't a clue what to do with them. I certainly wasn't going to attempt a stew, since that dish had already been spoken for. G-D had some pork chops, though, and since I'd already learned that pork and Hatch Chilies pair nicely, I decided to make a sauce for smothered chops.

First, the chilies need roasting. I've roasted other chilies before, so I sort of had an idea how to go about it. Unfortunately, however, I've never had complete success. There are a lot of tips out there on the internet for roasting in the oven, with the broiler, on the grill, over a gas range. I've tried all except that last, which is, incidentally, the method Auntie recommended to me later. Rather than suggest time limits (which vary widely depending on who you ask), I'll suggest heating the chilies until they blister and begin to blacken. If you don't roast them long enough it gets difficult to remove the skin at the end. That's the problem I tend to have. After you remove them from heat, put the chilies in a plastic bag (or tupperware, or a bowl covered with plastic wrap) to steam for fifteen or twenty minutes. That will help loosen the skin some more. Once they're good and soggy, you can remove the charred skin. If you can't get it all off, don't fret. A little roasted skin adds a lot of flavor to the sauce.

I began the sauce by sautéing half a chopped white onion in olive oil. After they were soft, I added three or four cloves of crushed garlic and kept that over medium heat for another two minutes. Then I added several pinches of flour until I got the thickened consistency that I wanted. Immediately after thickening, I added the chilies, which I chopped up after peeling. The chilies were a bit wet and sticky, so I let them simmer over medium-low heat for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. Once everything seemed to gel together, I added about a cup and a half of water. I would have preferred stock, but I didn't have any. Water worked fine. Finally, I stirred in chopped cilantro, powdered coriander, salt, a squeeze of lime, maybe small amounts of black pepper and cumin, I can't remember now. I let that simmer on low for about twenty minutes, until it began to thicken again. After it cooled down, I poured half in a zip-lock bag with the pork chops to marinade over night. The other half I reserved for topping the chops post-grilling.

This sauce will keep in the fridge for a week or so, which makes it easy to prepare lots at one time and save some for later dishes.

The next evening I used the skillet grilling method that G-D and I learned about earlier in the summer. Normally she plays Grill Master, but we were leaving for Chicago the next morning and she had other things keeping her busy. So, I took the task and, approaching it with nearly complete ignorance, I forgot to grease the skillet. As anyone might guess, the chops sizzled, stuck to the cast iron and broke apart into smaller chunks of meaty debris. Luckily, the cuts were pretty big, so even with large chunks falling off we had passable chops. I left them on for about seven or eight minutes, flipped them, and let them cook for another seven or eight minutes. In that time a miracle occurred. The meaty debris transformed into an unencased sausage that absorbed all the Hatch marinade. Unencased sausage? Yeah, well, that's what I decided to call it. The unencased sausage is the stuff in the middle of the plate, and it tasted great.

To serve, I reheated the leftover Hatch Chili sauce and poured it over the four largest chunks of meat, creating a plate of kinda-smothered pork chops. I think smothered pork chops are traditionally covered in their own gravy, but this created a similarly juicy and flavorful dish. We ate them with grilled corn and green beans. Later in the week we made cheddar-jalapeno mashed potatoes that I think might have been really good with these chops. Another time, perhaps. I don't when I'll make these again, but I definitely want to do more with Hatch Chilies. Auntie came over for a taste and said the sauce wasn't bad. "Maybe a bit more lime next time. I don't know, that might not be it, but it needs something." A ringing endorsement! Well, anyway, an invitation to keep cooking.


For more information about chilies, check out The Chile Pepper Institute's excellent website.

Pesto

It's really easy (and cheap) to make your own pesto, especially if you don't worry about doing it right. I usually crush a pile of garlic, then chop up an equal-sized pile of basil. Combine them with a healthy dose of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste and there you have it: homemade pesto. A bit of balsamic tastes good, too, although that's not traditional.

I never use a mortar and pestle, rarely add pine nuts and only sometimes include grated parmigiano. Nonetheless, it's always wonderful. If you don't love garlic, and its peculiar burn, it might be best to use two parts basil for every one part garlic. After you've worked out your preferred flavor, you can use it to dress up any pasta dish, as a spread or even as a salad dressing. I like to put it on one of my favorite summer sandwiches, Il Caprese. This is how Closet Cooking does it. And this is what mine looks like from above:




And from the side:



Sorry for the poor quality photos. I used my phone and it was dark.

Children's Book Edition

I’ve been searching for my wings some time now. I’m going to be born into the sky soon, because I’m a bird girl and bird girls go to heaven. There’s a rainbow in the sky all the time, don’t be blind.


But God did not intend me to fly, so I went to dance in an old grain silo. I hopped and bounced and moved to the beats of one hundred stupendous, ringing drums. My silo dreams echoed with laughs in the dark night. Everything else was only a beginning, I exclaimed, “The first fruits of the new age!”

But the next day my old life was calling. “I got to go to town; I need wheels, daddio.” "Nothin' doin'. You're father's hip and knows what cooks." So I went to the bus stop and that's where Jesus found me. Untoward Christian soldiers blew whistles and passed out pamphlets: "You too have fallen east of eden."


El Shaddai did not have the wings I’d wanted, but I learned that hell is a pot of hot oil.


And heaven a warm plate of bird leg adobo, cast out of the pot and into my stomach.

I did the cookin', pops did the cleanin'.

Bruce Springsteen

I promised a friend I'd convince him that Bruce Springsteen deserves his reconsideration. I’ve been thinking about how to persuade him for a couple of months now and haven’t gotten much footing on the problem. In fact, my failure to come up with a strong argument on The Boss’s behalf seems to be part of a larger problem I have explaining my musical preferences. So let that serve as a bit of a disclaimer to this post and feel free to skip to the bottom where you can download my very own Springsteen “Best Of,” entitled Reason To Believe, which I compiled from my three favorite albums: Greetings From Asbury Park N.J., Darkness On the Edge of Town, and Nebraska.

Although far from exhaustive, the compilation of songs represents the originality of Springsteen’s work and demonstrates his proximity to several musical genres that I hold dear: Southern soul, mid-century pop, rockabilly, 70s glam, urban blues. By “proximity” I mean simply that he fits none of those genres and does not even produce a self-conscious hybridity of genres as does, say, Bob Dylan. Rather, Springsteen makes smart music that celebrates rock n' roll's un-intellectual roots. At certain points in his career that mission has led him astray, toward reductive representations of “middle America” and working class culture. At his best, however, Springsteen paints a sufficiently complex portrait of America's collective emotional life.

I do want to add one awkward caveat, though, and say that to me the portrait he paints specifically addresses the life of white America. That's not to say that racial politics are insignificant to his music. Obviously he sings loud and proud about his blue collar background and, as Jim Dickinson once explained about a distinctively black and generally political music: “You hear soul music explained in terms of oppression and poverty, and that's certainly part of it -- no soul musician was born rich -- but it's more than that. It's being proud of your own people, what you come from. That's soul.” That was the explanation he gave Stanley Booth anyway, who then glossed it with this quote from a Hayes-Porter song made famous by Sam & Dave’s performance of it:

I'm a Soul Man
Got what I got the hard way
And I'll make it better each and every day
I'm a Soul Man

Springsteen too sings about getting things the hard way, but he rarely puts that boastful touch on it, never really looks to the future for improvement. In fact, he tends to linger on the past that broke the present:

You're born into this life paying
For the sins of somebody else's past
Daddy worked his whole life for nothing but the pain
Now he walks these empty rooms looking for something to blame

In that quote from “Adam Raised a Cain,” Springsteen describes a father-son relationship as a problem of repetition and cyclical violence. The hard work is “for nothing” because it goes toward paying down debt. The workingman here exists in a diminished state of subsistence -- just below breaking even -- that makes progress impossible. Springsteen also hints, however, that assigning blame for inheriting problems becomes an arbitrary, useless and miserable vocation. And indeed, the son/narrator, refuses to blame his father for raising a monster. The relationship, although marked by violence and regret, is quite loving.

The Biblical reference points in “Adam Raised a Cain” are slightly unusual in Springsteen’s lyrics, but the touching and troubled depiction of family life is not. Throughout his work he creates sparse narratives driven by complex characters, complicated emotions. And he does so with complete sincerity. I think it is that sincerity that makes The Boss’s work so special, so unusual and, perhaps, so easily dismissed. He is not the distanced ironist, not a clever satirist, not even an engaged protestor. In fact, his most famous attempt at irony, satire and protest was so poor that it backfired and turned “Born In the U.S.A.” into a national anthem for proud social conservatives.

The Boss is at his best when he’s telling private stories in the first-person. Songs like “Used Cars,” “Highway Patrolmen,” “Racing In the Streets,” and “Mary Queen of Arkansas” all create fictions close to Springsteen’s heart while “Nebraska” demands identification with, if not also sympathy for, a serial killer. That he has successfully and consistently employed sincerity speaks to The Boss’s disciplined power as an artist. Bald sincerity easily turns toward melodrama or, with a wink, camp. But in Bruce Springsteen's hands, sincerity maintains a level of seriousness that really does demand reconsideration from non-believers.

Of course, if the sincerity thing doesn’t grab ya, note that The Boss also has punk credits to cash in. He wrote Patti Smith’s biggest hit, “Because the Night,” which he’s performing here with the original lyrics. (Be sure to check out the lead guitarist, Nils Lofgren, really feelin’ it.)



And here’s recent footage of The Boss transforming the artistic intent motivating Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream.”



Get the best of The Boss here.

Reason To Believe

1. Blinded By the Light
2. Growin’ Up
3. Mary Queen of Arkansas
4. Lost In the Flood
5. For You
6. Adam Raised a Cain
7. Candy’s Room
8. Racing In the Street
9. The Promised Land
10. Factory
11. Prove It All Night
12. Darkness On the Edge of Town
13. Nebraska
14. Atlantic City
15. Johnny 99
16. Highway Patrolman
17. Used Cars
18. Reason To Believe

Terry Allen

Terry Allen is playing in Austin tonight, at the Cactus Cafe, a little place on campus that sells beer. It's going to be a great show. I was supposed to go with a friend who owns a sticky note artwork that Allen did based on his song "The Beautiful Waitress." The end includes a recitation that goes like this:

A waitress asked me what I did
I told her I tried (to make art).
She asked me if I made any money.
I said no...I have to "teach" to do that.
She asked me what I taught and where.
I told her.
She told me that she liked art, but that she
couldn't draw a straight line.
I told her if she could reach for something
and pick it up, she could draw a line that
was straight enough.
She said she wasn't interested in that kind
of drawing... but had always liked horses.
I said I did too, but they were hard to draw.
She said yes that was very true... said she
could do the body okay, but never got the
head, tail, or legs.
I told her she was drawing sausages... not horses.
She said no... they were horses.

I've tried to recreate the sticky note below, but the original is a lot better. Sorry.















Anyway, I can't go to the show because I don't have enough money to pay for the gas back to Buffalo and I need to start saving. I'm too down about it to write more, but there's an excellent entry at Pole Hill Sanitarium if you want to know more. They also have a link to a torrent for his 1979 masterpiece Lubbock (On Everything), but if like me you don't know your ass from a peer-to-peer protocol, you can just download it here instead.

Lubbock (On Everything)

1. "Amarillo Highway (for Dave Hickey)"
2. "Highplains Jamboree"
3. "The Great Joe Bob (A Regional Tragedy)"
4. "The Wolfman Of Del Rio"
5. "Lubbock Woman"
6. "The Girl Who Danced Oklahoma"
7. "Truckload Of Art"
8. "The Collector (and the Art Mob)"
9. "Oui (a French Song)"
10. "Rendezvous USA"
11. "Cocktails for Three"
12. "The Beautiful Waitress"
13. "Blue Asian Reds (for Roadrunner)"
14. "New Delhi Freight Train"
15. "FFA"
16. "Flatland Farmer"
17. "My Amigo"
18. "The Pink And Black Song"
19. "The Thirty Years Waltz (for Jo Harvey)"
20. "I Just Left Myself"

The Dixie Cups

Today The Dixie Cups are playing a tribute show for Wardell Quezergue, put on by the Ponderosa Stomp at the Lincoln Center in New York City. The Ponderosa Stomp is based in New Orleans and is dedicated to celebrating and preserving the music of its home city. The mission statement casts a broader net, explaining that the Stomp exists "to celebrate, pay tribute to, and teach the cultural significance of the unsung heroes and heroines of rock-n-roll, rhythm & blues and other forms of American roots music while they are still alive." And they do not limit their shows to New Orleans musicians, but of course, those specific musics came out of New Orleans and almost all American "roots" music can be traced back to traditions that grew from North America's fertile crescent of culture. Quezergue has played an important role in that musical legacy as one of the city's preeminent arrangers, transposing the intricacies and energy of second line rhythm into popular tunes.

To me, The Dixie Cups represent the popular side of Quezergue's work best. The group was originally comprised of two sisters, Barbara and Rosa Hawkins, and their cousin, Joan Johnson, all of whom grew up in New Orleans. More specifically, they grew up in the Calliope Projects, where the Neville Brothers also grew up. Still teenagers, Barbara, Rosa and Joan began singing around New Orleans as The Meltones, and later, Little Miss and The Muffets, which is a great name but probably would not have stuck to the charts quite the way The Dixie Cups did. Still under the name The Meltones, however, they already had a sound that caught the attention Joe Jones, another New Orleans performer. After working with the three women for a short time, he took them to the Brill Building in New York, where he introduced them to the already well-known song-writing team Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. Lieber and Stoller were in the process of starting a small record label, Red Bird Records, and The Dixie Cups were their first group.

"Chapel of Love," written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwhich and Phil Spector, was their first hit. It quickly hit number one on the pop charts in spring of 1964, thankfully knocking the Beatles out of that spot. They had several follow-up hits as well, including "People Say," but "Chapel of Love" remains their strongest claim to 1960s pop stardom. Their last hit, however, registers as their most iconic and the most rooted in their home town. "Iko Iko," released on two different singles in 1965 (b/w "Gee, Baby Gee" and "I'm Gonna Get You Yet"), never hit number one; nonetheless it became their signature song. It seems impossible to even mention their success with "Iko Iko," however, without also mentioning Sugar Boy Crawford's 1954 hit "J0ck-a-mo," which sounds remarkably similar.

As the story goes, The Dixie Cups were in the studio with Greenwhich and Barry and between takes began messing around, banging out a polyrhythm on ashtrays. They didn't realize that the tapes were rolling and, supposedly, Greenwhich and Barry simply dubbed in brass and drums before releasing it. Part of this myth also suggests that Barbara, Rosa and Joan learned the song from their grandmother, as Barbara seems to have claimed publicly, and that it must have therefore been an old Mardi Gras Indian folk song. Crawford's "Jock-a-mo" complicates the myth a bit, but has also led people to assume, on the other hand, that The Dixie Cups and Red Bird ripped it off from Crawford, who never achieved the sort of fame The Dixie Cups achieved. So, there are a number of confusing points to unravel.

First of all, they may very well have learned the song from their grandmother. Each of The Dixie Cups women were quite young when Crawford's version became a regional hit. It's likely, however, that they heard versions of it around town as they became teenagers and started getting interested in performing popular music. In any case, The Dixie Cups certainly didn't record the song on accident. There's an accapella version available on CD (or for download here) where they can be heard starting the song over, with direction from the control room, indicating that they recorded at least a second take. Furthermore, Barry and Greenwhich didn't just make an accidental recording and, on good intuition, turn it into a hit. In fact, that messing around on ashtrays was arranged percussion by Wardell Quezergue. Quezergue would have known Crawford's "Jock-a-mo" well, as he was already playing music in New Orleans when it was released.

Of course, he also would have known the Mardi Gras Indian chants that Crawford cribbed from to compose his song. Unfortunately for Crawford, and many, many other disenfranchised 20th century musicians, music copyright is a prickly affair that usually benefits the industry, rather than the creative and cultural forces that produce anything worth copyrighting. The important point for this post, however, is that The Dixie Cups and Quezergue held their culture and its history in high enough esteem to reformulate the New Orleans tradition in a New York City recording studio without flattening it out into the generic sort of dribble that many yankee businessmen thought appropriate for mass production.

I love "Iko Iko" for its simple presentation of complicated rhythmic patterns and its spontaneous (which is not to say accidental) energy. The arrangement retains the second line ebullience while also being spare enough to appeal to a radio audience. And, unlike "Chapel of Love," which seems quite dated, perhaps because its extraordinary fame helped define a certain 60s aesthetic, "Iko Iko" continues to sound like a breakthrough in popular recording. In 1964, Red Bird released a compilation of The Dixie Cups's singles under the title of their number one hit. I picked it up at Harvest Records in Asheville, NC on my way through town, where I stopped to have dinner with friends before moving on toward Texas. It was a steal at $4 and has filled my summer with much pleasure.

After their initial success Joe Jones decided to move The Dixie Cups over to the larger label ABC-Paramount. While they had other hits, they never were quite as successful and, under pressure to tour constantly, Joan left the group. Shortly thereafter legal troubles convinced the Hawkins sisters to do the same. They've been back at it for several years now, peforming with their old neighbor Athelgra Neville. It's nice to see them making a living from their music and nice to see them carrying the torch with the Ponderosa Stomp, despite having to relocate after Katrina. Since I can't be at the Lincoln Center tonight, I thought I'd share the music with y'all here. Enjoy!


Chapel of Love

1. Chapel of Love
2. Gee the Moon Is Shining Bright
3. I'm Gonna Get You Yet
4. Ain't That Nice
5. Thank You Mama, Thank You Papa
6. Another Boy Like Mine
7. Gee Baby Gee
8. Iko Iko
9. Girls Can Tell
10. All Grown Up
11. People Say

Northwest Miscellany / Too Long a Post Script

I got back to Austin late last Sunday after ten days in Seattle. I already blogged about the first part of my trip: A friend's wedding, fourth of July feast, leftovers, Ballard blues. The second half of the trip I spent across the Puget Sound from Seattle on "The Peninsula," as they say. Namely, I was in Port Angeles visiting a friend of the family with my folks. We covered a lot of ground, which I'll recap by sharing some grainy images.

We arrived late on the Thursday after July 4th and the short trip from Port Angeles to Port Townsend on Friday. Port Townsend is definitely the more touristy spot, despite Port Angeles's recent Twilight-related notoriety, and has a number of storefronts worth visiting. First, we stopped by Mt. Townsend Creamery to try their cheeses, see the creamery churning its curds and pick up a couple of lunches. For ten bucks each brown bag comes with bread, salami, figs and, of course, cheese. That may seem a bit steep, but one bag is plenty to feed two people. We ate those at a State park on the waterfront, where my mother spilled strawberry soda down my front-side and my father declared his hatred for pork fat. Luckily, the cheese was really good. Also in Port Townsend I had the best little espresso of my life. It's pictured here with the Friday, July 10th edition of Port Townsend's The Leader, which featured an entire section of lawnmower racing (Yeah, no shit. Click here to see how we do it in Texas).

After eating in Port Townsend we headed back to Port Angeles, where our friend, Minister of Music at Holy Trinity Lutheran, showed us the recently refurbished pipe organ. In fact, we got a bit of a preview, as she won't christen it until next Sunday. With thirty ranks and more stops than I could possibly explain, it sounded wonderful. She was a little worried that it might be too loud and so compete with the congregation during hymns. So long as attendance isn't too low, it'll probably be fine. But it was louder and clearer than most church organs I grew up with, which may have to do with the fact that I didn't grow up with real pipes. It makes a difference, not only for the enhanced sound, but also for the added visual pleasure, which you can see for yourself. The pipes are like perfect little modernist designs -- functional in their ability to produce a large variety of sounds and beautiful in their austere simplicity. Follow the link for a short recording of the Minister of Music practicing the hymn, "From Whom All Blessings Flow." It was especially neat to walk around behind the display ranks to see the many smaller ranks that normally stay hidden. Later that evening my mother made pasta arrabiata, after which we all drank too much wine and argued about the existence of God. We decided that question was predicated on a marketing problem, which non-denominational and born-again churches seem to have solved with praise services. Get rid of the organ, gather a garage band and then, there, you can see with rude certainty God operate all his horrors upon this world. Americans really do love atrocity.

Okay, enough preaching. On Saturday we ate waffles, which are my father's special culinary venture. Following his lead, we as a family have made a tradition out of sugar-and-dairy-fat-adorned batter. It's better than your average Eggo, and here I'll say no more for fear of preaching again. The image to the right is of my father's work, probably the only masterpiece he'll ever love.

After breakfast we met up with my sister -- and the family was whole -- at Camaraderie Cellars, a little winery in Port Angeles owned by some friends of the friend we were visiting. In fact, our friend works there part time in cooperation with a bartering system, for which she receives, well, I don't know what. A little wine, certainly, but mostly camaraderie I imagine. In any case, it was my first trip to a winery and it was fun to learn a little about what goes into producing the blood of Christ in bulk. For one thing, oak barrels cost a lot of fucking money. About $800 each, to be exact. And they have a lot of them even at a small business. No wonder it costs so much per bottle. Furthermore, they can only use each for about four years before they lose that barrel flavor. After that Camaraderie turns them into expensive furniture, which is, quite frankly, more palatable than tossing them on the trash heap. Nonetheless, it boggles the mind why anyone would pay so much for such an ugly chair, even if it is made of very nice oak. On the other hand, I was very glad to find that the tasting is quite reasonable. At five dollars a head we tasted five good wines. For everyone else that amounted to more than a glass of wine, as the pours were generous. For me, however, the pours seemed half-sized. Probably because the lady pouring thought I was underage but felt too embarrassed to ask for an ID since I was with friends and acquaintances. Oh well. I ate more than my fair share of the Ranier cherries that they had out for a snack.

That afternoon we went on a short walk through the Northwest's rain forest and then had dinner at a faux-fancy restaurant that played really awful music and served really good food. They have a wood-fired oven that cooks most of their dishes, making everything delicious. I had blackened salmon topped with a fruit relish, accompanied by a side of champagne and lemon risotto. While that was really good, the crab that my sister ordered looked far more impressive. In fact, it was far impressive in that it was plucked from the ocean only about a mile away. The salmon probably came from ten miles away.

That's all for now. I promise the next post will be shorter and more rewarding. Thanks for hanging in there thus far.