Coney Island Brewing's Mermaid Pilsner

A couple of weeks ago I tried Coney Island Brewing Company's "Seas the Day" India Pale Lager. Now I've also had their Mermaid Pilsner. It's good beer.

Pilsner (or Pilsener) is a style of lager--a lager being any beer made with bottom fermenting yeast--that originated in the city of Pilsen, or Plzeň, in what is now the Czech Republic. What distinguishes Pilsner from other lagers is that it is made with lighter colored malts, resulting in a golden, as opposed to a deep amber or brown, color. It usually also has a more pronounced hop flavor than other lagers. Most mass market American beers are made in the Pilsner style. Some, like Budweiser, have a forward hop flavor while others, like Coors, have a more subdued one.

For a food pairing I decided on something less spicy than the bánh mì I had with "Seas the Day." I chose a "Smokin' Henry" from our local deli, Lassen & Hennigs. It's made with smoked turkey, Black Forest ham, cheddar, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and Russian dressing. For a bit of spice, I had some of Trader Joe's cheddar and horseradish flavored chips on the side.

While I was waiting for my sandwich to be made, I took a look at Lassen & Hennigs' beer selection, and saw Mermaid Pilsner among their offerings.

The beer has a rich golden color, a shade darker than most American Pilsners, but similar to that of Pilsner Urquell, the original Pilsner from Plzeň. The head was moderate, creamy, and fairly long-lasting. The aroma was hoppy, with slight malt undertones and jasmine-like overtones. The flavor was a well balanced blend of hop bitterness and malt warmth, with a suggestion of spice and a pleasant, melon like finish. The beer worked well with the flavorful food, but would also be enjoyable on its own.

Unlike Czech or German Pilsners, which adhere to a purity law that allows only the use of barley malt, Mermaid Pilsner, like "Seas the Day,"  is made with a combination of malts. There is regular two-row barley malt, the staple of most fine beers, along with Cargill's "EuroPils," also made from two-row barley, but with a distinctive "grassy" flavor. There are also two non-barley malts: rye and wheat. It's the rye that imparts the hint of spiciness.

Mermaid Pilsner takes its name from Mermaid Avenue, one of Coney Island's main thoroughfares, and from the Mermaid Parade, an annual Coney Island event.

This is a well made and thoroughly enjoyable beer, equal to most and better than many imports and American craft-brewed Pilsners.

I'm no great Picasso fan, but I'm glad his threatened curtain at the Seagram Building got a reprieve.

Here [in 21st century New York], art is never spoken of in moral terms, and most aspects of everyday life--food and drink and bathroom fixtures--are mostly spoken of in aesthetic terms.
--Gerald Marzorati, former Editor, The New York Times Magazine

Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole;
Not in New York.
--Jonathan Richman

I have not been a great fan of Picasso. Maybe it's just my contrarian streak reacting to his conventional status as the preeminent painter of the past century. Maybe it's my overexposure to his "Bust of Sylvette", in an enlarged version executed by the Norwegian sculptor Carl Nesjär, that eyed me balefully (see photo above) on my regular Sunday transits of the Silver Towers courtyard going to and from brunch at the Prince Street Bar in SoHo when I was living in Greenwich Village. Mostly, though, it's that I never did get cubism. I can appreciate painters like Mondrian or Pollock (to name two whose styles seem, to me, as different as conceivable), who went the non-representational* whole hog, or like Bonnard who, while taking some liberties with perspective, scale, and other "naturalistic" qualities, produced images that were recognizable as real world objects. Cubism, which purported to portray objects from several perspectives simultaneously, seemed to me an uninformative and unnecessary, even annoying, exercise. I used to feel defensive about this, thinking that my failure to appreciate what Jed Perl, an art critic whose writing I enjoy and whose views I respect, calls an "epochal shattering of Renaissance space"** might be a symptom of some deficiency in my aesthetic sensibilities.

Then I found an ally in my wife, whose art background is considerably more extensive than mine. We were touring the Portland [Maine] Museum of Art and, as I started to move into another gallery, she--not knowing of my opinion--said, "Don't bother; it's all Picasso." Perhaps then my view, though at odds with that prevailing, could be justified on grounds less shaky than de gustibus non est disputandum. 

So, why should I care that the new owner of the Seagram Building wants to remove a nineteen by twenty foot curtain, Le Tricorne (image above), by Picasso, from where it hangs next to a passageway connecting the dining rooms of the Four Seasons restaurant?  For one thing, it isn't cubist. When I first walked past it (I've dined at the Four Seasons a couple of times, on both of which my employer was paying the tab) I thought it might be renaissance art--I wasn't paying much attention. Someone later told me it was a Picasso, which surprised me. Its history, as told by David Segal's New York Times story, is:

“Le Tricorne,” which translates to “the three-cornered hat,” was painted over three weeks in 1919, in a studio in Covent Garden, in London. It was commissioned by Serge Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets Russes, a traveling company based in Paris. The Russian scene painter Vladimir Polunin, who helped paint the curtain, wrote that Picasso wore slippers so he could stand on the canvas as he worked. His tools, according to the critic Sacheverell Sitwell, who visited the studio, included a toothbrush.

The Times piece also notes that what hangs at the Four Seasons is not the complete work. When Diaghilev needed to raise money, he had the center section cut out and sold, although the remaining two sections appear to have been joined seamlessly. So, we have a Picasso that was made as a stage prop, in collaboration with another artist, in a style other than the one for which Picasso is best known, and which is incomplete. Terry Teachout, in his Wall Street Journal piece, reports that Aby Rosen, head of  RFR Holding, the company that last year acquired full ownership the Seagram Building, was heard to describe Le Tricorne as a "schmatte" (rag).

RFR says Le Tricorne must be removed because of the condition of the wall on which it hangs, which is leaking steam. The architect Belmont Freeman disputes that assessment, saying there is nothing in the wall that could cause such leakage. Freeman was engaged by the owners of the Four Seasons to supervise its restoration. The restaurant was designed by Philip Johnson, so the Seagram Building as a whole, inside and outside, is a collaboration between two of the greatest architects of the past century. As Paul Goldberger notes in his Vanity Fair article, Johnson left the wall unfinished because "[h]e expected that the Picasso would cover it forever." Goldberger goes on to observe:

If the curtain is removed, it would be an act of destruction to Philip Johnson’s conception of the Four Seasons. “Le Tricorne” is, after all, a de facto part of the architecture, and so it would constitute a major alteration to one of the city’s most admired landmarks. It might also seriously damage the curtain itself, according to conservators hired by the Landmarks Conservancy. Even with the care the conservancy has given to the curtain, it is painted on fabric that is 95 years old, and it is brittle. The conservators say that the best way to protect it is to leave it alone.

Despite being "a de facto part of the architecture," Le Tricorne could not be included in the Seagram Building's landmark designation because, for purposes of such designation, it isn't considered part of the architecture. Nevertheless, its removal, and possible replacement with something else, would change the landmarked building in a recognizable way. The Picasso can be seen from outside the restaurant; in Goldberger's words, "it is part of the experience of anyone entering the building."

Is there something wrong with changing that experience? According to Goldberger, Rosen "reportedly will replace [Le Tricorne] with works he owns, perhaps rotating them as he has done successfully on the ground floor of Lever House across the street, which RFR also owns." I don't doubt there are some people, perhaps a significant number, who would prefer to see works by Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons--two artists that both Goldberger and Teachout mention as favorites of Rosen's--to La Tricorne. I'm not one of them, but that's just me.***

Nevertheless, I think there are valid arguments, other than my preference, for keeping Le Tricorne in place. One compelling reason is the possibility of irreparable damage to the curtain if it is removed. In Daniel Slotnick's Times story about the court order not to remove the Picasso pending further proceedings on March 11, a lawyer for RFR is quoted as making the incredibly crass statement, "If we break it, we buy it."

Moreover, I agree with Goldberger's argument that, despite the technicalities of the landmarks law, the curtain really is part of the architecture that should be protected. I'm not one of those who reflexively opposes change, and I believe there have been instances in which landmarks requirements have been applied in ways that are unnecessarily oppressive to property owners; usually, I think, because of the fear--which I consider in most instances to be excessive--of setting a bad precedent. Nevertheless, I'm troubled by what I see as a lionization of change for change's sake, and of "change agents," in contemporary culture. Yes, sometimes change is necessary. Organizations become sclerotic and need to be shaken up. Providing affordable housing without generating sprawl may necessitate construction of more high rise buildings. But unless occasioned by emergency, including by a manifest injustice, change should be considered carefully before it is implemented. It almost always has downsides as well as upsides, and it may have unintended consequences. In this respect, I suppose, I'm something of a Burkean.

If Le Tricorne goes, it will be the second loss by New York City of something by a major figure in twentieth century art within a year's time. I hope it doesn't happen.
__________

*I prefer "non-representational" to the more frequently used "abstract." All visual art, including photography, "photo-realist" painting, and sculpture is, of necessity, abstract.

**Perl, Jed, "The Abstract Imperfect", The New Republic. November 3, 2011 ( a review of De Kooning: a Retrospectve at the Museum of Modern Art).

***For an account of my naive groping toward a standard of aesthetic judgment, see this post.

Coney Island Brewing's "Seas the Day" India Pale Lager

India Pale Lager? I've long been a fan of India pale ales, or IPAs as they're usually called. I like their intense hop bitterness balanced, in the best of them, by a rich barley malt flavor. I didn't know quite what to expect from this lager offering by Coney Island Brewing Company. "India Pale" made me expect big flavor, so I paired it with a Vietnamese bánh mì from Hanco's, doused with some extra hot sauce.

I poured, and was rewarded with a full, foamy head. The color (photo above) was a golden amber. I took a whiff: the aroma was powerfully hoppy, with some floral notes. My first sip made my taste buds confirm the evidence of my nose. The hops have it! A few bites of the sandwich convinced me it was a good pairing. Still, I thought, while this beer goes well with spicy, flavorful food, is it something I'd want to drink by itself?

After a few minutes, though, the beer started to open up. I began to get some of the "[b]ig citrus and passion fruit aromas" promised on the label and on the brewer's website. The flavor also became more rounded, with fruit overtones softening the hoppy edge. I realized that I should have taken the beer out of the fridge and poured it a few minutes before tasting.

I checked the ingredients on the website. Five kinds of hops are used: Galena, Warrior, and Simcoe, all of which are considered "bittering" hops; Cascade, which is moderately bitter and gives a floral aroma; and Citra, a fairly new variety that has quickly become popular (with some dissenters) and that accounts for the notes of passion fruit. There are four malts: two row barley (commonly used in the best beers and ales), malted wheat, oats, and biscuit malt (I had to look that up). The last three would, I believe, tone down the flavor of the two row barley, and, set against the assertiveness of the hops, explains the beer's lack of any noticeable malt flavor or aroma.

On balance, this is a good beer. It would go very well with spicy food like bánh mì, Hunan or Szechuan cuisine, and the more picante of Mexican dishes. At a moderate 4.8 percent alcohol by volume, it shouldn't get you in trouble too quickly. My preference continues to be for IPAs that balance the hops with malt. Still, I would drink this again, maybe with my next takeout vindaloo curry.

So, what about this Coney Island Brewing Company? Is the beer made on Coney Island? No, it's brewed upstate, in Clifton Park, just south of Saratoga Springs. Coney Island Brewing is owned by Alchemy & Science, a "craft beer incubator" that is , in turn, owned by Boston Brewing Company, makers of the Sam Adams line of brews.

Next on my beer tasting agenda is Coney Island Brewing's Mermaid Pilsner. I'll be reporting on it soon.

Note: I've updated the post to reflect the fact that Coney Island Brewing is now owned by Alchemy & Science.

Frank Zappa, "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow."

Appropriate music for the weather we've been having here on the East Coast, and a dire warning to those who do violence to baby seals. Thanks to Eliot Wagner for the link.

Photo and iPod log: January 27, 2014.

I've been doing these for a while: see here for my most recent example. What follows is a log I made of what I was listening to and seeing this past Monday on my last walk of my (fortunately) brief period of unemployment. On previous walks that I've logged, I've taken one photo for each piece of music I heard, but I would strive to find something scenic, or at least something that seemed an interesting composition, while the piece was playing. This time, I decided to stick to a strict rule. Whenever a new song started, I would snap a photo. I might allow a very quick look around, especially if I knew something interesting was off to a side. Usually, though, I just shot whatever was in front of me. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy the photos and the music, to which I've provided links wherever available. As before, with a few exceptions I've let the photos speak for themselves.

Traffic, "John Barleycorn Must Die": a venture by this group into the Fairport Convention/Steeleye Span territory of English folk rock, from the album of the same name. What makes this cut for me is the late Chris Wood's flute. Live performance video here.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk, "Le Bananiere, Opus 5 (Chanson Negre)"; Amiram Rigai, piano: Gottschalk, born in New Orleans in 1829, the son of a Jewish father and a Creole mother, was perhaps the first well known American composer of what we now put under the rubric of "classical" music, although his music, like that of his contemporary Stephen Foster, was considered "pop" in its time. Hear it, as performed by Rollin Wilber, here. (Where there is no suitable video or audio clip by the same artist as on my recording, I'll link to the best performance by another artist I can find.)

The Clash, "Clampdown": from the great album London Calling. Hear it here.

Big Joe Turner, "Honey Hush": Big Joe was one of the artists on the cusp of the transition from jump blues to rhythm 'n' blues and rock 'n' roll. Hear "Honey Hush" here. Raise your hand if you know the origin of "Hi Yo Silver!" If you don't, you're probably younger than me, and there's always Google.

Diana Ross & the Supremes, "Love is Here and Now You're Gone": in 1967 they were simply "The Supremes," Diana, Flo, and Mary. Unlike other Motown acts, they were more popular with white suburban teens than with African American audiences. Still, they made great music. Live performance video here.

The Nightcrawlers, "Little Black Egg": Garage rock from Florida, which I first heard in a friend's dorm room at the University of South Florida. There's a theory that this is about the result of an inter-racial relationship, which would have been controversial in 1966, especially below the Smith & Wesson Line. Whatever it means, it got under my skin, and stays there. Hear it here.

The Kingston Trio, "Tanga Tika and Toreau": the Trio recorded several Polynesian songs, reflecting Bob Shane's having grown up on the Big Island of Hawaii and Dave Guard's having gone to prep school in Honolulu. Hear it here.

A fierce looking dragon guards the entrance to the Eagle Warehouse Building (Frank Freeman, 1894; now apartments). As I reached this spot I heard Renee Rosnes on piano playing "Blues Connotation." I first heard Rosnes at Bradley's, a great--and unfortunately long gone, like its owner, Bradley Cunningham--jazz bistro on University Place between 10th and 11th streets, just a block from where I last lived in the Village before moving to Brooklyn. This version of an Ornette Coleman composition is from Renee's album Art & Soul, on which she's accompanied by Scott Colley on bass and Billy Drummond on drums. Hear a sample here.

Dire Straits, "Walk of Life": "Here comes Johnny...." Live performance video here.

Bob Dylan, "Gospel Plow": this was on an earlier log. As I wrote there: "from his first, eponymous album, a frenetic blues and one of his earlier original compositions." Hear it here.

Danny Kalb, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out": Broooklyn born Danny Kalb was lead guitarist for The Blues Project, one of my favorite bands from the 1960s. Before switching to electric guitar he was active in the Greenwich Village acoustic folk music scene, for a time as a member of Dave Van Ronk's group The Ragtime Jug Stompers--Van Ronk is the inspiration for the title character in the Coen Brothers' movie Inside Llewen Davis, which I saw yesterday afternoon and recommend enthusiastically. He recorded this instrumental version of a classic blues song sometime in the early 1960s, and it was released on a Prestige Records anthology album, The Folk Singers, and much later included in Starbucks' anthology CD Town and Country Blues. Play a sample here.

While listening to "Nobody Knows You While You're Down and Out," I made a stop at an ATM, feeling the irony. As I left the bank, on came Jefferson Starship's "Be Young You." From the 1974 album Dragon Fly, this song (the title of which is a pun on Byong Yu, the name of the lyricist of "Ride the Tiger," the opening track of the album) seems obviously inspired by the first Middle East oil crisis. Hear it here.

Jimmy Cliff, "You Can Get It If You Really Want": from the great The Harder They Come soundtrack. One of my go-to songs when I'm feeling down. Hear it here.

Yes, my walk included a stop in our neighborhood supermarket, and Ben E. King's "Spanish Harlem," a fine piece of R&B by Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector from 1960, started while I was shopping. Hear it here.

Approaching home, I saw the Dutch stepped gables (thank you, Francis Morrone) of the Heights Casino (Boring & Tilton, 1905), as I listened to The Lion, "I Am Going to Buy a Bungalow," a classic Calypso. "That is why I must have a pretty Jane, but she must be Dorothy by name...." Why Dorothy? This is a song about aspiring to middle class trappings, and I guess Dorothy was considered a middle class name in late 1930s Trinidad. Hear it here..

Lou Reed and Sharon Jones, "Sweet Jane"

Once again, Eliot Wagner of Now I've Heard Everything comes through with a great video, this one courtesy of Connie Lynchitz, of Lou Reed and Brooklyn's own Sharon Jones doing the Velvet Underground classic "Sweet Jane" in Sydney. This isn't a live action video; what you get is excellent live in concert audio and still photos of Lou (up for the first half of the song) and Sharon. Lou starts the song, but then Sharon takes over the lead vocal in a stunning performance. Thank you Eliot!

Pete Seeger, 1919-2014

Pete Seeger, who died yesterday at 94, was an inspiration to the generation of folksingers who were popular during my high school and college years. While I was in college, I got his album How Can I Keep From Singing, and was particularly fond of the title song, as well as his musical setting of Idris Davies' poem "The Bells of Rhymney," and the Spanish Civil War song Viva la Quince Brigada. I also love his "Garden Song" (video above).

My erstwhile Lion's Head companion David Amram, who was a close friend of Pete's, has written a beautiful eulogy, part of which I've quoted below:

I first heard Pete 65 years ago when my mother took me to a Henry Wallace rally in 1948 when I was about to turn 18.

All the hundreds of times I have played with him over the years since then have always been a joy as well as an honor,

Ever since he chose his path, he has stayed on it and walked the walk he talked and inspired generations to raise our voices in song, to always think of others, to respect ourselves and all who cross our paths and to share whatever blessings we have with others.

He shared his incredible gifts as an artist with anybody and everybody and set an example to all musicians of what our job is all about...to make a contribution while we are here, to honor young people and to show love and exercise responsibility to our blessed planet earth.

On the subject of "responsibility to our blessed planet earth," Pete championed the restoration and preservation of his beloved Hudson River, and toured along it in the sloop Clearwater, which I photographed when it visited Brooklyn Bridge Park.

I'll close this with the words of another Lion's Head alum, Mary Breasted Smyth: "Tonight we will look up at the stars and imagine Orion is holding a banjo."

J. Press gets the New York real estate squeeze; Gray's Papaya in the Village goes down the hatch.

This post is about two New York City institutions--although the first is principally a New Haven institution and my first contact with it was in Cambridge, Massachusetts--that have recently disappeared, although in the instance of the first one the disappearance may be temporary, and in the instance of the second it is fortunately not complete. That I'm sorry to see them both go reflects two disparate--some might say incoherent--sides of my personality.

My first contact with the clothier J. Press was in the late spring of 1970. I was about to graduate from law school, and needed a suit. Press had a store on Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, and I'd gotten word that they sold good clothes. I showed up the day after a big Harvard Square anti-war riot, and found that all of the store's windows had been broken and covered with plywood. I was about to turn back, but saw a hand lettered sign by the door: "We're open, please come in."

It was a bit gloomy inside, but before long I found a suit I liked, one that spoke to my characteristic desire to achieve two incompatible goals: to be at once conventional and daring. It was a traditional natural shoulder center vented three button with plain fronted trousers in charcoal gray, but with a subtle electric blue windowpane check. As I was trying on the jacket, I said to the salesman, "It looks like you bore the brunt of the attack yesterday." "Oh, yes sir," he said, "I was here through the whole thing. These people, sir, they were the very scum of the earth. You could tell by the way they were dressed."

After I graduated and started work at a New York law firm, my suit caught the disapproving eye of a partner who was the firm's unofficial sartorial enforcer. That electric blue check didn't please him. He suggested I try Brooks Brothers. I did; they had a branch conveniently located downtown near my firm's offices. On my first visit there, another man asked a clerk if they had what were then called "permanent press" shirts. "Oh, no sir," the clerk said witheringly, "We are an all cotton store." I bought some sufficiently conservative togs there, though I later managed to push the envelope a bit by getting a dark brown suit with maroon chalk stripes.

I also found J. Press's New York store, on 44th Street between Madison and Fifth avenues, just around the corner from Brooks's main store at 346 Madison. I shopped at Press on occasion, although I don't have a clear recollection of what I bought. Vaguely, I can summon from memory a mustard yellow blazer--or was it a blue blazer and mustard yellow slacks? They also had good ties. As years went by, I became more of a Brooks loyalist; I don't recall the last time I went into J. Press, but it was certainly over twenty years ago. A few years ago, I was walking along 44th and saw their storefront was vacant. My heart sank a bit. Though I hadn't shopped there in years, I still cherished the memory of my first encounter with Press in Cambridge. Moreover, I liked their commitment to the classic three button jacket style, as in the photo above, and their willingness to do things a little bit daring, like putting the jacket over a tennis (or cricket) sweater, or like the windowpane check on my suit. I was relieved to learn that they had just moved their store to a new location at Madison and 47th Street.

Now I've learned, through the good offices of Francis Morrone, that the store at Madison and 47th has closed because the landlord is renovating the building, although my further research shows that the owners may reopen the store at a different New York location, perhaps in 2015. If they do, I will go there and buy something, even if it's only a tie.

And now, as the Pythons were wont to say, for something completely different:

Gray's Papaya at Sixth Avenue (that's Avenue of the Americas for non-New Yorkers) and Eighth Street was my resort for a quick and satisfying tummy fill and revitalizing fruit drink on many a decadent Greenwich Village night in my dissolute unmarried days (and a few post-marriage ones, about which my wife had something to say). I always got the "Recession Special" (available no matter what the condition of the GNP, the unemployment rate, or the stock market: $1.95 back in the 1990s* for two dogs, which I always got with mustard and kraut, and a sixteen ounce papaya drink) and left feeling much the better for it, which is more than I can say for most fast food outlets. 

Sad as I am about losing this connection to my mid-life crisis, I'm even more distressed to know what's replacing it: "a shiny health food shop that sells pricey liquified kale and wheatgrass." Not that I have anything against "health food"; I occasionally indulge. The key is "pricey": the Village has lost its Bohemian charm and become a bedroom community for the well-to-do as well as a place mostly catering to tourists. In this respect I must re-post here some of what my friend Dave Coles had to say:

Walking east toward Sixth, I find only interlopers: sushi bars and designer hair salons; sterile boutique windows lit by laser-tight pins of light; card shops touting ribbons and balloons, any kind of trifle; coffee chains and sandwich franchises, the commerce and character of Village streets having become nearly indistinguishable from any in Cleveland or Wilmington or Naperville.

I remember reading somewhere that Lou Reed liked to get his "mystery tubesteaks" at Gray's. Perhaps it's fitting that the Village Gray's died shortly after its perhaps most famous regular customer. At least the Gray's at Broadway and 72nd Street survives for now. Someday soon I'll make the trip to the Upper Left Side.
__________

*According to Gothamist, in 2008 Gray's raised the price of the "Recession Special" to $4.45, after previous increases in 2002 and 2006. The article quotes Mr. Gray: "It's always very traumatic for me as well as the customers."

Claudio Abbado, 1933-2014.

Claudio Abbado, one of the greatest orchestra conductors of the past half century, died today at the age of eighty. He was at various times musical director of La Scala, in his native Milan; the Vienna State Opera; the Vienna Philharmonic; the London Symphony; and the Berlin Philharmonic (he was on the verge of being asked to become the music director of the New York Philharmonic when he was offered the position in Berlin, succeeding Herbert von Karajan). He also served for a time as principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony.


In the video above he conducts the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in a performance of the adagietto movement from Mahler's Fifth Symphony. As was his custom, he conducted from memory. He took pride in his knowledge of the music he was to direct.

The Impressions, "We're a Winner."

A week ago I attended a "Free the Slaves" concert at Plymouth Church. The headline act was The Impressions, and they opened their set with "We're a Winner." The clip linked above was made using video from TV and audio synced from the recording as released. At the time "We're a Winner" was made, 1967, the Impressions consisted of Sam Gooden (at left in the video), Curtis Mayfield (center), and Fred Cash. Mayfield left to pursue a solo career in 1970, but for some time continued to write songs for the group and produce their recordings, He died in 1999.

At last week's concert, Gooden, a founding member from 1958 and Cash, a member since 1960, were on stage and singing. Mayfield's place as lead singer was taken by Reggie Torrian. Many would argue that the Impressions without Mayfield, a monumental figure in the history of rhythm 'n' blues and soul music, can be nothing but an inadquate imitation of what they were in the 1960s. I think that Torrian is a superb lead singer, and has a great talent for emcee-ing the group's show between songs. Is he as good as, or better than, Mayfield? No, but with him the Impressions are still very much an act worth hearing and seeing.

John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925.

John Singer Sargent is remembered as a portrait painter, mostly of elegant women elegantly posed and dressed, like The Wyndham Sisters. His best known painting is of the enigmatic, not so conventionally dressed Madame X, which incited scandal at the Paris Salon in 1884, causing him to give up on seeking acceptance by the French artistic establishment and to concentrate his efforts in England and in his parents' homeland. Sargent's parents were American expatriates; he was born in Florence and spent his childhood, youth, and young adulthood in various parts of Europe and in London.

My favorite of Sargent's major works is not a posed portrait but El Jaleo (image above; for an enlargement see here), painted after the artist had visited Spain and seen a Gypsy dance performance. The dancer's white skirt could adorn a fashionable woman such as one of the Wyndham sisters, but her black feather boa, leaning backward posture and extended, slightly raised left arm, with her right arm thrust downward, hand extended outward holding a white handkerchief, is not a configuration in which an elegant nineteenth century woman would likely be found. Her left hand is in what Texans would know as the "Hook 'em Horns" position, and her index finger points toward a woman at the right edge of the painting, wearing a red-orange dress. She has both arms raised high and is smiling. Next to her is another woman, head tilted back, with her right arm flung in front of her neck. On the painting's left, behind the dancer, is a row of musicians. Most of these have heads bowed, intent on their instruments, but the one nearest the dancer, evidently a singer, has his head thrust back and his mouth agape. El Jaleo is part of the small but exquisite collection of my wife's favorite small art museum, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in Boston.

Last summer I saw an exhibit of Sargent's watercolors at the Brooklyn Museum. In my "New Year's remembrances, thank-yous, and resolutions" I noted that i'd meant to post about it (as well as about the Hopper Drawing exhibit at the Whitney), and regretted that I'd procrastinated. Although the exhibit is no more, the Museum still has an excellent web page about it, so I'm using that page and its links to make up for my tardiness.

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). Santa Maria della Salute, 1904. Translucent and opaque watercolor and graphite with graphite underdrawing, 18 3/16 x 23 in. (46.2 x 58.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased by Special Subscription, 09.838

Sargent was a prolific watercolorist. A few of his works in that medium proved to be studies for later oil paintings, but most were a kind of travelogue, much like snapshots taken by a tourist today. That's not to say they were quickly dashed off: note the careful detailing of the church building in the Venetian scene above. According to the Museum's notes (click on the image of the painting at the right on the web page to see the notes), Sargent began with a careful graphite underdrawing of the church's structural features. The gondolas and canal in the foreground are done in a much more fluid style.

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). In a Medici Villa, 1906. Translucent watercolor and touches of opaque watercolor with graphite underdrawing, 21 3/16 x 14 3/8 in. (53.8 x 36.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased by Special Subscription, 09.826

This painting of a fountain in the garden of a villa near Florence is not as precisely detailed as that of the church in the previous painting. According to the notes, Sargent

summarily cropped away the two battling bronze figures at its top and nearly erased the smaller bronze boys perched on the edge of the lower basin. He directed his eye to transcribe only the bleached outlines and tinted shadows of the wide basins and decorative stone carvings in the raking glare.

While Sargent didn't take the liberties with perspective and scale that, for example, Pierre Bonnard did, this painting shows a willingness to depart from a strict realism.

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). Gourds, 1908. Opaque and translucent watercolor with graphite underdrawing, 14 x 22 in. (35.6 x 55.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased by Special Subscription, 09.822

Sargent brought the same skill to the painting of natural objects that he did to depicting human-made structures. These gourds seem almost pickable. Note also the sharp delineation of the leaves, stalk, and tendrils in the foreground, yielding to a slightly out-of-focus blurriness beyond. The notes call Gourds a display of "Sargent's extraordinary virtuosity."

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). A Tramp, circa 1904–6. Translucent watercolor and touches of opaque watercolor, 20 x 14 in. (50.8 x 35.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased by Special Subscription, 09.810

I'm amazed by Sargent's rendering of this man's face. The notes say "Sargent did not rely on any underdrawing or preliminary sketch prior to painting." Something I learned from seeing the exhibit: I'd always thought of the art of painting as just applying paint. Now I know it's sometimes a matter of removing paint. Again from the notes:

The work is a good example of [Sargent's] frequent use of wet subtraction to lift and remove color, seen in the strong diagonal wiping marks at the lower left and, more subtly, in the man’s sleeve, his left ear, the hairline of his forehead, and the tip of his nose.

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). White Ships, circa 1908. Translucent and opaque watercolor and wax resist with graphite underdrawing, 14 x 19 3/8 in. (35.6 x 49.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased by Special Subscription, 09.846

If, before I saw it in the exhibit, you had shown me this painting without attribution and asked me who painted it, I would have said, "Winslow Homer." As I'm a ship buff, it caught my eye in the gallery. In this painting, according to the notes, instead of removing paint "Sargent used a small amount of clear wax on the right side of the larger boat in order to repel the blue washes and create highlights."

On the Museum's web page for the exhibit, there's a link to an informative thirty second video by senior conservator Toni Owen, followed by readers' questions and M. Owen's answers. Well worth a look.

Kathleen Edwards and the Good Lovelies cover America: the messengers transform the message.

Even back in the early 1970s, when I eagerly collected John Denver albums, I found the group America insufferably boring. Their first hit, "A Horse With No Name," seemed a lame attempt to mimic the understated passion of Neil Young, and their second, "Sister Goldenhair," mere syrupy glop. So, what happens to that gloppy song when it's performed by Kathleen Edwards, with backing vocals by Toronto's Good Lovelies? Watch the video above and decide for yourself, but my caption expresses my opinion. Is it still glop? Yeah, but it's really good glop.*

Thanks once again to Eliot Wagner, and to tanjatiziana for the video.
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*Discerning readers may recognize this as a paraphrase of the last sentence in the "Hawaiian Sellout" segment of Firesign Theater's Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.

Hepzibah, the Airborne Ranger.

She prepares for a leap from her favorite perch.

Geronimo!

Elvis Presley, "Hard Headed Woman"

WHY, WHEN THE CREEDENCE CLEARWTER PUT OUT WITH THEIR "TRAVELIN' BAND" EVERYBODY SAY WHEEE-OO  BUT I KNOW IT CAUSE THEY ONLY DOING "LONG TALL SALLY" JUST LIKE THE BEATLES ANDTHESTONESANDTOMJONESANDELVIS....

--Little Richard, on the Dick Cavett show, sometime in the early 1970s, quoted in Greil Marcus, Mystery Train (5th Ed., Plume, 2008).

Today is the King's birthday. In the video above, taken from the movie King Creole (1958), he does his version of "Long Tall Sally."

Bob Dylan, "Pretty Saro"

Bob Dylan's 1970 album Self Portrait seemed, almost as much as Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, to be a raised middle finger to his audience and his critics. Now, as part of his "Bootleg Series," Dylan has released Another Self Portrait, made of tracks recorded for the original album, without the later addition of horns, strings, or background vocals, but adding some songs that were not included in the 1970 album. One of these is the folk ballad "Pretty Saro" (video above). My friend Michael Simmons, in his review of the new album (Michael also wrote one of the two sets of liner notes for Another Self Portrait; the other was written by Greil Marcus) has this to say:

Pretty Saro is a knock-out: a swooping tenor that leaps tall octaves in a single bound. Why it was left off Self Portrait is puzzling, maddening, but The Bard works in mysterious ways.

"[A] swooping tenor that leaps tall octaves in a single bound"? Yes, this is Dylan.

Hillel Livingston Seagull

That which is hateful to you, do not do to another....The rest is commentary. Go study.

Moon over Brooklyn II

'I saw the new moon late yestreen
Wi' the auld moon in her arm;
And if we gang to sea, master,
I fear we'll come to harm.'

--"Sir Patrick Spens" (Scottish ballad, Anon.). From Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900, via Bartleby.com.

The photo was taken from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. The omen proved true, as the weather turned bad later.

New Year's remembrances, thank-yous, and resolutions.

When I started my morning walk on New Year's Day the first song my iPod served up was the Byrds' "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better (when you're gone)." 2013 was for me, as any year must be for most people, a mixed bag. A project I'd been working on since July of 2012 ended in mid-November, putting me into what I'm confident will be a relatively short period of unemployment. Recently, I've been saddened by the death of friend, neighbor and fellow Grace Church parishioner Bronson Binger. There's a transcript of an interview with Bronson here. I spotted one error: "Church of Avenue Rest" should be "Church of Heavenly Rest." Mis-hearings are a hazard of oral history, as they are in court stenography. I once had to correct the transcript of a deposition of my then boss that had his first job in the reinsurance business as "excessive loss underwriter," which, if true, should have gotten him fired, instead of "excess of loss underwriter."

Others whose passing I've noted here are (in chronological order): Stan Musial and Earl Weaver, who died on the same day and are commemorated in the same post; George Jones; J.J. Cale; Seamus Heaney; Lou Reed; Arthur Danto; Nelson Mandela; and Yusef Lateef. Some I didn't post, but should have, include Joan Fontaine, Annette Funicello, Al Goldstein, Frank Lautenberg, Elmore Leonard, and Doris Lessing. Dave Coles and I both mourned the death of Greenwich Village as a Bohemian community. An interior designed by Frank Lloyd Wright was demolished. And there was the Boston Marathon bombing. Addendum: I just received the latest Harvard Law Bulletin, from which I get the sad news of the death in 2013 of one of my favorite professors, Detlev Vagts.

There were also reasons for celebration. Grand Central Terminal had its 100th anniversary, later commemorated by a parade of trains. My wife and I had our 22nd. Thanks to friends, we enjoyed a long weekend on Cape Cod that included tastings at Truro Vineyards and the Cape Cod Brewery. After a bout with cancer, Sharon Jones is back performing. The Mets finished third, not fourth in the NL East and the Red Sox (my second favorite AL team, after the Rays, and my wife's favorite, period) won the World Series. In Zagat's fifty state sandwich survey both beef on weck and the Connecticut lobster roll got their deserved recognition. Bill de Blasio was elected Mayor.

Google analytics tell me that "Grace Slick at Seventy" remains my most popular post of all time, so I must again thank Michael Simmons for supplying the photograph, and for being a continuing source of interesting bits of news and observations, many of which have inspired me to post. In second place, but in first place over the past year or so and therefore gaining fast, is "Lady Day: Henry Ossawa Tanner's Annunciation," for which another repeated thank-you goes to The Rev. Stephen Muncie, Rector of Grace Church, who first showed an image of the painting to me.

Enjoying third place on my all-time post hit parade is "Pierre Bonnard, 'Late Interiors,' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." As I note near the beginning of the linked post, I was inspired to see the Bonnard exhibit by the interest shown in that artist by my friend and neighbor, the painter Mark Crawford. A year ago I promised to do another post about Mark's more recent artwork, and I'm sorry to say that I haven't done it yet, but I resolve to do it in 2014. Meanwhile, you can see his work on his website.

Eliot Wagner and his blog Now I've Heard Everything have been a continuing source of inspiration. He provided the video for one of my most popular posts this year, Puss n Boots doing Neil Young's "Down by the River". Thanks also to Marshall Chapman for returning to New York after seven years and giving a great performance, which Eliot also attended, and which I memorialized, with two videos, in this post.

A post from 2012 that has enjoyed steady popularity is "Divine Dvořák; scintillating Shostakovich," for which I must thank the New York Philharmonic, and especially James M. Keller, whose notes I quoted to good effect.

Thanks to my Lion's Head friend Tania Grossinger for the opportunity to review her autobiography, Memoir of an Independent Woman. Thanks also to Dermot McEvoy for keeping me, and many others, up to date concerning alimni/ae of "Lion's Head University." Dermot has a new historical novel in the works, The 13th Apostle, which I will be reviewing here. It has a Facebook page which, if you're on Facebook, I encourage you to visit and, if you choose, to "like." Another good read this year was friend Adam Haslett's Union Atlantic. Adam, who has written for the Financial Times as well as other periodicals, wrote a gripping tale of financial and sexual intrigue. Addendum: His comment on Facebook reminds me that I should also thank Francis Morrone, both for the help he gave me in identifying the provenance of vault paintings in the Graybar Passage at Grand Central, and for the usefulness of his An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn as a reference.

As always, thanks to "Homer Fink," publisher of the Brooklyn Heights Blog and The Brooklyn Bugle for allowing me another outlet for my writing mania, and kudos to my BHB colleagues Karl Junkersfeld for his videos and Heather Quinlan for her award-winning documentary about New York speech, If These Knishes Could Talk.

Thank-yous to immediate family are customary, but I have a considerable debt to my wife, not just for her patience, but for providing me with ideas, especially from her regular perusals of the Archivist of the U.S.'s blog, and for sharing my work with others. Thanks also to my daughter for her support, and for turning me on to Hyperbole and a Half, John Mulaney, and The Violent Femmes.

Resolutions? This summer I saw two great art shows, Sargent Watercolors at the Brooklyn Museum and Hopper Drawing at the Whitney, both long gone, and about both of which I meant to post, but kept putting it off. I resolve not to let such opportunities pass again.

The plaque in the photo at the top of this post is on a row house across the street from where I live. You can hear the first stanza of New Year Letter here.

Phil Everly, 1939-2014

Phil Everly, the younger of the Everly Brothers (at left in photo) died Friday, less than a month shy of his 75th birthday.

My introduction to the Everlys was in 1957, when I was in sixth grade at Eglin Air Force Base Elementary School, in the piney woods of the Florida Panhandle. Each Wednesday afternoon we'd leave our classroom and go to the "cafetorium," where the folding tables and benches had been moved against the wall, leaving a row of seats on each side of the room and a dance floor between. One of the younger school staffers served as DJ, playing 45 RPM  records on a portable player. This was our weekly "social dancing," meant to prepare us for the teenage world we were about to enter. It was in fact an introduction to the loss of innocence, mine included.

I had a crush on a girl named Jamie. Unfortunately for me, she was "going steady"--a status evidenced by a ring hanging from a chain she wore around her neck--with Ronnie, the biggest boy in our class. During social dancing Ronnie and Jamie would gather with several other steady couples--I thought of them as the "Cosmopolitan Set"--on what ipso facto became the power side of the cafetorium. I would be with hoi polloi on the other side. Whenever the DJ would start a slow number, often the Everlys' "Maybe Tomorrow", which was the "B" side of their second big hit, "Wake Up Little Susie" but got a fair amount of play because the DJ liked to mix fast and slow songs, a sweet girl named Karen would manage to be standing in front of me. I would take hold of her and fox trot her over to where the Cosmopolitans were dancing. We had been taught the convention that a boy, and only a boy, could compel an exchange of partners by tapping another boy on the shoulder. Jamie and Ronnie were always protected by a phalanx of lesser Cosmos, so getting to Jamie involved several partner exchanges until I got to reach up and tap Ronnie, who would release Jamie with obvious distaste. I would get to hold her close and shuffle my feet for a few blissful seconds until Ronnie's knuckles rapped my shoulder and the partner swaps would unwind until I got back to Karen. That Karen put up with this over a number of dancing sessions, and that I was willing to make her put up with it, retrospectively amazes and appalls me. Karen, wherever you are, I hope you've had a very good life.



In 1958 my dad retired from the Air Force and we moved to Tampa. On our first visit to Britton Plaza--a 1956 vintage shopping center that I still visit whenever I'm in Tampa because it's home to the Tapper Pub--we went into Neisner's, what was then called a "five and dime," and I heard "Bird Dog" (video above) for the first time over the store's P.A. system. After that, the Everlys continued to be part of the soundtrack of my pre-teen, teenage, and early adult life. Their close harmony lent itself to romantic ballads like "All I Have To Do Is Dream", an anthem for hopeless lovers (something I've been more often than I should have; Jamie was just the first of many), but they also could do edgy songs like "Bird Dog" and like "Poor Jenny" (video below), which became a favorite of mine for its catchy, frenetic tune and its hysterically implausible lyrics:



I've always thought of the Everlys as Kentuckians, but as the Times obit says, while the family's roots and older brother Don's birthplace are there in Muhlenberg County, eulogized in John Prine's "Paradise", they moved to Chicago before Phil was born. After that they moved to Shenandoah, Iowa, where the brothers grew up and began their singing careers on their father's local radio show.

Goodbye, Phil. You were one of the last of the surviving pioneers who built rock and roll from country and blues roots. I'll miss you.

Update: Thanks to FB/BHB friend Arthur Boehm, here's an audio clip, with still of the record label, of Phil singing "The Air That I Breathe" solo, arranged by Warren Zevon, before the Hollies made it a hit:

Noah Griffin, "It's New Year's Eve"

My friend and law school classmate Noah Griffin sings a song he wrote for his wife. Happy New Year to all.

Yusef Lateef, 1920-2013.

My introduction to the music of Yusef Lateef, who died Monday at 93, came in 1967, when I was a first year law student. My dorm neighbor, Bob Bell, was a jazz aficionado. I knew next to nothing about jazz. I'm not sure how it came about: I may have been talking with Bob about music, or I may have heard something wafting from his dorm room--Jazz on flute? That's odd--but I ended up borrowing his copy of Lateef's album Psychicemotus, which sounded like nothing I had ever heard before.

Lateef's music was eclectic and syncretic. His roots were in big band swing and be-bop, but he later incorporated musical styles from other parts of the world, including Africa and Asia, as well as European art music, into his works. He also used instruments not often or ever before found in jazz; not only flute but oboe, as in the video clip above, and styles not common to jazz, such as the bowed, instead of plucked. bass viol in the same clip. He didn't like to call his music "jazz"; instead he called it "autophysiopsychic music." In the video, he's accompanied by Kenneth Barron on piano, Bob Cunningham on bass, and probably-- he's not identified on the video, but was on all of Lateef's recordings around the time (1972) the video was made--Albert "Tootie" Heath on drums.

Lateef was a teacher as well as performer. He held a doctorate in music education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and taught there, and at Amherst College, until near the end of his life.

I must add a footnote about Bob Bell: at the time I knew him, he had the distinction of having his name in the Constitutional Law casebook. He was the named appellant in the U.S. Supreme Court decision Bell v. Maryland, which vacated and remanded his and several others' convictions for criminal trespass arising from their participation in a sit-in demonstration at a Baltimore restaurant. In a delicious bit of irony, Bob later became Chief Judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals, the same court that had affirmed his conviction before it was appealed to the Supreme Court.

Veni Veni Emmanuel

Veni Veni Emmanuel ("O Come, O Come Emmanuel") sounds ancient, but had its origin as an Advent hymn in the eighteenth century. It "is a synthesis of the great 'O Antiphons'" which are of ancient provenance. The linked clip is of a performance by L'Accorche-Choeur, Ensemble vocal Fribourg, under the direction of Zoltan Kodály. The English translation is from the mid nineteenth century, by John Mason Neale and Henry Sloane Coffin.

Gram, Emmylou, and Linda; Emmylou, Dolly, and Linda

When I go for walks, I usually take my iPod set in the "shuffle" mode. Because of my eclectic interests in music, this sometimes leads to odd concatenations, as on a recent walk during which the Sinfonia from Verdi's Nabucco was followed immediately by the Holy Modal Rounders' version of "Flop-Eared Mule". Sometimes these conjunctions are serendipitously pleasant, as on one walk several years ago when the first, allegro movement from J.S. Bach's Second Brandenberg Concerto was followed by a lively Cajun song.

A few days ago I started out with the iPod playing Gram Parsons' haunting, autobiographical "In My Hour of Darkness," with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt on harmony vocals, from Gram's posthumously released album Grievous Angel (audio clip with still of album cover above); next came "My Dear Companion" from the Trio album by Dolly Parton, Emmylou, and Linda Ronstadt (audio clip below). It's easy for me to speculate that "My Dear Companion," on which Emmylou takes the lead vocal, was chosen by her as a tribute to Gram, her late musical companion and friend. I never met Gram Parsons, but I knew of him before he became famous. While I was at the University of South Florida in the mid to late 1960s I became friends with several fellow students who had known him in his home town, Winter Haven. They told me about this brilliant, talented guy who was a folk singer, and who performed with his group, the Shilohs, at the Derry Down, a night club for teenagers that was owned by his stepfather. I heard that he was at Harvard, and, later, that he had dropped out and started a group called the International Submarine Band, in which he was later joined by fellow Havenite Jon Corneal. I was thrilled when, in my second year of  law school, I read that he had joined my favorite rock group, the Byrds. I bought their newest album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which includes what has become Gram's signature song, "Hickory Wind". I followed his career as he left the Byrds and, along with another former Byrd, Chris Hillman, formed the Flying Burrito Brothers, then had a solo album, GP, which introduced to a wide audience the voice of Emmylou Harris. His death from a drug overdose in 1973 saddened me enormously.