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Cross Purpose
04.09.08
The sign on my bucket says: “All Proceeds Go to the Society for the Removal of the Meridians, in Support of the Abolishment and Eradication of the Unsightly Grid of Longitudinal Lines Encircling Our Planet.”
“Why not the parallels, too?” some wise guys will ask me. I’m ready for them. “They’re next,” I explain. “The latitude lines, because they are unconnected, have to be yanked off one at a time, but those meridians are all joined at the poles. All’s you have to do is slide a hook under one of the intersections and slip those suckers off, all of them at once, like the skin off a boiled onion.”
This is just a sideshow, however. The main action is my theremin. Whenever the sun shines and the mood strikes me, I set up my Moog Etherwave Pro in Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square, running it and my classic Fender 85 amp off a car battery that’s good for a couple of hours. In that time I can make $10 or $15 going ooeeoo and playing Rachmaninov, Debussy, Saint-Saëns and Roddenberry. I’ve got backup tracks queued up on a stomp box, my “thereoke.”
If a child comes by, I let him wave his arms at it—ooeeoo—and the momma’s sure to toss a dollar or two in the bucket. Your older guy will give me money just for the pride of knowing what the thing is. “The Beach Boys, ‘Good Vibrations,’ a theremin!” he’ll gush, and out comes the wallet. (I seldom bother to explain that the Beach Boys used a tannerin. Is the truth worth losing a buck or two? I doubt it.)
They come and they go. Birds sing. Clouds drift. The sun shines. Trucks doppler by. I wave my hands and pull music from the air. As long as there’s a little juice in my Sears DieHard, it’s not an unpleasant way to pass an afternoon.
The other day, toward the bottom of my charge and halfway through “Vocalise,” a big fellow staggered into my playing field from a Chevy’s across the street. He was a sturdy fellow with a thick neck and black hair neatly gooed. He wore the kind of zippered cloth coat you see on men driving tractors along country roads. He was shit-faced and half-dancing. I muted my air harp and watched him closely; the theremin is delicate, costly and rare.
“This was meant to be,” he said. “You’re exactly the man I’m supposed to meet. You know what I’m talking about, I can tell that you do.”
Sometimes drinks will ream a fellow of everything extraneous and render him clairvoyant. I un-muted my theremin and let the big guy gesture at it. “I’m going to tell you something I want you to do,” he said. “You’ll do it or you won’t, as God wills.” He looked both troubled and ardent.
He scanned the square in one slow sweep, but lingered on the Chevy’s. “Had to get out of there,” he says. “Had to get some air. Daughter’s birthday, 21 today. All those relatives, I know what they’re thinking when they look at me. ‘The drunk has to walk it off.’ But that ain’t it. I knew I had to come over here. You were waiting for me, but you didn’t know it. I come all the way from Wisconsin, from Baraboo, to be here. Not for the birthday—don’t think that. Jesus, Lord, I’m not used to big cities like this.”
A gang of boys skateboarding at the far end of the lot suddenly erupted in our direction. “They feel the energy,” the big guy said. “My name is Blake. What’s yours?”
“Eliot.”
“Well, Eliot, can you play a Hank Williams tune?”
“I’ll give it a try, Blake,” I said. It wasn’t the tiniest fraction of what I meant, but it was all I could make myself say.
“Well, I’m just about ready. Are you just about ready, Eliot?”
“I’m ready, Blake.”
Blake threw open his arms and danced and bellowed: “Yas, ma and daddy, don’tcha know, so glad, your son’s a-coming home?” I followed the best way I could with long low notes in the cello range, my hand to my breast bone, because, on the theremin, that’s where the deep notes are, the nearer the deeper. “This crazy world is rocking with happiness . . . sweethearts, can’t you hear me praying for that great day-ay-ay?”
Blake was on fire. He was a street preacher and a brawler and a great wounded beast. He sang like a mudslide and danced like a hemorrhage.
When he was done, he leaned against me, panting. “We did it, Eliot,” he said. Then: “You know who I am?” I thought he’d told me, but the fellow had more juice than a fresh DieHard, so I listened and waited. “I’m Blake Bitner, William Blake Bitner.”
“Like the poet.”
“Yeah, like the poet, but that’s not what my momma and poppa had in mind. They didn’t know a damned thing about any of that.” He managed it quickly, but his red face twitched, and I knew his folks had bruised him inside. “I come all the way across the country for my son. I bet you read about him in the papers—the Bitner kid?”
I shrugged. I read the clouds. I read the crowds. I never read the news.
“Look him up,” Blake says. “They say he killed a man, but he didn’t have nothing to do with it—some kids at a party. Fellow was stabbed more times than Julius Caesar. Naturally, they blame the guy with a record. On top of everything else, it’s the daughter’s 21st birthday. The make-it-or-break it age, when you bust out or you bust.”
“Which did you do, Blake?”
He gave me that clairvoyant look. “Whichever.” He read me, the real me, loud and clear. “It was ordained, just like you meeting me.” He ambled back to his daughter’s party.
I struck my gear and hunted up a local paper. It had been front-page news: a student from San Francisco State University, a boy of 21, the make-it-or-break it age, had been stabbed to death a week earlier outside a party, nobody knew why, and four boys were being held for his murder, one of them named Bitner. His picture took up a couple of inches: a porcine, bewildered country boy in a big-city police station. Kid had a record and was currently on probation for felony burglary.
Don’t you just hate that net of meridians? We are circumscribed but won’t call it real. It’s like the electrostatic field around my theremin: I play it, all right, but there’s nothing to touch. Waving my hands through thin air, I make children laugh and grownups drop their jaws. I am magical, invulnerable, immortal—until a beast wheels and shambles across Railroad Square to read my heart and make me harmonize. He brandishes a scythe and points a bony finger. I’m just a clown and busker. What’s death to do with me?
Wine Tasting Room of the Week
Reviewing a venerable Rutherford institution is almost shy-making. When he arrived in 1958, Mike Grgich had little but the beret on his head; now he is recognized as a Napa Valley institution in his own right. Grgich worked under key Napa figure André Tchelistcheff, helped to midwife the California Fumé Blanc style with Robert Mondavi, and his Chardonnays famously beat the competition at the 1976 Judgment of Paris and the lesser-known 1980 Showdown in Chicago.
In this century, Grgich Hills has become an all-estate winery that is solar-powered and practices organic and biodynamic farming. Where are the hills? Original money-man Austin Hills, of Hills Bros. Coffee fame, helped to get the winery off to a brisk start. Grgich Hills is right on the Highway 29 strip, but the tasting room is no-frills by neighborhood standards, and it’s well enough staffed so that visitors get a reasonable amount of individual attention even on a semi-busy day.
It’s shy-making to admit that Grgich’s famous Chardonnay is not my cup of tea or my cup of even Chard—but that’s me, you know, speaking personally. The 2005 Napa Valley Chardonnay ($40) features a striking apricot-pineapple nose, but has a distinctly sweet attack on the tongue, and a crackling acidity that seems to burn in the butter, despite having skipped malolactic. The right food would likely make all the difference with this flavorful, but sharp Napa Chard.
The 2004 Napa Valley Merlot ($40) is a juicy, silky snack, bright raspberry-vanilla drizzled on a thin wafer of precision tannins. While the tightly focused 2004 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($60) seems hardly a day older than the 2000, each sip is like a firm red currant, packed with dense, tart fruit.
Mike Grgich has a special connection with Zinfandel, having helped with the effort to locate its roots in his native Croatia. (No doubt, being able to pronounce Crljenak kastelanski proved invaluable.) The 2005 Napa Valley Zinfandel ($33) is grown from cuttings from an original 1899 vineyard. It’s big but confused, a Zin on the outlands of varietal expression. Is that black cherry or plum? Does it want to be a Cab Franc?
I soon discover it’s just a chip off the old block when I taste the wizened 2005 Miljenko’s Old Vines Zinfandel ($79), which is nose-deep in dark raisins and dried figs that dominate undertones of ginger cake and cow horns in dark, fresh earth. Although nearly opaque, it’s got classic claret balance, with a contemplation-inducing finish. Call it whatever you can pronounce, this unique Zin might be a Top 10 contender—or so says the 2008 Judgment of This Reporter.
Grgich Hills Estate, 1829 St. Helena Hwy., Rutherford. Open daily 9:30am–4:30pm; $10 tasting includes logo glass! 707.963.2784.
Clue Note
Planning/Eating
04.09.08
Nothing gives a person nutritional pause like being pregnant. I’m seven months along, and suddenly each ingested calorie is scrutinized and found wanting. Crunch (I’m hurting the baby). Swig (the baby’s going to have major issues from this caffeine). Chomp (maybe I should just lock myself up in a room and chew carrot sticks).
Eating properly can be daunting, especially when you have the mind-blowing responsibility of growing another human being. Of course, if you’re sans neonate, it is much easier to slip into the one-more-potato-chip-won’t-hurt routine, despite the exhortations of the latest Zone Diet book whizzing around your overcaloried brain.
We know we’re supposed to eat fruits and vegetables, and that fried foods are like a death sentence. Why is all this lovely knowledge not helping? A reasonable question, with diabetes an alarming national epidemic and fast-food sales the only thing saving the economy’s ass. It seems that sometimes we need a little nutritious nudge in the right direction, right around the time when Cheetos wend their way into the grocery cart in place of celery sticks.
Enter Paul Becker, Santa Rosa Community Market’s onsite certified nutritionist. The workers of the co-op market recognize the obstacles that impede a nutritious diet, and have put their hip vegetarian minds together to come up with a solution: half-hour sessions with Becker, where anyone who signs up can bare her soul, and maybe talk about nutrition, too. Cost to the customer? Zero.
I sat down with Becker to voice my own dietary dilemmas. Pregnant, full-time student, married to a junk-food-a-holic, a diet soda craver who happens to live for coffee—my rap sheet is a long one. After listening carefully to my story, he began without an ounce of judgment and with plenty of advice. “Eat a variety of foods,” Becker says reasonably enough.OK, but is it really possible to pull all of this off on such a busy schedule? “Being too busy is the concern of most people,” Becker says. His answer is to be practical, which means organization, planning and discipline. Prepare several meals on the weekend and freeze some to eat during the week. Each morning, prepare lunch for that day. Use a web-based program like AccuChef ($20) to organize recipes. Make a weekly meal plan and stick to it.
One person’s starting point could be another person’s far-off goal, Becker says, so it’s best to zero in on your individual needs and go from there.
An appointment with Becker is as easy as signing up on a clipboard at the market. Time slots are Monday-Wednesday and Friday from 4pm to 5pm; Thursday, noon to 1pm. With a little analysis and a lot of encouragement, anyone can be on the road to dietary success.
Santa Rosa Community Market, 1899 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. 707.546.1806
Quick dining snapshots by Bohemian staffers.
Winery news and reviews.
Food-related comings and goings, openings and closings, and other essays for those who love the kitchen and what it produces.
Recipes for food that you can actually make.
Moms of Invention
Quick Scan
Ageless Fountain
These Days: Jackson Browne’s current live music restores the idealistic yearning that anchors the big picture of his career.
By Karl Byrn
After 40-plus years in the music business, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jackson Browne understands the uncertainty that makes his work tick. “What’s your pleasure?” he knowingly asks the audience on his newly released disc Solo Acoustic, Vol. 2. “I could sing you a really tender song filled with despair . . . or a really weary song laced with hope.” The audience laughs gently, cheering for the forlorn beauty of “Fountain of Sorrow.” He laughs back, joking that the song has “a gigantic dollop of good will.”
Browne’s new disc extends the warm, live-recording intimacy of his 2005 release Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1, and also offers a preview of what local fans can expect when he brings his solo acoustic tour to Santa Rosa on April 16. Together, Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 connect the dots in his storied body of work, mixing hallmarks from his classic ’70s singer-songwriter era with a healthy dose of his solid but largely ignored later work, with only a touch of his uneven ’80s hits and politics. The two live volumes don’t make a complete best-of, but instead reveal the circular, single shape of the heart that Browne wears on his sleeve.
A reliable axis of tender despair and weary hope cemented Browne’s stature as the great California post-hippie rock-poet, but left him open to future disinterest. Even in his heyday, critics read his fresh and weighty poetics differently. “Jackson Browne is the most accomplished lyricist of the ’70s,” wrote American roots populist Dave Marsh, while arty, urban academic Robert Christgau complained that “there are a hundred country cheatin’ songs with more truth in them than any but five or so of Browne’s.”
As a ’70s teenager, I was drawn to his semi-truths—not casting him as a literate sage or a hackneyed wimp, but thrilled by the very incompleteness and simplicity of his struggles. His questing good-guy honesty and perpetual irresolution seemed like the whole point, the very thing that made his music essential rock ‘n’ roll.
After his early ’80s stadium success, more overt political content that explored global rhythms mitigated Browne’s soul-searching balladry. Ironically, as his records stuttered, he gained real-world credibility, with an arc of progressive activism that extends from spearheading the 1979 No Nukes concert to his current support of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, a grassroots group that promotes empowerment of the poor.
Outspoken activism notwithstanding, Browne has never really emerged as an alternative hero like contemporaries Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, two comparable ’70s songwriters who have sustained a rare undiminished reverence among indie-rockers and hip music media. Browne’s impact has thrived more indirectly, from the ongoing relevance of alt-country to new chart balladeers like Jack Johnson to the confessional basis of emo-rock’s romantic unrest.
Browne’s current live music restores the idealistic yearning that anchors the big picture of his career. Solo Acoustic, Vol. 2 highlights some post-classic gems, like the punchy “Enough of the Night,” from his forgotten 1989 disc World in Motion, and the loving “Sky Blue and Black” from his 1993 return-to-form I’m Alive. Four songs come from his latest studio album, 2002’s relaxed, substantial The Naked Ride Home, including the brooding social critique “Casino Nation.” Browne is planning to release a new studio album later this year. Meanwhile, if I were to answer his question about pleasures from his catalogue, I’d pick a whole new Solo Acoustic, Vol. 3, dug from all over his ageless fountain of sorrow and hope.
Jackson Browne performs on Wednesday, April 16, at the Wells Fargo Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. 8pm. Sold-out. 707.546.3600.
Concert notes and news.
What Is Hip?
From the Top: Christopher O’Riley remains alive to surprise.
By Gabe Meline
Christopher O’Riley laughs out loud when he learns he’s being billed as a “hipster” pianist. The laugh transforms to a full-blown wince when I propose a series of questions to determine just how accurately he fits the title. “Oh no, no!” he cries into the phone. “I’m gonna fail miserably!”
But he’s game, and we dive right in. How many mesh trucker hats or tight jeans does O’Riley own? None. Does he drink Pabst Blue Ribbon or ride a fixed-gear bike? No. Does he have Pitchfork bookmarked, does he have any tattoos or has he complained about gentrification in his neighborhood in the past two weeks? No, no and no.
Christopher O’Riley, as predicted, has triumphantly failed the hipster test. Not one to adhere to a single genre, O’Riley blazes a unique trail by recording classical piano interpretations of the music of Radiohead, Nick Drake and Elliot Smith, which explains the ill-fitting “hipster” tag. It’s not unlikely to overhear twenty-somethings in duct-taped Converse and studded belts praise his intriguing arrangements, which staunchly avoid Muzak’s lull and extract instead the inherent complexity of the songs. Yet O’Riley’s heart is in his classical training; give the Ohio-born pianist a chance to expound on Béla Bartók, whose Piano Concerto no. 3 he performs April 12–14 with the Santa Rosa Symphony, and he lights up in excitement, pleased to discuss the Hungarian composer.
“I feel like I’m playing Brahms when I’m playing Bartók’s third,” O’Riley explains (coincidentally, Brahms’ Symphony no. 1 is also on the program this weekend). “It has elements of Mozartian clarity and purity, in a very spare and idiomatic language, and also an extraordinarily ingenious way of working with material. Brahms’ later solo pieces for piano are good examples of exactly that motivic development—not eschewing melody, but evolving a much more cellular basis.”
Bartók’s third, O’Riley says, isn’t the thundering horde of Bartók’s first, nor does it contain the accessible athleticism of Bartók’s second; rather, its economy of means demands a delicate treatment. “I would see as much challenge in stating the first theme, between two unison hands, and really getting as much information into that shape,” O’Riley says, “as any technical thing in the piece.”
O’Riley slightly resembles a young Bartók, and considering that Bartók was an avid ethnomusicologist and collector of then-contemporary folk music, the connections between the two grow deeper. Collecting Radiohead songs for his repertoire, says O’Riley, confused many in the classical world at first (“There were all these bemused and lost-looking people who had no idea what I was doing!”), and he remains distressed by just how traditionalist the classical establishment can be. “It’s sort of sad that some people can be threatened by musical choices,” O’Riley sighs.
“Beethoven once said,” he quotes as if to fault the closed-minded, “that ‘aside from love, the thing I love most, about anything, is surprise.'”
Adding to the contemporary rock and pop artists he’s recorded, O’Riley has recently arranged the songs of the Cocteau Twins, a lilting British group, and Guided by Voices, an exhaustively prolific indie-rock band from his home state. Iconoclastic jazz pioneers the Bad Plus, naturally, are among O’Riley’s good friends (“They’re amazing guys, all three of them,” he says, “they’re like the Beatles”), and he’s brings his fresh open-mindedness to the masses as host of NPR’s classical-music program From the Top.
Considering that Bartók’s third piano concerto was composed at death’s door, and Nick Drake and Elliot Smith both met untimely deaths whose rulings as suicide are still, to this day, questioned, is O’Riley, in being drawn to their work, obsessed with human tragedy? “No, not so much tragedy,” he clarifies, “as the widest possible emotional or expressive palette.”
“A lot of literature, and some music, resides either in the total and worst emo threshold, or in a bubblegum world,” he says, obviously ill at ease with such divergent paths. “And I think people like Elliott Smith, Nick Drake and Radiohead acknowledge what I think Butters [from South Park] said best: ‘If I hadn’t been so happy at some point, I wouldn’t be this depressed now.'”
Christopher O’Riley performs Saturday–Monday, April 12–14, with the Santa Rosa Symphony. Wells Fargo Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. Saturday–Monday at 8pm; Sunday at 2pm. $27–$50; Saturday 2pm “Discovery Rehearsal” is only $10. 707.546.8742.
Concert notes and news.
Bondsless Baseball Back to Basics by the Bay
The Giants, post-Bonds: it’s like Candlestick again, they way it should be. People yelling “sit down, asshole!” to the guy standing in the way. Fans screaming on their feet when there’s two strikes on the opposing team. Total strangers arguing about the new guys in the infield. Old-timers in the stands yelling, “Bring back Candy Maldonado!” That kinda stuff.
Basically, people in San Francisco are watching baseball again.
They’re not buried in their laptops on the stadium’s free wi-fi, eating their bunless Atkins burgers and closing business deals on their phone. They’re not standing up to cheer every ninth batter and leaving if he doesn’t hit it out of the park. They’re not waiting in line at the Build-a-Bear store or to slide down the Coca-Cola slide. All those people are gone; the ones remaining are watching, attentively, one of the greatest sports in the world being played.
Even tonight, in just the second home game for the Giants, you could tell things are going back to basics at the once–paparazzi-prone ballpark. Sure, the smoking area has been banished even further away, and there’s now a dumbass “Fan Loft” that costs anywhere from $3,500 to $6,000 per game to rent, but for the most part a lot of the froo-froo element seems like it’s on its way out and passionate fans are on their way back in.
Take, for example, the Lincecum Girls at the game tonight: four of ‘em in sports bras and “T-I-M-!” drawn on their bellies in Section 127, going nuts every time Lincecum walked out to the mound or up to the plate. In the 7th inning stretch, they got up to go to the bathroom and found the womens’ line too long, so they strolled past the mens’ line, into the mens’ bathroom and crammed into a stall, taking turns peeing and leading the bewildered guys in a “Let’s Go Giants” chant.
Now that the home run donkey show is over and the unfortunate smugness of Bonds is out of the picture, more stuff like that can happen in San Francisco—it’s what we used to do best before we accepted an ill-fitting role of propriety. The old man I saw in the stands tonight, pulling from a brown-bag flask and scoring the game, is a perfect harbinger of the upcoming season: it’ll be dirtier and grittier, and people who don’t like baseball won’t have any reason to go to the ballpark.
I can’t say the Giants look too good this year, but I’m sure going to enjoy watching them a hell of a lot more these days. Bring on the Lincecum Girls. Bring on the brown bags and the yelling in the stands. Bring on the Dodgers fans. And hell, bring on the twin homers from Bengie Molina, who slammed a game-winning walk-off shot to right tonight and brought the 11th-inning faithful to a standing frenzy.
Bring on the baseball!
Cross Purpose
04.09.08The sign on my bucket says: "All Proceeds Go to the Society for the Removal of the Meridians, in Support of the Abolishment and Eradication of the Unsightly Grid of Longitudinal Lines Encircling Our Planet." "Why not the parallels, too?" some wise guys will ask me. I'm ready for them. "They're next," I explain. "The latitude lines, because they...
Planning/Eating
04.09.08Nothing gives a person nutritional pause like being pregnant. I'm seven months along, and suddenly each ingested calorie is scrutinized and found wanting. Crunch (I'm hurting the baby). Swig (the baby's going to have major issues from this caffeine). Chomp (maybe I should just lock myself up in a room and chew carrot sticks). Eating properly can be daunting,...
Bondsless Baseball Back to Basics by the Bay
The Giants, post-Bonds: it’s like Candlestick again, they way it should be. People yelling “sit down, asshole!” to the guy standing in the way. Fans screaming on their feet when there’s two strikes on the opposing team. Total strangers arguing about the new guys in the infield. Old-timers in the stands yelling, “Bring back Candy Maldonado!” That kinda stuff.Basically,...
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