From: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org (alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest) To: ammf-digest@smoe.org Subject: alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest V1 #949 Reply-To: ammf@fruvous.com Sender: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest Wednesday, November 4 1998 Volume 01 : Number 949 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: who is going to Baltimore and Wilmington? [wbsmiles@aol.com (Wbsmiles] What I Ate on Holiday (long but worth it) ["Aye, who's asking whom?" > This is so cool, we're going to be an infestation :) >> Flyers/Fruvous fans unite! > >OK, that means I'll be the lone Caps fan! :) > > >-- >chad@ >radix.net No way Chad! You're not alone. Go Caps Go!! Wendy :o) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 00:00:28 -0500 From: "Aye, who's asking whom?" Subject: What I Ate on Holiday (long but worth it) What I Ate on Holiday (long but worth it) by Dante "I may stop using my handle soon." Blando I arrived home with fifteen hours to spare (and got a full refund on my unused train ticket) and had an unfamiliar feeling of clarity and lightness. I wager the caffeine excesses influenced this as much as the ride home through the Berkshires with the sunrise on my back. My hope now is to put this emotion to its greatest effect by writing down what led to this and sharing some moments otherwise only linked by time and place. Since there will be at least twenty reviews of the Iron Horse shows, I shan't write a traditional review of people and performances. Instead, I'd like to please your other senses -- taste, touch, smell and sight. This weekend in Northampton was a bazaar of sensations. My first sight was the oddest jail break ever -- my own. I walked off the train in Springfield, about 20 minutes from downtown Northampton, and wound my way down to the street. The main facade of the station had to be the ugliest thing I saw all weekend: it had no windows or portals save the single exit to the street. All the rest was brick and stone, leaving me feeling closer to Auburn Correctional than the land of the Simpsons. I found myself entranced by the neon's glow from up the block at the bus terminal and magically transported by Peter Pan (seriously, that's the name of the local commuter bus company) up a river packed with lights (Interstate 91 during evening rush hour) to a cute town held hostage by restaurants. Before I got to the venue, which was two blocks from the bus station, my ethereal wave carried me across Main Street through a conduit the likes of which I had never experienced so singularly before: the crosswalk. Massachusetts has this law about pedestrians having absolute right-of-way when crossing within the zebra lines. While no one in Harvard Square would ever acknowledge such a rule, the people in the west of the state are a different lot. Never in my life had I crossed a street so calmly, so capable of being oblivious. This is the No-Mind of all the Zen texts I'd read: even a speeding city bus had to stop for my hulking carcass. Upon finding many friends already on line in front of the Iron Horse, I dropped my bag with the generous Kent and Susan and walked into the first restaurant I saw (which called itself a trattoria). They provided sit-down cuisine, and as I had been sitting for the past five and a half hours, I walked back out. I had stains on my shirt from the juicy, meat-engorged cheeseburger I'd paid too much to consume on the train, so I figured I'd spare a fine place my t-shirt and tousled hair. I headed up the block to Pinocchio's, a pizza joint with an aesthetic rarely handed to the starched slice in America. I ordered a plain slice and an orange cream soda to settle my stomach, and a barbecue chicken and mushroom slice to eat after I'd made my initial face shovelings. The barbecue (not the more intense B-B-Q, which comes closer to the smoked meat methods of Montreal or the day-long smoke-pit methods of Memphis) was well-controlled: nothing drippy, nothing likely to ruin even a fingertip let alone a shirt front. The large mushroom caps outshined the chicken visually, but the two worked very well together in and were so generous that I could offer people savory morsels from the slice without fear of depletion. Before I am accused of giving short shrift to the seltzered, sweetened beverage fans (I'm not here to cause a flare-up of the titular rivalry this kind of drink incurs), the orange soda was a Stewart's. I noticed that all the trendy spots in town, including the Iron Horse, featured the same three flavors of Stewart's in bottles as if they were delicacies (and priced them to match). My city is on the fringe of Stewart's Shops franchise region, so I consider such hikes a Yuppifying affront to the nature of the convenience store chain (one that is confident enough in its beverage stance to sell its own brand of Vichy Water). Of course, Stewart's probably has a hand in all this, but they still make great drinks. Once I had entered the show and the pizza had long passed down my gullet, I declared it time for alcohol. The barkeep, who in retrospect I did not tip enough, offered me a trial sip of Northampton Ale (Dark Ale, perhaps?) upon asking if the bar had any bitter ales. The sip was very convincing, as was the knowledge of the barkeep, so I drank a pint and enjoyed one of the better brews I've had in the United States. It was neat to see a rack of tap handles missing the usual angular plastic and instead featuring one beer with a skinny copper handle that curled at the top. The ale I had was not a strident drink, yet it held its own in ringing flavor through the mouth. While it could not compete with my favorite ale of all time (Smithwick's), it is a singular intermediate-level drink (low level being Piels, high level not readily available in America). Liquor prices were steep: the barkeep laughed and called me a New Yorker for questioning the five cents on top of the four dollars for the ale, as I guess Massachusetts's bars add tax to beer outside of the regular price. I didn't notice a similar grief when I asked for a double Bombay Gin and Seven (which I call a Gang of Four, as the 7-Up is cut in half and rounded up and I wanted to give a name to my hatred for tonic water), except that I could have bought a third of a fifth for the eight bucks I shelled out. As I like typing the word Massachusetts, I've done it again. On the way out of the Friday show, some staff from Kitchen Sink Press (which I believe is part of the cartoon museum in town) were handing out Devil Girl Candy Bars ("They're BAD for you!"), which feature a Robert Crumb drawing and pretty good milk chocolate for an American bar. I rode with Wild Bill and crew to the Motel 6 and learned... ...the six represents the maximum number of hours they will let you sleep. The chamber maid knocked on my door and scampered away, leaving me unable to return to sleep and hungry. While walking along state highways (read: any road properly paved) is theoretically illegal in Massachusetts, I did it anyway. Then I found out why such jaunts are illegal when I realized the short trip to the diner for breakfast may include being smothered by exhaust or slipping on the pretty pebbles lining the asphalt, whichever I wanted more. I walked back towards this pseudo-quaint coffee shop and had a fine cup of coffee, a decent raisin bagel, and the only scone (which I guess is Middle English for "bisquick and maybe some fruit in there") I've ever had that held real strawberries in it. By this point, my bitterness about this trip was peaking, and needed to be rescued. Andy paid my ransom by driving me to the Seven-Eleven (thank you again, Starfox). I'm a Slurpee addict, and since my hometown is about 100 miles from the nearest dispenser, I had 22 ounces of frozen Coke with a top-off of Black Colada for color contrast. Ahhh... sugar and ice. Upon returning to the hotel, Mike Wood offered up fun-size Jersey Milk bars, and I was returning to a happy state. Then I made a bad wager... They don't have sushi where I live, so I decided to fall in with the crowd going to the Taipei & Tokyo Restaurant and have some more cool fish. The salmon was the best part of my platter -- very fresh, just as the waitress said, and properly rippled with fat. The pink tone was exactly what I wanted, and I must compliment the chef again for those two morsels. The egg was good, but it's hard to ruin what is basically omelette patty. The eel and squid (I'm Sicilian, I have to like squid) also sat quite well with me. I was only introduced to sushi a week earlier, as it's not available inland and no trained sushi chef would find the fresh-water three-eyed fish of the Great Lakes tasty enough to serve for money -- maybe yakuza serve new rainbow trout on rice to people behind on the vig. If you live in a sushi-free part of the country, I should explain that eating raw fish is closer to a high tea ritual in England than a chilled version of dim sum: you have to prepare your mouth and each morsel before each bite, and each morsel is eaten whole. Each morsel costs about two bucks (or a loonie and a toonie in Canada) because each morsel must be prepared by hand, so . Sushi has more drawbacks than any other food available in America. I would suspect some of these detractions aren't so glaring in Japan, where the craft is more prevalent and revered. Also, I bet the Japanese don't look at wasabe and think about Play-Doh. My requisite moment of disgust, when the mere slither of the sushi past my palette makes me want to surrender and beg for Western food, arrived shortly before I got to my pretty slab of mackerel. I decided to ignore the gnawing feeling of chunder: the scales recalled nickel plating on the Chrysler building and smiled at me from a 1930s kind of future. I began to chew... and put the credit card into the waitress's hand so I could run away from my error and show off a new set of shirt stains (soy). I should note that before I had the sushi, I went with Kris (TedKoppel) to Dynamite Records, which had a very nice vinyl selection and "lots of posters on the door". I found Elvis Costello's "Blood and Chocolate" (which features Poor Napoleon) on vinyl. Now that I'm home, I notice the original tune should have been done acoustically, as the Fruvous version stomps the original by giving it a better pace and a better tonal context. (I feel similarly about Tom Waits' "Jockey Full of Bourbon": Waits doesn't scream "bloody fingers on a purple knife!" like Mike does. Now that Mr Ford is following the full lyrics, the impact is lost when he screams "Edna Million in a drop-dead suit!" Since the line "a hundred dollars makes it dark inside" is such a great line, perhaps a compromise is in order: keep the first half of the third verse, put back the bloody fingers section in the second half, and sail tonight for Singapore.) I also met up with Kent and Susan before sushi and got to be see the great Red and Yellow Budgie outfits their children had. These were no ordinary costumes: the head masks had firm mesh to support the mouths and very accurate construction. I'd go on, but I bet someone will comment more accurately and I'm still in awe. One last thing, as this article is too long already. Okay, two: 1) I should give the Iron Horse a proper description, as it is one of the finest places to see a band. It has these glowing wood floors and a lighting scheme under the dining balcony that reminds me of being below deck in a pirate vessel. Along the walls are signed publicity photos from hundreds of performers; you'd be speaking to someone and suddenly see a picture of Steven Wright or Victor Wooten and have to stop for a proper gawk. Downstairs from the bar are the bathrooms and dressing rooms. While the bathrooms were quite the fright, the long queue in front of them began at a listening station complete with rolling stools and durable headphones. I had never been to a bar with a listening booth, so I played around with the contraption and found it was a great way to bother women (I like to flirt, okay?). The place had this intensity of character, similar to Richard Brautigan's iDEATH in his 1968 book "In Watermelon Sugar": "There is something about the place that suits us." This place was built and is run by very passionate music fans, and every inch of the place says so. If ever you have a chance to visit, do not hesitate. 2) The Philadelphia Wench Crew had great fabrics. I was honored to feel the silks and satins, stare into Fruwench's Ottoman patterns, get enveloped in the folds of cloth. Some people find a cut-price bolt of textile and create something that encapsulates centuries of sewing craft and technology, and I met one of these chosen gurus on Hallowe'en. There are lots of things I don't wish to embarrass myself into commenting about, as I am still learning about how to travel alone while staying sane. I will say that I was honored that Dave Matheson gave me a big hug (good touch, not bad touch), a moment I shall treasure for a long time. Now that I've proven kosher with at least one of the Lads, I hope I have given a fair turn by giving you, fellow posters and readers, a sampling of the mind set that may have smothered you Friday and cried in his beer part of Saturday. - -Far away from wars and credit unions, Dante ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 05:35:03 GMT From: gemini@p3.net (Trace) Subject: Re: Buffy and Cordie the Fruheads On Wed, 04 Nov 1998 02:27:26 GMT, Srm9988n@aol.com wrote: >From tonight's Buffy the Vampire Slayer: > >Buffy: You really love Xander? >Cordelia: Well...he kind of grows on you...like a Chia Pet. > >(wonder which Chia Pet she likes the most? :) ) *lol* I'm glad I'm not the only one who instantly thought of Fruvous while watching Buffy this week :) - -- Trace gemini@p3.net "I'm not clever enough to be unintelligible." - -Jane Austen, "Northanger Abbey" "It would have to be the most inglorious death of all, 'The Bathroom Accident.'" - -Murray Foster, on the preferred manner of death for Fruvous publicity. ------------------------------ End of alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest V1 #949 ********************************************