For what it’s worth…
Category Archives: de musica
Yesterday’s wine: Willie Nelson at the Backyard
Miracles appear in the strangest of places…
Above: no synthesizers allowed… Willie played with a piano player, bass, drums, percussion, and harmonica. He played all the guitar himself on that same old acoustic guitar he’s used on all his albums. Man, that dude can play the guitar. I love his signature chromatic scales in his solos.
A week ago yesterday, Tracie B and I went to see Willie Nelson on the closing night of Austin’s storied concert venue, the Backyard. (Click here for a story about the closing of this legendary concert “shed.” I love what the reporter wrote: “Most folks say if the backyard does re-open elsewhere they’ll likely go, but it won’t be the same.”)
He played nearly all my favorites, including Yesterday’s Wine, one of his many greats, which was also recorded as a duet by George Jones and Merle Haggard (a great version):
- Yesterday’s wine, I’m yesterday’s wine
Aging with time, like yesterday’s wine
I don’t know much about Willie’s palate (although I do know that he and I share a predilection for another indulgence). But, like analog wine in a digital age, his songbook has evolved gracefully over the years, with the nuanced notes of a classic American composer — just like yesterday’s wine… One of the best shows I’ve ever seen in my life.
Above: “Ain’t you glad we ain’t all California girls/Ain’t you glad there’s still a few of us left/That know how to rock your world” (Gretchen Wilson). Tracie B and Jeremy P at Willie last Sunday.
*****
In other news…
Do Bianchi is rarely a forum for political views but something I witnessed Friday compels me to ask my Californian sisters and brothers to please vote NO on Proposition 8. Drivers-by hurled insults at the woman in the photo (left) and the other protesters who lined Adams St. around the corner from Jaynes Gastropub.
Proposition 8, which would outlaw gay marriage in California, “is discrimination,” it’s un-American, and it’s just plain wrong. At the restaurant on Saturday, I waited on a super nice couple who recently got married (they drank Il Poggione 2006 Rosso di Montalcino): the vote will be close, they told me, and every vote will count.
*****
Miracles appear in the strangest of places
Fancy meeting you here
The last time I saw you was just out of Houston
Sit down, let me buy you a beer
Your presence is welcome with me and my friend here
This is a hangout of mine
We come here quite often and listen to music
Partaking of yesterday’s wine
Yesterday’s wine, I’m yesterday’s wine
Aging with time, like yesterday’s wine
Yesterday’s wine, we’re yesterday’s wine
Aging with time, like yesterday’s wine
You give the appearence of one widely travelled
I’ll bet you’ve seen things in your time
So sit down beside me and tell me your story
If you think you’ll like yesterday’s wine
di mamma ce n’è una sola…
Judy’s grandchildren Abner (Micah and Marguerite’s older boy) and Amalia (Tad and Diane’s youngest) took a break from Judy’s birthday celebration for very important discussions.
There’s a saying in Italian, di mamma ce n’è una sola…, there’s only one mother, in other words, you only have one mother… A few weeks ago, the Parzen family celebrated a special birthday for Judy, “our bridge over troubled water…”
Of course, I did a little wine tasting for the party, which was held in the park across from my mom’s building at the La Jolla Cove. This Saumur Rosé Corail, a sparkler made from Cabernet Franc, was the winner in my notes.
Brother Micah with long-time family friend Mr. Regan.
Long-time family friend Dr. Ugoretz and my mom’s colleague from her UCSD days, Mary. Dr. U’s really into wine and he seemed to dig the Truchard Cabernet Sauvignon that I poured him the other night at Jaynes.
Brother Tad, his father-in-law Saul, and the Golds, who live in my mom’s building. Mrs. Gold is my mom’s swimming partner.
Sister-in-law Diane and long-time family friend Theresa, one of my mom’s best friends.
Megan and I grew up together in our old neighborhood. Our families have been friends since we were children.
The weather was fantastic that day and everyone had a great time at the party. La Jolla never seemed more beautiful.
If you ever wonder where I learned how to do “jazz hands”… That’s me and Judy at Jaynes earlier this year celebrating my birthday.
Happy birthday, mom! Here’s a lil’ YouTubication for you…
The great Brunello debate and please keep Austin weird
Above: sopecitos at Fonda San Miguel, one of the many excellent Mexican restaurants in Austin, Texas.
Just a quick reminder: Franco and Ezio Rivella will face off tomorrow in the great Brunello debate in Siena, 3 p.m. local time. You can watch the debate live at http://www.vinarius.it/. I’ll be watching, of course, and will most certainly post about it here and at VinoWire. Franco will be presenting the case for Brunello di Montalcino to remain 100% Sangiovese while Rivella will argue that appellation regulations should be changed, allowing for other grapes to be used as well.
Above: Dale Watson did an awesome show at the Broken Spoke the other night in Austin.
In other news…
Tracie B. and me did us some more honky-tonkin in Austin this week. I’ve really been impressed by how Austin still has many family-owned and run music venues and restaurants. Especially coming from Southern California, where the landscape is dominated by fast food chains and strip malls, I’m happy to know that there is an America where folks are still keeping it real. Keep Austin Weird is a grass-roots movement that promotes general “weirdness,” as they put it.
I’ve been enjoying some of that weirdness and I really dug Dale Watson’s version of Pop a Top the other night at the Broken Spoke (my second-favorite honky tonk after Ginny’s Little Longhorn).
Pop a top again
I just got time for one more round
Sit em up my friends
Then I’ll be gone
Then you can let some other fool sit down
I’d like for you’d to listen to a joke I heard today
From a woman who said she was through and calmly walked away
I’d tried to smile and did a while it felt so outta place
Did you ever hear of a clown with tears drops streamming down his face.
Pop a top again
I think I’ll have another round
Sit em up my friend
Then I’ll be gone and you can let some other fool sit down.
Home for me is misery and here I am wasting time
Cause a row of fools on a row of stools is not what’s on my mind
But then you see her leaving me it’s not what I perfer
So it’s either here just drinking beer or at home remembering her.
Pop a top again
I think I’ll have another round
Sit em up my friend
Then I’ll be gone and you can let some other fool sit down
Pop a top again.
What to serve with home-smoked ribs in Austin TX? Produttori del Barbaresco, what else?
Above: what else would I pair with home-smoked ribs? 2004 Produttori del Barbaresco Barbaresco (classico), of course. I’ve tasted this wine a number of times since I first tasted it in NYC at a Vias portfolio tasting with Alfonso, Alice, and winemaker Aldo Vacca early last year. Over the last few months, it’s been in what I call a “state of grace”: a period of sensational drinkability before it shuts down again for the long-term. The bottle we opened on Sunday night in Austin showed signs of tightening up again but was delicious nonetheless.
Italian wine bloggers — me, Tracie B., Alfonso, and Wolfgang — converged on Austin last weekend for the Austin City Limits music festival and some general honky-tonking.
My festival highlight was Erykah Badu: man, that lady is one bad-assed mother… (and I mean that on multiple levels: played an amazing show, rocked a great percussion solo on with her digi trigger, and how many months pregnant is she?). We watched her set with my friend, roomate, and licensing agent Michael Nieves. He and I raised a beer to toast the phat placement he did for our song Fille Atomique on Gossip Girl on Monday.
Alfonso, Tracie B., and I were the guests at the home of Misti and Nathan, Tracie B.’s good friends. Nathan smoked pork ribs — one rack with a spicy rub, one with a bbq sauce finish, and one plain. He began smoking them in the morning, keeping them at about 200° F. all day long, using chips from old whiskey barrels (Franco would agree with me that this would be an excellent use for barriques! Nathan said, however, he prefers pecan). Misti made steamed corn with jalapeño rounds and a great potato salad (with olive oil instead of mayonnaise). Lena and Dean were there, too. Nathan’s a pretty mean guitar player and so we traded some riffs and played Beatles and Bruce Springsteen into the night (on the ladies’ request).
Above: what do Italian wine bloggers drink when they get together? Mexican beer, of course! Wolfgang and Alfonso at Güero’s Taco Bar in Austin. I wasn’t sure about getting fish tacos in a land-locked taco joint so I went with the roast pork, which was very good, but the sides were just so-so. The salsa bar was excellent if meager and I love the way they serve the beer with small, old-school glasses, like the ones you find in Mexico.
Above: Tracie B. at Ginny’s Little Longhorn, my new all-time favorite honky tonk. The night we were there, the caliber of the playing just made me want to go sell my geetar at a pawn shop. Tracie B. moved back to Austin earlier this year from Ischia where she wrote her fantastic blog, My Life Italian, about Italian food and wine and the life of a Texana in Campania, Italy. She’s a little shy on camera but, man, that girl’s got the prettiest eyes this Italian wine blogger’s ever seen!
*****
Post scriptum
Strappo and Marco: we missed you at the Italian wine blogger summit, Austin, 2008 edition.
Feeling fat and stinky (and that’s a good thing)
Above: fat and stinky. I can’t say where it came from or who shared it with me (since it’s illegal in this country), but this Ami du Chambertin was fantastic yesterday evening at my buddy’s place. This week I’m feeling just like that cheese.
When I first moved to NYC and got a job as a magazine editor, one of the graphics guys was a Russian. Slava was his name, very talented dude and a good friend. Every time he’d see me laugh or smile, he’d say, “Jeremy, suck a lime.” In other words, stop smiling because unless you don’t something bad will surely happen.
Well, I’m throwing caution to the wind because it’s been a good week and I’m feeling fat and stinky like that cheese.
Found out yesterday that Nous Non Plus’ Fille Atomique (from …Nous Non Plus self-titled) will be featured on the show Gossip Girl on Monday (8 p.m. Pacific, check your local listings).
Our new album, Ménagerie, is being printed as I write this and will be out in January.
This week I’m finishing the final edits on my behemoth translation of a Guide to Italian Cinema for Princeton U. Press. I’ve been working on this book for a few years now and it’s great to see it come to fruition.
And this weekend I’m headed to Austin, Texas to hang out, relax, and listen to some good music during Austin City Limits. Maybe I’ll even get to dance with a pretty girl… I can just hear Slava saying it, suck a lime…
In other news…
I really like this post today by McDuff: one of the things I like about his blog is the way he balances the human aspect of our business with great tasting notes and informed background. I was just talking to some colleagues about Vajra last night and lo and behold, David posted on the winery today.
Italian Wine Guy is back from Italy and shared with me this updated list of the now 41 Italian DOCGs (a few new ones were added this summer). Alfonso, looking forward to seeing you this weekend in Austin, man!
Obladi Oblada: Jayne and Jon got married
Above: on Saturday, I officiated at Jayne and Jon’s wedding in Presidio Park overlooking San Diego.
The task was daunting: as I sat down and finally put pen to paper after months of procrastinating, the thought of writing a wedding ceremony and wedding vows seemed insurmountable.
As a musician, I’ve played more weddings that I care to remember and I’m glad not to be in that business anymore. But playing someone’s first dance or getting a crowd to rock out on the dance floor — that’s easy. Writing a ceremony and vows for two of my best friends in the world, whom I care about deeply — that’s a tall order. But once I finally started writing, it all came together. Jayne’s family is from Liverpool and they’re all huge Beatles fans. So the only request was that somehow a Beatles’ lyric be incorporated. If you care to read my talk and the vows, click here.
The ceremony was lovely, if I do say so myself: just enough tears and not too much laughter. I was very flattered that Jayne and Jon had asked me to officiate and how could one say no to such a request from such dear friends. But what do I know about what makes a great marriage? I’m certainly no shining example of a lifetime of bliss.
When my old friend Mike Andrews and I spoke at the party, I shared my doubts with him. “Jeremy, you were the perfect person to do this,” he said. “Because you’ve never stopped believing in love.”
Above: the happy couple. That’s Bart Davenport in the corner playing guitar. Man, that dude can sing…
I believe in love, Alfie.
CONGRATULATIONS TO JAYNE AND JON!!!
Epilogue
The reception was held at the restaurant where among other great bottles, we opened:
1999 Produttori del Barbaresco Rabajà in magnum
2000 Château Certan in magnum
1976 Lòpez de Heredia Viña Bosconia
And, of course, the Bollinger Special Cuvée and the 2004 Produttori del Barbaresco (classico) flowed into the night and flowed over to the after party at Tio Leos. Music industry veteran Jon had put together what was the most smoking wedding band (short of Stevie Wonder playing your wedding), led by the inimitable Bart Davenport. Jon sat in on Gill Scott Heron’s “Lady Day and John Coltrane” among other numbers and I backed Jayne’s dad, Frank Battle, on “Ring of Fire.”
La dolce vita, after all
Above: a pensive moment at dusk outside La Pineta, a fantastic seafood restaurant where I dined with Cinzia Merli and Luca d’Attoma last week, in Marina di Bibbona, on the Tuscan coast (photo by Ben Shapiro).
Strappo is sure to remind me that Fellini’s labyrinth of semiosis often led him to revise his explanations of signifier and signified in his films. But I believe the great Romagnolo director was telling the truth when he said that the expression la dolce vita referred not to the glamour of the Via Veneto but rather the sweetness that we find in life, even in our darkest moments of existential crisis.
[SPOILER: if you’ve not seen La dolce vita, I am about to reveal the final sequence!]
As Ben and I were waiting to meet our dining companions, Cinzia and Luca, the other night at La Pineta in Marina di Bibbona on the Tuscan riviera, I took a stroll alone and gazed out at the sea in one of those “what’s it all about, Alfie?” moments.
Just over a year ago, my life fell into turmoil when my mid-life crisis hit me like a freight train and I wished that I had gone straight but was side-swiped by a simple twist of fate. Today, I find myself in the Munich airport, on my way back to the States, exhausted but invigorated, excited about music and work, thankful to have so many wonderful folks in my life — some of them my oldest friends, some of them my newest.
Marcello turns his back on Paola, the young girl he met one day in a seaside trattoria. But before he returns to the party, he looks back and sees her irresistible smile — sweetness in his otherwise bankrupt existence. Maybe it’s the sweetness in a young girl’s smile, a plate of wholesome pici with ragù, a bunch of Greens dancing to Nous Non Plus in a forgotten border town along the Polish-East German border, or maybe it’s the waters of March. I believe there is a sweetness in life, to be revealed when you least expect it.
You don’t need to speak Italian to enjoy the clip below. Marcello has been partying all night with a lascivious crowd and the revelers find their way to the beach shortly after dawn…
In other news…
Yes, you can now add R.D. to my post-nomial Ph.D.: I was recently ordained as a Rock Doctor in the Universal Life Church and I’ll be officiating at the wedding of Jayne and Jon next Saturday.
*****
What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give
or are we meant to be kind?
And if only fools are kind, Alfie,
then I guess it’s wise to be cruel.
And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie,
what will you lend on an old golden rule?
As sure as I believe there’s a heaven above, Alfie,
I know there’s something much more,
something even non-believers can believe in.
I believe in love, Alfie.
Without true love we just exist, Alfie.
Until you find the love you’ve missed you’re nothing, Alfie.
When you walk let your heart lead the way
and you’ll find love any day, Alfie, Alfie.
— Hal David and Burt Bacharach
Bees in Berlin
Above: Céline Dijon (Verena Wiesendanger) and Bonnie Day (Emily Welsch) had so much fun dancing the night before in Frankfurt an der Oder that they had to recreate their dance moves the next morning on the train back to Berlin.
Sunday, Nous Non Plus took the train back to Berlin where I spent the afternoon and evening with my childhood friend Noah Isenberg, who’s on sabbatical in Berlin this year (he’s a professor of German), his wife Melanie Rehak, and their gregarious son Jules. The four of us had a leisurely stroll in their neighborhood in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg, ate a sandwich and drank a Radeburger, and hung out at their favorite playground, or spielplatz as Jules likes to say.
Above: there are so many bees in Berlin at the end of the summer that shopkeepers have no choice but let them have the run of the place.
Noah’s guide to Weimar cinema is to be released later this year and Melanie has just completed a book on a favorite restaurant of hers in Brooklyn (the name of which I cannot reveal! to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
After Jules was put to bed, we stayed up late, talking and talking and sipping a nice, very food-friendly Zweigelt, which weighed in at 13% alcohol and paired well with a much-needed, simple and wholesome repast of roast chicken, potatoes, and cauliflower.
Today, I leave for Montalcino… stay tuned…
Above: Radeburger and a cheese sandwich really hit the spot on a lazy summer afternoon in Berlin.
Above: people are really into vintage scooters in Berlin.
Above: Jules really loves this über-cool pirate ship in his favorite spielplatz.
Dany le rouge
Nous Non Plus had a rocking time last night at the Bridging the Gaps Green Party party in Frankfurt an der Oder. But the real star of the evening was Daniel Cohn-Bendit (above, dancing), Dany le rouge (Danny “the Red”), one of the leaders of the student protests in May 1968 in France and the co-president of the European Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament. He had just delivered the key-note talk, where he spoke about the crisis in Georgia and the Greens’ role in moving forward.
The party was fantastic, we did three encores, and then we danced away into the night with lots of new Green friends. Nous Non Plus has played a lot of crazy shows in our time but never had we seen a conga line in the audience. What a great crowd and what a great time. That air kiss above? The recipient knows who she is ;-).
Do Bianchi 