Tag Archives: Nous Non Plus

Cooking for the band: Tracie P’ulled pork with chocolate and chiles

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Yes, hell has frozen over and the band is getting back together.

Céline Dijon and Jean-Luc Retard and I (Cal d’Hommage) have begun recording our new album in the Groovers Paradise (otherwise known as Austin).

And Tracie P has been cooking up a storm.

Yesterday, she cooked a pork shoulder for seven hours in our Crock-Pot with chiles and chocolate. They were served topped with homemade slaw, avocados, and fresh salsa and wrapped in corn tortillas from a local tortilleria. The 06 Montbourgeau made for a fantastic pairing.

Chip and dip, anyone? Please pass the grooves…

Scenes from our SXSW

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It’s not easy to understand what SXSW is until you’ve actually experienced it. That’s the scene last night on Sixth Street, which is literally lined (all year round) with music clubs. During the festival hundreds and hundreds of bands come here and there is music non-stop from the morning until the dawn — and then it starts all over again.

Our high light last night was Chateau Marmount, an awesome electronica band out of Paris.

They’ve been killing it on their first American tour.

German band Torpedo Boyz rocked the Kraftwerk.

Tracie P took this pic of me with our A&R man Humphrey Bogart and Céline. I’ve known Humphrey since I was a freshman at UCLA in 1985 and he’s been with our band Nous Non Plus since the early years (1998).

Les Macarons Ladurée

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Céline Dijon came in yesterday to Austin from Paris for SXSW. And she brought with her the famous Macarons Ladurée as a housegift.

They had been purchased 36 hours before she arrived and were in excellent condition. Can you see why I like playing in a French band?

Magliocco, swordfish, and Gossip Girl

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That’s the inimitable Shawnté Salabert, writer, voiceover artist, and song plugger for Sugaroo (my band NN+’s licensing agent). She’s the one who got our track “Catastrophe” (click to listen to preview) into Gossip Girl tonight. (Hey, I know it’s not Master Piece Theatre but if the teenage female American demographic digs my music, I ain’t complaining!)

“Catastrophe” is one of my favorite tracks: I wrote it in NYC with Céline Dijon back in 2007 (seems like a lifetime ago). Tonight’s episode also features another song I wrote and recorded with Céline in New York many years ago, when we played in another now unmentionable French band together. It’s called “Les Sauvages.”

I got to meet and thank Shawnté in person on Thursday when I went to visit the mother office and have dinner with my old friend and music biz veteran Michael Nieves, who cooked up a delicious swordfish steak, which we paired with a bottle of 2009 Terre di Balbia Balbium (I had tasted it earlier that day at a trade tasting and swiped the bottle from the rep).

This 100% Magliocco from Calabria, raised by Venica & Venica, is one of the most exciting wines from Southern Italy that I’ve tasted this year (and I’ve been tasting a lot of southern Italian wines recently for a new consulting gig).

From what I understand, some (or all?) of the grapes are briefly dried in the vineyard before vinification. I was blown away by the freshness of this wine, its balanced alcohol (a little higher than I like but nicely settled in the wine), and its juicy cherry and plum flavors and bright acidity. Extremely yummy wine, excellent with Michael’s roast swordfish steak dusted with paprika.

Thanks again, Michael and Shwanté: for the placement and the rocking piece of fish!

08 Cos Nero di Lupo: o my UNBELIEVABLE Nero d’Avola! (no one night stand)

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In Los Angeles this week for a series of business meetings for a new and thrilling restaurant project (more on that later) and a working dinner with one of NN+’s (my band’s) agents… and NO trip to LA is complete without a visit to the BEST WINE BAR on the planet (IMHO): Lou on Vine (with AW, of course).

As always, Lou poured an incredible flight of wines for our tavolata… but the wine that simply annihilated me with its goodness was the 2008 Nero d’Avola “Nero di Lupo” (a toponymic designation), vinified in amphora and cement… and, in this case, open from the day before !!!… think blood sausage and sour cherries and volcanic rock in a glass… unbelievable wine… So fresh, so focused, and so beautiful in the glass… Highly, highly recommended and even better, Lou said, the day after… This is definitely a wine that “you call the next day, no one night stand…”

Lou is predominantly Francophile but Italy — and southern Italy in particular — is his mistress… We also drank…

So young but showing so gorgeously right now…

Can you hear the Stevie Wonder in your head?

And though you don’t believe that they do
They do come true
For did my dreams
Come true when I looked at you
And maybe too, if you would believe
You too might be
Overnoyed, over loved, over me

(How’s that for a pun, Thor?)

Lou called it “a little farty” at first and didn’t pour it until it had aerated for about an hour. It’s so hard to find Overnoy in this country and I was thrilled to get to taste the 07 (which we drank at the end of flight… a perfect closer…). I love the mouthfeel of these wines (at once light and heavy), with that nutty oxidative note balanced by apricot and honey… utterly delicious…

Rebbe Lou presides over what is IMHO the best wine program in the country. Perhaps a little radical for some but always right for me: thrilling, delicious, and always something I haven’t tried yet… If only we could clone Lou and have him open a Lou on Vine in every major American city… we’d have a brighter and stronger next generation of young wine professionals…

Icing on my cake: my fav NN+ song in Gossip Girl 2nite

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Click image to listen.

As if celebrating one’s anniversary with one’s gorgeous wife in Venice weren’t enough, today’s icing on the cake is sliced in the form of one of my favorite Nous Non Plus tracks, Monokini, appearing tonight on Gossip Girl.

Writing nowhere songs for nobody

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While in New York City, I spent some intense sessions writing songs with my super good friend and writing partner Verena, aka Céline Dijon of our band Nous Non Plus. She and I began writing together in 2000 (!) and if you watch TV and/or movies or listen to college radio, you might have heard some of the songs we’ve written and recorded together with our bandmates.

These days, I write so much: for my own blog, for VinoWire, and for so many other blogs to which I contribute openly or anonymously as a ghost writer. Everything I write is published almost immediately.

The process of songwriting is the exact opposite: we come up with an idea, we play around with it, we improvise melodies and discuss the subject, and we flesh out the lyrics. In our case, I usually have a riff or a song structure and then Verena writes the melodies and lyrics. But that’s just the BEGINNING of the process. We then record the demo and start fine tuning it. If we decide that we want to release a given song, we will rerecord it and then set into motion all the elements that go into a release: rehearsing, recording, mixing, mastering, artwork for the album, and ultimately a new record — a process that takes months and months. In the meantime, these works are just nowhere songs for nobody (although I always play them for Tracie P).

Recording technology is so accessible these days. All you need is a decent computer and relatively inexpensive software and hardware (a tube-powered microphone preamp, a digital-to-analog interface, and a decent microphone). When I started working the recording arts at 19 years old (some 24 years ago), we used expensive 24-track tape machines that used 2-inch-wide reels of tape!

We took a break from the intense process of songwriting for a visit from the newest member of the Nous Non Plus family, Vivian, with her dad (and NN+ drummer) Harry Covert.

Buona domenica, ya’ll! Have a great Sunday…

Fat cat Cernilli leaves Gambero Rosso marking end (?) of an era

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Above: Soon-to-be ex-editor of the Gambero Rosso Guide to the wines of Italy, Daniele Cernilli, as photographed by Christian Callec, who quotes Cernilli as asking “what is wrong with the use of new oak?”

Italy’s top wine blogger Mr. Franco Ziliani and I have posted the news over at VinoWire: Daniele Cernilli is stepping down as the editor-in-chief of the Gambero Rosso Guide to the Wines of Italy, the most influential rubric of Italian wines today (pun intended for the Italophone among you).

Rumors of his departure have circulated wildly in the Italian enoblogsphere for more than four weeks and while no one expects the editorial direction and ethos of the Gambero Rosso Guide to change for the better (actually, it will probably only get worse), the omega of his tenure there does mark the end of an era that saw the “international style” and international grape varieties dominate the worlds of commercial and fine winemaking in Italy.

I interviewed Daniele Cernilli in San Diego in 2008 when he came there to speak at the Gambero Rosso Road Show, traveling event. The event, originally scheduled for Las Vegas, was hastily detoured to San Diego that year. An insider told me that the sudden change of venue was due to the insistence of behemoth distributor Southern Wine and Spirits that Cernilli and his wife Marina Thompson present only wines distributed by Southern. Whether or not this is true (and I believe that it is), it does give you a sense of how Cernilli, his wife and publicist Thompson, and the Gambero Rosso Guide are perceived by observers of the Italian wine industry as a purely “pay-to-play” operation.

Here’s the video, directed by my childhood friend Charlie George and with music from Nous Non Plus:

My band in a pretty major Google ad campaign launch today

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Yup, that’s me playing a Telecaster…

Whenever I hear one of our old songs in a license or film (and thankfully, that happens often), it always brings back powerful memories of being in the studio and recording. I even remember the sautéed pork chops deglazed with white wine that I cooked for the band the night that we tracked “Allô Allô” in my friend Mike Andrews’s Hollywood Hills studio!

Back then, the band was still called Les Sans Culottes (before the infamous on-stage fish taco fart, the inevitable split in the wake of the fart, the lawsuit, and the dawning of the NN+ era) and since we tracked that song, I must have played it a thousand times live (we used to and still will open the show with it).

Jean-Luc Retard and Céline Dijon wrote the song back in New York City and we recorded the rhythm track in one take. That’s me playing guitar: I played one of Mike’s 70s Telecasters through a Fender Champ (small amps are always the best in the studio). Jon Erickson of Jaynes Gastropub engineered the session and that’s how he and I become friends.

For those of you so inclined, you can hear other tracks from those sessions (Fixation Orale, Aeronaut, 2004) and purchase “Allô Allô” from ITunes by clicking here.

Allô Allô (Hello I Love You) - Fixation Orale

Tracie P and I had have a pretty amazing year professionally, and, wow, this license is the icing on the cake. Suck a lime: I have a whole lot to be thankful for this year.

So many of my dreams have come true in life — opening for Ringo Starr in New York City (!) and a top-10 college radio album have been musical highlights for me… When I left NYC, I thought that all of that joy was behind me. But since I met Tracie P back in 2008, it sometimes feels like the whole world is smiling at me.

Maybe that’s because I’m standing next to a beautiful girl…

Thanks for reading and listening and thanks for all the support for our music over the years!

Welcome back trotter and other idioblogs

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Folks often send me images of what they’re eating, cooking, or drinking. I call them idioblogs, “blogs intended for one reader and one reader alone.” Here are a few recent notables.

Welcome back trotter, from SnackBoyJr aka Jean-Luc Retard Björn Türoque aka Dan Crane.

Brother Tad’s killer chili. “first batch was a little bland. Enhanced the recipe with some ortega chiles, green pepper, extra chili powder, a bay leaf, a little Cholula hot sauce and a little garlic. taste test is tomorrow. it is pretty good!”

Alfonso’s “Killer Lambrusco.” Hopefully Alfonso will start posting about his recent and most amazing trip to Emilia.