SOUNDTRACK:RHEOSTATICS-World Next Door Festival, Winnipeg, MB (September 5, 1998).
I was pretty excited to hear this outdoor festival version of the Rheostatics. I knew the show would be short (and it is at about 45 minutes), but i imagined the entire feel of the show would be different in this setting. What surprised me is that the recording is taken from a CBC radio broadcast of the show (which in and of itself is pretty cool). But the recording is terrible! The sound is bad and there are dozens of stops in the tape. Bummer (especially when Aliens gets cut off).
Perhaps the most enjoyable part is when Dave says there’s going to be a double neck guitar war between Martin and Gordie Johnson (he was the front man for Big Sugar, a band I don’t know. They apparently headlined the festival and he plays a mean double neck guitar).
Strangely enough I can’t find out anything about this festival which apparently doesn’t exist anymore.
[READ: March 5, 2014] Relish
Sarah read and really enjoyed this graphic novel. She said I would like it too and she was right.
This is a collection of memories from Knisley. She writes about growing up in a family of foodies and how at a very young age she at anything. She even began to crave unusual foods (in one short piece, she says that as a child she craved sautéed mushrooms). But what’s cool about the story is that although she was raised in a snobby food way (you she see her father’s reaction to McDonald’s and her mother’s reaction to ketchup) she still appreciated junk food. She says, “Anyone who can fail to rejoice in the enticing squish/crunch of a fast food French fry or the delight of a warmed piece of grocery-store donut, is living half a life.”
At the end of each chapter is a recipe for something from the book. The recipes are pretty simple, although some of them have extravagant ingredients (like her Chai Tea which sounds amazing, but is frankly too full of expensive ingredients for me to ever make–cardamom pods, star anise? No way.). However, her recipe for marinated lamb sounds delicious and uses only the most basic ingredients.
As the memoir (I guess) starts, Lucy is a baby watching her parents love of cooking (in their bohemian Manhattan apartment). When she gets a little older, she even helps to serve the food at parties (and is much adored for doing so). The focus of the book is how various food bring back crystal clear memories for her.
The big surprise for me came in chapter two when she explains that he parents divorced–chapter one seemed so idyllic that I was totally surprised. She and her mother moved to upstate New York while her father stayed in the city. Lucy resisted at first but grew to love the outdoors and all that that meant–gardening and raising chicken, but less so getting attacked by geese and hornets.
I enjoyed that her mother, who loved to cook, also encouraged Lucy to cook–as a way to express herself, or when she felt frustrated, or even when she wanted to eat something that her mother didn’t want to make (her mother did not like chocolate chip cookies, preferring more exotic types so Lucy learned to make delicious ones).
Knisley has also traveled quite a lot for someone so young: Mexico (the recipe for huevos rancheros looks yummy) where she and her friend got to explore all over by themselves because both adults had the flu; Japan, to visit her best friend after his family moved there (she offers a recipe for sushi but it is primarily vegetable sushi). I of course loved the chapter on Japan, as I am fascinated by Tokyo. Even Italy, when she was a sulky tween and her dad was trying to show her culture.
Despite her differences with her mother and father (whom she still sees, and who now has a cordial relationship with her mother), she knows that she takes after them both but especially her mother. The chapter in which they both wound up working in a cheese shop decades apart and in different states was really entertaining.
Not every recipe is a success for her of course–she point blank explains that she never successfully made croissants. And not every food memory is good one (she talks about some disastrous meals that friends have made). But usually, given a little time, even a disastrous meal can turn into a fond memory.
Despite Knisley’s food appreciation, she is actually an artist–and went to art school. Her drawings in this book are superb. Simple drawings with just a few expressive lines adding character to the story. The coloring is also lovely. Somehow her drawings also perfectly fit in the First Second style, which surprised me but which I also found very intriguing.
I’d very much like to try some of these recipes some day too.
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