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An occasional blog about populist politics and popular music, not necessarily at the same time. LinksLocal Links Social Media My Other Websites Music Politics Others Networking Music DatabaseArtist Search: Website SearchGoogle: Recent Reading
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Monday, December 14, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25944 [25911] rated (+33), 381 [383] unrated (-2). Didn't bother with a Weekend Roundup yesterday. I figure there will be plenty of opportunities in the future, and had something better -- at least more constructive -- to do. When we lived in Boston, we used to be regularly invited to Hannukah parties, which aside from anecdotes that were more historical than religious was mostly an excuse to pig out on latkes -- fried potato pancakes. Since then I've learned to fry up my own latkes, and we throw a nice little dinner party every year sometime around the holiday, and last night was this year's occasion. The latkes are pretty straightforward, although my recipe has strayed from the one I reference in Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food. What I did last night was:
I suspect you can get away with four (instead of five) eggs (Roden's recipe calls for one, and makes onions optional). The mix did get to be a little soupy toward the end. I don't use any flour to bindn the latkes together (matzo meal is traditional; potato starch is gluten-free and probably better), but the extra egg works fine. In past dinners I served the latkes hot out of the pan, which is nice for the guests but means the dinner is done before the cook can sit down. Also, I like to make some side dishes, which start out on the table and tend to get eaten while the guests are waiting for latkes. Latkes are traditionally served with sour cream and applesauce. I bought sour cream and served it in several dishes. I made applesauce, improvising on Roden's recipe:
My favorite way to eat latkes is with sour cream and a slice of cured salmon. For the latter, I bought a pound of Scottish salmon cut from the tail. Following Roden's recipe, I packed the salmon with 1.5 tbs. kosher salt in a freezer bag, and stored it in the refrigerator for 12 hours (actually, a little longer). Take it from the bag, rinse it off, and test it for saltiness. If it's too salty, you can soak it in cold water for as long as it takes. Slice and serve. That's all it really takes, but over the years I've added some side dishes. I usually serve some herring -- alas, from the Nathan's jars, as it's been a long time since I've been able to buy matjes or schmaltz herring locally -- and chopped liver (I used to use Roden's recipe, but now prefer Ottolenghi's Jerusalem). For yesterday's menu I got carried away and added some vegetable salads/spreads:
Most of the spreads were made the night before -- the eggplant, etc. were roasted the night before that -- so the actual cooking on Sunday was fairly light, and actually relaxing in that I let it displace everything else I usually do -- Weekend Roundup, a day and a half of rating records. Rated count this week is still quite respectable, and you'll find a very wide range of interesting music listed below. I also reduced the 2015 jazz queue to virtually nothing (just that cassette; even nabbed four Xmas albums below, only one even marginally recommended), although incoming mail has since added a few stragglers -- a critic's work is never done. Most of the non-jazz records below were found on EOY lists, although few of them panned out. However, the best stuff continues to come from trusted critics: two string band obscurities recommended by Robert Christgau (Have Moicy 2 continues to elude me), a drag queen thing Lucas Fagen likes, a mixtape Jason Gubbels praised in Spin. I toyed with picking on Peter Gabriel over the Youssou N'Dour concert, but in the end decided I'd rather be grateful. The Sharrock reissue is an upgrade from my original B+. I can't argue that the new album is any better (although I do prefer the new cover), but I played it many times while cooking, enough to appreciate some of the nuances in the drums and sax. Or maybe I just appreciate getting a physical copy? That doesn't happen often with reissues. I got delayed in posting this as I was trying to bring the EOY aggregate files up to date -- even thinking I'd comment on them a bit. I currently have 162 lists counted (see legend). You can look at the current state of the New Music and Old Music lists. I will briefly note that the top three albums (Kendrick Lamar, Sufjan Stevens, Courtney Barnett) seem secure and unlikely to change. The next three are very close together (Jamie XX, Tame Impala, Father John Misty). After Julia Holter, three albums have nudged their way into the top ten (Björk, Grimes, Vince Staples), displacing Kamasi Washington and Sleater Kinney (I think Björk was previously 10th). In the next ten, the top gainers are Oneohtrix Point Never (16), Blue (17), and Carly Jepsen (18) -- up from 22, 30, and 20 last week. Very few new jazz lists this week, so the top jazz records have dropped relative to everyone else. Francis Davis' Jazz Critics Poll results are due to be published Dec. 21, so I'll be able to add more then. The total number of new albums so far is 1986. The Old Music list is much sparser, only 171 deep at present, with a tie between Legacy's Miles Davis and Bob Dylan Bootleg Series entries. One note I might as well mention here. This was originally written a few days ago as a comment to a Facebook post by a Witness bemoaning that he had looked through three EOY lists (Rolling Stone, Spin, and Paste) and hadn't seen any mention of Ezra Furman, Heems, or Paris. However, for some reason (maybe tardiness) the comment bounced, so I thought I'd make it public here:
One more bit of news is that I've actually frozen the December Rhapsody Streamnotes file. I'll try to get it indexed and posted tomorrow -- the way things have been going, probably late evening. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
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