Texas Notes: Jazz Break

Hamid Drake

     A musical interlude from our Austin bureau chief, Caren Jeskey.

     Ernest Dawkins and his ensemble took the Velvet Lounge stage and solemnly bowed to each of the four directions. Bedecked in intricately woven golden hued cotton and silk garb, fezzes, and dreadlocks, they began to play. Their hybrid of free jazz, funk and soul reached inside of us and elicited feelings we didn’t know we had. At one moment the upright bass soothed our souls, and in the next, bright sounds of a Treme-style trumpet kicked into full gear and had us on our feet.
     We were at the original Velvet Lounge on Indiana near 21st. With its exposed brick walls and red velvet wallpaper, and a collection of musicians and audience members who are there to truly listen and not just drink, it was a cozy and captivating place to be. When it relocated around the corner to a  swanker listening room on Cermak it still held its power. Fred Anderson, the proprietor, was one of Chicago’s jazz greats and endowed us with his brilliance. He was wise and generous enough to also treat us to a showcase of artists. Only the cream of the crop stood on his stage. When the glass door closed and the $20 cover was paid, patrons were expected to sit down and pay attention to the show, and that we did. Drinks were quietly and discreetly secured between sets. 

     Certain music elicits deep inner worlds where there are no words, but only mystery and  possibility. It shocks the listener into silence, first, by the sheer prowess of the voices and instruments and how they are used and second, by a huge sigh of relief that life can feel so darn good for a stretch of time.

     Hamid Drake is another gifted showman in our midst who I first met at Velvet Lounge— a percussionist extraordinaire. (By ours, I mean yours up in Chicago). He is a towering presence of power often adorned in clothing fit for a king and amulets with secret meanings. Though I more easily picture him in a chariot, one just might run into him at Starbucks on Lincoln and Wilson as I once did (as he sat to wait for his daughter who was in music classes at the Old Town School). The area around him seemed to be filled with a vibrating presence. Perhaps his drums followed him around? I wonder if having such genius in one’s mind takes up more space?
     Hamid’s discography is endless and includes work with The Mandingo Griot Society, Herbie Hancock, Pharaoh Sanders. He is dedicated to the creation of his art and COVID has not stopped him. This year marks the 30th consecutive Annual Winter Solstice Percussion Concert that Mr. Drake and his creative partner Michael Zerang will offer as way to bring reverence to that time of the year. It’s an experience designed to get us off of the conveyor belt of holiday chaos and into a quiet, reflective zone.
     I started going to these concerts back in my Velvet Lounge days, the early 2000s. At that time they were running for 3 days straight— the 21st, 22nd and 23rd of December— at Links Hall on the corner of Sheffield, Newport, and Clark. The first time I went I was hooked and returned as many times as possible year after year. We’d line up at about 4:30 a.m. to be sure we’d have a good place to sit. The doors opened at 5:30 or so, and we’d silently shuffle up the stairs, many of us clutching pillows and meditation cushions. When we entered the dark space, we could just make out two drum kits set on woven rugs in the center of the hardwood floored room. Hundreds of tea light candles surrounded the drum kits. Peppered all around the kits were frame drums, mallets, bells, shells, rattles and other music makers. Floor to ceiling windows overlooked the 'L' tracks.
     I’d sit on the floor as close to Hamid’s kit as possible. Hamid and Michael would silently walk in at about 6 a.m., sit down, and start to play. They'd play on and on through rumbling 'L' trains as the sun came up. If I didn’t know better I’d think the trance we all fell into was drug induced, but it was not. When it ended we’d feel a sense of well-being, thanks to a combination of the steady, deeply resonant beats and the shared and joyful experience. We were wowed by the unique and unparalleled techniques we’d just witnessed. They played off of each other, speaking in the language of music. Sometimes it was delicate and tinkling, other times thunderous. There were also deep moments of silence. We felt we were hearing a lullaby that drowned out fears and doubts, and replaced them with an emptier mind with more space to rest and breathe. Whether we were heading to brunch or to work the rest of the day would be blanketed in a sense of calm. 

     This year I see that the show is planned to be held virtually at ESS, also known as Elastic Arts, in their Quarantine Concert Series. Who knows where we will be in December of 2020, this mad year? Instead of being glued to the revolution that very well may still be televised, perhaps we can consider taking a break.

Rosh Hashanah livestreamed in COVID-19 era

     The Jewish year of ... checking ... 5781 begins at sundown Friday, and is a reminder that the Chosen People are not newcomers at celebrating holidays during hard times. As grim as the COVID pandemic has been, it doesn’t hold a candle to Babylonian captivity or Roman persecution, the Inquisition or the Holocaust. 

     Not yet, anyway.
     The business of maintaining Jewish identity, already under siege by modern life, is complicated in the Plague Year of 2020 as Judaism celebrates Rosh Hashanah — literally, “head of the year” — and then atones for sins in the year to come at Yom Kippur nine days later.
     “This is an interesting year, unlike any other,” said Rabbi Steven Lowenstein, whom I called because his synagogue, Am Shalom of Glencoe, is one of many streaming high holiday services.
     “We’ve been livestreaming for eight or nine years now,” he said. “We originally did it as part of our outreach to people who were sick or couldn’t come to services. This year is much more complex and more difficult.”
     Complex because they can’t just turn one camera on the bima — the raised platform where services are conducted. The clergy are scattered, for their own protection.
     “Now we are spread out in four different locations,” said Lowenstein. “Seven or eight different cameras, six different lecterns, socially distanced from everyone. We’re attempting to bring it all together.”

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Bartlett water ski show to thrill no more

     The Palmer House Hilton closing indefinitely, I can endure through pure denial; it recovered from the Chicago Fire of 1871 and the Great Depression, it’ll somehow pull through COVID-19 and bounce back with its Wedgewood ceiling intact.
     Ronny’s Steakhouse, well, having eaten there several times, I could accept its demise philosophically. Things happen.
     But the Tommy Bartlett Show? The Water Thrill Show?
     Noooooooooo!
     Cut out the heart of the Dells — out of Wisconsin, out of the entire Midwest. Exile the ornate faux riverboat of Mr. Pancake to the salvage yard, sell the Packers to Austin, Texas and sign our country over to the Russians while you’re at it. White flag. We surrender.
     I’m semi-serious. My family loved going to the Dells. Seeing the Tommy Bartlett Show was as American as apple pie.
     ”The boys liked the speedboats and clownery,” I reported after a 2002 visit, “and I savored the show as a pure form. One doesn’t get much chance to see a chorus line of gals doing the can-can on water skis, never mind a flag-waving pyramid streaking by to ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever.’"
     Is that not America? How could that not survive? That is the central quality of the Midwest. We don’t quit. We continue. Did a duck boat sinking in Branson, Missouri, killing 17 people, put a stop to the Dells duck tours? Of course not. Did the death of Tommy Bartlett, famous radio star, slow his empire? No, the concept he expropriated in the early 1950s from Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven, Fla., kept going without him.

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If Donald Trump is trying to quash something, it must have real value

     Vacation days are dumb beasts. They don’t know there’s a pandemic. They keep reproducing, even though they’re unnecessary, since the prudent person never goes anywhere anymore. Busy yourself working — isn’t that the best?
     Yet they keep reproducing, out-of-sight. Then when your attention is finally forced in their direction, say, by your company’s human resources director, you’re shocked to see there are now dozens of them, a flock, cooing gently under the porch.
     Use those days or lose them, and the only thing I like less than taking vacation — if you’re not in the paper, you might as well be dead — is losing vacation. You feel cheated. So I winnow the herd.
     I was going to start vacation two weeks ago today. But the paper had scheduled me for diversity training, and that isn’t something the prudent employee skips. “Maybe if you had attended diversity training, you wouldn’t have . . . ” insert some head-slapping blunder here.
     My only thought, beforehand, was an imperative. “Say nothing.” This event is transmitting information to me, not drawing information from me. Now is the time to show off my hard-won shutting-up skills.
     The two-hour meeting transpired on Zoom. And might have vanished down the memory hole, except two days later, a presidential memo barring such sessions in the federal workforce was released. “The President has directed me to ensure that federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions,” wrote Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.

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The blue jay, the president of birds

     Just when I thought the whole summer would be a waste, three blue jays showed up at my feeder Monday.  I lingered to admire them too long, and didn't get a shot of the trio as they flapped around, vying for position at the seed trough.  Not that an iPhone can shoot birds that aren't roasted and on a platter.

     John Jay Audubon did a much better job of capturing a trio of blue jays. 

     Of course he had the luxury of killing them so they'd sit still for their portraits.

      Mine spent about half a minute pecking at their lunch. Then they were gone, no doubt off to visit with their wide range of admirers, which are many for these handsome if vexing birds.

     "Their saucy, independent airs, sprightly manners, brilliant colors, and jaunty, plumed caps have gained them many friends," F.E.L. Beal notes in his 1897, The Blue Jay and its Food."

     I try not to find augury in birds, but I took a certain meaning from their arrival at this perilous point in time, knowing that blue jays are particularly American birds.
     "The blue jay, Cyanocitto cristato (from the Greek kyanos, "blue," and kitta, "jay"), is the very first bird in Alexander Wilson's famous nineteenth-century American Ornithology," Diana Wells writes in her essential book 100 Birds and How They Got Their Names. "And he surmised, correctly, that this 'beau among the feathered tenants of our woods' is uniquely American."  

    This is not necessarily a compliment. Audubon depicts his trio of blue jays gobbling another bird's eggs.

     "Who could imagine that a form so graceful, arrayed by nature in a garb so resplendent, should harbor so much mischief," Audubon writes. "That selfishness, duplicity, and malice should form the moral accompaniments of so much physical perfection." 

    Yeah, a lot of that going around...

    "Selfishness, duplicity, and malice." I sense a replacement for the eagle as our national symbol, depending of course on how the election goes this November.

      The blue jay's range does include most of the southern half of Canada, and in 1976 the otherwise anodyne city of Toronto appropriated the blue jay for the name of its expansion baseball team. "The Blue Jays" was picked among 4,000 entries by the majority owner, Labatt Breweries, though common wisdom is that the color won the day more than the bird itself: Labatt's Blue is their major brand of beer, so the team was always going to be the "Blue Somethings." Blue Bells, Blue Valentines, Blue Bayous—when you think of the alternates, it almost had to be Blue Jays. 

    The "blue" in the name doesn't need any commentary. The "jay" is obviously an onomatopoeia, as the things are always screaming "jaaayy, jaaayy!" The Oxford English Dictionary traces "jay" back 700 years in connection with "a common European bird, Garrullus glandarius, in structure and noisy clattering resembling the magpie, but in habits arboreal, and having a plumage of striking appearance, in which vivid tints of blue are heightened by bars of jet-black and patches of white."
     Wells points out that the word was often used to describe a silly person—hence "jaywalker"—but this is unfair, since "in fact, like all corvids, jays are very intelligent." ("Corvid" is a general term for large birds with clawed feet adapted for perching, including crows, ravens, magpies and jays). 

     A very stable bird genius, perhaps.

    "He is more tyrannical than brave," Aubudon writes, "and like most boasters, domineers over the feeble, dreads the strong, and flies even from his equals. In many cases he is a downright coward.

     Yup, we know the type.

     

Swampy's Revenge, or, "Hey, wait a minute...."

 

     People cling to stuff, and it accumulates.
     That was especially true for me. I had trouble getting rid of possessions, precious relics all, debris from my ruined palace of self. Maybe if I held onto it, I could build the past back up someday...
     Lately I've been better. Having seen my wife having to dispose of her parents' possessions—her mother had 11 roasters—I'm keen not to put our own kids through that. So stuck at home, and with a vacation last week, we went at the basement. It helps we have a grand-nephew now, crawling like nobody's business, to whom we can deliver plastic crates of toys and books.
     The old video games were pitched. Don't write in to tell me they were valuable and I could get as much as $3 a pop on eBay. Not worth the time. Not thrown away, but taken to Goodwill. Maybe someone else can use them.
     Except this one. It's going too, but it is infused with a tale, and I have to wring the story out before I discard the rind.
     Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge, the second version (I assume) of the vastly popular kiddie video game where bold-if-reckless amphibians are sent hopping across busy highways. The small print on the back says it was released in 2000, which sounds right. My boys would have been 3 and 5, freshly moved to this house.
    The game was brand new, and they really, really wanted it. I don't remember this part, but pleading was usually involved. Out-of-stock 0n Amazon (it's scary to think Amazon is 20 years old—it's actually 26, and started selling computer games in 1998). 

     It's hard for boys to wait, and I had an idea. Online might be overwhelmed, but there was still the living world. I swung by the Borders on Waukegan Road, made my way to their music and video games department, and sure enough, there was Frogger 2.
      An ordinary dad would have purchased the game, brought the thing home and delivered it to my jubilant lads. But I am not that dad; I had a kink in my programming that caused me to look for the more ... ah .. whimsical route.
     I deposited the game in our mailbox, then went upstairs.
     "Should we see if Amazon has Frogger 2 in?" I said, settling in before the computer, a boy on each arm. I scrolled quickly past the part saying it wasn't available.
     "It is!" I said. "Should I order it now?"
     "Yes yes!" the boys cried in chorus. "Now now!" 

     I pressed the order button with an exaggerated plunge of the finger.

     "There!" I said, ignoring all the other screens needed to settle credit cards and shipping before the order was actually placed.

    I waited a moment. 
    "Okay!" I said, hopping up. "Let's see if it's here!"
     We all ran downstairs and burst outside, and tore open the mailbox.
     "It is! It is!" the boys cried, faces aglow.  We headed upstairs in joy and triumph. 
     If that's all there were to the story, I would never tell it. But there is one more part, as we headed up to the computer to play, a moment occurred afterward I always cherished. Crossing our front room, heading up the stairs, our older boy paused.
    "Hey," he said, or words to that effect. "Wait a minute...."
     Something was amiss. The brief time that elapsed between clicking the button and the game arriving in our mailbox. That was ... awfully fast.
     That "something's wrong here" reflex is key to the intellectual development of any adult. Not every adult, sadly. Lots of people never acquire it, which is why Donald Trump is president of the United States. But the ability to grasp that something — even something that is good, something you want — just doesn't make sense is as precious as gold.  It serves me well, and I'm proud I've passed it on to my sons, who it will no doubt will continue to benefit.

     Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge goes to the Goodwill, eventually. Though I might keep it on my shelf for another couple decades first, as a token a of a father's small prank, and a flash of nascent skepticism in a 5-year-old.

Whimsy and good steak at Gene & Georgetti

     Early in the pandemic—April it was—the boys had been home a few weeks, we were enlivening up Friday nights and supporting our besieged restaurant community by ritualistically ordering takeout. The boys, both sent home from their schools, realized we could, by ordering out, put normally wildly-expensive Alinea chow in our mouths for a fraction of the price—1/10, by my estimation, with the duck confit cassoulet dinner costing $39.95, about a dime on the dollar of eating it in their Lincoln Park dining room.
    The food was fantastic. I did something I had never done before. In cleaning up afterward, I took the little round transparent plastic lid from the raspberry vinaigrette and, glancing around guiltily, licked it clean. That's good salad dressing.
     But something was missing. If you have eaten at Alinea, you know that, as great as the food is, there is also sense of drama. Small clever flourishes of conception and presentation. Dinner there is like watching a magic show. How, I wondered, would they translate this whimsy to the carry-out experience? I expected a rolled note tied with a ribbon. An enigmatic seashell. A clever token. Something fun.
     And the answer was, they weren't. Just excellent food, period. In regular aluminum containers with cardboard lids. Which was fine. But I had expected something more from one of the best restaurants in the world. Something was missing.
    That something was found when we pulled into Gene & Georgetti for our anniversary earlier this month, before I even sat down I smiled at the little clear "stash your mask" envelope. Score one for old school. Michelle Durpetti will never be featured on "Chef's Table." But she figured something out that Grant Achatz' couldn't (Actually, she tells me, she borrowed the idea from a restaurant in LA. That works too).
     The flourish couldn't have cost much. A nickel for the opaque envelope. A dime for the sticker. But somebody had to think of it, a mask holder which, I rush to observe, nobody really needs. I dutifully slipped my mask inside, taking it out when the waiter approached. They are very, very COVID conscious at Gene & Georgetti. We felt safe. And coddled.
     Our first dinner in a restaurant in six months was excellent. We sat for two hours, outside, enjoying the 'L' occasionally grinding by, the passersby on the street. Service was friendly and impeccable. Our opening course, shrimp dejonghe, came in a butter sauce of such excellence that my wife asked for some bread to sop up every last drop up. She ordered a brace of lamb chops that were first rate. Our older son—we weren't going to leave him at home—was interested in the aged steak. Aged steak is like aged blue cheese—a very distinctive taste. He liked it very much; let's leave it at that.

     I have a favorite meal at Gene's that I've been ordering for decades, which they call a "steak sandwich" which is actually a filet mignon on a piece of toast. But since this was our 30th anniversary, and we were not in Spain, where we had hoped to be, I threw caution to the wind, and ordered their top-of-the-line $78 t-bone steak, medium rare.
    Let me re-iterate. I adore Gene's, have been going there for 20 years and hope to go for 20 more. But I do have a fidelity to truth, and the truth is, while the steak looked fantastic, was perfectly grilled, and I finished every morsel, it was not indeed fantastic steak. At least not fantastic a way that I could comprehend. If it was superior from what could be picked up at Costco and slapped on the grill, I was blind to those superiorities. My guess is that it is a supply chain issue, due to the current crisis, and completely out of Gene's hands.  I trust they'll forgive me mentioning it; I couldn't write about the experience otherwise. In fact, I know they will; you don't stay in business for 79 years by getting upset over a little loving criticism from a regular customer.
     That mild disappointment—good, not great steak—did not detract from an unforgettable dinner, I hasten to add. With the steak was a fabulous dish of roasted Brussels sprouts with apples and chunks of thick bacon, and their trademark creamed spinach. For dessert, we had a first rate tiramisu and something new—an intensely rich chocolate cake. I tipped well and will return happily, assuming they'll still have me, and urge you to dine there soon.  Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their restaurants. Nothing is guaranteed in this life, and Gene & Georgetti is one of those special places that make Chicago Chicago.