The Weekly Meat

Barbecue

There's no better time than July 4th to light up the backyard barbecue and singe off your arm hair. This year, let it be some pork shoulder, cooked slow and low, with my loose interpretation (meaning I improved the hell out of it) of the "Rickyard Ribs" recipe from the Jack Daniel's Old Time Barbecue Cookbook. It's a great starting point for further experimentation — a tasty middle of the road sauce, with some tang, some sweet, some bite, some depth, and a little something extra.

BK Kine Cue Sauce

1 C  ketchup
<1/4 C  molasses
1/4 C  red wine vinegar
1 shot  bourbon (so, in fact, not Jack Daniel's)
1 T  lemon juice
1 T  Worcestershire sauce
1 T  soy sauce
2 t  brown mustard
1 t  horseradish
1 t  pepper
1 clove  garlic, minced
hot sauce to taste

(Big T for tablespoon, small t for teaspoon.)

1. Combine in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

2. Put that sauce to use. (Note: There are hundreds of folks here on The Internets to teach you how to properly cook meat and who provide you with the requisite, crystalline food porn pictures, so go visit them. Some are quite worthwhile. Perhaps the ancient race of Druids over at Meathenge.)

Enjoy.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

As summer rolls in, it's important we all brush up on the amateur musicianship that used to get us laid back in college.

You did play guitar in college, right?

Well, get the led out. Literally. Brain dump all those musty Led Zeppelin bits you learned back in high school. No one wants to hear your masterly picking on "Over the Hills and Far Away." There has only ever been one good use for Zeppelin (see Damone, Five-Point Plan), and even that is dated.

Alright. It's festival/backyard barbecue/family reunion season and you will be called upon to rally the troops, young and old. You'll need 45 minutes worth of tunes you can play and sing well. If you're lousy with lyrics, keep a sheaf of cheat sheets in your guitar case. The key is a varied repertoire in your vocal range, with no alternate tunings, and no more than a half-dozen chords.

Important!  Do not cater to children. Kids need to learn grown-up songs, not vice versa. Barney can go screw.

In compiling a solid playlist, you'll need at least one tune from the following dozen well-established musical genres:

Country: Let me be clear that I mean old-school country, not some nouveau radio-friendly crap sung by anyone remotely hot. The following are solid picks: Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried," Townes Van Zandt's "Pancho & Lefty," Jeff Walker's "I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight," or the daddy of 'em all, Steve Goodman's David Allan Coe vehicle: "You Never Even Call Me By My Name." 

Folk: First, understand that folks were more patient for six- and seven-minute epics back in the coffee house days, but that dog don't hunt anymore. No one wants to hear you go prattling on about "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" or sit for all of "Tangled up in Blue," so keep it short. Dylan, John Prine, Gillian Welch, Josh Ritter, all fine choices.

Blues: You don't need to solo, but you do need to know your basic 12-bar 1-4-5. Rufus Thomas' "Walkin' the Dog" and Fats Domino's "I'm Walkin'" are brilliant tunes to get the house rocking.

Classic Rock: I've got a few, but (done well, mind you, not like this) nothing is easier or goes over better than AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long." (But for god's sake, if you insist on playing Led Zeppelin, do something like "Tangerine," because if I hear "Stairway to Heaven" I will break your guitar like Belushi.)

Indie Rock: Easy crowd-pleasers for the post-punk slacker moms and dads. "The Concept" by Teenage Fanclub, "Tennessee" by the Silver Jews, and the Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man."

Punk: No party is complete without some well-timed punk. Black Flag's version of "Louie, Louie," The Clash's "Death or Glory," Cock Sparrer's "England Belongs to Me." With the proper venom and snarl, these'll make them cough up a deviled egg.

Oldies: Gotta have a couple the AARP crowd knows the words to. Ricky Nelson's "Hello Mary Lou," Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man," Buddy Holly's "Well... All Right."

A Capella: I know. But trust me — it's critical. It's the musical equivalent of golf's sand wedge. You've gotta have it in your bag for those times when you break a string, or are too drunk to keep time, or have to prove you actually can sing, or when you're night fishing for great whites. In fact, sea shanteys work like a charm in most instances, and at these trying times, give a nod to Quint and go with either "Show Me the Way to Go Home" or "Spanish Ladies" (incidentally, an excellent lullaby for kids). Another rollicking, sea-faring song with some teeth (and a "goddamn them all" chorus) is Stan Rogers' great "Barrett's Privateers," which I learned over a campfire ages ago at the Philadelphia Folk Festival.

Bluegrass: You need at least one tune to play with a banjo- or fiddle-toting friend. And if you don't have any friends who tote said instruments, you need to take a hard look at who you're hanging out with. I can't do a lick of real fingerpicking, but I can comp chords, and tunes like Hank Williams' "Jambalaya" or the Stanley Brothers' "Man of Constant Sorrow" work well.

Johnny Cash: You're damn skippy JC's a genre unto himself, and you best know a handful. "Folsom Prison Blues," "Ring of Fire," and "Tennessee Stud" for starters.

Songs about trains: No self-respecting musical hack can have a train-free repertoire — and not just so they can satisfy my train-crazed 4-year-old nephew (who is already familiar with the rail-heavy catalogs of Hank Snow and Jimmie Rodgers). I know maybe a dozen, but in a pinch, I'll take REM's "Driver 8," Roger Miller's "King of the Road," and Leadbelly's "Rock Island Line."

Songs about drinking: Give someone their first listen to Sonny Boy Williamson's classic "Sloppy Drunk Blues," or try to do justice to The Pogues' "Streams of Whiskey." It has a built-in party chorus and still sounds hella good after many rounds. For plenty more help with this genre, fumble your way over to the brilliant and encyclopedic Barstool Mountain.

Now, beyond all that, you've got to have a single go-to song — something short that you can do in any key, for any occasion, and at a moment's notice. That song should be a genre-buster; hitting several at once. The little banjo ditty Newman does in Cool Hand Luke ("Plastic Jesus") is a great place to start.

Dust off those fingers, boys and girls. It's time to go make an ass of yourself.

Mama Tried — Merle Haggard
Hello Mary Lou — Ricky Nelson
Barrett's Privateers — Stan Rogers
Streams of Whiskey — The Pogues

Public Art

I'm part of the global warming problem. I have a ~30 mile commute to work, and I drive it solo, four days a week. I drive a '95 Camry, not some idiotic suburban assault vehicle — and I work at home one day a week — but still, it's a long drive. Oh yeah, this post isn't about being green. My point is this: the drive is boring as all hell.

I miss the days when my commute (which took the same ~45 minutes) involved bus and/or subway, and I could just read, or write, or people watch, or zone out to my Walkman (yes, it's been that long since I last worked vaguely near public transportation), or all four at the same time. But driving (well) takes some modicum of concentration, and listening to NPR, or a good college station, or AM hate radio, only gets me so far. So I listen to podcasts and audio books, and what have you. Of course, the scenery still sucks.

That is, but for several hundred yards of what might otherwise be the most uninspired part of the commute — a down-in-the-mouth bit of traffic-choked local roadway alongside I-93. Because brightening up that bit of the drive is one of my favorite painted murals of all time.

As far as I am concerned, the Mystic River Mural (yeah, that Mystic River) is the second most successful piece of public art I've had the pleasure to experience (more on the first, below). Its success in this case is due mostly to the improvement of its blah surroundings (it's literally sandwiched between a community housing project and the interstate), its staying power (new sections are added each year), and the fact that it plays such a refreshing role in my daily commute.

Public art should be just that: widely viewable, well-executed, and aesthetically accessible. Even some of the graffiti writers create great public art. (Also appreciated on many a commute.) Wish I had some better pics to link to for some old school Philly faves, but suffice to name-check "Mr. Blint" and leave it there. Dude could paint.

This mural — which stretches several hundred yards, and covers up nothing but ugly concrete reinforcement walls — actually achieves its clear mission every day, which is to remind those who take the time to see it, that there is an living, flowing river just on the other side of the overpass. The location is the subject matter is the message.

Hands down, the greatest piece of public art I've seen was Olafur Eliasson's "Sun" installation at the Tate Modern in London. Trippy, religious, almost too cool and too powerful for words. It was a feeling, beyond the sheer enormity of the space, which is bigger than most outside of Cape Canaveral.

The Tate Modern is housed in what used to be a mothballed old power plant on the bank of the Thames. The Sun installation played on the building's former life so well, filling the vast, open turbine hall space not just with a glow, but with a low hum that made you wonder if the plant was still cranking out electricity, or if it could be the "sun" itself.

At its core, the piece (now long gone) was about raw power: of the sun, of electricity, of art; the powers of perception, suggestion, and even group inertia. It drew you in — literally (the photo at right is what I saw upon entering the museum), and figuratively (respectable people lay down on the floor, as if sunbathing, basking in the yellowness and warmth).

It immediately made me want to get to museums more often; made me wish more art was transcendent, had vision, had balls, had an audience. What I liked most about the Sun was that it was free. The old turbine hall is essentially one of the world's great foyers. You needn't pay a pence to come inside and hang out.

One of the brilliant things about The Internets and our new global world is that art is increasingly more accessible than ever. The best of the best are no longer locked up in castles or salons or museums, or even in expensive textbooks.

Back in the day, NYC graffiti writers dreamt of painting "all-city" trains, so their sometimes fantastic murals could be seen in all boroughs. Nowadays we have whole marketing teams concerned with tracking "eyeballs," and we can count unique visitors to sites, exhibits, etc. Nowadays, the talk is about going viral, or going global.

Bring it on. Paintings to the people!

More of my Tate Modern "Sun" installation pics.