the musical fruit: movement #6.

the musical fruit: movement #6.
song: "criminal," fiona apple
fruit: ginger gold apple



remember fiona apple? had that song "criminal" back in '97? was on mtv a bunch? looks like a calvin klein model? dated paul thomas anderson for a while? people always fixate on how depressed/heroin chic she is? yeah, that fiona apple. she hasn't released an album in almost four years, but back in '97, after releasing her first album (tidal) & making some noise with her first single ("shadowboxer"), she released a second single ("sleep to dream") & bam! out came "criminal." this was back when i still watched mtv. i remember seeing the video for "criminal" & being all "whoa. that chick's dark." the video's directed by mark romanek, who's directed a ton of videos, including ones for NIN's "closer" & johnny cash's cover of NIN's "hurt," so the dude totally knows dark.

once "criminal" started getting some heavy mtv airplay, apple's career really took off. the song became her first top 40 hit, the video took home an mtv award for best cinematography, tidal ended up going triple-platinum & eventually, she won a grammy for the song (best female rock vocal performance). all that from a song with lyrics like "i've been a bad bad girl" & "i've done wrong and i want to suffer for my sins" by a woman who blatantly bashed the music industry while accepting her '97 mtv award for "sleep to dream" (best new artist) by saying, "this world is bullshit & you shouldn't model your life on what you think that we think is cool & what we're wearing and what we're saying." the music industry eventually got their revenge, as they waited a full two years after her next album was finished to release it & she hasn't released anything since other than a comedy song with zack galfanakis & a cover of "why try to change me now?" by the late cy coleman. the lyrics to the latter are way too fitting.

this past afternoon at work, just before i was about to dial into an engrossing weekly conference call, i hurried off to the kitchen, grabbed a plate & the only sharp knife in the office & hurried back to my desk to pass the time on the call with slices of the lovely ginger gold apple you see above. the ginger gold's one of the first apples to be harvested (usually in august), so there are tons of them around right now. virginia friggin' loves them. back in 2007, the state legislature actually proposed a bill to make it the official state fruit. it was eventually tabled & therefore never even made it to a vote, but i suppose it's the thought that counts. valiant effort, kris & toddy!

i can see where they were headed with the whole state fruit thing. i mean, it's a damn tasty apple. i'd been sort of turned off from apples for a while because for the longest time, especially when i was growing up, other than an occasional granny smith, it was all red apple city for shawn. the problem with that? red apples have that slightly mealy consistency & it sort of skeeves me out. after years of enduring them, i finally realized that i just didn't like mealy red apples & decided to exercise my adult authority & forgo them indefinitely. in contrast, the ginger gold doesn't have that mealiness to it. plus, since it's a yellow apple, it's not as sweet as the red varieties, which is actually more appealing to me, believe it or not. anyway, the conference call definitely flew by thanks to the ginger gold. well...at least the five minutes it took me to wolf it down did.

the musical fruit: movement #5.

the musical fruit: movement #5.
song: "bankrupt on selling," fresh cherries from yakima
fruit: cherries



about a half decade back, when i was playing a lot more guitar, for as much joy as i got out of writing my own songs, i would also sit around for hours on end learning & playing covers of my favorite songs. these days, the few times when i pick up my guitar, it's usually to figure out how to play some song that randomly comes up in the itunes shuffle & grabs me by the scruff. my skillz are slower these days, but a half decade back, i was playing a good amount & my skillz had reached an acceptable level of quality. at the same time, i was all into lo-fi music, so it was fine if my playing or recordings sounded flawed or blatantly home recorded.

sometime around then, i came across this dude who goes by the name fresh cherries from yakima. he's from washington & i first came across him because of a cover he did of wolf parade's "you are a runner & i am my father's son." back then, i thought his stuff was brilliant. my favorite was (& probably still is) his cover of modest mouse's "bankrupt on selling," which, after hearing, i immediately tried to learn how to play. it's one of those songs you can play as slow & sad as you want & in as much isaac brock voice as you prefer & it still sounds good. mr cherry's done covers of the decemberists' "eli the barrow boy," wilco's "jesus, etc," neutral milk hotel's "communist daughter," "linger" by the cranberries...a bunch of stuff i've totally tried to play at some point or another. in fact, there's a whole library's worth of his potentially unlistenable covers & originals on his website, a number of which i've tried to learn. as for my reaction upon hearing his music again for the first time in a few years...not as fresh as i remembered it being back in the day..."specific time in my life" sort of stuff, i suppose.

earlier this week, as i went back & rediscovered fresh cherries from yakima, i did so under the influence of a shit ton of cherries. cherries are pretty much the best fruit alive these days. cherries--you may remember them from last month's tropical thunder & cherries related post. that means you get two photos of two different angles of a bowl of cherries for your money here at eat!drink!snack! this time, i learned from my mistakes & made sure to consume them over the course of 48 hrs (the unit of time, not the eddie murphy/nick nolte gem). another 48 hrs [insert rimshot here] & those cherries would've been as gross as a monkey with a self-deprecating attitude.

but i didn't wait for that to happen. you see that bowl up there? something like twenty/twenty-five cherries in it? i can not tell a lie. that was half a package & before i'd even had a chance to finish listening to four songs by FCFY, the cherries were reduced to a sorry bowl of pits & stems. ooh! let me drop some science on you. cherry trees take somewhere in the range of five years to grow & produce crop after first being planted. that's a half decade & that's the same amount of time since i first discovered fresh cherries from yakima! whoa!

and...theme.

the musical fruit: movement #4.

the musical fruit: movement #4.
song: "blue diamonds," the long winters
fruit: blueberries
guest blogger: allison felus


photo from the original long winters-blueberry connection flickr page

when i was first introduced to them in early 2004, i quickly became smitten with the long winters. i spent many happy evenings that summer walking home from work listening to when i pretend to fall on my portable cd player. (portable cd player! this is pre-ipod, people! you know i was committed to the rock if i was carrying around a portable cd player and a small sleeve of disks everywhere i went.) depending on how fast i was going, i could basically get from "blue diamonds" through "prom night at hater high" by the time i was unlocking my front door. the band continues to be one of my faves, one of those groups that i will unquestioningly go see whenever they're in town, and i will buy whatever albums they release. all their stuff is great in its own way, but when i pretend to fall is probably their masterpiece (so far). it's just an immaculate stunner of an album. friend of the band and general man-about-the-internet merlin mann says in this video, "it stands up to repeated listens like...like a dylan record. i mean, it's really, really good"; he even used that awesomely sneaky rhodes piano figure from album-opening track "blue diamonds" as the theme music to the merlin show (now sadly on hiatus).

unlike the kind of big "here i am, world!" album opener that grabs you by the lapels and insists you pay attention, "blue diamonds" has a patient, insinuating charm. it's the perfect tone for telling this oblique story of some sort of criminal act gone wrong and also shows masterful restraint on the meta-level of the album's sequencing. any other band probably would have kicked the album off with that sublime organ whine, chugging drums, and honking horn section at the beginning of "scared straight," which follows, but the production team knew it was smartest to reel listeners in here. this song also contains some of my favorite lyrics ever penned by el-dubs impresario john roderick: "you make a gang sign framing your face," "it feels like this is happening in tree time," "these chickens are fish in a barrel." he also sings, in the first verse, "delight at my first try at being sly." which i invariably do every time i hear this song, knowing that it's going to set me off on a musical journey that remains as fresh five years on as it did when i first heard it in '04. it's left intentionally unclear where these blue diamonds are being smuggled from, or for what purpose, so i can only assume they're headed straight into our hearts.

which is a good ultimate destination for all the much talked about antioxidants in blueberries. filled with vitamins a, c, and e, blueberries consistently rank high on lists of easily accessible, often-overlooked, non-exotic superfoods. apparently a small serving--enough to cover the top of a bowl of cereal--gives you "1,773 international units of vitamin e." (international units! ooh la la! whatever those are.)

even if you think all this business about superfoods is bullshit, it's hard to deny the no-nonsense appeal of the blueberry. unlike cherries which must be pitted, strawberries which must be denuded of their green tops, and raspberries and blackberries which can occasionally feel grainy thanks to their tiny hairs and tiny seeds, the blueberry is exceedingly low maintenance. give 'em a quick rinse, and they're basically ready for action. you can make them into a pie--raw pies are deceptively easy to throw together and so healthy you can eat them for breakfast (check out an all-purpose recipe here). you can chuck 'em into the blender with a banana, some water, a tablespoon of almond butter, a dash of vanilla, and a sweetener like medjool dates or agave nectar for a thick and creamy and brightly colored shake/smoothie. or, of course, they're delightful to munch on by the handful, whether from a bowl (if you're fancy) or straight from the pint container (if you're lazy and eager to commence with the snacking, like me). speed and ease are always of the essence if you're on the run from the law, as any good jewel thief would tell you.

allison felus likes to turn people on to the long winters any chance she possibly gets--like here and here. she sometimes talks about other stuff too at wrestling entropy.

the musical fruit: movement #3.

the musical fruit: movement #3.
song: "fee," phish (camden, nj - 07.06.09)
fruit: nectarine



as i'd mentioned a little while back, i rekindled the college years back in the beginning of june by going to back-to-back phish shows in mansfield, ma & camden, nj. the camden show was my favorite of the two, as they busted out a bunch of the old faves like "guyute," "lizards," "tweezer," & "wolfman's brother." after opening the show with "chalkdust torture," they moved on to "fee," the opening song on their first album, junta. as slightly shaky live footage from that night shows, phishheads went nuts when they broke into the song & went even more nuts when during the second verse, trey totally forgot the lyrics.

those lyrics tell the story of a weasel named fee ("a buddhist prodigy long past the age of maturity"), milly (the woman he loves, "a gospel singer with pocks on her face") & floyd (a chimpanzee who "was jealous and alone" & "wanted milly for his own"). as the story goes, floyd tracks fee & milly down on a ship, where they're on a "lover's trek." floyd goes after fee with a bottle & milly comes to fee's defense. her weapon, which she slams floyd in the face with...a nectarine. it's such a powerful nectarine that floyd is knocked over the edge of the ship & eventually plummets into the water, allowing fee to be "finally free." it's a touchingly joyous multianimal love story that phish has been telling for over twenty years now & i've been jamming to pretty regularly over the last two months.

tonight, in honor of fee's triumph, i'm having a nectarine for dessert. in the interest of full disclosure, i'm not the person you want to ask to pick a nectarine out of a fictional fruit lineup, especially if those who set up the lineup also toss a peach into the mix. in fact, during the fruit run where i procured tonight's nectarine, i also bought a peach. when it came time for nectarine snacking, the only way i could tell the difference was the tiny labels affixed to their respective skins. in the future, i'll just i have to recall that peaches have the furrier exterior of the two. as long as some other fun fact doesn't push that one out of my phish-rattled brain, it's all good.

once i'd cut up my nectarine & started popping slices into my mouth, my taste buds were all "oh c'mon. this is so a peach. it's got the pit, the yellow-orange fruit with stains around the pit--the whole shebang." this led to an interweb research tangent & the discovery that nectarines are actually a subset of the peach. well there you have it, reader. now that i know that, i feel much better about the whole thing. it means that i can eat one or the other despite the differences between their skins, because they're essentially the same on the inside. that's right...fruit tastiness isn't just skin-deep.

the musical fruit: movement #2.

the musical fruit: movement #2.
song: "killed by the boom," the veils
fruit: kiwifruit



wow. lord of the rings sure made new zealand look like the bestest place on the planet, huh? lush greenery, short people, creepy flightless birds...what's not to love about it? they also have flight of the conchords, but they're not really a real band really. as far as real bands go, the best i've heard from new zealand is the veils. they're fronted by finn andrews, a dude with a voice that alternates between sounding like jack white, nick cave, richard ashcroft (the verve), neil hannon (divine comedy), conor oberst, thom yorke & probably somebody else throughout their three albums. not pete doherty though, at least vocalwise.

...so the veils released their third album & first in two plus years, sun gangs, back at the beginning of april. the top track on it at the moment for me is "killed by the boom," the fourth track in. the veils' catalog contains a handful of poppier, loungier songs with humurously tragic lyrics, but this one's a rocker. the tragic lyrics are still intact. in fact, the chorus even contains the lyrics "oh no what a tragedy." andrews brings out his jack white voice & they do some serious rocking out, muse/queens of the stone age style. think lord of the rings, but with guitar. quality stuff. apparently they put on a good live show too. damn. i guess they just played around the friggin corner at bell house on monday night. ball = dropped. culprit = me.

in honor of these musical kiwis (well...two of them are kiwis at the moment), yesterday, i started my day with a kiwifruit for breakfast & had another as my last snack of the day...a kiwi kick in the ass & nightcap, respectively. i forgot just how good these hairy ass fruits are. they're sweet & tart all at once, with seeds & acceptable consistency & that different-colored center. you can basically eat the whole thing other than the fur, which is a definite bonus, especially if you're like me & enjoy picturing the kiwifruit screaming as you peel off its skin before eating the ENTIRE THING.

who makes the most kiwis worldwide? new zealand, right? nope. italy! take that kiwis! the mafia muscled in on your kiwi racket. how's #2 feel? anyway, the best part about the kiwifruit is that you can't even tell it's genetically related to a bird! crazy! doesn't taste like chicken in the least! what'll new zealand's fruit geneticists think of next? a treat called a "koalafruit?" i hope so! i can't bear to eat the mammal equivalent.