Question Mark

Posted April 3, 2011

QUESTION MARK

New track by Jonathan Kemp: vocals, guitars, bass, drums, synth

Here is the first song I wrote as part of my most recent project. I always record a full track when I write songs, creating the song as the recording ensues. This is like the first page in a musical sketchbook. Comments welcome, it's a work in progress.

Using an Apogee Duet and Logic 9, the drums were recorded first, in an untreated garage attic, in mono, using an MXL 2001 placed in the rafters with a big yellow foam windscreen, and an EV RE11 inside the kick, which had some pillows stuffed in it. I took all the bottom heads off the toms and the front head off the kick to get an early '70s sound. Also, I duct taped some tea towels to the toms and snare like they did with Ringo's kit on Let It Be. The RE11 was used on the guitar amp, an Ampeg Rocket from 1959, and on vocals. The bass is an Epiphone Viola "Beatle" bass and was recorded through the guitar amp.

It was the first recording I did for this project, so it's certainly not immaculate, but it's got something going on I like. Did my best to "master" the mix and get it to a reasonable volume level without too much processing, but I really don't have the right equipment to do this properly. For this I used the Puigtec EQP-1a plug-in, the Renaissance De-esser, the C4 Multiband compressor, and the Nomad Factory LM-662 (awesome Fairchild clone) to somewhat adequate results, I hope. My monitors are a pair of vintage Auratone 5C's and a pair of KLH 32's, both from circa 1973, and I use a set of Grado SR-60 headphones.

Lamb & Wine

Posted: March 31, 2011

CHÂTEAU SAINTE EULALIE

2007 Minervois Plaisir d'Eulalie

BRAISED SHOULDER OF LAMB

with sautéed spinach and roasted red potatoes

Going shopping the other day, I decided I was hungry for lamb. My choices were a $19.99/lb center cut loin chop and a $6.99/lb shoulder chop. Usually my method for lamb is simple: sear both sides over high heat, remove them, add wine, reduce, and add some butter and herbs to make a pan sauce; but this quick-cooking method requires a premium cut of meat. Not wanting to shell out for the most expensive cut, I thought I could braise the shoulder for an hour in some wine to soften up all the connective tissue that comes with the lesser cut of meat. Though I'd never done this before, it turned out to be easy, inexpensive, and delicious. Decidedly succulent. Below are step-by-step instructions.

The wine I chose was a the Chateau Sainte Eulalie 2007 Minervois Plaisir d'Eulalie. Cost=$15. Most of the wines I've had from this region, located in southern France in the Languedoc, have been kind of disappointing. They are not bad, but they can be innocuous, flat, uninteresting. Ok, I guess that's bad. This was happily not the case with this wine, which I found bursting with ripe, plush raspberry on the nose, shockingly different from what I had expected. It's like finding out you are going on a date with Serafina, the redheaded actress who carries a five-inch blade in her leather boot when you were expecting Beth, the buttoned-up accountant in the grey pantsuit.

The varietals here are 45% Grenache, 40% Carignan, and 15% Syrah. The palate was full of young, forward fruit, but with the acidity to hold it up and make it perfect for a dish like braised lamb, where you want a little more fruit and acidity to cut through the meaty, rich, savoriness of the slow-cooked lamb and provide some refreshing balance. Tannins and structure are also crucial for accompanying most meat dishes, and there was enough of a backbone present, though it was certainly not on the level of a well-structured Bordeaux or a spicy Rhone wine. Delicious nonetheless; actually it was hard not to just knock it back and get rowdy, so it's a great bottle to pick up for dinner with friends as long as you get two or three.

Now, I didn't cook with the same wine that I served with the lamb, I cooked with an inexpensive Spanish table wine called Rojo Vivo, a tempranillo/bobal blend, because it was fruity, and had only a touch of oak, . It cost about $6. The best rule to follow for cooking wine is to make sure the wine is low on tannin and oak, and otherwise it should be fine, just go with what is around. You are left with some of the essence of the fruit, so don't get something you wouldn't drink, and make sure it hasn't gone off.

Aside from the fact that the meat will simply melt off the bone and is one of the most flavorful ways I've prepared lamb, the great thing about this dish was it's simplicity, and that there was a ton of room for error. If anything here cooks for an extra few minutes, no big deal. While the lamb is braising, you've got plenty of time to roast the potatoes and sautée the spinach, including prep work. Also, leftover lamb that has soaked in wine overnight is pretty great, maybe even better the next day. I left out onions and garlic, but if you like, dice some up and add to the pan before adding the wine.

Ingredients:

Two or three lamb shoulder chops, or however many you can fit in a heavy pan.

1/2 lb. small red potatoes

1 bunch fresh spinach

Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper

1 Cup or more of red wine, maybe 3/4 of a bottle

2-3 tablespoons of butter

Fresh tarragon or other herb for garnish such as sage, mint, or parsley

1. Heat a cast-iron or other large, heavy skillet over high heat. While the pan is heating, liberally season the chops on all sides with Kosher salt and pepper. I usually go for about an 80/20 ratio of salt to pepper. I knew the pan was ready when I could only stand to hold my hand for five seconds about two inches from the surface. Place both the chops in the dry pan, and don't move them at all for at least the first minute. Should only take two minutes on each side to brown. Remember they are also going to be simmering in wine for nearly an hour, so get them out of the hot pan sooner than later. After removing the chops, turn the heat down to medium and pour in about 1/2 a cup of the wine. Immediately start scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to remove all the flavorful bits stuck to the bottom, because they will add a lot to the finished dish, but not if they are still stuck on the bottom. You can let the wine reduce for a minute or so, and then add the lamb back to the pan and add more wine so that it reaches about halfway up the side of the chops. Set the heat to low, make sure it's simmering, and cover with a lid for about 55 minutes.

2. For the potatoes, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Dunk the spuds quickly in a bowl of cold water to remove any dirt, and dry them with paper towels. No need to peel, no need to slice them since they are small enough to quickly roast whole. Place them in a roasting pan and coat them in olive oil and salt. Try to avoid using so much oil that the excess pools in the bottom of the pan. When the oven reaches 400, place the pan on the center rack for 30-35 minutes.

3. Next wash the spinach in three changes of fresh, cold water and use a salad spinner to dry them. I prefer my greens completely dry, so I finish the process by wrapping them in a clean towel and leaving them for a few minutes. Cooking the spinach will take only 2-3 minutes, so when the lamb and potatoes are nearly done, turn a burner to medium, and wait a minute before adding a tablespoon of butter. When the butter has melted, add the spinach, cover, and give the pan a quick shake to get more of the greens in contact with the butter. There is a lot of water in the spinach, so they will be steaming themselves, too. Be sure to remove it just after it begins to wilt.

4. Always make sure to warm plates before serving. If you haven't, throw some in with the potatoes as they finish. When the lamb is done, garnish with fresh tarragon leaves. A little bit of tarragon goes a long way here, even for people like me who love its licorice-y goodness. Add some more butter and salt to taste to the spinach after removing from the pan. Serve the potatoes whole, with butter and salt nearby. Some nice sourdough bread is a great match, here, too.

5. Don't forget the wine. Maybe some mood lighting and Robert Goulet on 8-track. Enjoy.

Katz at the Albertina

Photo ©2010 Jonathan Kemp

Originally posted: August 14, 2010

VIENNA – Alex Katz (b. 1927) is an American artist whose works on display at the Albertina in Vienna span from the 1960's to 2010. Though there are a few of his oils on canvas in the permanent display on upper floors, the entire lower level of the museum is showcasing a notable collection of his prints. His style and voice are much more fully realized through his prints. Katz's style is clean, it is understated. His works can be stark and rendered subjects contain little in the way of decoration, as in the case of Kym with Baseball Hat, below:

Alex Katz - Kym with Baseball Hat (Linocut, 2007).

Though ornament is absent in some sense, nuance is not and Katz is highly trained at a sort of hyper-efficient visual language that rarely comes off as contrived or clever, though it could be called cool, and it often is. At one time Andy Warhol famously smirked, “Art is what you can get away with.” I have been frustrated and unsatisfied by Warhol prints I've seen at the Acquavella Gallery in New York and, just this past weekend, at the Yale University Art Gallery; perhaps artists like Katz compound this feeling. Katz's work is genuine, inspiring. If Warhol got away with something, Katz left something for this viewer, at least. Though minimalist, even where he works in almost two-dimensional monochrome with mere lines criss-crossing he gets it right, like an author who can describe an overlooked banality so perfectly they tap into a remarkable sense of truth. Woods (Aquatint, 1993) and Sunrise (Woodcut, 1995) are two pieces where I put Katz at this level.

Alex Katz - Woods (Aquatint, 1993).

Alex Katz - Sunrise (Woodcut, 1995).

The level of control Katz evidently maintains at each step furthermore shows his status as a printmaking master. In many ways he deftly bridges a gap between two art worlds - one where works of art were not intended for reproduction, and one where mass production and mass consumption exist. Printmaking is a process that can produce multiple copies of images and Katz's particular control over the steps of this reproductive process is what hit me so hard. In the display there are a few triptychs that are actually just side by side comparisons of different techniques - aquatint, screenprint, and woodcut - using the same image. The differences are noted by Katz as are the strengths of each medium in communicating his visual message. For different images, he prefers different approaches and printmaking processes, and this is always a carefully considered aesthetic choice. Choices such as these are imperative when making art, and it's wonderful to see this being so adeptly demonstrated in the Albertina display.

Working as I have for many years in music and photography, this is particularly poignant. Both the recording and photographic industries have been violently uprooted in the past decade or two, so much so that media and techniques, once commonly available and taught, are fighting for survival against the March of Technology. I speak of silver-halide film, magnetic tape, manual focus cameras, turntables, et cetera. These have been popularly ditched in favor of computers and digital iterations of mechanical designs. In many cases, quality and technical comparisons may favor the outdated products, though everybody is versed in the advantages and capabilities of the digital heirs. Yet discussions in casual conversation and in professional settings frequently turn towards the need for homogeneity, and why one should dominate, why one should be obsolete. Alex Katz's prints show that different processes create different results, and the job of the artist is to make an aesthetic choice, and make this choice on a case by case basis.

Too rarely do I hear of musicians taking a stand and assuming complete responsibility for the recording process in a way that successfully realizes an aesthetic goal. Though for many decades collaborations between musicians and engineers (a large number of whom actually had electrical engineering degrees) were highly proficient and reached wonderful heights - check out this article on Roy Halee and Paul Simon - now recording studios are often vacant and engineers' training and hours of practice are scarce compared to just 15 or 20 years ago. Additionally the music industry is, as always, following monetary momentum instead of craftsmanship and art, and seems to be failing to let artists or engineers really work and grow. Of course, the major labels are also losing money by these practices, which was not always true.

It is more now than ever the purview of a recording artist to take the entire scope of recording into an artistic realm and explore these different media as painters or other artists do. Just as there are acrylic and oil paints, linocuts, and aquatints, there are endless choices of microphones; there is cassette tape, there is vinyl, there is ProTools, and there is ADAT. The same goes for photographers - glass plates, tintypes, 110 film, fiber paper, and APS-C sensors all produce glaringly different types of images.

The fun of the Albertina's exhibit is taking part in enjoying the results of the documented efforts Katz undertook. On of my favorites was entitled The Green Cap (Woodcut, 1985). Here, Katz had a printing color mixed to minutely exacting specificity by a Japanese printer such as to chillingly replicate the color Katz saw on a Renaissance-era fresco in Italy. The print and the color is breathtaking in person (sadly not as much so in JPEG form), a supremely adorned print and an achievement that left me revisiting the work several times while I was still at the exhibit and again in my mind's eye months later. It testifies to the power and excitement possible through mastering one's craft.

Alex Katz - The Green Cap (Woodcut, 1985).

See more selections from the Albertina's exhibit here.

The Rockford Files, Reopened

Originally posted: July 31, 2010

Perhaps I was reminded of my tweenage obsession by Temple Grandin's own love of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – on a recent flight I saw the excellent HBO film Temple Grandin starring Claire Danes. Or perhaps it was that after two weeks in Europe, I needed to revisit the hyper-American character of Jim Rockford, as played by James Garner in the 70's private-eye drama The Rockford Files. A random visit to Hulu reopened my interest in the show that dominated my 12 year-old mind back in the summer of '93.

Why was I so fascinated by this program? For starters, it is just drenched in hallmarks of the time, which in the early 90's was quite shockingly garish and out of style. Movies like Dazed and Confused hadn't come out to start the trend of romanticizing the 70's quite yet (true, it was released in 1993 but who saw that in the theaters?) So for me it was a nauseating journey through split-pea green shag carpeting, plaid polyester sportscoats with 10-inch lapels, and shiny rust-colored muscle cars. I admit, I liked the muscle cars, though. But Rockford, he had common sense, he had more taste than the LA socialites he was surrounded by, and he was a folksy fishing-loving guy who lived in a trailer on the beach in Malibu. He was great at being in, but not too absorbed by, his environment. I think my fascination with the show was due in part to watching him somehow live in late 1970's Los Angeles, hang out in condos with way too many giant houseplants, talk to scores of airheads with feathered hair and pants from Sears, all the while somehow not developing a severe dependence on narcotics.

But Rockford doesn't sit in his trailer smoking dope and listening to the Dead, whining about his sorry lot, even though he has bad credit and a criminal record (he claims) he doesn't deserve. Instead he puts on his uniform - a sensible sportscoat and an unbuttoned Oxford - and solves crimes at the behest of beautiful women, disenfranchised farmers, or even rich playboys suspected of murdering their parents. Sometimes Rockford gets paid, sometimes he ends up in jail, sometimes he gets to go fishing with his dad, and sometimes his metallic gold Firebird gets totaled in a giant explosion while soaring off a cliff. But he keeps leaving his trailer on new leads every episode.

Of course, Rockford's not perfect - he can be whiny, all his friends are usually just subordinates he uses to solve cases, and he can be a chauvinist asshole, too. And the show is always too neatly wrapped up at the end for my tastes. I also just saw the 1980 film The Upper Crust, a fantastic film noir set in Vienna that manages to avoid cliché and provide little in the way of answers. The Rockford Files seems like a kid's show in comparison. But Rockford is still cool in a way that Starsky and Hutch, Magnum, or even Erik Estrada's Frank Poncharello from CHiPs (my brother's favorite, on after Rockford back in 1993) can't touch. He's by far more intelligent than the rest of his peers, he's got a rugged outsider's perpective, and he's no slave to trendy fashion. He's his own man.

I tried to roughly approximate the Rockford vibe as a kid, but I lived in landlocked Ohio in my parents house, and couldn't drive, so I was going to a grocery store in a strip mall with my mom in her wood-paneled Buick station wagon while Jim was speeding down the 101 after baddies. A heaviness drifted over me as I felt tweenage misery and the trappings of awkwardly advancing years while Rockford waited for the next adventure to come knocking on his corrugated aluminum door. Eventually we ended up with some similarities - an anti-authoritarian streak that has given me a few speeding tickets and open-container violations, a little bit of debt, and just like Rockford slummed it up in a trailer while hob-nobbing with the upper class of LA, I lived in some dingy apartments in sketchy areas of New York while managing to find myself in high-class surroundings at wine or music industry events. Never got a 1974 Pontiac Firebird, I rode the bus and the subway, so in some ways maybe I'm like the emo, earth-friendly Jim Rockford?

Ben Folds makes mention of the Rockford Files, so maybe I'm not the only sensitive musician-type who digs the Rockford swagger:

And you think Rockford Files is cool

But there are some things that you would change

If it were up to you

So think about your masterpiece

Watch the Rockford Files

Call to see if Paul can score some weed

-from ”The Battle of Who Could Care Less” ©1997 Ben Folds

Speaking of music, the show's theme and background music is some of the best of the genre. I'm pretty sure Larry Carlton, guitarist and veteran of Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, and tons more records, contributes a lot to that. You really can't beat the theme song for perfectly summing up the anti-authoritarian twang, the cosmopolitan flash, and the rugged suavity that is Jim Rockford. And somehow all without a wah-wah pedal. Amazing.

Check the show out on Hulu at http://www.hulu.com/the-rockford-files, I just watched “The Trees, the Bees, and T.T. Flowers,” a two-parter that's a great place to start.

Official Launch

Originally posted: July 31, 2010

Welcome to the launch of Earth to Jonathan. Enjoy, feel free to comment, and I will continue to share my work and ideas with you.

As you will see, my photography concentrates on work in the domain of film, manual focus, and available light (no flash). Musically, I also prefer analog tape to digital when recording, but there are one or two digital recordings here. There is no use of any digital programming or drum sequencing, only real instruments, though listening back to some of the drums I play myself, maybe I should have used some of that magical, computerized help...so much for being a Luddite.

Thanks for stopping by.

-Jonathan