March is here!
Drunk Greek food at a cocktail bar in Williamsburg, gear failures during soundcheck, my efforts to watch more movies, and shows to come
I’m still figuring out when and how often I intend to post here. I just got off work at my bar, and I’m seated at the counter with a drink to my right. We got a large order of Ume Plum Liqeuer last week and are trying to create some drinks that feature it. My little invention for the day: 1 oz lime, 0.5 oz charred rosemary syrup, 1.5 oz mezcal, and 0.5 oz Ume Plum Liqeuer, served up in a chilled coupe glass with a salt rim. Not bad. It was a beautiful day today and quite unreasonably so. I spent most of yesterday day holed up inside at work and later, in my apartment playing guitar. But today, I got locked out of work by the closing crew and had to spend an hour outside waiting for a manager’s keys to open the front door, but I didn’t mind because it was a crisp and sunny 55 degrees out. It’s March. That’s not right, but oftentimes what is pleasurable is not right. That’s how I justify selfish appreciation of things that are objectively horrendous on the macro scale.
What I’m Reading
Elon Musk’s Tunnel Reportedly Oozing with Skin-Burning Chemical Sludge
The city of Las Vegas partnered with Elon Musk’s Boring Company to build “Hyperloop” tunnels underground that shuttle vehicles at low speeds underneath the city’s infamous strip. These tunnels are reportedly secreting a sludge that burns the skin Boring Company workers. Musk’s companies have tallied an impressive amount of safety concerns and his union-busting efforts demonstrate an obvious disdain for his workers — sludge in his tunnels should hardly be a surprise.
Internal Emails Reveal Columbia’s “Task Force on Antisemitism” is Causing Ruptures in Its Faculty.
Columbia University is, at the administrative level, quite concerned by antisemitism on campus in the wake of Israel’s exterminationist campaign in Gaza. Student-led groups like Social Justice for Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace were suspended by Columbia after protesting Israel’s actions. These suspensions and the administration’s creation of a task force on antisemitism prompted a fascinating email exchange between Columbia staff where film professor, James Schamus (screenwriter/producer of Brokeback Mountain, The Ice Storm, Lust, and Caution) asked some very revealing and amusing questions towards Columbia administration that worth reading in whole.
Queso de Bola, a Matter of Love
Visitors to the Yucatan peninsula may be familiar with queso de bola, an Edam cheese that originates in the north of Holland. This article explores how this Dutch cheese became an essential part of Yucateco cuisine.
The MTA’s Farebeating Crackdown on Buses Is a Mess
Hellgate, an independent, subscriber-funded news site about New York City, looks at recent NYPD incidents on MTA buses. A typical incident: NYPD officers board the bus, demand to see proof of payment, and are confused by the OMNY system and its verification system, which prompts them to kick riders off of the bus and fine them.
Police chases are killing more and more Americans. With lax rules, it’s no accident
An extensive investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle finds that fatal police chases have soared in recent years. What’s more disturbing is that many of these fatal crashes began over low-level offenses. Tangentially related: NYPD officers really ramped up their chase rate after Eric Adams took office.
Ghost Kitchens Are Advertising AI-Generated Food on DoorDash and Grubhub
404 Media looks at the rise of AI-generated food images in delivery service apps and man, the photos are freaky. What’s the harm in uncanny valley food images with impossible dimensions and inaccurate ingredients? Dig a little deeper and you’ll find a world of ghost kitchens and a loss of work for food photographers.
Neocon Iraq war architects want a redo in Gaza
Some of the worst people in the world — aka, Bush administration officials — have a dogdick plan to “rebuild” Gaza and purge its future government of any “radical” elements.
What I’m Watching
I’m making an effort to watch more movies and TV shows this year. Left to my own devices, I’m a bedroom guitar player and a reader. I need other people around to watch TV/movies. This is not a bad thing because it makes watching a social experience. This past month, I’ve already seen more movies than I had throughout all of 2023. So far, I’ve seen The Menu, Trainwreck: Woodstock 1999, Love and Mercy, and Triangle of Sadness. Tomorrow, I’ll be watching Dune 2 at an IMAX theater.
What I’m Drinking/Eating
I was lucky enough to spend some time at Mr. Melo bar in Williamsburg this past week with some college friends and the bar’s owner, Nik Vagenas. Mr. Melo has been around only a few months, but it already has an aura. The space is beautiful, the music selections are tasteful, the cocktails are very creative, and the food appeals to both my base and elevated sensibilities. The Drunk Greek Fries lived up to their name but the real star of the show was the Crispy Eggplant Sando, which featured whipped feta, pickled onion, toum, and fried eggplant on a pretzel bun that maintained its structural integrity with each bite. I’m still thinking about their drinks too. My favorite: is Tony’s Trinidad Tai, which is their riff on a Trinidad Sour and leans heavily on angostura bitters and mixes oatgeat, lime juice, curaçao, and rum in a potent and complex cocktail with a rich, maroon hue.
What I’m Playing
I’ve hinted on my various social media accounts at my obsession with musical gear. I’m going to give a partial accounting through a story of a recent gig I played with my band, Kela.
Last year, I got a Mesa Boogie Mini Rectifier 25-watt amp head. A few months later, I picked up a Mesa Boogie 1x12 amp cabinet with a v30 speaker.
If those sentences mean nothing to you, feel free to skip the next few paragraphs.
I’ve spent lots of time and money on guitar pedals since I started having disposable income. I went through a Fuzz Factory phase, a Big Muff era, and a Boss Metal Zone era. Much of what kept me reasonably sane in the pre-vaccination pandemic was obsessive tinkering with distortion pedals in search of a mythical Perfect Distortion Tone. After much research, I’ve concluded that the Perfect Distortion Tone I heard in my head was a humbucker-equipped guitar through a Mesa Boogie Rectifier.
Why the Recto and not a Marshall? Well, I think Mesa Boogie amps are simply capable of more than their British counterparts. I can get my Mini Rec to approximate the bark of a cranked Marshall, but a Marshall lacks the larger-than-life width of a Recto and the lava-like thickness of the Recto’s modern mode. Mesa Boogie Rectifier amps are often associated with nü metal players but fewer know them as amps that featured on Soundgarden’s Superunknown or were Jeff Buckley’s distortion tone for live shows.
I started bringing my Mesa to shows because I value consistency. With my amp and my pedals, I know what all my settings are. I rarely tweak knobs to fix volume levels in between songs. I don’t need to mess with a backline amp’s bass, treble, and middle knobs. I know what I sound like. My Mesa head weighs about 12 pounds and is super portable. But, my old pedalboard, which I lugged around in a metal case, weighed about 25 pounds in its case. Add the guitar strapped on my back and I was carrying nearly 50 pounds of gear to shows that are mildly attended at best.
I made the move to a digital pedalboard, Line 6’s HX Effects, last fall. I’m down to 26 pounds of gear for shows. That’s huge. But what’s really exciting is that the HX Effects has hundreds of effects at its disposal that you can route or set in pretty much any conceivable way. Want a preset with two fuzzes, an ambient delay, a filter pedal, and a compressor that has a footswitch that takes you to the next preset mid-song? Sure. Want to have footswitches set to change the value of, say, the mix level of your chorus? Easy. Want the HX Effects to change your amps channels? You get the picture.
So I’ve become very reliant on the HX Effects because it’s allowed me to get more creative as a live performer. This reliance turned into a burden last Monday during my band’s soundcheck when my rig was no longer giving me reasonable stage volumes. After extensive testing of my signal path (four cables carefully labeled with their ins and outs) and testing of each cable directly into my amp, I determined my amp’s FX Loop was the problem. A quick post on the Mesa Boogie Facebook group yielded a consensus solution: I needed to replace the v5 tube in my amp. So it was that I ran home in between soundcheck and our set to grab some spare tubes and a screwdriver so I could remove the amp’s chassis and swap tubes.
Turns out that solution was bunk. But thanks to the sound guy, Eric, at Our Wicked Lady, we got everything to sound ok by maxing my amp’s clean channel gain and volume and relying heavily on the amp’s mic’d up sound in my monitors and the audience-facing speakers. I spent a few days at home testing cables and my HX Effects’ global settings to see if I’d moved a knob inadvertently. Nothing. Finally, on a whim, I did something silly that solved my problem: I plugged an instrument cable into the R output of the HX Effects, rather than the L (mono) output and... my volume levels were fixed.
Is there a moral to this story? Depends on who you ask. Tommy would say that pedals are stupid. Most sane musicians would remind me that backline amps are reliable and available for a reason. Someone else might say that I really need is a guitar tech, but I’m very obviously not going to afford one any time soon. Anywho...
What I’m Thinking
Despite the technical difficulties I subjected myself to on Monday, the show was a blast. Wiring put out one of my favorite records of 2023 and it was an educational experience to watch Connor of Wiring play his songs solo. Connor’s guitar playing is quite skillful. His fingers jump large gaps of frets in a blink of an eye and often times he’ll go from forceful strums to the softest hammer and most delicate notes during those jumps. Wiring in a solo context made me think of Brookyln band, Peaer, whose songs are written by Peter Katz. Wiring and Peaer songs often build around long, multi-measure phrases that wind around the other instruments. Wiring plays its next show March 27 at Purgatory.
Lucky, which consists of Jeerleader’s Sam Larson and other friends, closed out the show at OWL and kicked ass. Sam has a voice and a half and after the show on OWL’s roof, we descended to the ground level for karaoke. Sam did a haunting version of Amy Winehouse’s “Love is a Losing Game,” while her bandmates Kelly and Cady did “Hollaback Girl” and “Teenage Dirtbag.” I made my way shortly after an indulgent version of Beck’s “Debra.” The Lemon Twigs also showed up during our songs but paid little mind to us.
I’ve been off work for about two hours now. I intended to watch the Warriors’ matinee game against the Celtics when my shift ended, but I checked the score while grabbing some menus and saw that the game was essentially over by the second quarter. The Warriors taketh, the Warriors giveth.
What I’m Doing
I have quite the week ahead of me. My dad is coming to town from Mexico on Wednesday night for my 30th birthday, which is next week. The days leading up to that birthday are going to be a stupid amount of fun.
Marinara, my favorite band, and one that I am lucky to play in, plays Hart Bar in Bushwick on March 6. Marinara also just released their brilliant album, The Black Goat. I’ve already listened obsessively, most recently as I opened the bar and cranked the sound system.
The next night, my dad + Nick of Marinara and I are going to see punk legends, Mclusky, at Warsaw in Greenpoint. The very next night, I’ll see one of the favorite bands of my youth, Porno for Pyros, at Hammerstein Ballroom. Porno for Pyros did its last prior tour in 1996. I’ve been waiting for this moment since I was 13.
My birthday party is in exactly a week, March 10, at my bar in Dumbo. My band Kela plays at 9 PM. Feel free to stop in if you know me or even if you don’t — this party is free!