At BLUE
KITCHEN, we instill our passion to our products,
and to food in general. Food is a wonderful way of sharing - (see
our RECIPES
page) - with family or friends. Do something spontaneous - ring
your mother & tell her you love her; invite a few friends over
for a BBQ ..... put on some music, talk about a book you've read....
HOT LICKS
- MUSIC TO KEEP THE
KITCHEN
RED HOT AND COOL:
This latest disc by American
sax-maestro Michael Brecker brings the number of his albums
on my shelf to six, each one worthy of a regular listen and
fully deserving of the praise that’s been heaped on
a man dubbed the biggest influence on tenor sax players since
Wayne Shorter.
Brecker – whose trumpeter brother Randy is on some of
his work, but not this release, despite its 15-strong band
– was an admired studio player who cut his teeth on
rock and R&B. Then he discovered jazz improvisation, within
very tuneful limits, although that didn’t stop him playing
with the likes of James Taylor, Yoko Ono, and Paul Simon.
Mean-while, he kept honing his talents with Horace Silver,
Billy Cobham and other jazz greats, and went on to head his
own projects.
'Tales from the Hudson',
and 'Two Blocks from the Edge', are still superb, as is the
more recent ‘Nearness of You: The Ballad Book’.
This time, he’s expanded his lineup, drawing on some
great talent, to produce a soulful, at times funk-driven 70-minute
set of remarkably mixed moods. The ten tunes range from mournful
riffs that sound like escapees from a late-night New York
club, to the energized outpourings of the ‘Quindectet’
members, their horns, strings and percussion threaded around
Brecker’s sax solos like meat on a satay stick (with
BLUE KITCHEN
Hot Chilli Sauce, of course-Ed).
The co-proprietor of Lismore's Chopper's music store, Pat
Smith, is a walking advertisement for the benefits of a healthy
eating and exercise program. After taking the advice of local
GP, Dr Andrew Binns, to set about to lose weight, Pat and
his wife, Narelle, drastically revamped their lifestyle. The
results show, and will pay dividends for ever. 'Now that I've
lost so much weight, I look around and it's a shock to see
how many people are really overweight,' says Pat in one of
the profiles featured in this highly motivating work by journalist
Paula Goodyer, former health editor of Cleo.
Although billed as a get-healthy guide for 'anyone who's ever
worried about reaching mid-life feeling flabby and tired',
the user-friendly book is relevant to bodies of all ages and
shapes.
At 40 - which he still looks - former rock guitarist (for
Hush), Les Gock, now 49, told a personal trainer he wanted
a body like you see 'on packets of men's underwear'. He began
eating sensibly, doing weights and regular walking with his
dog. Gock is as fit as a fiddle (that's him on the cover)
but agrees 'it's difficult not to be obese in a Western society.'
Writes Goodyer, 'Just because you've become middle-aged
and chairbound, doesn't mean it's too late to turn it around.
Sedentary middle-aged people can improve their fitness to
return to the same level they were in their 20s.'
The well-illustrated chapters, 'Eat Fit', 'Losing it',
'Age Defiance' and 'The Exercise Prescription' encompass
sensible eating, after explaining dietary and culinary principles,
and the benefits of getting active. A seemingly healthy
intake often has a low 'food count' less than the 25+ different
daily foods recommended by nutritionists, and far below
the 30 advised by authorities in Japan, 'home to some of
the world's longest living people.'
Tips include eating fruit (for the fibre) and drinking water,
than fruit juice, and the latest thinking about cholesterol,
fats, the need for calcium and folate, and vegetarianism:
'A vegetarian diet isn't just about eating a standard Australian
diet minus the meat.'
Roy Hargrove is one of the younger breed of hot US jazz
musicians, but already his credentials are long and impressive.
His trumpet has blazed impressively on an array of albums
over the past decade, winning him plenty of admirers and
a swag of sales.
Amongst the standouts, mostly on the respected Verve label,
which backed this project, are Parker's Mood, a trio tribute
to Charlie Parker, and Habana, an exciting live set, featuring
an array of Cubans, recorded at an outdoor festival in Italy.
The 14-track neo-soul/jazz set showcases the vocal talents
of Erykah Badu, Common, D'Angelo and Marc Cary, with a top
lineup of instrumentalists. Ranging from funk and hip-hop
to crossover jazz, the disc draws on a range of contemporary
talents to (in Hargrove's words) ‘create a world in
which listeners and creators from all genres can participate
- I've always felt that music should not only sound good,
but feel good as well.’
Separated by a large ocean
and two generations, Sharny and Shirley, both wonderful vocalists,
have delivered such fine - and not-dissimilar albums - that
they deserve to be reviewed together.
Russell, a Queensland Conservatorium graduate,
has developed a strong reputation on the Australian jazz scene
as a pianist and vocalist, honing the latter talent after
a near-fatal car accident that would supposedly make it very
difficult for her to sing again. A devout Christian –
while living in Toowoomba, she wrote four Gospel musicals
that have been performed widely - she’s reached great
heights, with this album receiving support from ABC Radio’s
Regional Production Fund.
The musicians are mostly from the Northern
Rivers, and include her pianist brother Stephen, and sister
Helen who plays bass. Sharny has an impish, natural delivery,
with plenty of gusto, and ranges easily from melodic ballads
to Latin swing. The 10-tune set features all-originals, and
is a delight.
So is the latest gem from the venerable Shirley Horn, one
of the few great American vocal legends alive. Her career
includes such highlights that one recent album, the superb
‘I Remember Miles’, was a testament to musical
friends of that period.
The late-night listening queen, Horn has a voice that’s
as warm and mellow as a good brandy, with a great trio and
top guesting by Ahmad Jamal on piano and trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
LOVE
AND DEATH IN KATHMANDU - by Amy Willessee &
Mark Whittaker
(Macmillan rrp AUD$30.00)
The Himalayan
kingdom of Nepal has long captivated visitors but the authors
of this book came not for the mountains but to investigate
the murder of the royal family by none other than the heir
to the throne, Crown Prince Dipendra.
In 2001 news reached Australia that a ‘demigod’
in a ‘faraway land’ donned military fatigues and
shot dead his parents, the King and Queen of Nepal, as well
as his brother, sister and various aunts and uncles, then
turned his guns on himself. ‘He is declared king while
lying in a coma,’ they write, saying the most consistent
story centred on a ‘rift between the queen and the twenty-nine-year-old
crown prince over the woman he loved, an arrestingly beautiful
aristocrat named Devyani Rana.’
The murderer’s ill-fated father, Birendra Shah, was
packed off at the age of 13 to board at England’s prestigious
Eton. Back home, he became a general in the Royal Nepalese
Army and waited his turn as king, marrying his third cousin.
Their son Dipendra was born seven months before his father
ascended the throne, after the then-King died of a heart attack
while hunting tigers. ‘Dippy,’ as he would become
known, was also packed off to Eton, arriving with a love for
firearms, a short temper and a fondness for alcohol. Mates
recall him as a ‘psycho, really scary’ and ‘a
freak… who was always smashing people’s watches
and punching people in a “humorous” way.’
Back in Nepal, he continued to indulge in whisky, pot and
guns, had a Penthouse spread as his screensaver and spent
late nights trawling the internet. His royal cousins urged
him to start acting his age and consider his future role as
their monarch, but Dippy continued to live up to his name,
ann-ouncing that he intended to marry a sophisticated woman
from a family disapproved of by his mother.
On the fateful night, primed on ganja and grog, and carrying
a pistol, shotgun and M16 automatic, Dipendra entered the
family’s billiard room and created a scene of carnage
that ended when he shot himself in the head. After desperate
attempts to save his life, he died two days later, having
bizarrely been crowned King and delivering to the monarchy’s
many opponents, notably the Maoists, a propaganda coup of
unimaginable proportions.
Snare Drum, Tea-Chest Bass and Ukulele? You
heard it right - this trio of talent take a host of jazz standards
on a new spin, tongue-in-cheek, but played with enough irreverent
skill to get the purists frowning and smiling at the same
time.
From Feathered Lenny (NYC 2002): "Through
the aromatic fog of smoke & sweat, I could make out the
silhouette of a trio through the swinging doors. The swish
of brush upon snare, a cool paced walking bass, a lightning
spark of a diminished scale reached out and dragged me into
the bar where kids of 18 and groovers of 50 alike gaped in
awe at the Old Spice Boys.
Sticking their necks out, getting close to the
bone by the skin of their teeth - three supremely skilled players
straining and stretching the jazz canon sideways to breaking point.
Then it snaps back with a thwack into familiar shape and swing.
They're on a joyful jaunt through heavy musical territory - the
music is powered by courage, tempered by the limits of minimalist
instrumentation - but to play Miles or Ellington on a ukulele, a
snare and a tea-chest you must have a staunch respect. I was witnessing
a potential paradigm shift in the direction of jazz, and Coltrane
was never going to sound the same again"
As with all the best musical wits, underpinning
the hilarity is expert musicianship. Probably one to put in the
CD stacker on random while you cook up a storm, 'Alibi of Birdland'
proves there are more good things coming out of the Rainbow Region
other than BLUE KITCHEN GOURMET
FOODS.
'Alibi of Birdland' is distributed in Australia
by Vitamin Distribution. Or order online through Chaos
Music.
THE TYRANT'S
NOVEL- byThomas Keneally
(Doubleday rrp AUD$35.00)
With its daunting title, grim
cover and bleak message, this book is one that the prolific
Thomas Keneally might have preferred not to write, but conscience
calls, as he reveals in the ‘The Visitor’s Preface’,
where two writers, one of them clearly the author, enter a
detention centre to meet an asylum-seeker who has won a UN
award for ‘trying to keep his fellow internees sane
and healthy.’
An outspoken critic of Canberra’s policies, Keneally
penned this novel to spearhead his campaign against mandatory
detention. The chilling book humanises ‘foreign’
refugees by giving the central character, an Iraqi, the western
name of Alan Sheriff and attributing European social values
– drinks parties, barbecues and the like - to his country
of origin.
They might seem ‘like us’ but there is no mistaking
the reality, for the nation’s president, ‘Great
Uncle’, a double for Saddam Hussein, rules through the
brutality of his omnipresent security forces, the Overguard,
and unites the nation by fuelling endless conflict with his
neighbour - ‘the Others’ – the real Iran.
Sheriff, well known for his
writings, has received a US contract for a novel, along with
a $40,000 advance that liberates him from dependency on the
state, which has the power to censor books. Sheriff and his
actress wife Sarah live a comfortable existence amongst other
cultural figures who make the required compromises to remain
in work - or to stay out of jail. Sheriff is sucked into the
vortex of patronage when his wife dies suddenly and the commissars
see his talent and overseas connections as an ideal way to
sanitise the regime’s image before a crucial UN vote
on the nation’s crippling economic sanctions.
Thus is born the ‘Tyrant’s Novel’, a work
to be penned by Sheriff but claimed by Great Uncle, with the
manuscript to be completed within a month – or else.
Sheriff agonises his way through the task, handing the work
to the president after undergoing the required cleansing ritual
of showers, cavity inspections and liberal applications of
Great Uncle’s favourite cologne, Tommy Hilfiger. The
delighted dictator offers him a villa and other rewards: ‘I
was to be made the Emperor’s caged canary.’ A
broken man, Sheriff flees into exile on an oil tanker and
declares himself a refugee when the ship reaches international
waters.
