Music to make grown men cry – only a few words on John Grant

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

Sunday night was the fourth of perhaps fifth time I have seen John Grant in concert.

I first came across him in a review of a Czars album in Uncut magazine from more years ago than I can now imagine. It was effusive enough to send me out to buy it and I have been a fan ever since. The album was Goodbye and I can remembering it coming like a shot out of the blue. I don’t know what type of un-pleasant loud beat music I was listening to at the time but this was something else. Songs of heartbreak and soft, delicate breakdown. After that there was a album of cover versions which was made up from off-cuts and b-sides and included a bit of Abba, Neil Sedaka and Song for the Siren.

And then nothing.

Over the next few years I would get out the albums and play them usually late on a Sunday afternoon when it was time for some blue notes in the air. I even managed to pick up a couple of the earlier Czars albums. Through them all there was an amazing voice and lingering melancholy.

So when news started to circulate that their singer, John Grant, had sorted himself out and was ready to make new music I was more than excited.

We missed him when he first played in Liverpool supporting Midlake and the following year he played we missed him again. But on that second occasion we told others to go and they came away converted.

The Queen of Denmark came out and it was brilliant and then we finally got to see him at Latitude Festival. He played on the main stage in the middle of the afternoon. There wasn’t a huge crowd but he was good playing the new songs.

Later that year we saw him again playing with just a piano to back him up in Halifax Minster – 900 years of history suited the songs. He played some new songs that had been written in Iceland and finished with Little Pink House.

Two years later there was a new album, Pale Green Ghosts, and we finally got to see him play in Liverpool at The East Village Arts Club. It was rammed to the ceiling and as the dance squelches of synths played out over the sweaty room it at times felt we were all in some HNG New York disco from a lost time in the mid 1970’s.

We saw him again in the Phil in Liverpool playing with a full orchestra. The songs were still magnificent but they were constrained by the need to keep within the discipline of playing with the orchestra.

There was none of that on Sunday night when he played the Phil again. He played fast and loose with the songs and if we had been close enough to see I am fairly sure he was smiling the whole way through. Sometimes the noise took us back to the HNG Disco we saw in The East Village Arts Club and other times he was just sat back with his piano taking us through the slow desolation of Queen of Denmark and then Glacier. Sometimes the dirty bass was so loud it felt as if the concrete under our seats was vibrating with the music.

Through it all there was his voice – rich and human – riding above the noise of the music. Ideally he would have played all the songs from all three of his albums and then thrown in some old Czars’ songs as well but there wasn’t time for that. if there was a disappointment it was that he didn’t play Where Dreams Go to Die. But I will be seeing him again and there will be time enough for that.

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We have Pinchos

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

People were going to coming over the course of the evening so it seemed sensible to have a roll out of dishes – some hot and some cold.

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Part of the morning was taken up with a hunt for quails’ eggs. I was told that they don’t lay this time of year but that didn’t stop me having a go trying to find some. I thought I had struck lucky when I found three boxes in The International Store but it transpired they were all past their best before date and so they were not for sale.

I got some prawns instead and in the grocers I picked up rocket, three different types of mushroom and bag of multi-coloured cherry tomatoes.

The rest of the day was taken up with a bit of cooking and a lot of assembling.

We had the following:-

Gilda – peppers, anchovies, olives and small cocktail onions on a stick
Blue cheese and membrillo (quince cheese)
Pale white sheets cheese with parsley and and beetroot
Crostini with rocket and walnut pests
Crostini with a cannelloni spread
Crostini with mushrooms – they had marinaded all afternoon in olive oil, lemon juice and garlic
Prawns fried with garlic and cayenne pepper
Sliced chorizo
Padron peppers fried with salt
Cherry tomatoes with giant capers and olive
Cherry tomatoes with mozzarella and basil and dressed with truffle oil
Tortilla
and lots of rolls

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Come the morning it had all gone and our recycling bin is full of empty bottles of Prosecco and I am hoping that there is some one out there with a sore head after they finished off my bottle of rhubarb flavoured vodka.

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Chic was played along with Sister Sledge and the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever is still on the turntable although it has stopped going round. I also spent 2o minutes tearing the attic apart trying to find Earth, Wind & Fire’s Greatest Hits.

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Getting ready for a big birthday

Posted on February 6, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

We are celebrating an upcoming birthday this weekend. There will be fair amount of Prosecco and good food drunk. There is a danger that some of the Prosecco will be coloured with some dark pink rhubarb flavoured vodka that has been lurking in the cellar these last few months.

The food will include hunks of toasted bread smeared with bright garlicky green rocket and walnut pesto. I have just made it now in readiness. Bags of rocket from the grocer mixed with walnuts, garlic, good cheese and plenty of olive oil.

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Calcots

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

I was in Lunya on Thursday to buy cheese to eat whilst sat down listening to the new and final David Bowie album. I had managed to secure a copy on pristine black vinyl and we were going to give it some proper cogitation. By the corner of the counter there was a whicker basket filled with bunches of calcots held together with black tape – yours at 8 for £2.00. They were too great a temptation so I bought £4.00’s worth.

One of my favourite cookbooks is a book on Catalan Cooking by Colman Andrews. It was first published in 1988 and was then republished in 1997. It was the republishing that brought it to my attention by way of an article that appeared in one of the Sunday papers. The book was given to me as a Christmas present that year and since then it has become suitably tatty and stained. It has in it my favourite recipe for stuffing a turkey which involves sherry and black pudding, a fantastically evocative description of the La Boqueria Market and a half dozen pages given over to the calcot.

A calcot is basically a large leek sized spring onion that has been grown in trenches packed up with earth to blanch the thick bulbous stems. Colman Andrews describes how they are eaten in a festival atmosphere cooked over open flames so the outer layers are charred and blackened. Once cooked they are wrapped in newspapers to steam. To eat you peel of the burnt layers of skin to get to the soft sweet centre, this is then dipped into a pungent sauce and lowered into the mouth. A bib helps.

Back at home I had thought I would have a go cooking my 16 calcots over the BBQ. There is something satisfying in lighting up a BBQ in the dark of January but they strong wind and driving rain meant that it was not a particularly practical option so I had to make to with the grill.

It worked reasonably well although I am not sure they came out as black as they should have been.

The pungent sauce was made with roasted hazelnuts, roasted red peppers, a whole blanched bulb of garlic, a dash of cayenne pepper, a tablespoon of tomato sauce and olive oil. All this was crushed to a satisfying pulp in a heavy pestle and mortar.

We ate it all with fried potatoes, chicken in paprika, lamb chops and chickpeas with spinach. We also had a couple of razor clams which also had to be lowered into the mouth.

Very good it was all too. We listened to Royal Trux and Make Up. Scuzzed up rock’n’soul. Made to be played loud.