Oeuvre rule: I'm only vaguely familiar with the band Real Estate, and Frankie Cosmos to an even lesser degree. I like Real Estate, but not as much as Sunny Day Real Estate, and they have rather different vibes. Real Estate is super chill, laid back, mellow and pleasant--not as overwrought (in a good way) and thunderous as Sunny Day. They are like the final wave from the heyday of indie rock from the 2000s (before all the bands got Spotified) and their first two albums were accordingly praised by Pitchfork. Frankie Cosmos seemed to come slightly later, though only by a couple years, and similarly does not "go for the jugular," so to speak, but again I'm hardly vaguely familiar with them. To be clear, I like what I've heard, and while I have revisited Real Estate a bit more in the course of reading this book, now I will need to do that with Frankie Cosmos in the course of writing this review.
This is because the book is authored by a member from each of those two bands. It's not quite accurate to say that. The book is "curated" by these two musicians, and they must have edited a great deal of it themselves, but they only contribute an essay or two individually, and much of the work involved tapping connections to numerous bands and requesting their participation in the project. Beyond that, they wrote an introduction to the book, and introductions to each essay. They deserve praise in bringing this book to fruition, because there really doesn't seem to be anything else like it, but as might be expected in any book of essays collected from over a dozen musicians, the quality varies.
***
Books of short stories or essays are always difficult to review. You don't want to give short shrift to certain contributors when they are all placed on equal footing. In this case, however, it's unrealistic to expect a review to mention every single essay (there are somewhere between 40 and 45). Many of them are very short--1 or 2 pages--and feel slightly "phoned in." Each musician/writer does consider the topic distinctly and tries to write meaningfully about it, but it feels like a creative writing class prompt, at times.
You know what it really feels like? It feels like a big zine, the type I might have put out during college when I solicited contributions from friends, about 50% of which were musicians. It makes the book fun in a way, and it is not "amateurish" in its presentation, but yes, the content sometimes feels that way. Am I judging all the contributors that are under 40 slightly more harshly than maybe is warranted? Maybe, but I don't think so. Basically, this feels like a "coffee table book"--in terms of the photography in the book and its general appearance and production--and that's not a bad thing.
Ultimately, the best parts of this book are the recommendations (Du Pain et des Idees in Paris for the greatest croissant, and L'As du Fallafel; Durumzade in Istanbul for durum--all of which come from Hermon Mehari ), which are also sometimes anticipated to be obsolete. I am thinking of "Sweet 16th and the Temporary Lives of Sandwiches and People" by Adam Schatz, a saxophonist for Japanese Breakfast. I can only presume that it is the most memorable essay (though I also think the closing "It's Not about the Pho" by Sebastian Modak is the most artful) because his co-worker wrote what is basically one of the greatest memoirs of the 21st century (at present), so Schatz really wanted to show up for this. Tour Food is also still an active website and may be a great resource for many people, and I will be checking it out shortly (nothing was included for Italy; it may be more US-centric). In any case, his essay topic is basically nostalgia:
"Until very recently, on North Sixteenth Street in East Nashville, Tennessee, there was a bakery right on the corner called Sweet 16th, run by a couple of New Englanders whop opened the spot in 2004. I ended up there for the first time seven years later, not because I heard it was amazing, but because it was a breakfast sandwich near me [what he usually types into his phone to find breakfast on tour]. I got the egg casserole on a biscuit sandwich, immediately translated as 'One to Go!' by owner Ellen Einstein at the counter, who shouted it back to the kitchen. A few minutes later it showed up wrapped in paper, the kind of hot that your smart brain knows you ought to count to one hundred before eating. But then your idiot hands shove it into your stupid mouth before you count to fifteen, because that's how good it looks." (116)
To be more precise, the book is about the odd "golden hour" period between Sound Check and Show Time when bands usually just have food delivered for their Rider, but sometimes venture out into the city to find something more unique and special. And also about the people along the way--the promoters and fans and organizers and record shop owners that also put bands up at their house and cook for them. I guess, if there is a definitive book for musicians on the topic of food and the concept of "family-style" dining, this is it.
***
Some of the moments in these essays are quite beautiful and touching, so Bleeker and Pyenson occasionally strike gold:
"As the van rolled out of Budapest, I was overcome with memories of my baba that centered around food and eating: how she would hand-crimp her homemade pierogi with the tines of a fork; my dad, aunt, and grandparents, crowded around the kitchen table at my childhood home in Toronto, eating headcheese doused in vinegar (my cousins and I were nauseated by the smell); the year or so when Baba seemed to confuse different tomato sauces and served after-school snacks of pizza with a Tostitos base or tortilla chips with Ragu for dipping. In the backyard of that Toronto home, her vegetable garden bore bumper crops of tomatoes, cucumbers, sorrel, and herbs that were used for soups and pickling, or just picked off the vine and eaten over the sink in the middle of an August heat wave. I wept silently as I realized it was logistically and financially impossible to get back for the funeral. 'Don't worry too much,' my dad consoled me when we finally spoke on the phone. 'Baba would have been horrified that you'd skip a gig for her.'" (172, "Baba" by Steve Sladkowski)
The main introduction to the book lays out its mission statement like a thesis, and the blurby-intros are similar, but Bleeker's intro to Chapter 2, about Wellness on the Road, strikes a deeper chord of vulnerability:
"As long as I've been playing shows, people have been taking photos of me onstage, and as long as I can remember, I've struggled with my weight and with compulsive overeating. Back in 2001, future Real Estate bandmates and I started a Strokes cover band to perform at a friend's sweet sixteen. We all went to the thrift store to buy secondhand dress shirts and army jackets, doing our best to impersonate our skinny idols. The show was a resounding success, but when a photo of the band surfaced a week or so later, I spent a significant amount of time on MS Paint trying to crop and edit my belly out of it. This technique did not work." (104)
Obviously, these more melancholic moments are tinged with humor, and it is a very funny book at times:
"But because of the night-and-day difference between fast food in Japan and the US, I feel so comfortable eating at rest stops and konbinis. Not only is it delicious, but it's really cheap: It's a miraculous win-win. You're like, 'Oh my god, this was only five bucks! I got a great meal, I don't feel like shit, and I'm not gonna shit my brains out after this.' And if I do, there's a bidet at the 7-Eleven, the seat is heated, and it's singing to you." (214, "Rest Stop: Japan" by Sen Morimoto)
There is a heavy emphasis on rest stop culture, and what I gather is that they are much better in the U.K. and Japan than they are in the U.S. But the first of these "interludes" on rest stops includes a conversation with Mark Ibold and the author of a book that seems like a forebear to this one (Michael Stern and Eat Your Way Across the U.S.A.). The book came out before a certain Pavement tour, and the story of the "throwed roll" may or may not be an homage to the infamous rock throwing as depicted in Pavements:
"I was trying to make eye contact with the people who worked there, and they were all busy doing things, but then there was a guy on the complete other end of the place [Lambert's] who kind of looked at me, and I waved to him. And when my hand went up in the air, he just threw this roll and it went straight into my palm. And I caught it from, I would say, at least fifty feet across the room....I remember looking into my hands, like, dumbfounded, and I was trying to tell my bandmates that a guy had just thrown this roll--I mean, nobody even saw it, it happened so quickly--and I was about to tell my bandmates that this had happened when another one came flying at us and hit our drummer right in the face!....And then everybody just starting cracking up, and somebody came over and gave us a table. I think they served everything in giant cast-iron pans, just, like, ridiculous portions with meat slopping over them, just gigantic, and I think once you sat down, for your rolls, they brought you these little tubs of....what's it called? It's not maple syrup....it's not honey....[MS: Sorghum, or molasses....] Sorghum, sorghum, yeah." (55)
Probably not because getting hit in the face with a roll by a restaurant worker is funnier than getting hit with a rock by a dumb festival-goer.
I said there weren't many "famous" musicians in it, but that's not totally true---there is also Damon from Galaxie 500/Damon & Naomi, Chris Frantz from Talking Heads, Devendra Banhart, Kevin Morby, Geologist, Robin Pecknold, Sadie Dupuis and of course Bob Mould. I was familiar with all of them, and also Greta Kline though I had to be reminded she was the force behind Frankie Cosmos (and not a nepo-baby per se, but paranoid she might be). Her essay is rather amusing, as are all of the above. I am finding now that I want to say all sorts of things about this book. Like how there is an inordinate fascination with gas station food, and why I like Fleet Foxes more than I did before (I always liked them, to be clear) after Hunter Biden's appreciation for them became public knowledge. And Subway. Subway is mentioned at least three times in this book, maybe four--and each time it is basically almost the entire topic of the essay. I find most in common with Bob Mould on this point:
"It's not the same anymore, but thirty years ago Subway was great. It was consistent nationwide, and the bread was always baked fresh on-site. Yeah, the loaves were baked from pre-made rolls, but so are my favorite Hokkaido cheesecakes at te Westfield mall. It was high quality, it was cheap, and it was consistent. I think psychologically for me, when I'm on the road, consistency--any kind of consistency--is valuable. Every day is an iteration of the same motif, but things do change from town to town. Back then, you could count on Subway. We could all agree on it, it was fast, and we could eat it on the run. Sometimes when you're touring, those are the things that are most important." (108)
Having gone to Subway many, many times with a vegetarian resigned to Veggie Delights, Pecknold indicates that may or may not have been the right idea:
"My savior and my destroyer became the Subway 'Veggie Patty,' a gray-brown melange of unidentifiable vegetal ingredients, damp from the microwave. Mouthfeel of sieved paper pulp or marinated sponge. Flavor nonexistent to net negative; it was so powerfully antiflavor that it siphoned and destroyed the flavor of anything surrounding it. Just a volume of calories, a shape, a wet wallet of mashed peas and binding agent around which I'd pile lettuce, spinach, carrots, salt and pepper, and oil and vinegar, all encased in a sleeve of dubious bread." (183)
We learn that if you are a musician, and you can make it to the next level where you get an early afternoon billing at a festival, you must go to Osheaga Festival in Montreal--if only for the food. In fact this chapter made me want to try to be in a band again specifically so I could justify that (it doesn't seem the catering tent is available to festival go-ers--just bands--though I'm sure the food for everyone is better on the whole, too).
And in Iceland, it may not be best to go for haute-cuisine:
"The first course arrived, and I swear I thought someone was playing a practical joke on us. It was a quarter-sized piece of burnt chicken skin with a tendril of dried moss or lichen on it. Second course: one single wild carrot and two flakes of sea salt. Third course (twenty minutes later), everyone's hunger now manifesting as manic smiles and raised eyebrows: a tiny fermented quail egg on a bed of hay. Fourth course, and we're all losing it in the damp basement, silent and sectioned off with a red curtain, blond-haired servers dancing in and out of sight: a tiny mushroom cap with compost-tasting muck stuffed inside. Sixth course: one single drop of cream the size of a dime on a slate slab." (65, Flora and Fauna by Meg Duffy). [She later goes for a couple hot dogs and maybe that does not sound very appetizing but if you are in Iceland, I would recommend them just as I would in Chicago, because they are different and unique.]
There's probably more I could say about this book, but I think that's probably enough. I think in writing this, I realized that the quality is generally higher than not.
Some of us idolize the lifestyle of the touring musician because it's an incredibly difficult thing for regular people to make their way around the world and see all there is to see--travel is one of the key defining "interests" or "hobbies" of regular people. "I want to travel," they say. Meanwhile many of us working stiffs get 2 weeks out of the year to squeeze everything we can into it. You really need to be strategic, and patient, if you are aware of all that is out there, and want to see as much of it as you can. Of course, the downside to this for musicians is that they don't have the the time to properly explore (this is what I also here from regular working people that travel for work, which I've always been envious of but maybe not so much as before). If there is any "message" to this book, it is to explore whenever you are able, absolutely--and to even prioritize that exploration, rather than submitting to the grueling city-per-day schedule that international touring sometimes demands. As I recall, Shellac did not really tour the U.S. much at all. They would go to Europe once a year for Primavera, and then play wherever they wanted to go on a vacation. That to me is obviously the ideal arrangement, but not everyone is so blessed to have that option.
And musicians may not alway be blessed to have a generous per diem, and though tours are not likely to make a stop at Burlington (local musicians are more prevalent in the back room there, though I believe it's not unheard of to have people in from out of town), if they do, as long as I am in this apartment, I will humbly offer a place to stay and my own "basic" recommendations in the surrounding area. Because now I know just how meaningful that can be, and the types of lifelong connections of the most beautiful sort that can be created through this act of generosity. I think reading this book will cause others to act accordingly.
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