music: food of the gods
it has been a mad week, following all the events in NYC and covering the UN World Summit on the web. been working wacked hours. boss is not happy about that. but when it comes down to it, i'd do it whether i got paid or not. i probably won't (get paid, that is), as there are various hoops to go through to make that happen, which i just don't have time jump through. bottom line is i love what i do, so that's why i do it.
i left the office around 10:45pm tonight (i think just a tad earlier than last). i used to work in a music store where the whole last shift would always leave together -- you'd never leave just 1 or 2 guys to close. there were stories about people jumping the last man out, and ripping off the shop big time. well, i locked up the Oxfam Int'l office without incident, and cycled homeward, going my usual route through Oxford city center....
...when i heard the drumming...
not having eaten dinner, i was famished. of course my mind started roiling: to eat, to drum, to eat, to...
i stopped. there were 4 of them, 3 on various sized djembes, and one hippish-looking dude carrying one of those biggish, metalish-looking bass drum type jobs slung around his shoulder, like in a samba band or something. perhaps what sealed the deal for me, and made me stop, was the decent sized crowd. i am a sucker for an audience. plus i knew i looked like a foppish (foolish?) Oxford professor, with my dress pants tucked into my socks (hey, small price to pay to keep the nice trousers from the bike chain -- at least it saves on dry cleaning, which is usuriously expensive here in the UK).
of the 4, the youngest, Ryan, was the best: a decent leader, he tried somewhat successfully to call out tempo changes and stops; plus he had chops. he had a very sweet sounding high pitched djembe, its plastic head giving it a nice crisp high end. we traded licks and fills, pleasing the crowd. i was playing a smallish metal drum also with tight plastic heads, but using sticks, so i could easily ride on top, cut through the other drums, and make the enclosed building space snap, crackle and pop.
the crowd grew. and cheered. then the one female drummer got up and started dancing. and soon some passersby followed on. by this time the pubs had let out, so several folks were clearly quite buzzed.
in all, a short, delicious evening out.
got home, made grilled cod (little oil, lemon, green onion) with yellow and red peppers and quartered zucchini (italian olive oil, fresh from Frascati); plus, in keeping with the wacked nature of this week: a top-of-the-head, spur-of-the-moment, clean-out-the-frig pasta dish: shells with broccoli, cherry tomatos, crumbled Danish blue and a healthy dusting of hungarian paprika. yum.
i left the office around 10:45pm tonight (i think just a tad earlier than last). i used to work in a music store where the whole last shift would always leave together -- you'd never leave just 1 or 2 guys to close. there were stories about people jumping the last man out, and ripping off the shop big time. well, i locked up the Oxfam Int'l office without incident, and cycled homeward, going my usual route through Oxford city center....
...when i heard the drumming...
not having eaten dinner, i was famished. of course my mind started roiling: to eat, to drum, to eat, to...
i stopped. there were 4 of them, 3 on various sized djembes, and one hippish-looking dude carrying one of those biggish, metalish-looking bass drum type jobs slung around his shoulder, like in a samba band or something. perhaps what sealed the deal for me, and made me stop, was the decent sized crowd. i am a sucker for an audience. plus i knew i looked like a foppish (foolish?) Oxford professor, with my dress pants tucked into my socks (hey, small price to pay to keep the nice trousers from the bike chain -- at least it saves on dry cleaning, which is usuriously expensive here in the UK).
of the 4, the youngest, Ryan, was the best: a decent leader, he tried somewhat successfully to call out tempo changes and stops; plus he had chops. he had a very sweet sounding high pitched djembe, its plastic head giving it a nice crisp high end. we traded licks and fills, pleasing the crowd. i was playing a smallish metal drum also with tight plastic heads, but using sticks, so i could easily ride on top, cut through the other drums, and make the enclosed building space snap, crackle and pop.
the crowd grew. and cheered. then the one female drummer got up and started dancing. and soon some passersby followed on. by this time the pubs had let out, so several folks were clearly quite buzzed.
in all, a short, delicious evening out.
got home, made grilled cod (little oil, lemon, green onion) with yellow and red peppers and quartered zucchini (italian olive oil, fresh from Frascati); plus, in keeping with the wacked nature of this week: a top-of-the-head, spur-of-the-moment, clean-out-the-frig pasta dish: shells with broccoli, cherry tomatos, crumbled Danish blue and a healthy dusting of hungarian paprika. yum.
posted by Joel Bassuk at 1:01 AM
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