Piety Street Studios Blog

shrimp and tasso pasta

Written by Administrator
Wednesday, 26 August 2009 09:23

 

As I was making this I had to run out to get something. On the way back I saw a crack ho on St. Claude, walking in that determined but going nowhere step that involves twitches, head turning, quick stops followed by quick starts and frequent looking back. She could have used a good meal but food was not on her menu.

 

so, this recipe is a prayer in honor of the lost souls  of New Orleans, the many thousands of homeless neighbors, the squatters, and the millions of ghosts who live in the humidity and hiss at us as we ride bikes in the night.

 

 

1 pound of shaped pasta of choice.. I use Tinkyada rice pasta or Penne

or whatever you like

4 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup tasso ham, cut into matchsticks

1 cup chopped onion

1 cup chopped  mixed hot and sweet  peppers of choice

1/4 cup chopped green onions

1/4 cup chopped celery

1/2 tsp dried thyme or fresh

1/4 tsp oregano

1/4 tsp  black, white and cayenne pepper

1/8 tsp onion powder

1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning blend (such as Tony Chachere's®)

1/4 teaspoon hot sauce (such as Tabasco®)

1 cup (yogurt, sour cream or heavy cream)

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 pound fresh shrimp peeled and depoopified

1 cup of cooked chicken breast cubed

chopped dried shrimp 1/4 cup

1/4 cup  cilantro

1 chopped tomatillo

1 cup stock of choice

 

saute onion, 1/2 the tasso, peppers, celery,green onions until translucent

add cilantro, tomatillo, seasonings and hot sauce

cook a few minutes

add cup of stock

bring to a slight bubble boil

add shrimp

cook 2 minutes

add chicken

 

mix the cheese and sour cream (you can certainly use heavy cream,  but I hate it, makes me wanna sleep, cant tune my gt, it seems like a textural presentation thing as the flavors take over the sour cream as they would the heavy cream... enough fat is enough)

 

add the cheese mix to the rest and stir. put in the oven to keep warm while you cook the pasta.

 

mix it up and there you are.

good substituting crawfish tails or scallops, or skip the chicken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PC story 2007

Written by Administrator
Wednesday, 26 August 2009 08:55

the moon was amazing, near full over the gulf.

How can something we see so often remain so compelling ?

the beach water is 88 degrees.

got in about 6:45 after a meandering drive from NO.

D had a bushel of oysters. He shucks faster than you can get them prepared and down the hatch. There was so much liquid in these oysters, gets all over you when you eat them. yum.

 

ate many saltines and more horseradish than at a seder.

D's neighbor S brought a bottle of Crown Royal- with the cute little bag.

no, I didn't drink any.

D drank some, says he's slipped a bit in the last week, after a month or so clean..clean if you consider gobs of klonapin clean but after his post k coke binge ended, he had worse panic attacks than the next guy in line at Dachau, so clean is relative, as always.

 

D smoked a bunch of cigarettes, too. He had said he quit.

S the neighbor got shit faced on crown and sprite.

His wife and daughter came over. they were nice. Wife was stunning, especially for the Redneck Riviera- 41 and still wearing Barbie aerobic dress  with matching teen daughter. It worked for her. Her sister was visiting and they went off to play Scrabble.

 

Then M came over (the Coast Guard guy I gave the 69ing frogs to for a wedding gift - the marriage lasted 2 months-he still has the frogs)

and they wanted to eat, so we went to a sports/karaoke bar .

D sang "right place, wrong time".

7 year old girls sang Amazing Grace, reading the words off the screen- at least     they could read but why were they in a bar at 9:30?

while their parents applauded ? PC is a Christian town all the way.

the bar was loud and I felt panic coming on. went outside and watched baseball on the patio. People smoked on the patio. I reached for the ativan.

a few more friends of D arrived and they ate wings and fries. Wings confuse me.

 

I had a salad and a near sushi grilled tuna sandwich.

better slow down on the tuna, as my mercury levels might be getting bad.

I begged to leave, so we did but they all wanted a real liquor drink... the sports bar was beer only and I had a freaking 32 oz coke, which is probably why I'm still awake ...

so we went to a strip mall bar/liquor store- on the way home, at least -and they drank  at an outside table, looking up at highrises in progress.

Inside were many odd creatures , yakking away, drinking Jaeger-bombs. The place was a bright as an interrogation room. I checked out their wine selection and they had maybe 2 drinkable bottles !  Lots of boones farm.

 

D's scene is like high school only they are all in their 30's.

It appears that it's something of a big deal to his friends for me to be here and they have things planned, but I told them I just needed to rest.

Still, I might go out in a boat and snorkel in 30' water and spear fish. Not if they are drinking !

 

PC seems like atlantic city, transient, drunk, lots of meth kids,  ex-soviet and Czech girls on bikes, endless tacky souvenir stands and

miles of high rise condos and hotels in progress.

While outside the liquor place, a hooker in short shorts and see through mesh stockings with a halter top, was on her cel phone, having trouble connecting with her john. We had watched the guy drive up 3 times looking for the rendezvous.

She had a new Suburban with a baby seat in the back .

D's friends were actually calling out to her, considered her attractive.  she was grotty. More make up than a network anchor and she'd already bleached her hair so much she'll have that crazy balding part you see in 50 something gals who have gone ballistic with the hair alterations in their youth.

Not a great look...

I got that awful olfactory remembrance of spandex and vaginal deodorant- 30 years away from working at The Spa and I can still well up the smell of a working girl, though I wasn't close enough to her for an actual whiff. Thank the universe for small favors.

 

we got home around 11, late for me . S wouldn't leave, kept drinking and was belligerent. He kept being very physical with us, hugs followed by pushes and attempted head locks. I hid in my room for a while. D slipped  a klonapin in S's beer. S passed out fast. We watched a bit of Iron Chef America while S groaned on the floor.

Eventually we woke him up to try to get him home- it wasn't easy - he's a huge guy.  S chased me with menace then attacked D in true fighting style , so D got a shoulder under him and flipped him over a couch.  Steve cracked his head on the floor and passed out again. Sumo drunks. He stayed out for a while.

At 12:30 , D got him up and out the door and walked him home in stagger step. Seemed like 3am. How'd I get those bruises ?

 

Saw S's wife at the beach in the AM. she said "you guys had a late night."

S didn't remember anything past eating oysters and drinking crown and he wondered why he was so sore.

He did not recall his violent acts and we didn't tell him that D kicked his ass.

That afternoon I did make it out in the boat and 2 dolphins came up as we idled a mile off shore.. never been on the ocean in a boat, never seen a dolphin.

I guess that makes my mini vacation a rousing success.

 

Peter Stampfel's Notes for Dook Of The Beatniks

Written by peter stampfel
Wednesday, 26 August 2009 08:16

 

 

 

 

Big Slop Buckets/ Peter Stampfel

 

In the 60s I read a William Burroughs book in which he ranted about

dumb American desires, including “love love love in big

slop buckets.” Now there, I thought, is a song. Antonia and I tried

writing it in the 60s, but it ended up a throwaway. Took me about three

decades to get it right. The sounds at the end come from a hog

calling contest. Mark Bingham, who produced,

arranged, and recorded this album, remembered he had it on tape,  and

thought it would fit perfectly. As usual, he was right.

 

 

 

Ooma Looma Messy Dessy/ Peter and Zoe Stampfel

 

Our family was in Antigua, staying with relatives of Genney, our

nanny. Some of the cousins showed our daughters, Zoe and

Lily, a hand-clapping rhyme called “Ooma Looma Messy Dessy.” Now

there, I thought, is a song. The rhyme itself, with some variations

at the end, made a perfect chorus. Zoe helped me with one of the

verses. Later on I found out that this rhyme/game was also common in many

parts of the eastern US.

 

 

Our Lady of Oklahoma/ Peter Stampfel

 

My Catholic upbringing shows up here. It keeps on keeping on, like the

Energizer Easter Bunny. The phrase “our lady of Oklahoma”

popped into my head one day as I was looking at a shop window on

Bedford Street in the Village. Popping up immediately after was,

Oklahoma? But Oklahoma felt OK. Just taken as a word, it’s a fine

word, as most state names are. And Oklahoma has a good beat as

well. A lot of states have good names, but not so many have a good

beat. Generally speaking, a word has to have at least four syllables

to get a beat going, although four or more syllables does not

guarantee a good beat. No disparagement intended. I have

a lot of friends from Oklahoma. Maybe my subconscious was

reacting to the fact that Oklahoma has had more than its share of

hard luck over the years.

“Bites the bag” was a short-lived late 60s expression meaning it’s

really bad. The song is a combination rant and prayer.  Rants are fun

to write every once in a while. Feels better to write prayers, though. I wrote a really cool tune to Hail Mary, which except for Now I Lay Me was the only prayer from my childhood that tugged at my heart. I also liked that it was shorter than the other prayers.

 

 

 

 

Wisconsin Honeymoon/ Peter Stampfel

 

Some songs have a chord change  where the bridge starts three half steps above the major. In this song, which is in G, the bridge goes to Bb.

I first figured out this change from a couple of Jerome Kern songs (“Long Ago and Far Away” and “All Through the Day”). It also comes up in my

fave Elton John song, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” This song was

originally an instrumental I made up just to

work this structure trick, which I eventually employed

in “Big Slop Buckets” as well as the last song on this album, “Holy Terror.”

 

After I got the chords down I thought, now it needs words.

I wanted to write about something really great, to fit the really great

melody and chords. The first thing that came to mind was the

honeymoon Betsy and I had in Wisconsin in the summer of 1982.

They really were the most delicious mashed potatoes in the world—the further north you go, the longer the sun shines in the summer, which I believe enhances’ the crops’ sugar level. We drove on two lane blacktops for almost all of the 1,500 miles we put on the rental car. In northern Wisconsin, we didn’t see any foreign cars at all, just like 1950. Every day was perfect (except when Betsy got a speeding ticket). The circus

museum in Baraboo had some amazing instruments, like these different-sized bells at the end of bent steel bars maybe five feet long. You’d pull

the bar and let it go. The harder you pulled, the longer it would ring.

It had a range of an octave and a half.

 

 

 

 

New Adam in the Garden/ Antonia and Peter Stampfel

 

Here is another traditional song we force to

submit to our twisted ways. Antonia did most of the words, and had

the new chord ideas.

 

 

 

 

Black Leather Swamp Nazi/ Antonia and Peter Stampfel

 

Antonia and I came up with this title in the mid 60s, and the song

followed about a year later. Black leather had a scarier image back

then.

 

 

 

 

Beware the Chupacabra/ Peter Stampfel

 

A chupacabra is a mythical Latin American beast that sucks goats’ blood. In the 90s I was approached by a guy who was doing a sleazy movie

about chupacabras that shape-shifted into bimbos. He wanted a

movie song. The movie never happened, I don’t think. Anyway, he never

paid me anything, and dropped out of touch. Delighted he forced me to write this swell song, though.

 

 

 

 

Dook of the Beatniks/ Peter Stampfel

 

For years I had this rant, which basically went, “There are no beatniks! Never were!” The whole idea, I had been told by someone in San Francisco in April of 1958, started when a bunch of what were then called bohemians were

sitting around and decided to invent a fake movement for the purpose of putting on straight people. But the bohemians had allies, most of whom were unaware of each other. There was the jazz-oriented hipsters, the folk/lefty crowd, the Harry Smith-influenced bunch, who thought the music was more important than the politics, and, hell, gays and motorcycle gangs. Then there were the young members of a growing cohort of kids like myself, who were profoundly influenced by Harvey Kurtzman's Mad comics.

 

 

By 1957, a spirit of rebellion, often referred to as non-conformism, was rising throughout the US. Jean Shepherd was a radio personality who railed against what he called creeping meatballism, as decent a phrase as any to

describe the prevailing attitude of the 1950s. Shepherd was one of many who had a powerful compulsion to put on the straights, or as he put it, strike a blow against creeping meatballism. His method of attack was to ask his listeners to go to their local bookstore-- an odd place to launch such an attack, when you think about it--and ask for a non-existent book, I, Libertine, by Frederick R. Ewing. Thousands of his listeners did, so many that the book was listed in The New York Times Book Review as soon to be released. An editor at Ballantine Books, recognizing an opportunity, contracted my favorite science fiction writer of the 50s, Theodore Sturgeon, to ghost a book with that title. A doctored photo of Jean Shepherd as Frederick R. Ewing, wearing ahead-of-their-time granny glasses, was featured on the back cover. Written as an 18th-century picaresque novel, the book was issued only as a paperback, and featured on its cover a period gentleman ogling a woman with a modestly plunging neckline (this was the 50s) and a choice line from the book: “Gadzooks,” quoth I, “but there’s a saucy bawd!” It was actually a very enjoyable book. As a writer, Sturgeon, who back in the 50s owned a customized pickup truck as well as a 12-string guitar, could do no wrong.

 

My point is that “beatnik” became a catch-all label for something that was too complex and nuanced to be described so simply. As an example, when I moved to New York City in late 1959, I got a job packing foreign car parts in the shipping department off Hoffman Motors, and one day my girl friend came to meet me after work. The other guys there had decided I was a beatnik, and my girlfriend Marlene, who had long, straight hair, used no makeup, and wore a Navy surplus peacoat, was obviously a “beat chick.” The next day I was approached, singly, by several of the guys at work, who asked to sleep with my girl friend, because, they explained, I was a beatnik, and she was a beat chick, and beatniks let their friends sleep with their beat chicks, and weren’t they my friends?

Ay yi yi.

 

 

 

Pass That Peace Pipe/  Roger Edens, Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane

 

This wonderful song was a hit in 1947 for Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, and I never forgot it, although everyone else did. Note Mark’s cool I-

don’t-need-to-know-the-stinking-chords guitar part.

 

 

Big River/ Johnny Cash

 

This was the B side of Johnny's 1957 hit, and maybe my least favorite Cash song, Ballad of a Teenage Queen. Big River was as good a song as he ever wrote. Big River is as good a song as anyone ever wrote.

 

 

Laura the Horse/ Antonia and Peter Stampfel

 

Antonia wrote the words in 1967, but we couldn’t think up appropriate music for them. Over the years, a couple people tried, but no one nailed it. In the early 90s, They Might Be Giants had a label that released ten five-song CDs by different musicians, and they asked me to do one. I thought I had probably learned enough at that point to write proper music. It took me about five minutes. Hell of a good song.

 

 

 

Bamma Lamma/ Peter Stampfel

 

I had a dream. In the dream it was 1961, and Little Richard had not quit rock and roll. In fact, he was openly living with Tennessee Williams, and they were collaborating on songs. It was a good dream. So in this dream, I’m listening to their latest album. Two or three of the songs knock me

out. The other songs are all good, but not at that level.  But when I woke up, the only one I could remember was a B-title, which I confused with an actual Little Richard song, “Shout Bamalama.“ I soon realized it was a new song, and quickly wrote down the words. When I catch a dream song, I seldom remember more than a single line or phrase, but I always know what the song is about, and they hardly ever take more than ten minutes to write. My--probably most peoples'--creative mind(s) tends to be pretty wide open when waking up after an intense dream, and the words always pour out. If I don't have the next line, I just go back to the beginning, read it over, and by the time I get to as far as I've got, the next line shows up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take a Message to Omie/  Sam Shepard

 

Sam wrote this around 1969, when he’d only been playing guitar a short time. He’s not too crazy about it, but I think it’s brilliant and perfect.

 

 

 

Once Upon a Long Long Time Ago/  Peter Stampfel

 

I got the basic idea for this song—that the Good Old Days were terrible—in the 70s, but it took almost 20 years and a number of false starts to pull it off.

 

 

Bad Karma/ Peter Stampfel and Antonia

 

In 1968, the Rounders had a gig at the Family Dog opening for Pink Floyd. We had just opened for Ike and Tina Turner in LA. What a roll we were on. Driving up, we picked up a couple of hitchhikers who were twelve or thirteen. They proceeded to go on about local prices, quality, and availability of pot, as a way of presenting their hippie credentials. I had just heard that middle-school kids were shooting up in study halls in Detroit,  and was beginning to realize drugs were not the panacea I had

assumed them to be. Like many others, I had been making the

distinction between “good” drugs (pot and hallucinogens) and “bad drugs (heroin, speed, downers, alcohol, tobacco). But I instinctively knew that drugs for twelve and thirteen year old kids was a bad idea. Years later, I learned that the brain at that age is still developing, and is particularly susceptible to drugs. It is more easily addicted, which is why many young smokers find it hard to quit after just a few cigarettes. After we dropped the kids off, we talked about this, and decided that something must be done about the situation.  Somehow, we decided the appropriate action was getting some Jack Daniel’s for the gig. The locals were outraged at our imbibing the evil alcohol, and stomped around the club tirading that the Rounders had bad karma! Bad karma! So Antonia and I wrote the words when we got back to LA. The music, however, was cliché boogie format. In the 90s I re-did the music. The words held up fine, though.

 

 

 

 

New Keep a Knockin   / old words Little Richard, new words Peter. New music

bridge, Peter. Little Richard, revised by Peter Stampfel

 

I went on the prowl for good two-chord songs in the early oughties, and I noticed that Little Richard’s “Keep a Knockin’” qualified. I recently heard the gospel song that Little Richard based it on WAMU’s Sunday Dick

Spottswood show, which I listen to on the internet every week. I made up the new words while watching New Year’s fireworks in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. I turned one of the original verses into the chorus.

 

 

 

Holy Terror/ Peter Stampfel

 

Another dream song. In this one Nick (Hickory) Hill was showing me this a gospel song called “Holy Terror,” which was simultaneously the wackest and the most amazing gospel song I had ever heard.  When I woke up, the only line I could remember was “Holy terror gonna blow you up for Jesus.” I tried writing more words in this vein, but they didn’t work the way they did in the dream. Dream song words are often untenable.

 

The only way I could make it work was to write the rest of the words as straight as I could.  Beyond the Bb in the key of G trick, I made this a three-part song. Most standard 20th century songs have an A part and a B part, with the usual format being AABA. But I like songs with a C part.

 

My wife Betsy and I saw the musical Rent when it came to Broadway. Something I really hated about it was a subplot involving a singer-songwriter with AIDS, who was trying to write a last great song before his death, which was expected in about six months. Wow, I thought, that’s powerful. So during his lastdying six months, he works and works on this song. Finally it’s ready. I was dying to hear it, as it were. Unfortunately, it turned out to be this bland piece of hackwork. I

was outraged. But the idea—write each song as if it were your last chance—stuck with me. Soon, I started writing a lot of three-part songs, because I love three-part songs. But I quickly realized that making each song three parts was boring, and an occasional lapse into the simple, dumb,  and cheesy makes for a greater totality of Art in the long run. And that’s what we’re all here for.

 

 

Thanks to Bob Christgau for help in the final editing on these liner notes.

 

New York, November 2008