Daily Archives: January 23, 2021

Welcome to Between Takes; where artists and musicians tell stories about what happens behindthescenes.

WDETs Sam Beaubien has been dedicated to making music in Detroit for 20 years, and this series connects you with the stories he has heard on gigs and atrecordingsessions.

Get a look into Stevie Wonders audition for Motown Records, sessions with funk master George Clinton, renowned hip-hop producer J Dillas first days with a drum machine, and many more stories about what shaped the legacy of thismusicalcity.

John Sinclair in an important figure in the activism and music movement in Detroit during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Between hisimprisonment for marijuana, his role as manager for the MC5, opening the Artist Workshop, and helping found the White Panther Party, John had a huge culturalinfluence at thattime.

As a way to bring people and messages together, John hosted many free concerts and festivals. At these events, you would find cutting-edge music, protestsand public speakers talking about change that needed to happen for a better society including conversations about race, police brutality, and the freedom ofexpression.

Doug Coombe

JohnSinclair

John had a deep love for all genres of music that were a genuine expression of creativity. Jazz, soul, funk and rock all were welcome at his events. One artist who was known for his freedom of expression and far-out views was Sun Ra. A free-jazz and experimental musician whose music encapsulates the entire history of jazz in a single song, Sun Ra was THE Afro-Futurist of his time. His music was about the cosmos, planets, higher-beings and his whole band lived and worked together day-in and day-out. It was more than music it was alifestyle.

John was infatuated with Sun Ra and his music, which was also influential to the MC5. John was interested in meeting and working with Sun Ra. He interviewed Ra and also booked his band to perform in AnnArbor.

Related:

Essential Conversations: John Sinclair Still Hates the CIA

When John Lennon Supported JohnSinclair

John Sinclair, The MC5, and Kickin Out TheJams

WDET is here to keep you informed onessential information, news and resources related to COVID-19.

This is a stressful, insecure time for many. So its more important than ever for you, our listeners and readers, who are able todonate to keep supporting WDETs mission. Please make a gift today.

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Between Takes: Space is the Place for Sun Ra and John Sinclair - WDET

Published onJanuary 20, 2021

CategoryNews

Mixing techno, electro, rock, and punk.

Louisahhh is releasing her debut album, The Practice of Freedom, via HE.SHE.THEY this March.

Listen next Exploring the sounds of Nine Inch Nails, with Louisahhh

Incorporating influences including Nine Inch Nails, Patti Smith, and Judith Butler, The Practice of Freedom brings together industrial with electro distortions, techno, and rock, all united by Louisahhhs punk ethos.

The album is informed by her entrance to the world of BDSM, and finding a new identity as feminist/submissive.

I find typically that music is a premonition, that i think its about something when its being made and it winds up being kind of a prayer galvanising me (and perhaps the listener) forthe future, explains Louisahhh.

The Practice of Freedom follows her Ascender 12 with Maelstrom, on Discos Atnicos last year.

Pre-order The Practice of Freedom here in advance of its 12th March release, check out the artwork and tracklist below.

Tracklist:

1. Love Is A Punk2. Like A Shot3. Chaos4. Ferocious (Contained)5. Master6. No Pressure7. Not Dead8. Corrupter9. A Hard No10. Hunter Wolf11. Numb, Undone

Photo by: Ella Herme

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Louisahhh crafts industrial pop on debut album, The Practice of Freedom - The Vinyl Factory

On Instagram, until this week, a whopping number of 10 million posts had been dedicated to the hashtag of ramen alone. Featuring countless variants such as miso ramen with pan-fried spam and pork bone ramen, these had been put up by food enthusiasts from all over the worldfrom New York and San Francisco to Tokyo and Goa. During the pandemic, ramen has proved to be consistently popular, winning over short-term food fads such as dalgona coffee. Clearly people have been craving a warm and comforting one-bowl meal, featuring complex layers of textures and flavours.

The fact that it has emerged as an urban food phenomenon is obvious by the surge in deliveries and takeaways of ramen at Asian restaurants. Part of the reason is also that a typical broth needs to bubble away for a long time, often spanning 48 hours, thus making it easier for people to order in, rather than attempting it at home. Guppy in Delhi is one such example. We started deliveries in June, which was the peak of summer. One would have thought that people would want to order cooling salads, but ramen was a hit from day one, says Vikram Khatri, executive chef of the restaurant. Guppy is also offering DIY ramen kits as part of its delivery menu.

A similar story can be seen playing out in Panjim, where Chef Pablo Miranda runs Patraos Deli, known for its cured meats, weekly specials and other culinary curations. During a visit to Japan two years ago, he had ended up tasting over 200 varieties of ramen dishes. Inspired by this experience, just before the pandemic-induced lockdown, he had plans of opening a ramen house, which unfortunately had to be put on hold. Last May-June was the start of the monsoons. It was gloomy being locked up inside. And suddenly one day, an image of a ramen bowl popped up on my Instagram history. I realised it would be great to make this at home in this kind of weather, he says.

Miranda tried to put together a bowl of tonkotsu ramen, or a velvety pork bone broth recipe. It took him nearly a week to get the noodles right. When he perfected the bowl and put up an image, Miranda was flooded with messages on Instagram about whether he was taking orders or not. I wondered why not. And since then things have really kicked off. People cant travel right now, so they would like a taste of international flavours, he says. The ramen on Mirandas menu is made with hand-rolled alkaline noodles, a 24-hour tonkotsu broth, chashu pork belly, mayu or black garlic oil, chilli oil, shredded leeks, shiitake mushroom, an Ajitsuke Tamango or marinated egg, nori and spring onions.

Yet another chef who has taken to experimenting with ramen during the pandemic is Kavan Kuttappa, who works with The Permit Room and Toit Brewpub in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune. With some time on hand last year, he decided to recreate his experience of tasting 30 bowls during a 21-day-trip to Japan in 2018. Kuttappa started by making small portions for his friends, but seeing the demand, moved on to bigger batches. The ramen that he makes is of a different style each time and is numbered in Japanese. The names are based on the type of dish he makes. So far, he has gotten till six. He usually announces the variant on social media most Wednesdays for delivery that same weekend, and every batch is sold out within minutesa response that has Kuttappa baffled. "A Japanese ramen chain, which is a giant player in Tokyo, is coming to the country. Clearly, it has gotten wind of this trend and wants to tap into it, says Kuttappa.

Lobster ramen at Guppy, Delhi

However, while the pandemic might have brought ramen into the sudden spotlight, it has been making its presence felt on restaurant menus for the past six to eight years. Khatri, for instance, introduced it at Guppy six years ago, with 15 variants featuring noodles of all kindsthick, thin, egg, eggless, and more. At one point, we were the only restaurant doing vegan ramen, he says. Fatty Bao too started offering ramen seven years back in Bengaluru, and has seen it being embraced as a comfort meal by the diners. It has taken some time for people to get used to the runny yolk, par-cooked veggies and the soupy broth. When I launched it, I remember people saying, yeh tho maggi noodle hai, paani wala broth hai. I learnt to acquire a thick skin to such comments, says Manu Chandra chef-partner, Olive group of restaurants. People just couldnt wrap their heads around the fact that a simple broth cooked for hours and hours, without many added extracts, could be delicious. Taste has, over time, become so synonymous with spice, that people take time to accept something in its bare simplicity.

He made a decision right at the beginning to provide an array of broth and noodles to cover a middle groundoffering an elevated experience to those who crave ramen, while also easing the rest into the dish. Ramen, truffle and blue cheese have had a similar trajectory in India. There has been a shift now, with more people enjoying the real deal. They dont mind the runny egg, the slippery alkaline noodles. This gives the chef to launch more products in that headspace, he adds. It helps that restaurants such as Guppy and Fatty Bao are located in urban centres, which are home to well-travelled young professionals, who have been exposed to the dish over time. The uptake is good and continues to be so. It offers a lot of comfort, while also working really well if you are peckish, he says.

Love for ramen has also changed lives. It is one of the reasons that Benpramar pivoted from a corporate job towards becoming a chef. During his travels abroad, he would make it a point to try out the various ramen dishes. And when he would come back to Mumbai, Benpramar would sit at his desk and dream of ramen. I used to live in Pali Naka, with a meat shop located below my house. So, I would get the bones easily. And during my travels, I would pick up a lot of ingredients like kombu and bonito flakes, he explains.

Benpramar started out with quick broths simmered for two to three hours and then kept slowly extending the cooking time. He enjoyed cooking ramen so much that he started weekend pop-ups for 10-11 guests, for which he would slow cook the broth for nearly 48 hours. Benpramar had plans to open a ramen bar in Bandra but that didnt materialise. Meanwhile, he quit his corporate job to study the culinary arts in Buenos Aires. When he came back to India three years back to open a restaurant in Goa, he made sure to include ramen on the menu. Since the lockdown, I have been staying in Bengaluru, where I run a delivery kitchen from my sisters kitchen. And we get at least 30 to 40 orders on a weekly basis for ramen. While I may experiment with the spice levels, aromatics and toppings, I mainly stick to making a pork bone broth, either tonkotsu or shoyu, which are truly a labour of love, he explains.

Pablo Miranda tried to put together a bowl of tonkotsu ramen, or a velvety pork bone broth recipe

What also works is the versatility of the dish and its ability to adapt to local ingredients and flavours. In fact, contrary to popular perception, ramen is not an entirely Japanese dish, but has its roots as a Chinese noodle dish, which spread to Japan, and integrated with the local food culture, mentions the website of the unique Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum in Yokohama, Japan. From France and Germany to America and even Australia, Japanese born-and-bred ramen is presently taking the world by storm. The style now sweeping the world is one that's true to Japanese form, but eventually, as has been seen in Japan, it will be drawn to intermix with the local climates, environments, and food cultures of each country, giving way to new regional ramen styles from around the globe, it adds.

In India too, it has sparked off innovation. At Fatty Bao, for instance, one can see a confluence of influences in dishes such as the Via Malaysia veg ramen, Fatty Pho ramen featuring an aromatic chicken broth, the Soto Ayam Lamongan ramen or an Indonesian aromatic chicken broth with coconut milk and the Chinese Mixian ramen. According to Prashanth Puttaswamy, executive chef of The Fatty Bao, ramen is all about soupy noodles, versions of which one can find across southeast Asia. So, the team worked on ramen dishes based on those variants. For one dish, instead of the rice vermicelli noodles, he created black alkaline ones with activated charcoal powder. The idea has been to experiment with flavours while keeping some of the benchmarks of a ramen intact: slippery alkaline noodles, complex broth and an array of toppings such as the menma or seasoned bamboo shoots, green onions, nori sheets, and more.

At The Bombay Canteen, Chef Hussain Shahzad has brought together these staples with flavours from Sikkim in a dish called Thukpa Ramen, made with pork. It is part of a rotating section called, Just Because we Love it So Much, featuring ideas and concepts that the team likes. The thukpa is, perhaps, the closest to ramen in India, with its rich heritage of broth, dumplings and noodles. The team does a tonkotsu-style thukpa ramen, with trotters, bacon, aromatics and charred barley coming together in an intense, milky broth with a layered, velvety finish to it. The fat is not skimmed away but blended into the liquid, with the gelatin extracted from the bones. The team gets onto the broth as soon as it comes to the kitchen in the morning as it has to simmer away on a slow flame, he elaborates. This is served with noodles, hand-rolled in-house, slow-cooked pork belly and accompaniments such as chilli crisps, furikake, and more. When we started deliveries a couple of months ago, this was the one thing that everyone asked us to put on the menu, adds Shahzad. Its no wonder then that ramen has emerged as a warm embrace in these difficult times for people.

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Keller Williams, the one-man band - Livemint

So, I got a directors chair, sitting next to mine, during the shooting. And it was a nice, young guy, and we talked during the shooting. And I explained to him a little bit between shots, how it all worked. And then we all, Jane, and he and I, had lunch together. And it all went very well. And at the end of the lunch, I said, Jane tells me youre going to London. What are you going to be doing in London? He said, Well, Im with a singing group from Liverpool, and were going to be making our debut tomorrow night in London.

Yes, it was Paul McCartney.

By that point, Corman had already made the jukebox movie Rock All Night, which featured the music of The Platters, and would go on to produce the 1979 punk movie classic Rock n Roll High School. That film starred The Ramones, who got their name from Paul McCartney when he tried out the stage name Paul Ramon. But Corman had no clue who he was talking to back then, and the Mersey musician kept up his part in the masquerade of red sauce.

He was very cool, Corman says. He knew that as an American, I didnt know who The Beatles were, or what he was. And as he left, I said, Well, good luck, Paul, on your debut in London tomorrow night. And I remember he was very cool. He understood, and he didnt want to say, Listen, buddy, were the number one group. He just said, Well, were a singing group.

Whatever show it was Pauls singing group was in town for, the band apparently passed the audition. Then I saw the paper Sunday morning headlines, Beatles conquer London, Corman remembers.

Originally posted here:

When Paul McCartney Braved the Set of Roger Cormans The Masque of the Red Death - Den of Geek