mORE vODAK!! The Banquet

...Shimmered with the feel of summer camp mixed with your best day at college mixed with this strange feeling that you really shouldn't be there because everyone is smarter than you.

onetwothreefourtellthepeoplewhat.she.wore...and yet it doesn't matter because you can barely understand each other anyway, so why not make the best of it.

The Banquet was situated, a small caferteria type room with wood paneling that only looks good in places like, The Elks Lodge, or Rotary Club and strangely enough, here in this ornate oppulent 19th century opera house built well before people said no to beauty. You know, the type that's too thickly stained with coat upon coat of tan. Just tan...maybe dark tan, or boring tan. Maybey caramel, of the sort you would never take out of your grandma's candy jar. You know that Brach's stuff.

Can you believe, we all ate that? I mean, sure it was a tradition and all... Those darkly foiled romantic packages contianing the indides of a person's nose. mixed with sugar. Yes, it's boogers with sugar. THATS What these walls look like!

A couple of Cocal-Cola machines, a couple of retail fridges with assorted fruit, hydro and sody pop drinks, a little sales counter, where a small assortment of snacks lay unheeded by the festival revelers. It looked just the same as anywhere, really. That is until you get up close and the candy is like SMRHG ONNpLbN CAb 10! UX. And the pop is CODA ROR Kokb. Or something to the effect of Soda Pop, Coke. Of course my cool factor radar just goes berserk. But where I would have been ten years ago at the counter seeing if I could score a couple "Bapc" (bars) of Choco goodness, these days I was like, it's all the same. I can get this anywhere.

I mean, this set up was set up just the same as any social hall meeting anywhere else in the civilized world. You gotchyer big long tables that can seat about ten people if you remove their arms, you got yer plastic chairs mixed with the metal ones that clang and pinch your fingers when you try to put them away. You got yer food laid out along them too. Now they look like pot-luck trays and, well, why not... indeed they are. Though catered that's the long and short of it, folks were were at a week long potluck meal. What Luck! But like the candy, upon closer inspection of this traditional potlucky, you get this feeling of..."whoahhh. What Ihhz that?" This coleslaw looking dish, for example. It was shredded squid and red cabbage...chompmunchchompmunch it's really, really great. They had these kind of flat egg quiche wedges. It was as if you had a roller in your oven, flattening your basic quiche and then cooling it off and serving it. This never took long to disappear. And then, my friends and then. To top it all off. Deviled Eggs. Deviled Eggs. I looove deviled eggs. But consistent with the 'upon closer inspection', these were not you father's, mother's, cousin's, sisters' Deviled Eggs. Unless you happen to be Russian and put a smidgen of caviar in your recipie...hmmm? hmm? hmm? No? well. I tell you what. Being a connoisseur of deviled eggs, it was all I could do to stop trying to speak in my best but horrible combination of German/English/French/Italian with a little bit of I understand only a very little bit of Russian(phonetically: Ya nym noguh punyihmayouh paRuskya), and grab all of those deviled eggs and beat it back to the hotel. Just a few, like a half teaspoon of caviar. wow!

These thirty feet of tables festooned with China, tons of little glasses everywhere to hold whatever libation you would be enjoying and food and pitchers of different colored drinks. Pitchers containing red, pink, orange drinks, waters of different kinds...and then there's...wine, both red and white. You gotchyer Cognac (more about that later), and then...V.O.D.K.ahhhhh.

Vodak, I mean Vodka!!! a spirit distilled, normally from the potato. It is, in it's traditional form, clear in color and indeed literally means 'water'. Like Whiskey stemming from Aquavit, meaning water of life, Vodka and I have had an on and off again relationship.

I first heard about vodka as the drink that child alcoholics drink because, as was reported back in 1980, people can't smell vodka on the breath. We watched this fun film about...wait, this was in the seventies. We had some Iowa highway patrolman come in and show a video of the dangers of drugs and alcohol. Who says it was just the Ruskies that were great at propaganda? Anyway, they talked about angel dust and showed some dude high on PCP and, then, they got into child alcoholism. It was all so horrifying to us cub scouts. People drink? Kids like us drink? The highlight of this video was some pimply faced kid with his voice adolescently quavering "I Used to PUt AlcHOOL in My cereal beForE schOol." We were dutifully shocked. incedentally, I never did the liquor with cereal, but it did inspire me to experiment with seven-up and other assorted fun drinks with my cereal. ...Cause mom wouldn't buy Cap'n Crunch I made up for the 'no sugar' serials with having the sugar in the liquid. Soory mom. Kids are so much smarter than you would even think. Tricks are for Kids is no lie.

So My next real encounter with Vodka is from reading John Steinbek's, "A Russian Journal", where the vaunted and heroic author gets back to his reporting roots and journals his and his photographer, war photojournalist, Robert Capa visit to post war Russia in 1948. Can you imagine? Three years after the biggest catasrophicaly devastated country. From the millions killed during the Bolshevik Revolution to WWI and then WWII and then the Stalin regime...so much death. There was Steinbeck and Capa traipsing through the Stalingrad and the surrounding countryside. This was before the cold war KGB coverup, where people were allowed to be shown as people. I'm making overly general statements about this period of time, but it is quite a read. These wonderful people giving most of a months food to George and Robert and their daily allotment of "water". they would just fill up their mason jars and drink it. They would fill their glasses to the brim every day and just drink.

At that point, upon reading this I had rarely imbibed in the viscous clear deadly cereal filler (just in the glass again, not in cereal) and couldn't fathom a whole mason jar of the stuff every day, but I determined to see what was the deal. It was just this time that premium vodkas were just coming out. Absolut, Ketel One, Smirnov, Stolichnaya and then Sky Vodkas were the ones to be drinking, with Ketel One being the artisianal Vodka choice for those in the know. Indeed this love of the vodka lasted for a little while. Martinis and straight up chilled, as long as it was good and smooth special, and delicious. Of course, this is from the palate of one who drinks these things regularly. Some don't understand the hard liquor drinkers. It's not about being harder or softer, it's for me and the folks I imbibe with, the process and the tradition and the time it takes to make something like this. It's a sharing of time spent with the distillers. A sharing of a feeling and a smell. Once you get to know what a particular liquor tastes like, you can get the differences between distillers soil and their country. You can taste what their surroundings are. It's not about gettin' Druuunk!!! Although, I do admit, there are plenty of times when it HAS been about gettin druuunk.

Then, after a while I got into Single Malt Scotch. The making of this stuff is what it means to be an artisan. Vodka lost its lustre after meeting up with the Single Malt. Vodka is distilled to remove impurities. You get this falderal about some particular vodka being distilled more times than the Earth travels around the sun, which automatically makes it better. For me, I feel like it takes the life out of the spirit.

Then upon playing with the Lorca heads, it was all about Tequila. This to me was a turning point in my drinking of spirits. Tequila is supposed to be this maddening dring that makes people crazy drunk and gives major hang overs. People are killed and kill while under the influence of tequila. Supposedly. Well I found that's just Jose Cuervo. If you like spirits and want to get into the whole tequlia thing, do not go for Cuervo. In fact, do not buy anything but top shelf tequila. This includes Herradura, Don Jose, Chinaca, El Tesoro, Casadores. Do NOT for the love of good health and longevity buy Cuervo, Sauza, McCormicks, Tres Generacionesor Montezuma!!! You will thank me. Not even in your margarita. period. There are good spirits and bad spirits.

The next iteration of Vodka was the recording sessions of the American Tenors. We went to Warsaw Poland to record the Warsaw Symphony for our backing tracks to our eponymous albumn. While there I found a whole new world of Vodka.

A big thing in the states with vodka is flavored and infused vodka. Absolute Peppar, Absolute Cranberry, Absolute Mandarin Orange, Smirnov Orange, Grey Goose Lime, Stoli Limon, All of them made for mixing with something. Not for really drinking, savoring. I'm no saying these things don't have their uses, but see, that's the problem. You have to have a reason to mix them with something. It's for people who don't like alcohol who want to have a specialty mixed drink that tastes like, Cranberry, Orange, Pepper, Vanilla, etc. Well, I have tried them (not all of them mind you) and I have tried naturally infused vodka, where you get a gallon pickle jar, put in a lot of vodka and a particular fruit and let it sit there for a long time, infusing.

Well in Poland they do the infusing thing, but they use herbs and things that would actually go well being infused with vodka. Literally I had grass infused vodka there. (not marijuana grass, but real grass) That would be totally missing the point of this whole thing if you think this entry is about getting drunk. (though I fully admit to writing this while listening to Shiyani Ngcobo and amazing African guitarist and singer while imbibing in Chopin Vodka...and over the course of this entry as evening turns into night and night turns into morning there is a sip here and a sip there so who knows were I might end up...maybe we'll get back to the banquet at some point)

It is also here that I had to get rid of the parenthetical writing.....

You must know about how my thoughts are about Vodka and drinking in general before we go on with this journal of Russia. Vodka is so central to the culture. And to this trip. Although it doesn't make it's appearance in but a few of these stories, it is a part of this whole thing. When a culture cna sit around and drink glassfulls of this thing translated as 'Water', it is wholly important. As is this amazing music.

SO ....

I came home in 2002-2003 with a new love for vodka. But you know folks, you have to really search for the good stuff. And even searching for it, it is only rarely you can find what you are looking for. Even with the multiplicity of fine and superfine vodkas here in the States, it's hard to get the 'bad stuff', which really, is the good stuff, though not on the Cuervo sense...

Not having the Polish version of Vodka around, I soon switched back to tequila, and then Mescal. I know, I know, the drink with the worm. But let me tell you, in reality it's not with the worm. Mescal brings the artistry of making single malt and the purity of distilling tequila (and vodka for that matter) together. This stuff is made by mountain dwelling indigenous Mexicans for crying out loud. They smoke the agave cactus in the ground and then distill it. There are really bad versions and there are blessed ones, and they are all different, with people coming from thousands of miles away to drink a certain man's thousand year old recipe.

But again, it's rare and so insanely expensive to buy, or you actually have to go there, though that is an intriguing option, it's just not possible most of the time.

...Well here is this spread of perfect crystal clear bottles of Vodka. This picnic-like spread in the caramel colored tan wooded America, nee Russian Legion, nee Opera/Ballet cafeteria room were just so gorgeous. Like tall jewels, or collected stars they stood. Affirming that we were wher we needed to be. At long last. These almost two years of waiting and struggle to keep playing, to keep alive, for heaven's sake, just so we could be at that banquet table surrounded by scholars, musicians, conductors, authors, poets, philosophers of the highest order. I can tell you now that this sense of accomplishment eclipsed all but the most hard fought achievements of my life.

You see, it's not a struggle to pay the bills as a musician or an artist, it's the struggle to prove existence; the proof that we are here folks is tantamount to my being an artist. Among all of us, anonymous, working stiffs there needs to be some of us who spit the paint on the wall and say, Killroy was here. We were here. Or at least attempt to. Isn't that odd that the multitude of American culture pertains to A. Selling something now, so as to have comfort on this Earth this day our daily bread and B. Selling something, whether an idea, a sound, a word made to last for eons. Vodka, Aquavit, the water of life. Bread....a triangle...Coca-Cola, Youtube.com

So there we were. To be among those who make the decisions that affect our world culturally and not only that, to be sitting at the table with the potluck-like platters, the hued drinks, the wine, the Cognac and the Vodka, but more importantly, these people who recognized that the world changed because of the vision of one person. Sergei Diaghilev. Have you been to a ballet? Thank Diaghilev.

Have you wished, for one moment you could be Barishnikov..or be with him, or near him? Thank Diaghilev.

Did you weep for Gregory Hines and celebrate Savion? Diaghilev.

Balanchine? Diaghilev.

Twila, Monk, Jennifer Owen, Westside Story?

Diaghilev.

And there sitting accross the table was his fracking great great grandson. and by the way...he likes Metal.
Diaghilev.

This was the banquet. Me with Purple hair and Beau, a tall gentle, quiet giant.

-fin-