Last week I hosted a birthday shindig at Duff’s Restaurant. My brother Dan and I (aka The WirePilots) played and trotted out some new gear, notably my new Korg WaveDrum, which is a ‘virtual acoustic instrument.’ In other words, it’s electronic but there’s no MIDI or computer interface. It’s played in real time like any other acoustic instrument and it responds to gestures like slapping or hitting the rim.
Here’s a video of a new tune that Dan wrote and I like how it turned out.
A couple of posts ago I talked about how I was reunited with my former marimba. Now I’ve made contact (although virtual) with my boyhood drum set. It’s a vintage Rogers kit with a sort of pearl-oyster finish that I bought when I was 15 or so.
Here’s the story. A couple of days ago we got an email from a friend who moved with his family to the west coast a few years back. I had sold him the Rogers kit, but to tell you the truth I kind of forgot about it.
In the email he told us his son (our kids were preschool buddies) had started playing the drums, so when I got some video links of the kit in action I was stoked. It’s amazing that these instruments are still in circulation inspiring a whole new generation of kids to play!
Let me start this post by admitting that my usual martini is made with gin and slightly ‘dirty,’ which means a little olive brine is added to the mix. I prefer a minimum of two big, stuffed olives. Bleu cheese is my preferred stuffing but I’m not particular. Recently I have developed a new recipe which is jostling for martini supremacy. I dub it the Half Sour Pickletini.
A bit of history. I am very fond of the half sour Russian pickles that are found in hand-packed containers at Global Foods Market in Kirkwood, MO. They can be found in a refrigerated case at the back of the store, not far from the deli counter. As I mentioned earlier, I gravitate toward the gin martini but I have long been aware of the Russian fondness for eating pickles while quaffing vodka so I decided that perhaps the two would play nicely in the same glass. I can tell you now that they do.
I started by dropping a few half sour pickle slices into a chilled martini glass. Then I made a straightforward martini by filling a steel shaker with ice, splashing in a bit of vermouth and four ounces of Absolut (cheaper vodka will do in a pinch) and shaking like the dickens until it got uncomfortably cold. That last bit is an important step–you have to shake for at least thirty seconds.
I poured the icy mixture into the pre-pickled glass and voila: the Pickletini was born! If you can’t get the aforementioned half sour variety, I think any Polish style dill pickle would suffice.
