Ragnar Kvaran - “That Time”

I’ve been digitizing old tapes like crazy for a week or two, preparing to start posting songs on a regular basis, but it turns out I’ve been beaten to a few of them. To my great glee but also, I have to admit, mild astonishment, Ragnar Kvaran’s bassist has a web page with OVER A HUNDRED songs for download.

At some point I’ll sift through the others, but “That Time” almost certainly ranks among the best. Kvaran’s voice has the nervous tension that powered a lot of new-wavy power-pop bands in the early 80s, only a little more inscrutable. With the song’s three sections chasing each other around in a circle, he perpetually sounds like he would be letting go of the old and celebrating the new if it were only clear which was which.

I also dig the contrast between the two guitars– almost made better by the joint distortions of vinyl and mp3. The band came from Ann Arbor; I am assured vocalist Kvaran was Icelandic, although strangely one web page (with no reference to the band) claims the name is the alias of a 10th-century Persian musician.

One of the interesting things about just learning to cook now is that I had absolutely no precedent for the feeling of making my own kitchen smell like the house I grew up in.

This is my mother’s recipe, edited only for orthography.

1 lb. curly egg noodles (cook & drain)
1/4 lb (1 stick) butter — will melt on the hot noodles

Mix together & add to the noodles:
1 lb cottage cheese
4 eggs
3 oz. cream cheese
1/2 cup milk
1/2 pint sour cream
3/4 cup sugar
put into 9×12 casserole dish

Combine 2 more eggs and 2 cups milk and pour on top.
Sprinkle w/ cornflakes now or wait until the kugel is almost done and add the mixture of melted butter, brown sugar and slightly crushed cornflakes. Bake for 1 hour at 375F. Serves 6 or more.

—

There’s a troublesome “the” in the third-to-last sentence– WHAT mixture of butter, brown sugar and cornflakes? I used 1/2 cup Special K, 1 Tbsp brown sugar and 2 Tbsp butter, which was way too little cereal compared to the butter, the sugar, and the kugel’s surface area. Special K also needs to bake longer, perhaps, than cornflakes.

Getting an even distribution of liquid and noodles on putting the first mixture into its dish was crucial; I didn’t bother spreading liquid to one corner and it burned a little. I do not fully understand what magic is at work with pouring the extra egg/milk mixture on top separately, since it seems to pervade the kugel anyway. This stuff is best warm, but it was still overly moist after an hour; maybe it should cook longer at lower temperature, or sit in a warm oven for a long time after cooking? I mean, you have to eat it hot, so you can’t just wait for it to set on the counter.

When I first read the recipe I couldn’t help thinking of the “multiplier effect” they laboriously pounded into our heads in high-school health class: if you consume several depressants at once, they exacerbate each other’s effects. I really hope fats don’t work the same way.

Verdict: Time-consuming but easy and good. I might try less sugar next time.

I actually like little reminders that memories, even clear and banal ones, can lie. I usually put this “I like being wrong!” but it’s not about being wrong, it’s about memory. I reread old journals just to find the stuff that I can’t believe I wrote.

But I don’t like the intermediate feeling of a memory slipping away. A while ago, let’s say six years (though honestly I don’t remember when it was, ha ha), my memory of the indie scene was that, say, Gang Of Four, the Pixies and New Order all got passing respect, but not much attention. Gang Of Four probably had the lowest profile of the three, but they also had some reissues in 1998, I think.

So, look, Bloc Party often sound like Gang Of Four– early Gang Of Four, the good stuff. They’ve appeared, crappy name and all, at a time when young British bands sounding like seminal post-punk bands from twenty years earlier do not require much searching to find. By the standards of the current age, this is a good to great record; the first half has few if any weak moments, and they strip off some of the gloss that bands like the Futureheads added. I didn’t mind the gloss, but when you’re aping the band who sang “Is this really the way it is / Or a contract in our mutual interest?” to decry the social construction of romance as a distraction from class issues, a little decorum doesn’t hurt.

The memory of a recent time when this album would have nearly been a revelation nags at me, though. It can’t live up to those expectations, which I guess is convenient for the band seeing as how they made the record now and not then. Still… I’ve gotten as excited about the post-punk revival as anyone, and I don’t want to understate how good these songs get, yet there is something in this that feels like a manufacturer of industrial equipment challenging John Henry’s great-grandkid to a rematch. Yeah! Go team!

Feel free to throw all this back at me when “Positive Tension” or “Banquet” makes my list at year’s end. But I’ll bet you double-or-nothing I don’t find any occasions to quote Bloc Party in 2025. I defer to you the question of whether that matters.

Mail from my friend Smith, roughly ten years ago:

I found an amazing thing in the U. of C. on-line catalog while looking  for information on bicycle wheels.  The following is the title _only_ of  (I presume) a book.  2  100-199  Blo-bzan-byams-pa, Byiu Rig-dzin. / Klon chen snin thig gi Nan                sgrub rig dzin dus pai zin bris Rig dzin zal lun bde chen dpal                ster and other instructions on the practice of the Klon chen                snin thig cycle of revelations of Rig-dzin Jigs-med-glin-pa                Ran-byun-rdo-rje.

Going through my old files, I found the following, quoted from Underwood Dudley’s Mathematical Cranks:

	According to St Paul "The peace of God is beyond our utmost  understanding" and is offered to us. Quantify it therefore in terms of  some field F known to God but unknown to us and represent it by the  column vector {S} of unknown dimension (S for Serenity, we cannot use P,  it is needed for a special purpose). The elements of {S} are finite  because we are finite. 	St Paul tells us that it will "keep guard over your hearts and  your thoughts in Jesus Christ," the original Greek for 'your' is plural.  So represent the social action of the peace of God on a group of people  "in Christ Jesus" by premultiplying {S} with a matrix that has as many  rows as there are people in the group and an infinite number of columns,  the "revelation matrix," R. The product we will call {U}, the peacemaking  power of the Christian people of all denominations in Ulster. So  		R{S} --> {U}  	If there are 1,500,000 Christians of all denominations in Ulster,  R will have as many rows. The row m for some particular Mr Murphy will  have some elements zero, or with special positive or negative finite  values, corresponding to matters that particularly concern him, the other  elements will be members of some absolutely convergent series, arranged  so that each element has a value corresponding to Mr Murphy's ability to  receive God's revelation of peace for some aspect, opportunity or action  of Mr Murphy's "heart and thought." His free will can affect a finite  number of the elements of m but cannot overrule God's requirement that  the infinite series of elements in m shall be absolutely convergent... 	{U} will have as many elements as there are Christians in  Northern Ireland, one element u_m will represent the peace in heart and  mind of Mr Murphy. Suppose he feels aggressive and unpeaceful whenever he  thinks of the Battle of the Boyne, then r_mb is negative, corresponding  to s_b, the element of S representing that aspect of the peace of God  which can keep guard over the hearts and thoughts of people thinking  about the Battle of the Boyne. We should pray that r_mb may become  positive. Any change of sign from negative to positive in an element of m  will increase the value of u_m, Mr Murphy's whole peace of heart and  mind; and therefore will also increase the total peacemaking power of the  Christians of Ulster. 	R{S} --> {U} is therefore an accurate and completely detailed  statement of how the peace of God is keeping guard over the hearts and  thoughts of all the people in Christ Jesus in Northern Ireland. To  transform it into an intercession we need a Polite Request Operator, I  suggest  				P[...]  where the operator acts on everything within the brackets, and is read as  "Please cause." So here is the prayer:  			P[R{S} --> {U}, all r > 0]  	This prayer should be sufficiently concise to be acceptable to  Christ, yet every single Christian inhabitant of Northern Ireland has  been separately included with detailed consideration of all the infinite  ways in which the peace of God can, if he lets it, keep guard over his  heart and thought.  		--quoted in Underwood Dudley's _Mathematical Cranks_

1 9-inch pie crust
4 large egg yolks
2/3 cup sugar
3 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 cups half and half
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet mint chocolate chips

Bake crust separately and let cool. [I made a dough crust and did so poorly; I'm not sure whether, ideally, it would have had a good dough crust, or a graham-cracker crust.] Place yolks in medium bowl and set aside. Combine sugar and cornstarch in heavy large saucepan. [The mixture gains a LOT of volume when boiled. Don't use too small a saucepan or you will regret it.] Whisk in half and half. Bring mixture to boil over medium-high heat, whisking constantly, then boil 1 minute. Whisk half of mixture into yolks, pour yolk mixture into saucepan and whisk again to combine. Once again, bring to a boil and boil for 1 minute, whisking constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in butter and vanilla.

Place chocolate chips in medium bowl. Add hot custard and stir until chocolate chips melt and mixture is smooth. Spread chocolate custard into crust and cover with plastic wrap. Cool on rack 1 hour, then refrigerate until set. [2 hours in our ice-cold refrigerator wasn't enough; 12 hours was plenty.] Grate chocolate on top before serving.

—

The original recipe suggested using 1 cup of peanut-butter chips and 1 cup of chocolate, spooning the peanut-butter custard on top of the chocolate. My experiment with this (I made two pies at once) suggests that 50% peanut butter is probably too much, and that one has to be careful in dividing the custard lest the two sections be wildly different consistencies. Although, I don’t know, if they were even more disparate in thickness it could be interesting. That experimental pie broke two milestones for me: one, it was the first pie I had made with structural integrity (I cut half of it apart to take to work, and it came away with no struggle at all!) and it was the first pie I had made that I didn’t really want to eat. I consider these both good things to have done at least once.

Considering how much I like mint chocolate, I feel like my having only moderate enthusiasm for the mint-chocolate pie may mean this isn’t a totally great recipe, or else I screwed it up more than I realized. On the other hand, pie!

Recently, Decemberists singer Colin Meloy made a solo EP of Morrissey covers to sell at shows. I wasn’t going to say anything about it because it wasn’t that good.

But then I stumbled across recordings of Meloy performing several Robyn Hitchcock songs at a tribute concert in 2000, before anyone had heard of the Decemberists (and possibly before they existed; I’m not sure). His voice rings out so distinctively that– in this age of the Internet knowing more or less everything a hot new musician has recorded, and usually being able to supply any notable live performances– I find it mildly uncanny, like a message that somehow appears on your answering machine during an afternoon you spent within easy hearing range of the phone.

Comparing the two reveals the positive side of what I said before about Meloy’s creative stagnation: he’s had his voice for a long time and shows no sign of losing it. He even redeems some recent songs that stand nowhere near the top tier of Robyn’s compositions for me (”I Saw Nick Drake” and “I Feel Beautiful”) while nailing a complex classic (”Chinese Bones”). And, lest I not repeat myself enough, it’s ALL in the voice. The one Hitchcockian emotional note he can’t hit squarely is “menace”, which makes the Soft Boys-era “Tonight” less intense, though not less listenable.

All of which, now that I think of it, may be why the Morrissey EP sounds lackluster; he put the guitar up in the front of the mix, and the vocals in the back!

I had wondered how long my enthusiasm about the Decemberists could last after Picaresque if Meloy and the gang didn’t develop as songwriters. Now, I think, it might be a long time. I don’t feel any great personal loyalty to the band (unlike with Robyn Hitchcock, whose last few disappointing albums I just try not to think about as I psych myself up for the next one); I just don’t think their assets are the kind one can quickly squander. Unless Meloy’s a smoker, I guess.

This may resemble leader Michael Gira’s old band Swans on some profound level, but I never appreciated Swans at all, let alone deeply, so I wouldn’t know. In spots it reminds me of the quirky post-electronic sounds vended by people like Psapp– Gira’s new songs are structured like singer/songwriter material, made (mostly) from the sounds that singer/songwriters use, but the actual process of assemblage gives the impression (though I have no real idea) that it happened on a laptop.

Ultimately, though, not really my thing: I don’t find “sensitive tough guy” much more appealling than “tough tough guy”, no matter whether the music in question is Nickelback vs. Limp Biskit or Swans vs. Angels Of Light. See also “I never liked Nick Cave”…

This may not be a coincidence; I’ve always felt like some of the old alternative idols that split the difference between machismo and maudlinness had barely the thinnest of veils over their preference for sound over melody, a preference that’s never been shameful in the contemporary electronic music community (as far as I can tell). But actually, I don’t think Gira’s showboating and his innovation reinforce each other; if anything, his desire to ham it up gets in the way of the fragile momentum he works up sometimes.

BEAN SOUP:
2 cans black beans
1/2 large spanish onion
4 cloves garlic
butter
cumin
cheese + sour cream

CURRY TUNA:
5 cans tuna (in water)
mayonnaise
1/2 green apple
1/2 C dried cranberries
curry powder

MYSTERY TUBERS:
mystery tubers
butter
cinnamon

This impromptu meal knocked my socks off, and Molly deserves most of the credit. Thanks, Molly! Preparation:

Dice onion and garlic, and sautee in more butter than is strictly necessary; stop when onions are starting to become translucent. Pour in both cans of beans and not-quite-one canful of water; bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Add lots of cumin. Blend into homogeneity with a food processor of some kind (we used an immersion blender) and serve with shredded cheese and/or sour cream on top. I’ve had black bean soup that was basically just bean/garlic/onion before, and I don’t know what to credit with this soup’s excellence– I am guessing either the extra butter, the total smoothness into which we blended it, or the mildness of Spanish onion.

The tuna salad is simpler; chop the apple up (not too finely; it’s for texture as much as flavor) and dump everything together. Mayonnaise to taste; curry powder is to taste as well, but should probably be several times as much as you think you need. This plus the soup will serve 4 people; add the mystery tubers and something bread-like to eat the tuna on and you could probably call it 8. I suspect that with bread, it would have needed even more curry powder or perhaps just fresher spices. As an attempt to recreate the tuna curry sandwiches from my favorite lunchtime sandwich shop (now vanished), we failed, but the results tasted good in many of the same ways.

Now, the mystery tubers: I bought them from a tiny grocery store in Inman Square. One bin said *SWEET* POTATOES $1/lb. and contained the standard elongated orange things; the bin next to it said __SWEET__ POTATOES $1.50/lb. and contained what looked like large reddish regular potatoes. I bought the latter. The first time I had them, I microwaved them liberally (20 minutes for three large ones), wondering whether I should get out the salt in case they turned out to be regular old potatoes when cut open. They were not. They were yellow-green-brown inside and not very appetizing. Still, I took a bite.

Some of you may be familiar with the tenets of Gnosticism; I am not, except that I was told at some point that the Gnostics (or one of their offshoot sects?) believed in two gods: a good, transcendent one and an evil one that created the material world, which was thus also evil. I’m pretty sure they disagreed with one another over whether the God of the Bible was the good one or the bad one. At any rate, as soon as I topped the mystery tuber with butter and cinnamon and took a bite, I realized that all this was TRUE: the physical world we know and all the things in it, all the people we have ever met or foods we have ever tasted, are merely the work of a wicked god that means to trap us in delusion and sin– all except for THIS root vegetable, which is the work of the REAL god.

I mean, it tasted like a sweet potato. But a very, very, very good one. It was smoother than most sweet potatoes, and maybe starchier. I happen to consider a good sweet potato one of the better things in life.

Realizing that I like my tubers cooked more than a lot of other people do, I tried microwaving the next batch somewhat less for tonight’s dinner, with disappointing results: half of each potato was as soft as before (fine with me) and the other half was inedibly tough. Maybe the microwave is not the way to go.

Describing the mystery tubers to people, I’ve gotten several different responses, most of which boil down to either “Oh, those must be yams,” or “Whatever those are, they aren’t yams.” If they aren’t yams, does anyone have a guess what I’ve been eating?

Modified slightly from an epicurious.com recipe…

10 graham crackers
2 T sugar
5 T melted unsalted butter
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
4 large egg yolks
1/2 C key lime juice
strawberries

Convert crackers into crumbs. [I did this by hand. Apparently, normal people put them in a Ziploc and crush them with a rolling pin.] Stir crumbs, sugar and butter together in a bowl until combined well, then press the mixture along the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie plate.

Bake crust 10 minutes at 350F in the middle of the oven, then let cool on a cooling rack.

Whisk together condensed milk and egg yolks (they should be totally combined pretty quickly). Add lime juice and whisk thoroughly again. If you like your pie tart, add a few more tablespoons of juice. If you only have regular lime juice, add a LOT more.

Pour filling in and bake at 350F for 15 minutes. Cool pie on a rack until it’s room temperature, then cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.

Serve with strawberry slices or whipped cream.

[I used ReaLime lime juice, which was not nearly key enough, as it turns out. A half-cup of lime juice plus part of a fresh lemon I had left over from dinner made a pie that tasted on the bland side of okay; I prefer things tart. Other than that, it was easy and delicious. Microwaving frozen strawberries to eat with the chilled pie made for a nice blend of temperatures and flavors, though once the strawberries were there I occasionally forgot I was eating a key lime pie, and instead thought I had a slice of the smoothest cheesecake ever, which was not actually a problem.]