Roadfood: When Good Food Goes Bad

Garrett's Restaurant in looked perfect: located on the courthouse square in tiny Carlisle, Ky and recommended by the tour guide at the Blue Licks revolutionary war battle site. But once inside, things took a fast turn for the worse. After I'd ordered (country ham, greens, white beans, and mac & cheese) an old lady and an older guy started smoking cigarettes. My son Leo couldn't take it (and I really can't blame him). He was miserable. He refused to eat (and he kept his hand over his nose the whole time). For Leo, it was thumbs down for Garrett's.




But things picked up at the venerable Columbia's Steakhouse in downtown Lexington, Ky. (the first city in Kentucky to ban smoking), a last bastion of Bluegrass delicacies like fried banana peppers and lamb fries.


Finally, no trip to Lexington is complete without a mess of unparalleled glazed donuts from Spaldings Bakery.

Talking 'Twelfth Night' Near Christmas, on WNYC

Hey, say it out loud, it's even got the right number of syllables. For what may be one of the last Suite 16 posts of the decade it seems ok to have a little pun, er fun.

Sorry, couldn't resist a little wordplay. It may not be worthy of Shakespeare, but the brilliant and eclectic band Hem sure are, as they ably proved earlier this year with their original music for the production of 'Twelfth Night' at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park.

And earlier today, Dan Messe and Steve Curtis stopped in to New York public radio station WNYC to talk about the project with Leonard Lopate. Here's the two of them (with yours truly) just before the show:


And you can listen to the conversation for yourself here:



The album, which features the band as well as contributions from cast members such as Anne Hathaway, has been a critic's darling through the fall and on to a host of best of the year lists. Learn more at this link.

The New Kindles are Here! The New Kindles are Here!

Thanks to Shore Fire's President Marilyn Laverty, we got brand new Kindles yesterday at our annual pot luck. That plus Matt Hanks' amazing peanut butter and bacon pie made for a wonderful time.

A quick, day after survey of "what did you download first?" finds that Marilyn, Mark Satlof (me) and Brendan Gilmartin downloaded Moby Dick, with the atmospheric addendum that Brendan has been reading his Kindle on the high seas (during his commute on the Staten Island Ferry). Diana D'Angelo's got the Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe; Chris Thieke's digging the Compete Works of HP Lovecraft; Nick Baily has subscribed to the Economist; Lauretta Charlton plans "Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir as her first read; and Matt Hanks is starting with a trial subscription to The New Yorker (and his wife Courtney grabbed the new Alice Munro short stories collection Too Much Happiness).

Rob Eisenberg, Who Are You? I Need "Feliz Hanukkah"

So much for the Modern World. Me and my two boys laughed till we cried driving to school this morning, listening to Rob Eisenberg singing "Feliz Hanukkah" on XM Radio's Hanukkah Radio channel...I wanna fry you some crispy latkes, they're no good for your heart....and can you believe it, I can't find any trace on the internet. So here's hoping Rob's got a Google alert on...email me, Rob, msatlof at shorefire.com - Thanks, Mark

VU Redux: Reed, Tucker and Yule talk to David Fricke

If you know me, you know I'm a little obsessed with the Velvet Underground. So you can imagine what a thrill it was to attend the on-stage interview this past Tuesday between David Fricke and Lou Reed, Mo Tucker and Doug Yule at a grand hall deep inside the main NY Public Library building. (Which begged the question: when was the last time Reed and Yule were in the same room together)? What a rare event: Lou prepared to talk about the Velvets. While it was pretty familiar turf to a train spotter like me, even I (and David) learned a tiny new nugget, that the VU had opened for Bobby Bland in a black club in San Francisco. Never heard that one before. The event was to promote the new book Velvet Underground: New York Art, one of three awesome new VU books. To cap the evening, I waited on line and got my book signed. One for the ages. Here's the audio of the event that's posted on WNYC:

Getting To Know: Butch Walker!

Butch Walker played three sold-out nights at Joe's Pub last weekend, and lucky for us, he's been in town all week. He came to our holiday party on Monday, and yesterday I was treated to a private show of some songs from his brilliant new album 'I Liked You Better When You Had No Heart' at the offices of Crush management. In the meantime, I've gotten to geek out w/ Butch on a variety of subjects ranging from music to music photography to George Jones to more music to kids to the Rolling Stones to even more music!

I'm looking forward to more quality hang time w/ Butch in the new year. Watch this space for more revelations.

Neil Diamond and Adam Sandler: What A Fine-Looking Jew

Everybody's favorite zayde Neil Diamond sings Adam Sandler's "Chanukah Song" in honor of the first of eight crazy nights tonight. Note how he changes the "smoke your marijuanukah" line - and the animated chest hair.

Happy Chanukah, everybody! May all your dreidel spins be gimels, all your latkes delicious, and all your Chanukah gelt tax-exempt. (HT: The Daily Swarm.)

Shore Fire Holiday Party, 09 Brooklyn Bowl Edition: Thanks to our Friends

And finally, thanks to everyone who came from near and far to Brooklyn Bowl last night to contemplate the year's end and prepare for what's next in 2010.




Sirius XM's Jeremy Tepper and Sony Legacy's Rob Santos preparing for the next round.

PR Newser's Joe Ciarallo with his friend Meg, of Random House.
Cat Empire manager Corrine Wilke, Velour's Sean Hoess, Chris Taillie, and Velour's Morgan Young.

Check out that spread!

Old friends and former Columbia colleagues Arthur Levy and Ronnie Kairey.

Jornos Jim Bessman and Ira Robbins of Premiere Radio Networks.

Regina Joskow and John Newcott, both of Verve, with Arthur Levy and Andy Schwartz.

Flatiron Management bros Ben Weber and Mike Martinovich.

Freelancer Tad Hendrickson, Shore Fire's Brendan Gilmartin and freelancer Will Hermes, down from New Paltz.

Shore Fire Holiday Party, 09 Brooklyn Bowl Edition: Thanks to the Staff

Our Brooklyn Bowl holiday party last night was a blast....we've worked hard all year and we were blessed we could celebrate. And we couldn't do it without our terrific staff, most of whom made it into one of my shots and seen here with some of our other attendees:




L-R - Blue Note's Perry Greenfield, Shore Fire President Marilyn Laverty, Shore Fire Senior Vice President Mark Satlof


Nora Lyons with Sirius/XM's Jeremy Tepper and Sony Legacy's Rob Santos.


Chris Taillie with Nick Loss-Eaton


Marilyn Laverty and Elizabeth Lutz.

Sony's Fran DeFeo with Rebecca Shapiro, who is looking terrific just five days after giving birth to a bouncing baby boy!


Rockingale Record's Karen MacMillan with Brendan Gilmartin and friend.

Prefixmag.com's Dave Park with Chris Taillie and Nick Baily


Lauretta Charlton with Random House's Meg (??) and Joe Ciarallo of PR Newswer


Carrie Tolles, Matt Hanks and Matt's wife Courtney Banfield.


Elizabeth Lutz with Diana D'Angelo


Nancie S. Martin with Director of Multimedia for Time.com, Craig Duff

Shore Fire Holiday Party, 09 Brooklyn Bowl Edition: Thanks to the Musicians

Shore Fire capped a great year with our annual holiday party last night, but this year a venue change to the amazing Brooklyn Bowl added a whole other dimension to the festivities. It had to be our biggest yet, lanes packed with friends old and new, journalists of all stripes. But let's not forget that it's really our clients, the musicians, who are our most honored guests. This year Butch Walker, Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Cat Empire, Myron Walden and Sonya Kitchell were spotted in the crowd:


Matt Hanks with Annie Clark

Marilyn Laverty with Sonya Kitchell


Matt Hanks with Butch Walker

Happy Birthday, Nancie!

Last Thursday we celebrated the fearless, ever-fashionable Nancie S. Martin's birthday here at Shore Fire with Crack Pie from the venerable Momokufu (please, no jokes, please).


It does not look menacing, but the Crack Pie is nothing to be scoffed at; it is SO good that the tiniest slice tastes like a week long vacation in heaven, all expenses paid. (Our Brendan Gilmartin, right, looks on skeptically while Nancie, the only person who had had the pie before, looks perfectly serene.)


Here's Nancie, making the wish.


And here's the gang after the hit. You'll notice several of us already showing symptoms of withdraw!

Happy Birthday, Nancie! See you in rehab!

Good times with the Boys from Oklahoma

My favorite Red Dirt rockers Cross Canadian Ragweed were in town this week for a couple of rare NYC shows. We had a fun press day on Wednesday that started out at Relix where Cody, Grady and Jeremy played a couple of acoustic songs for the folks there. It was nice to hear stripped down versions of the songs that they rock out live. Next we made our way over to Sirius where the band was interviewed on the Road Dog channel followed by a session for Outlaw country.


By far the highlight of the day was meeting Jesse “The body” Ventura. Here is a pic of the guys and the governor at Sirius.

Evolution of the Hipster

As a chick who grew up in Williamsburg/Greenpoint, I found this document (courtesy of our friends at PASTE) very amusing and totally accurate.

Cooper Boone's G-Rated Jingle Balls

I must admit that I giggled (like the 12-yr.-old girl I am) when country crooner Cooper Boone told me that he wanted to make his "Jingle Balls" - a modified spherical butter cookie - on WPIX-TV.

Fortunately Spencer Mindich, Jill Nicolini and the rest of the PIX Morning News team remembered how much fun they had back in August when Coop brought in his recipe for Roasted Corn Salad and agreed to take a chance.

And everyone was glad they did as Coop proved his ability to deliver a fun, high-energy cooking segment full of comedy once again and we all got to feast at 8am on his chocolate/coconut/walnut encrusted butter cookies (a.k.a. Jingle Balls).

Watch their hysterical kitchen antics at:
http://weblogs.wpix.com/news/local/morningnews/blogs/2009/12/cooper_boone_1.html

TuneCore Loves Rock & Roll, Joan Jett, Shore Fire

We were immensely proud to get our copy of the TuneCore Sales Certification Award for Joan Jett selling over 100,000 songs via TuneCore. Click here to find out more about the awards. Here's our own Chris Taillie and Nancie Martin, who worked on the campaign for Joan, with the newly minted award. If you come to visit, look on your left as you come through the front door and you'll find it hanging prominently. Thank you, TuneCore!