The Smiths - The Queen is Dead

OK, here we go with the second record you have to have in your collection.

The Smiths put out a lot of great singles, but to me The Queen is Dead is their best full length record. Ten great songs including the title number which managed to rhyme spanner with piano. While there were no huge club dance hits on this record, we got to see Morrisey stretch his song writing beyond the dark sad songs they had specialized in up until then and add a sense of humor to the mix. We also learned that in Morrisey's world Wilde trumped Keats and Yeats combined.

The reason I love the Smiths so much is that on the surface Johnny Marr gives us fantastic danceable pop tunes, but lying just below the surface are smart, painful lyrics. So you could be dancing your ass off while still maintaining a sullen bad attitude. This album won't stop you from downloading half a dozen other Smiths singles off iTunes, but for start to finish listening you can't beat it.

Chicken Fried Steak

I had never heard of chicken fried steak (CFS) before I moved to Texas in 1976, and I was a little afraid they were going to serve me some kind of mutated half chicken, half cow the first time I ate it. But that was not the case. I fell in love with a cheap cut of steak battered up like fried chicken and fried up in a pan with white gravy. Of course you also have to have the appropriate sides, which I say are mashed potatoes and green beans. A roll with butter and iced tea would complete the official meal of Texas.

Now I have written recently about Texans having two main food groups: Mexican and BBQ, but I was negligent in leaving out the CFS. Every little cafe and tavern in Texas seems to have CFS on the menu. This makes me wonder, where did CFS come from? We know Tex-Mex is our take on Mexican food and all the southeastern states that were settled before us have BBQ. Although the Texas version is a little different, I don't think we can lay claim to inventing BBQ. So did we invent CFS?

A quick search of the interweb gives us the definitive answer: The precise origins of the dish are unclear but many sources attribute its development to German and Austrian immigrants to Texas in the nineteenth century who brought recipes for the classic Austrian dish wiener schnitzel. Lamesa, on the Texas South Plains, claims to be the birthplace of chicken fried steak. Good enough for me.

As much as we love Mexican food and BBQ, I think we now have to say, chicken fried steak is the "official meal of Texas."

Real Rain

Yesterday I was reminded what rain can really sound like. That hard southern rain where two inches falls in an hour. The kind of rain that if you get caught out in it, you not only get drenched, your head hurts from the pounding.

Yes it does rain a lot in the Pacific Northwest, but I think it would make more sense to say it rains consistently, not a lot. In 30 minutes yesterday we got more rain than Portland does in a month. As cool as it is to watch, there are two major problems the rain brings with it. One, flash floods and two, it feels like you are taking a sauna in a swamp with a plastic bag wrapped around you when it stops and the sun comes out. Flash floods are not very fun either. Freeway underpasses and other low lying areas fill up with water fast and can make the roads impassable. Also, the rain seems to activate all the oil on the road and makes driving a contact sport.

It's funny when something you don't really notice any more in Portland, can bring everything to a stop in Houston.

BBQ or Mexican?

You have all played the game before, if you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life what would it be? The funny thing is most people have an answer for this, but if we think abut it, eating the same thing for a week would drive us crazy.

I have been back in Texas for a few days now and there are basically two types of food we survive on here: BBQ and Mexican. To be clear, the Mexican food should be referred to as Tex-Mex as it different from what they eat in Mexico and the lame stuff they call Mexican food on the west coast. So far, the majority of my meals have come from one of these two categories. Saturday night we went to an upscale Mexican restaurant where you basically pay a little more to sit in a nice atmosphere and eat the same thing you would in a Cantina, but still very good. Sunday night we went back to the old tried and true family Mexican restaurant Ninfa's. Ninfa, like many restaurant owners turned her ability to cook for a large extended family into a chain of restaurants here in Houston in the 70's. She passed away last year but the restaurants are still around.

For lunch we are heading to Goode Company BBQ. Jim Goode has turned his talent for making a great BBQ sauce into a chain of BBQ and seafood restaurants. As you might have guessed, we are not totally against chain restaurants here in Texas, as long as we know the person who started them and we can still go down to the original place they started. Tomorrow I will hit Otto's BBQ, George Bush Sr.'s favorite BBQ place in Houston. On this one issue I may have to agree with him. Then on the way to San Antonio I am sure I will hit another of the 100 best BBQ spots in Texas for lunch. Every small town has a great BBQ restaurant so the picking is easy.

In case you don't know, San Antonio is mostly populated by Mexican-Americans, so guess what I'll be eating there! After a few days the pendulum will have swung too far to Mexican and I'll have to get a little more BBQ in Houston before I fly home to Portland where I will go back to eating sushi.

I guess this is a long way of saying, you can't live on one kind of food.

The Clash - London Calling

I am going to get this thing started with the best record I own, The Clash, London Calling. I couldn't wait to get this record, I kept checking the record store as I knew it was supposed to be released the same time in the US as in the UK. 1979, Cactus Records in Houston, Texas. A beautiful double album (now on one CD) that goes from power punk to reggae to a top 40 hit, Train in Vain.

I played this record all weekend until I knew every word by the time I left for school on Monday. To this day, if I hear a song on the radio or my shuffle I instinctively start singing the next song in the original album order. 19 amazing songs (Train in Vain is a hidden extra), who puts that many good songs on one record these days?

When you buy this record, your are going to have to make sure the neighbors are away, because you are going to want to turn it up loud. Your going to dance and jump up and down and you may feel like smashing a few things, that's the contact high from all the speed Mick Jones was on at the time.

The 100 records you should own overview

OK, lets set the ground rules for this thing. There are a lot of great bands and there are a lot of what used to be called, great albums. They don't always go together. The Beatles made a lot of crappy records, in fact I think they only made one that sounds good start to finish and that's the White Album (it may or may not make the list). The first four Led Zeppelin albums are all great (II and IV will make the list), these guys knew how to make a record start to finish. The Who only made one good album, Who's Next. All the good Who songs that they play over and over again came from this one record.

This will not be just a trip back to last century. There are some great bands that are alive and well and even a couple of classics from the 2000's, but more on that later. What I want to do here is mine my collection and refute the iTunes paradigm that you only need to download the singles you like. There is a place for that, but not here. Here you will be turned on to rare, and not so rare records that you can sit down and enjoy for the entire playing time.

So every so often I will post a new record review and in a couple of years, you'll have a great collection. Enjoy!

Missing Texas?

It is strange that I have lived in Oregon for 12 years, but I still do not call myself an Oregonian. When people ask I say I am from Texas. I have not lived there since 1991, and I wasn't born there, but somehow it dominates my sense of self. The bigger mystery to me is why I still identify with Texas so strongly when I have no intention of ever moving back there. My parents, brother and sister all live there so I still have very strong ties to the state. We visit once or twice a year so it's not like I am pining for a long lost motherland. And the biggest irony of all is Oregon is much more in line with my personality and beliefs. Oregon is a blue state, Texas as red as they get. The Prius is the state car of Oregon, in Texas the SUV is king. When it comes to race and sexual politics Texas is still the old south, while Oregon is a little more forward thinking, etc., etc.

However there are some drawbacks to living in Oregon. All you ever hear about are Pac 10 sports and I wish most of the Pac 10 teams would fall off into the ocean with all the Florida schools following close behind. Crowding into a sports bar with a group of alumni you have very little in common with at 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning is not as fun as heading out to Darrel Royal Memorial stadium on a Saturday afternoon.

Basically I am saying I would be happy to have a private jet that lands in Austin every Saturday morning and leaves loaded up with Green Mesquite BBQ at 2:00 a.m. on game days and buzzes by Houston for Christmas and birthdays. And for less than 400 hours a year Texas still gets to be where I am from, versus the 8,360 hours spent in Oregon.