Peter Gabriel’s First Solo Concert, Post-Genesis: Hear the Complete Audio Recording (1977)

After retir­ing for per­son­al rea­sons from prog-rock giants Gen­e­sis, Peter Gabriel went on to record a total of four solo records enti­tled Peter Gabriel, dis­tin­guished from each oth­er by ref­er­ences to their cov­er art (“Car,” “Scratch,” “Melt”) and an alter­nate title insist­ed upon by his label (“Secu­ri­ty”). This inten­sive focus on the epony­mous per­haps bespeaks of ego, per­haps humil­i­ty. It also maybe sig­ni­fies the decep­tive­ly straight­for­ward pre­sen­ta­tion Gabriel would offer the world—shorn of the make­up and cos­tumes of his Gen­e­sis days, he might appear to have become anoth­er earnest, bal­ladeer­ing singer/songwriter. (See our post on clas­sic Gabriel-era Gen­e­sis from yes­ter­day.) Yet that first, 1977, solo out­ing was as imag­i­na­tive, baroque, and glee­ful­ly exper­i­men­tal as his pre­vi­ous work. His expan­sive musi­cal vocab­u­lary gave the first Peter Gabriel what Stere­ogum calls “a pur­pose­ful­ly eclec­tic, any­thing-flies approach to songcraft” that some­times worked, some­times didn’t.

Some of the uneven­ness of the first solo album is due to what Gabriel him­self felt was over­pro­duc­tion on the part of Bob Ezrin, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the song “Here Comes the Flood.” He would there­after per­form this song solo on piano—re-record­ing it thus in 1990. At the top of the post, you can hear him play it as the open­er for his first ever solo show at the Capi­tol The­atre in Pas­sa­ic, New Jer­sey.

The March 5, 1977 con­cert kicked off the tour for the first Peter Gabriel, for which he assem­bled an all-star band, some of whom had fea­tured on the album, includ­ing King Crim­son gui­tarist Robert Fripp (appear­ing under the name “Dusty Rhodes” and appar­ent­ly play­ing off­stage behind the cur­tain). After “Here Comes the Flood” is “On the Air,” and just above, hear the weird, wob­bly “Mori­bund the Burg­er­meis­ter” from that night. Below, in four parts, hear the remain­ing songs in the set (see the full setlist here). Over the audio in each Youtube clip, see mon­tages of still images—some pre­sum­ably from the tour, some of album and pro­mo art­work.

While Gabriel may have ditched the flam­boy­ant onstage per­son­ae, he nev­er aban­doned his visu­al flair, as we know from those ground­break­ing music videos. Wit­ness the artis­tic pedi­gree on dis­play in the cov­er art of Peter Gabriel (Car)—a pho­to­graph by Throb­bing Gris­tle mem­ber and artist Peter “Sleazy” Christo­pher­son of Gabriel slumped in a car owned by famed album cov­er design­er Storm Thorg­er­son.

But the new Peter Gabriel, the solo artist, had—as he put it in the first album’s big sin­gle “Sols­bury Hill”—“walked right out of the machin­ery” of Gen­e­sis’ exces­sive pre­sen­ta­tion. That song, still one of his most mem­o­rable, has been cov­ered by every­one from Lou Reed to Era­sure. Speak­ing to his strength as a song­writer, the tune with per­haps the broad­est appeal is also one of his most personal—purportedly about his deci­sion to leave Gen­e­sis. Hear it live in Part 5 below.

Though he may have left behind the band that made him famous, he still pays trib­ute to them in his first solo concert’s finale. At the close of the set, below, he ends with a Gen­e­sis song, “Back in N.Y.C.,” from the last, dou­ble con­cept album he record­ed with them. It doesn’t feel out of place at all, prov­ing per­haps that, even with­out the makeup—as All­mu­sic writesPeter Gabriel was “unde­ni­ably the work of the same man behind The Lamb Lies Down on Broad­way.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Gen­e­sis (from the Peter Gabriel-Era) Per­form in a Glo­ri­ous, 1973 Restored Con­cert Film

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch Genesis (from the Peter Gabriel Era) Perform in a Glorious, 1973 Restored Concert Film

If you’re of a cer­tain vintage—let’s just say old enough to bore mil­len­ni­als to death with nos­tal­gic rants about how MTV used to play music videos, man—then you will remem­ber Peter Gabriel’s visu­al­ly stun­ning “Sledge­ham­mer” video from his award-win­ning 1986 album So. You will have had your heart­strings tugged by his “In Your Eyes” and its pitch-per­fect appro­pri­a­tion in Cameron Crowe’s Say Any­thing. And you will know—though maybe not as well as Patrick Bate­man—the sounds and images of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” This music may not have aged as well as those of us who grew up hear­ing it (or vice ver­sa), but it left an indeli­ble impres­sion on a gen­er­a­tion and defined 80s pop cul­ture as much as Michael Jack­son or The Ban­gles.

But if you are of a slight­ly ear­li­er vin­tage, you will remem­ber these fine musi­cians for an entire­ly dif­fer­ent rea­son. Before the catchy dance-pop silli­ness of “Sus­su­dio” and “Big Time,” there was the arty, high-seri­ous­ness of Gen­e­sis, as front­ed in its hey­day by Gabriel, with Collins pound­ing the drums. Though the band per­sist­ed well into the 80s and 90s after Gabriel’s 1975 depar­ture, meld­ing funk, soul, and pop in inno­v­a­tive ways as Collins took the lead, die-hard Gen­e­sis fans swear by its clas­sic con­fig­u­ra­tion, with its sur­re­al con­cept albums and stage shows rival­ing Wall-era Pink Floyd or Bowie’s Star­dust phase. If you’re none too keen on lat­er Gen­e­sis, the slick synth-rock hit machine, and if the afore­men­tioned flam­boy­ant pro­duc­tions are your cup of Eng­lish prog-rock tea, then we have a treat for you.

Just above is a ful­ly restored con­cert film of a 1973 per­for­mance at England’s Shep­per­ton Stu­dios, “per­haps,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “the sin­gle best rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Peter Gabriel-era Gen­e­sis on film.” Though the con­cert pre­cedes the band’s Gabriel-era swan song—double con­cept album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broad­way—it does show­case the strongest mate­r­i­al from their two pre­vi­ous records, Fox­trot and the tru­ly excel­lent Sell­ing Eng­land by the Pound. Promi­nent­ly on dis­play are the eccen­tric­i­ties that sharply divid­ed crit­ics and enam­ored fans: the odd time-sig­na­tures and abrupt tem­po changes, vir­tu­osic musi­cian­ship, lit­er­ate, eso­teric lyrics, and Gabriel’s the­atri­cal make­up and cos­tum­ing. The effect of it all is some­times a bit like Rush in a pro­duc­tion of God­spell, and while This is Spinal Tap took a lot of the air out of this sort of thing three decades ago, the film remains an impres­sive doc­u­ment even if the per­for­mances are hard to take entire­ly seri­ous­ly at times. See below for a full track­list:

“Watch­er of the Skies” (8:04)
“Danc­ing with the Moon­lit Knight” (9:02)
“I Know What I Like” (5:46)
“The Musi­cal Box” (11:39)
“Sup­per’s Ready” (23:59)

The sto­ry of the film’s restora­tion is intrigu­ing in its own right. The Shep­per­ton footage was res­cued by a small group who pooled resources to buy it in a New York estate sale. Since then, Youtube uploader King Lerch and his con­fr­eres have upgrad­ed the orig­i­nal restora­tion to the HD ver­sion you see above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Turkish Musician Shows How to Play the Yaybahar, His Mesmerizing, Newly-Invented Instrument

Once upon a time, a hand­some man was trapped in a tow­er over­look­ing the sea. To amuse him­self, he built a mag­i­cal instru­ment. It was con­struct­ed of wood and met­al, but sound­ed like some­thing one might hear over loud­speak­ers at the Tate, or per­haps an avant-garde sound instal­la­tion in Bush­wick. The instru­ment was love­ly, but so cum­ber­some, it was impos­si­ble to imag­ine pack­ing it into a taxi. And so the man gigged alone in the tow­er over­look­ing the sea.

Wait. This is no fairy tale. The musi­cian, Görkem Şen, is real, as is his instru­ment, the Yay­ba­har. (Its name remains a mys­tery to your non-Turk­ish-speak­ing cor­re­spon­dent. Google Trans­late was no help. Per­haps Şen explains the name in the pat­ter pre­ced­ing his recent TEDxRe­set per­for­mance…music is the only uni­ver­sal here.)

The Yay­ba­har looks like min­i­mal­ist sculp­ture, or a piece of vin­tage play­ground equip­ment. It has fret­ted strings, coiled springs and drum skins. Şen plays it with a bow, or a wrapped mal­let, nim­bly switch­ing between spaced out explo­rations, folk music and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.

After many years, a pass­ing prince or princess was bewitched by the beau­ti­ful music that reached his or her ears from the tow­er. He or she braved the bram­bles to free Şen and his instru­ment. 

It’s also pos­si­ble that Şen enlist­ed a cou­ple of pals to help him mus­cle the Yay­ba­har down the steps, cry­ing out when they bumped the pre­cious instru­ment into the walls, strug­gling to get a decent grip. No good deed goes unre­ward­ed.

At last, they left the con­fines of the tow­er. Görkem Şen lift­ed his face toward the Turk­ish sun­shine. The Yay­ba­har stood in the sand. A noble­woman whom an evil sor­cer­ess had turned into a dog hung out for a while before los­ing inter­est. The instru­ment rever­ber­at­ed as pas­sion­ate­ly as ever. The spell was both bro­ken and not.

You can hear more sound clips of Şen play­ing the Yay­ba­har below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Kurt Vonnegut Explains “How to Write With Style”

vonnegut-how-to-write-with-style

If you feel the need for tips on devel­op­ing a writ­ing style, you prob­a­bly don’t look right to the Insti­tute of Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ics Engi­neers’ jour­nal Trans­ac­tions on Pro­fes­sion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. You cer­tain­ly don’t open such a pub­li­ca­tion expect­ing such tips from nov­el­ist Kurt Von­negut, a writer with a style of his own if ever there was one.

But in a 1980 issue, the author of Slaugh­ter­house-FiveJail­bird, and Cat’s Cra­dle does indeed appear with advice on “how to put your style and per­son­al­i­ty into every­thing you write.” What’s more, he does it in an ad, part of a series from the Inter­na­tion­al Paper Com­pa­ny called “The Pow­er of the Print­ed Word,” osten­si­bly meant to address the need, now that “the print­ed word is more vital than ever,” for “all of us to read bet­ter, write bet­ter, and com­mu­ni­cate bet­ter.”

This arguably holds much truer now, giv­en the explo­sion of tex­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion over the inter­net, than it did in 1980. And so which of Von­negut’s words of wis­dom can still help us con­vey our words of wis­dom? You can read the full PDF of this two-page piece of ad-uca­tion here, but some excerpt­ed points fol­low:

  • Find a sub­ject you care about. “Find a sub­ject you care about and which you in your heart feel oth­ers should care about. It is this gen­uine car­ing, and not your games with lan­guage, which will be the most com­pelling and seduc­tive ele­ment in your style. I am not urg­ing you to write a nov­el, by the way — although I would not be sor­ry if you wrote one, pro­vid­ed you gen­uine­ly cared about some­thing. A peti­tion to the may­or about a pot­hole in front of your house or a love let­ter to the girl next door will do.”
  • Keep it sim­ple. “As for your use of lan­guage: Remem­ber that two great mas­ters of lan­guage, William Shake­speare and James Joyce, wrote sen­tences which were almost child­like when their sub­jects were most pro­found. ‘To be or not to be?’ asks Shake­speare’s Ham­let. The longest word is three let­ters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put togeth­er a sen­tence as intri­cate and as glit­ter­ing as a neck­lace for Cleopa­tra, but my favorite sen­tence in his short sto­ry ‘Eve­line’ is this one: ‘She was tired.’ At that point in the sto­ry, no oth­er words could break the heart of a read­er as those three words do.”
  • Sound like your­self. “Eng­lish was Con­rad’s third lan­guage, and much that seems piquant in his use of Eng­lish was no doubt col­ored by his first lan­guage, which was Pol­ish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ire­land, for the Eng­lish spo­ken there is so amus­ing and musi­cal. I myself grew up in Indi­anapo­lis, where com­mon speech sounds like a band saw cut­ting gal­va­nized tin, and employs a vocab­u­lary as unor­na­men­tal as a mon­key wrench. [ … ] No mat­ter what your first lan­guage, you should trea­sure it all your life. If it hap­pens to not be stan­dard Eng­lish, and if it shows itself when your write stan­dard Eng­lish, the result is usu­al­ly delight­ful, like a very pret­ty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue. I myself find that I trust my own writ­ing most, and oth­ers seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a per­son from Indi­anapo­lis, which is what I am. What alter­na­tives do I have?”
  • Say what you mean. “My teach­ers wished me to write accu­rate­ly, always select­ing the most effec­tive words, and relat­ing the words to one anoth­er unam­bigu­ous­ly, rigid­ly, like parts of a machine. They hoped that I would become under­stand­able — and there­fore under­stood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picas­so did with paint or what any num­ber of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punc­tu­a­tion, had words mean what­ev­er I want­ed them to mean, and strung them togeth­er hig­gledy-pig­gledy, I would sim­ply not be under­stood. Read­ers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they them­selves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.”

While easy to remem­ber, Von­negut’s plain­spo­ken rules could well take an entire career to mas­ter. I’ll cer­tain­ly keep writ­ing on the sub­jects I care most about — many of them on dis­play right here on Open Cul­ture — keep­ing it as sim­ple as I can bear, say­ing what I mean, and sound­ing like… well, a root­less west-coast­er, I sup­pose, but one ques­tion sticks in my mind: which cor­po­ra­tion will step up today to turn out writ­ing advice from our most esteemed men and women of let­ters?

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Toni Mor­ri­son Dis­pens­es Writ­ing Wis­dom in 1993 Paris Review Inter­view

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Ray Brad­bury Offers 12 Essen­tial Writ­ing Tips and Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture Saves Civ­i­liza­tion

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

The Best Writ­ing Advice Pico Iyer Ever Received

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut, A 19 Minute Music Video for Their Last Album With Roger Waters (1983)


The End­less Riv­er, Pink Floyd’s unex­pect­ed new album, dropped Fri­day, and unless we cred­it sly hints dropped by drum­mer Nick Mason, it’s like­ly the last we’ll ever hear from them. But one should always clar­i­fy, when speak­ing of the band, exact­ly which Pink Floyd is under dis­cus­sion. Is it Pink Floyd 1.0, with mad­cap singer/guitarist Syd Bar­rett at the helm? Pink Floyd 2.0—the most endur­ing combo—featuring Mason, Bar­rett replace­ment David Gilmour, bassist Roger Waters, and key­boardist Richard Wright? At anoth­er time, Wright was out of the pic­ture, then back in. After 1985, Waters, the band’s pri­ma­ry lyri­cist, and arguably most vision­ary mem­ber, was gone for good. They would nev­er again make music as soar­ing and ambitious—if also bombastic—as they did with his over­bear­ing pres­ence.

The title of the last album Waters record­ed with the band, 1983’s The Final Cut, pre­scient­ly announces itself as a coda for Floyd 2.0 (or 2.5? What­ev­er…). It also alludes to the band’s cin­e­mat­ic reach: whether scor­ing films, writ­ing them, or mak­ing records with the scope and breadth of epic movies. Floyd and film have always formed an organ­ic part­ner­ship. Before the quick fix of Youtube, they made fea­ture-length music videos that seemed to emerge ful­ly formed from nar­ra­tive and con­cept-rich records. The Final Cut, the album, ini­tial­ly intend­ed to be part of 1982’s rock opera The Wall, took on a life of its own when Waters re-con­ceived it as a protest against the Falk­lands War and Mar­garet Thatch­er, as well as a eulo­gy and vin­di­ca­tion for his ser­vice­man father who died in World War II. The Final Cut, the film (above—not to be con­fused with a 2004 sci-fi flick of the same name), is a nine­teen-minute piece that dra­ma­tizes four songs from the album: “The Gunner’s Dream,” “The Final Cut,” “Not Now John,” and “The Fletch­er Memo­r­i­al Home.”

The album itself brought the band to an impasse—pushing Waters’ increas­ing­ly per­son­al focus to such an extent that, writes All­mu­sic, it “pur­pose­ful­ly alien­ates all but the most ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­er.” That may be so, but if one is will­ing to indulge it, it’s a very reward­ing lis­ten, “more like a nov­el than a record.” And it makes a fas­ci­nat­ing con­trast to The End­less Riv­er, “a suite of most­ly instru­men­tal moods and frag­ments” rem­i­nis­cent of the band’s film scores. Tak­en togeth­er, these two doc­u­ments show­case the endur­ing strengths of Pink Floyd proper—they were a band who excelled both at telling com­plex sto­ries and cre­at­ing deeply felt moods that are, like the title of The End­less Riv­er’s clos­ing track, “Loud­er than Words.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rare Reunions of Pink Floyd: Con­certs from 2005, 2010 & 2011

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

Dur­ing the gold­en age of vinyl, Ron­co sold vac­u­ums to keep your records clean. But there was always a cheap­er DIY hack — a hack demon­strat­ed in a video cre­at­ed by a Youtu­ber who sim­ply goes by “ghettofunk13.” Just pour some wood glue on your record, spread it around care­ful­ly as the turntable spins (don’t get it on the cen­ter label), and you can appar­ent­ly get rid of those snaps, crack­les, and pops. The video is pret­ty straight­for­ward. But it’s worth not­ing the adden­dum “ghettofunk13” lat­er added in text: “You can use con­sid­er­ably less glue and still get the same effect — it cuts the dry time way down. Just be sure that you get the whole record cov­ered!”

Over on Metafil­ter, one com­menter took “ghettofunk13” to task, say­ing “The bass is mud­dy and there’s no clar­i­ty and sparkle at the high end.… He should have used de-ion­ized wood glue from a poly­car­bon­ate (NOT polypropy­lene) bot­tle, and spread it in the direc­tion of rota­tion with a hand-pol­ished cedar shake. Ama­teur.” Just some­thing to con­sid­er if you plan to do some DIY record clean­ing this week­end. You can get a few more details on the process here. Try at your own risk.

FYI, over at Kottke.org, you can see an excel­lent micro­scop­ic pho­to of vinyl record grooves. Jason writes, “When you look real­ly close­ly at record grooves, like at 1000x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, you can see the wave­forms of the music itself. Sooo cool.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

World Records: New Pho­to Exhib­it Pays Trib­ute to the Era of Vinyl Records & Turnta­bles

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The Red Hot Chili Orchestra

Chili Klaus, a Dan­ish entertainer/chili enthu­si­ast, asked some mem­bers of the Dan­ish Nation­al Cham­ber Orches­tra to per­form Tan­go Jalousie … but with a twist. Mid­way through their per­for­mance, they ate “the world’s hottest chili pep­pers” and then con­tin­ued on with the show. Over two mil­lion peo­ple have enjoyed what hap­pens next.

The orches­tra, cre­at­ed in Copen­hagen in 1937, is unfor­tu­nate­ly going to be shut down at the end of the year by its cash-strapped par­ent com­pa­ny, the Dan­ish Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (DBC). The video above seems to be just a fun­ny final act. Too bad it was­n’t used as part of a cam­paign to get the DBC to recon­sid­er its deci­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pens When Every­day Peo­ple Get a Chance to Con­duct a World-Class Orches­tra

The Recy­cled Orches­tra: Paraguayan Youth Play Mozart with Instru­ments Clev­er­ly Made Out of Trash

Har­ry Partch’s Kooky Orches­tra of DIY Musi­cal Instru­ments

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essential Cooking Techniques: From Poaching Eggs to Shucking Oysters

I was blessed to grow up around a grand­moth­er who cooked every meal like she was feed­ing a dozen fam­ished farmhands. She nev­er spelled out all her var­i­ous tricks and short cuts … let’s not call them hacks. She just did what she did, and I picked it up by osmo­sis, using a juice glass for a bis­cuit cut­ter and watch­ing for pock­marks in the pan­cake bat­ter. End­less hours in her kitchen made me a con­fi­dent chef long before I was in a posi­tion to buy my own gro­ceries.

Not every­one is so for­tu­nate, I know.

They get their infor­ma­tion from Julia Child, Martha Stew­art, some pseu­do­ny­mous food blog­ger or pos­si­bly my friend, Jesse, whose exper­tise as a builder extends to things culi­nary. He once insist­ed on show­ing me a more effi­cient way to cut up man­go. My grandmother’s trop­i­cal fruit expe­ri­ence maxed out at oranges, so I was on my own in the sep­a­rat­ing man­go flesh from man­go bone depart­ment. I tried it his way a cou­ple of times, before revert­ing to my non-way.

There’s unde­ni­able com­pet­i­tive­ness amongst those of us who pride our­selves on our cook­ing abil­i­ties. Our skills are our hon­or. So help me if I went on Top Chef, and some guest judge decreed I was doing some­thing wrong!

For the record, The New York Times endors­es Jesse’s man­go tech­nique above, in their short instruc­tion­al video series, Cook­ing Tech­niques. There are 53 videos in total.

I can see how such a col­lec­tion would come in handy for those who didn’t grow up around my grand­moth­er, Jesse, or me.

And speak­ing of handy, all fledg­ling chefs are advised to get a firm han­dle on knife tech­niques before pick­ing up a noto­ri­ous­ly slip­pery-fleshed fruit and cut­ting toward their own fin­gers! Such reck­less­ness would nev­er have passed muster with the edi­tors of the Bet­ty Crock­er New Boys and Girls Cook­book. The Times is liv­ing on the edge!

Some of the con­tent has a dopey wash-rinse-repeat vibe, abet­ted by an odd­ly fla­vor­less nar­ra­tive voice. (Not every­one has Thug Kitchen’s nar­ra­tive sparkle. I should be grate­ful for the per­son­al­i­ty shin­ing through oth­er Times videos, notably Bill Cunningham’s “On The Street.”)

I’ll eat those words should I ever need to shuck an oys­ter, anoth­er one of those culi­nary duties that had no place on my Mid­west­ern grandmother’s agen­da. Not to say that my kitchen abil­i­ties are limned by the culi­nary stan­dards of 1970s Indi­ana. I fling around fish sauce and coconuts with Siamese aban­don, but oys­ters always seem so damn daunt­ing. Could owe to ear­ly read­ings of Lewis Car­roll.

I don’t know what I was so afraid of. Appar­ent­ly all it takes is 30 sec­onds and a dish­tow­el. (And an oys­ter knife, but we’ve got draw­er­fuls of those, the trick­le down effect of my husband’s Cape Cod boy­hood.)

Ulti­mate­ly, it’s sol­id stuff, but though with apolo­gies to our veg­e­tar­i­an read­ers, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. You can poach eggs a la the Times, or do it my way by adding a table­spoon of vine­gar to the poach­ing water. No fussy pre-poach. Boom! Done!

Sim­i­lar­ly stem­ming greens. My way, gleaned, not from my gran, but a hand­writ­ten, illus­trat­ed zine ear­li­er this mil­len­ni­um, doesn’t even require a knife! Hold that kale stem side up, using your oth­er hand as an ersatz prong, tear­ing the leaf from stem to stern.

Good heav­ens. Is that where that expres­sion came from? Per­haps some­one at the Times would know…. See all 53 of their cook­ing tech­nique videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Wis­dom of Michael Pol­lan

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Harvard’s Free Course on Mak­ing Cakes, Pael­la & Oth­er Deli­cious Food

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, for­mer food blog­ger and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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