Zurich

Juliette Lewis and the Licks

27 Jul ’07ZurichJuliette_Lewis, music, Zurich

A number of artists bring a certain power to the stage, but I saw Juliette Lewis and the Licks bring it to the people during their show at Rohstofflager in Zurich.

Most times you see a lead singer they’re a magnet for female groupies. The groupies buy the $40 concert T-shirts and when the singer starts clothing line and she wears a white hat on-stage the groupies buy the $20 knock-off at H&M and support her make-up line. During a show, the groupies scream and drool when the singer takes the stage and set the energy level for the venue.

Lewis has the rather unique quality of inspiring a rabid following of male groupies, who jump through the crowd-sea with American Indian feathers around their heads – you see them rising above the waves on the shoulders of those below them. The scene is hip, it’s energetic – visually as well as emotionally commanding. The thing is, it doesn’t feel like she’s been molded to be a sex symbol or to embody any particular message, she exudes the pure-rocker aura that marks groups like The Doors and the White Stripes.

As a singer Juliette is sort of interesting in that, you don’t get the feeling that she sings because her manager wants a certain look – like with a Britney or a Spice Girl. She’s already made her mark on the Silver Screen and you don’t get the feeling that she needs to be a star.

Interaction between an artist and the audience is tough, so much so that Pink Floyd: The Wall was written after Roger Waters spat on a fan after a show. Juliette is kick-ass in this way, during the Zurich show she surfed the crowd and was interacting on the level of a unique rock-star totally connected with the audience. After the initial surfing someone’s hands where apparently too intimate because at 21:25 Juliette addressed the crowd:

"When I go out there, who’s the little fucker that tries to grab my tits?"

Her energy is something you don’t see during a main-stream multi-thousand dollar production by Justine Timberlake or even less known groups like The Spores from LA. I checked out The Spores show when they were in Zurich. We were packed into a maybe 40 person bar and just 5 feet from the stage. Despite the puppet show and close proximity to the artists, I was just standing there, enjoying the music, but not being moved by it in my core. I also had a headache and wasn’t in the mood to have the limits of my ear drums tested, but good shows should rise above such Earthly trappings.

Rohstofflager was an awesome venue for the Licks. It’s situated in the gritty industrial-club district of Zurich. It’s a place for people to pack in and get crazy or chill out and soak up the vibes. My girlfriend took to taking awesome photos while I recorded the night with my sketch book.

At the Licks concert I was way back by the bar and later up in the balcony with my girlfriend, far away from the madness of the stage-front; but still felt totally connected to the music, which I was hearing for the first time. It’s not just the music, at the show you also get her personality, those bad-ass energetic attributes which made her popular in movies like From Dusk Till Dawn and Natural Born Killers.

If the Licks are coming to your town I highly recommend checking them out. Juliette Lewis and the Licks are the real deal, pure bad-ass kick-ass rock vibes, just like the Shaman intended.

The Laughing Lemon

22 Feb ’07Zurichcooking, Laughing_Lemon, Zurich

I tend to write a lot of drivel about heading into the Alps, there’s no method behind it all, it’s just what floats around in my head. But it seems like a good time to digress and focus on more important topics. I’ve often thought about taking up chocolate science as a career, but much like joining the CIA, it just doesn’t seem to fit me. I’ve also harbored ideas of being a wine connoisseur and knowing how to taste the subtle differences between a pinot and a merlot, but like writing as a career – I’ve generally lacked the desire or drive to get serious about the subject.

That’s where the Laughing Lemon comes into play.

It sounds like the coolest cocktail you’ve ever heard of, but the Laughing Lemon is actually a cooking school in Zurich. I learned about the Laughing Lemon from Jack (he invited me to the Swiss wine class) who’s dating Kara, who is friends with Kate, who grew up in Ohio, but I met her in Michigan, and then we ended up sailing through Greece with Allison, who’s from Hawaii, and was dating Kevin, who cheated on her, and now I’m dating Iris, who was born in Virginia but grew up in Germany, and went to New York for college where she met Kevin and Evan (who’s wedding I attended in July) the non-sequitur thing is that it’s not the same Evan, and this Kevin is no relation to the one who cheated on Allison. Oh, and the Jack who invited me to the wine course is no relation to Jack McNulty – who runs the Laughing Lemon with Silvia Gautschi McNulty. The point here is that the Laughing Lemon offers a Chocolate and Wine class – which I signed up for without a second thought.

I took the class on a fine Thursday night last Fall. We started off learning about the history of chocolate in Switzerland and various facts like: soldiers used to eat high-purity chocolate to stay awake when on guard duty. Then we started tasting an array of chocolates with different cacao contents. Everything from the bitter dark madness to the white too-sweet-to-be-delicious variety. Then came the wine. We learned how to pair different wines to different chocolates. I can’t remember what goes with what, but it’s all written up in the information packet that one is provided with.

Then we got hands-on

Truffles are some of the coolest things that I had now idea how to make, and the creation of chocolate mousse has long befuddled my brain. So it was a bit of a godsend that we learned how to do both that night. Dipping in melted chocolate, whipping egg whites and gently folding the chocolate in so the mousse has the right texture, we went over all the little things that always intimidated me about chocolate creations in my kitchen.

We ended the class with a tasty-amazing-yummy dinner, consisting of rabbit cooked with peppers and dark chocolate used to thicken the sauce. Chefs who do this stuff for a living will tell you that an alternative thickener is blood – I like idea of using chocolate. For dessert we ate the truffles and mousse (goes well with prosecco/champaign), in addition to slices of truffle cake (I think it pairs well with a mild-bodied red wine).

All in all the Laughing Lemon cooking school is one of the coolest things to do in Zurich, rivaling a club night at Kaulfleuten, summiting the Glärnish, or even jamming to Karaoke from Hell at Mascotte on Tuesday night.

But the test of any class is not what you learn during the lecture, but what you’re inspired to do after you go home. I got inspired to bake a chocolate truffle cake.

They’re simple things to make; nothing but chocolate and butter and sugar and eggs. Melt chocolate in a double set-up, it’s not rocket science. However, not having an electric mixer of my own, a chocolate truffle cake is more work than you’d think. Egg whites just don’t whip up easily (like when Martha does it on TV) when you’re going it all manually with a whisk. In the end, it didn’t look like the one in any cookbook, but I’m not dead yet and still have time to perfect my technique.

Dude, Who Brought the Tear Gas?

28 Jun ’06Zurichsoccer, street, Zurich

So, the World Cup seems like a big deal over here in Europe. Especially so if you’re a Swiss soccer (excuse me, football) fan and you were in Zurich last Friday watching the Swiss team beat South Korea. I watched the game on an open air screen just off the Limmat river, the same one that flows through Zurich. In the summer it’s fun to take your clothes off and go swimming there at 2am after the bars get boring. After the game I felt tired, but also felt like checking out the city so I took my bike down to Bellevue, a popular location where a small soccer stadium was set up for devoted fans to watch the game in. For some reason it made me think of my college days at Michigan State University. In particular, the 1999 Final Four when folks took to the streets and started fires on Grand River, Bogue street, and various locales in East Lansing.

The crowd seemed happy enough. I was running around with a $1000 camera in my right hand and snapped off some shots of the crowd. Things seemed to be taking a turn for the more interesting when the crowd surged towards me and I could catch hints of fumes in the air. The police were gassing the crowd near the bridge and there seemed to be an exodus in the works. I started running as well, but got distracted by the guy in a cow suit.

The cow suit guy

The police must have left because I couldn’t see any shooting tear gas stars floating through the night sky. But there were fools who were crazy enough to try and drive through the city. I was a bit worried when some spirited youths began rocking a van back and forth. I thought about getting in close for some photos, but I didn’t want the thing to tip over on me.

Van rocking

For some reason though, I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe it was because the game didn’t mean anything to me. Or maybe I was just tired inside. Ah, so this is what getting old feels like. They call that maturity some would say. I just had no desire to view the riot and instead took the long refreshing bike ride home.

Zurich Soccer World Cup