Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

Socialize

The Bay Brewed: A Rock & Roll Beer Festival

By

guitar
This sure sounds like a fun new event. The San Francisco Brewers Guild along with City Beer Store and The Bay Bridged is putting on a beer festival and a music festival called The Bay Brewed, which is scheduled to take place on December 3, from 2-7 p.m. at San Francisco’s Verdi Club, located at 2424 Mariposa Street. Here’s some more info from the press release:

Presented in partnership with the City Beer Store and the SF Brewers Guild, a ticket to The Bay Brewed includes unlimited beer tastings from San Francisco Bay Area breweries including 21st Amendment, Anchor Stream, Beach Chalet, Lagunitas, Magnolia, Social Kitchen & Brewery, and Speakeasy, and musical performances from four excellent San Francisco bands: Weekend, Sleepy Sun, Extra Classic, and Terry Malts. Food will be available for purchase courtesy of Rosamunde Sausage Grill.

Christian Cunningham, General Manager of The Bay Bridged, explained the desire to create an event pairing local bands and local craft beers: “San Francisco’s music and beer scenes are both unbeatable when it comes to the talent and creativity of the people involved. The Bay Brewed is our way of bringing together people who like great music and people who like great beer for a unique event that couldn’t happen anywhere but San Francisco.”

Ticket prices are $45 and can be purchased online, or buy them at the door for $55. According to the ticket page, “[y]our ticket purchase includes performances by four great local rock bands — Weekend, Sleepy Sun, Extra Classic, and Terry Malts — and a commemorative mug that gets you unlimited beer tastings all day long from an array of awesome local breweries. In partnership with the City Beer Store and the SF Brewers Guild, you’ll be sampling beer from and meeting the brewers behind 21st Amendment, Anchor Stream, Beach Chalet, Lagunitas, Magnolia, Social Kitchen & Brewery, and Speakeasy, with more still to come.”

bay-brewed-2011

New Pliny The Elder Video By The Famous

By

pliny
The San Francisco-based band The Famous regularly plays the beer circuit and can frequently be seen performing at beer festivals and brewpubs around the Bay Area. They’re a terrific band. I’ve seen them several times, most recently at Vinnie Cilurzo’s 40th birthday party at Russian River Brewing. At Vinnie’s party, The Famous did a song created for the occasion, Pliny the Elder or The Pliny Song, an awesome little homage to the beer and the man it was named for. They’ve now recorded a studio version of it, and have created a music video to go along with it. Enjoy.

Muppets Drink Kronenbourg 1664

By

kronenbourg-1664
Another one of my many obsessions is my unabashed love of the Muppets. I came across a new video today of the Muppets covering the LCD Soundsystem song Dance Yrself Clean. In the Video, apparently shot in Brighton, both Cookie Monster and Animal are seen drinking Kronenburg 1664 — hey, they’re both over 21 — and in fact at the end (spoiler alert) both pass out on Brighton beach surrounded by beer cans. Enjoy.

Beer Bottle Xylophone

By

xylophone-rainbow
This would make an awesome gift, especially for the person who loves beer and music. Created by designer Sam Gensburg, his Southern Bells six-pack uses an ingenious design that can turn the empty bottles into a makeshift xylophone.

so-bells-1

Says Inhabitat, “Of the things that you could do with beer bottles, this has got to be one of the most glorious. Designer Sam Gensburg has created this special packaging for beer bottles — in this example, the adorably-named “Southern Bells,” — that can be transformed into a tone-accurate xylophone. Once you’ve drunk all the beer, of course. Read on to discover more about this recycled polyphonic percussion set.”

so-bells-2

“On the back of each bottle is a guide for musical key-making. You simply fill the bottle with water to the appropriate line, and it will produce that key when struck. With what, you ask? With special batons that come in the box– you make them with the corks from the bottle tops! The bottles can be arranged in a musical line by unfolding the six-pack. Two six-packs make a full octave.”
so-bells-3

Sadly, there’s no information about where, or even if, this is available commercially for purchase. Searching only reveals it’s been featured a lot on DIY websites.

so-bells-4

St. Luke’s Bottle Band

By

beer-bottle-brown
Believe it or not, since 1979, St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Illinois has had a musical group, the St. Luke’s Bottle Band. According to their website, the band was “founded by Professor Paul Phillips. Over the past few years the St. Luke’s Bottle Band has been featured on National Public Radio, the NBC Nightly News, Wild Chicago and the Jenny Jones Show. The band has traveled to Atlanta Georgia to perform for the American Lutheran Church Musicians Conference, as well as Door County, Wisconsin, to present a concert at the Fish Creek Auditorium. The Bottle Band has appeared on An American Moment with James Earl Jones and twice on the Late Show with David Letterman.” (Thanks to Tom D. for sending me the link.) In addition to Scott Joplin’s Peacherine Rag below, there are a number of additional videos of the bottle band performing, including a rousing kazoo version of John Philip Sousa’s Washington Post March. The also have a Facebook page. Enjoy.

Dogfish Head Bitches Brew Honors Miles Davis

By

dogfish-head-green
Dogfish Head Craft Brewery today announced the release of Bitches Brew to commemorate the original release of the milestone jazz album, Bitches Brew, by jazz legend Miles Davis.

The new beer by Dogfish Head is described as “a bold, dark beer that’s a fusion of three threads imperial stout and one thread honey beer with gesho root, a gustatory analog to Miles’ masterpiece.” It also features the “the album’s iconic artwork, created by the late Mati Klarwein, on its label, Dogfish Head’s Bitches Brew will be unveiled at Savor, An American Craft Beer & Food Experience tonight at the National Building Museum, Washington DC. The beer will be bottled in 750ml bottles and released through Dogfish’s distribution network in late August.

DFH_miles_davis

From the press release:

The newly created ale is designed, according to Dogfish founder and president Sam Calagione, “as the ultimate partner for chili or spicy curry chicken” and best enjoyed “sipped cool, not cold, from a snifter or red wine glass while listening to the Bitches Brew album.”

Calagione was drawn to the alchemical spirits in Bitches Brew right out of college, acquiring a copy of the album “within months of the first time I brewed a batch of homebrew in my apartment in New York City.  I listened to it when I was writing my Dogfish business plan.  I wanted Dogfish Head to be a maniacally inventive and creative brewery, analog beer for the digital age.  You could say that my dream was to have Dogfish Head, in some small way, stand for the same thing in the beer world that Bitches Brew stands for in the jazz world.  You can imagine how excited we are to be doing this project 17 years after I wrote that business plan.”

“There’s a spirit of innovation, of creativity and individuality, that’s at the core of Miles’ music,” said Adam Block, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Legacy Recordings.  “Sam and Dogfish Head approach their art from the same place and consequently the marriage is an easy and cool one.”

Later this year, on August 31, an anniversary edition of the recording — two, actually: a Legacy Edition and a deluxe Collector’s Edition — will be released on CD.

Outside Lands Music Festival Pairs Rock & Roll … With Wine

By

woodstock
I have nothing against wine, I drink it fairly often and am an unabashed cross drinker. But this is still a little odd, to me. The Outside Lands two-day music festival that will take place in Golden Gate Park in mid-August appears to be wine only. And that’s despite having Heineken as one of the “partners” of the festival. The tagline for Outside Lands 2010 is “Music — Food — Wine — Art,” listed that way even on the Tickets page — they go on sale tomorrow. There are some great bands playing, including a favorite of mine — Gogol Bordello — a band I can’t imagine without beer. To me that seems like an epic fail. Rock & Roll without beer is like … well, I can’t think of an apt metaphor. It’s just wrong.

Beer In Art #67: Peter Cross’ Beer Drawings

By

art-beer
Today work of art is, at least to me, a great example of how varying interests can come together and lead to one thing, in this case the art of Peter Cross, a British illustrator of album covers and children’s books, among others. I first became aware of Peter Cross in the late 1970s. I was a huge fan of the music of early Genesis (up until around Duke) and was enough of a music geek that I also picked up solo works by members of the band. Anthony Phillips was a founding member of Genesis and its original guitarist (along with Mike Rutherford) though the most famous Genesis is alum is undoubtedly Pete Gabriel. Anthony Phillips left after the second album due to crippling stage fright, though he also wrote fan fave Musical Box which appears on Nursery Cryme, the band’s third album. After leaving Genesis in 1970, Phillips studied classical guitar and appeared on other people’s recordings from time to time before releasing his first solo album, The Geese and the Ghost, in 1977. The album cover featured beautiful art by Peter Cross. I was, and remain, a huge fan of art that’s very, very detailed, the sort of art you can look at for days and continue to find new things. So I was almost as excited by the cover art as the music when Phillips second solo effort appeared in 1978. Wise After the Event also featured another Peter Cross cover. A couple of years later I was working as a record buyer for the now-defunct chain Record Bar. A friend who worked at Jem Imports in New Jersey — and who knew I loved Peter Cross and Anthony Phillips — gave me a print of Wise After the Event signed by both Cross and Phillips, and it still hangs in our hallway.

wise-after-the-event

A few years later, a children’s book was published called Trouble For Trumpets and Cross did all the illustrations for it, apparently taking seven years to compete the 30-page book.

trouble_for_trumpets

It’s a fabulous book, a story about war, but it’s the art that really makes it for me. There was also a sequel a few years called Trumpets in Grumpetland and it’s equally wonderful. Unfortunately, both are out of print and quite expensive if you can even find one used.

But that brings us back around to beer. I was recently searching for new art to feature in this weekly series of Beer In Art, when I discovered that Peter Cross is still working and is represented online by Chris Beetles Art Gallery. Better still, he’s done several works recently involving beer. So I’m thrilled to be able to share one of my absolute favorite illustrators, Peter Cross.

peter-cross_beer-garden
Beer Garden is a watercolor originally done for a greeting card.

peter-cross_beerkats
Beerkats, a watercolor spoof of Meerkats also for a greeting card.

peter-cross_beerstalker
And lastly, Beerstalker, a pen and ink drawing.

In addition to Peter Cross’ Wikipedia page, there’s also a short biography and an interview on Anthony Phillips’ website. And can see more of his artwork at Chris Beetles Art Gallery

Tony Sings The Blues

By

guitar
Another highlight of The Brewing Network’s Winter Brews Festival, held yesterday at Linden Street Brewery in Oakland, was the music. There were some terrific bands playing. But my favorite was, as usual, the down home blues stylings of Tony Magee, owner of Lagunitas Brewing. He taught himself to play just a few years ago and in fact his debut performance was at the Celebrator 15th Anniversary Party when we held it at the Great American Music Hall in 2003. Since then, Tony’s been getter better every time I see him play. Here he is performing a Big Bill Broonzy song, Key to the Highway.