Monday, November 23, 2009

J.A. Deane and Ava Mendoza at OTR.. a Sonic Food Festival!

This last week, Novembe 18-22, OTR hosted long time friend, JA Deane (Dino) to 4 days of recording adventurously WILD music with Ava Mendoza, a young rising talent on guitar in the avante garde scene. The music took two days to record and two days to mix (well, one REALLY long day that had no break). Dino has sold his trombone and bass flute to focus on the electric mountain dulcimer which he hooks up to a plethora of effects. It was a battle of the foot pedals between Ava and Dino!

Cookie Marenco was the engineer and co-conspirator for the sessions with help by Patrick O'Connor operating the digital machines (and reviewing guitar pedals on line) and Mike Howles, our aspiring young engineer who admitted he had never heard music like this before. Several other assistants were onhand to witness the musical assault.

BluCube arrived for mixday and held the console hostage, despite the cries of Dino and Ava, "How COULD you do that to our music?!?!". The Cube has posted one mix at the website to protest Pluto's removal as a planet by current scientists. She left shortly afterwards.

Black Coast--12 minutes to barbeque a steak by....

The 2 hours and 40 minutes of music created and mixed was then used to set the mood for an all day cooking fest at OTR the following day. The sonic explosion was put on endless repeat while Dino, Cookie, and Mike cooked and ate dinner from 3pm to 10pm. Patrick offered his help on the steaks, but mostly stayed in his room working on the vintage electro harmonix efx box after a lesson from Dino.

The menu included and was revealed in this order....
Toasted Crostini with olive oil, garlic, red hot peppers and grated white cheddar cheese
Crab Cioppino with some Heat
Spinach and Cheddar Souffle
Crab Cakes with Leftover Vegetables and Lemon Aoili
Barbequed Steaks and Mash Potatoes
Baked Apples and Pears with Cranberries and Breadcrumb Cookies

Not one bad dish through the night! Amazing.. a first!
And by the way, the music was INCREDIBLE for cooking to as it blasted through my Orfeo speakers.. one wild Blue Cube ride after the next. Sonic torture for some, but for us it was a ride to the heavens!

A little history... Cookie and Dino played together in bands before the days of OTR. It was Dino who said to Cookie, "YOU'RE GONNA LEARN THIS STUFF!" when the first installation of gear was complete more than 20 years ago. Cookie complied fearing the wrath of Dino.

The complete set of music will soon be available as downloads.
The recipes can be found at the Jar of Spice fan page on Facebook.

We would like to thank Whole Foods for having crab and steaks on sale for a change! Cookie would like to thank Dino for buying the new souffle dish. It is rumored BluCube and Ava have run off to a heavy metal camp for kids in South America... or so they SAID that was the reason they had missed dinner!