All posts by davidrbergman

Music

Metal Music and Virtuosity

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I’ve been playing guitar for over 30 years and listen to all kinds of music.  I started listening to metal at an early age.  As metal evolved the instrumental side pushed the envelope with respect to technical playing.

Back in the day the metal bands on top were Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Anthrax, Metallica, Mega Death, Slayer, just to name a few.  A few things these bands have (had) in common is a decent singer, very melodic vocals and for the most part very good guitarists, orchestrated songs with definite breaks and riffs that are paralleled among the instruments.  I have my favorites and least favorites from the list.  This is late 80s early 90s metal.

Fast forward to the Seattle Sound/Grunge movement.  Metal starts to go underground, i.e. not as main stream as it used to be.  Now you have a bifurcation of the standard metal template into several sub-genres.  Without getting too wordy about these details and to get to the point, metal (as I define it) got heavier, darker, faster (and faster) and for the guitars and drums (and bass too) more technically challenging.  The new metal singer, however, is what turned me off.  Anthrax and Slayer have pretty fast heavy music and yet the vocals of their songs still have melody.  Now it seems that the standard is a low growl.  This turns me off to most of the newer metal bands.

Case in point Decapitated.  When I first heard the beginning of Homo Sum every hair stood up, it’s an exciting song, excellent instrumental.  Then comes the growl and I just want to hear more drums and guitar.  However, the band is good enough for me to have purchased their latest album.  I am not completely disparaging the growlers, but I am comparing this to the classic metal style, which I miss.

Other great bands that push the technical envelope (in my opinion) are:

Dying Fetus (you have to hear their new album Reign Supreme)

Dimmu Borgir

Decapitated

Opeth (doesn’t quite fit the description I provided, they are somewhat progressive and melodic)

copyright 2013 David R Bergman

Single Malts

Peat and Smoke

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Someone recently introduced me to a book, The Whiskey Classified that isolated different flavor groups in single malt scotch whiskeys.  It’s an interesting book, well worth the read.  One thing I discovered as I read it is that my palate prefers the flavors: Peat, Smoke, Medicinal, Tobacco.  I capitalize these as they are like proper names of personal friends of mine.  Fruity, Florally, Honey and Spice are all nice too (not to me), but when I get Medicinal it makes me feel better.

I haven’t tried every type of single malt out there but that is a life mission of mine.  So far my favorite “every day” scotches are as follows.

Lagavulin 16 year

Laphroaig 18 year

Ardbeg Corryvreckan

I will probably blog a lot on this topic.

Food and drink

Jerusalem Restaurant in NJ

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I will probably blog a lot about this place as time goes on.

We live within driving distance from this place in Livingston NJ.  It’s a Kosher Vegetarian restaurant that seems to be very popular with the orthodox community near by.  It’s popular with everyone who goes there because the  food is so damn good.

Let me clear one thing up, it’s not really vegetarian.  They serve dairy and hence, by Kosher law, cannot and do not serve any meat or poultry.  They are known for Kosher Veg Pizza (with real dairy) and they have a Sushi Bar (very popular these days in Kosher restaurants).  Mixing fish and dairy is not forbidden by Kosher law.  But what I want to rave about is their collection of salads.  I have had hummus from all over the world and the hummus at Jerusalem is the best I’ve ever had (period).  The baba ghanoush, Spanish eggplant salad, carrot salad, mixed bean salad, etc are all very good.

They offer a mixed salad sampler plate called the Super Jerusalem Platter which is a good deal and a good way to sample about 10-12 of their salads.  It comes with falafel and pita as well.  We typically buy large or medium sized containers of 6-12 of our favorite salads to take home.  That will last for 3-4 days, or 12-16 meals.

This is one of our favorite local restaurants.  They do observe the Sabbath so you need to check for Friday morning and Saturday evening hours.  They will change with the seasons.  One good thing is they were open on Christmas and we needed food.

copyright 2013 David R Bergman

Food and drink

Spice Market in NYC

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We’ve been to this restaurant several times in the last three years and the food is always great.

But, it’s so dark in there I can’t see anything.  I couldn’t even read the menu without using the flashlight app on my cell phone.

The prices are alright, you should expect to pay more to eat at a popular restaurant in NYC but it’s on the upper end of reasonable.

I had salmon and eggplant in a green curry.  The flavor and texture were amazing.  I am a big fan of texture as part of the eating experience.  The salmon was seared on one side, which provided a nice crunch to the dish.  The salmon meat was not over cooked, it was very tender and melted in my mouth.  This coupled with the eggplant being firm made the food fun to chew.

You get the crunch of the seared salmon, the firmness of the eggplant that makes you chew for a longer time and the melting salmon meat that slides down as you chew the eggplant (at least that’s how I remember it and I wasn’t drunk).  This is how I like to eat.

My wife had the ginger fried rice.  This dish was a standard fried rice, only better, with a fried egg sunny side up (or over easy, I forget) on top with a large portion of fried crunchy ginger flakes.  The fried egg was runny, you break it open and mix the yolk with the rice and ginger flakes.  Again, what makes it a great dish for me is not only the flavor, which was better than average, but the mixture of textures.

If you are in NYC, specifically in the Village, I would recommend eating at Spice Market.

The Guitar

My “new” Gibson

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I recently had some work done on my Gibson 335.  It hasn’t been adjusted in over 10 years and has been played for about 18 years without any fret work.  There were some large pits in the frets, the instrument buzzed and was so out of tune that octaves drifted close to a major 7-th as you moved up the neck.  Guitarists know what I mean.  It was ugly.  So, I brought it in to Raritan Bay Guitar Repair in Freehold NJ.  They did such a great job on the instrument that I keep telling people I got a new guitar.  I find myself telling my wife “this new guitar plays great”.