The Walkmen, Franz Ferdinand: The Musician as Food Critic

Despite superficial differences, the worlds of music and food are not all that removed from one another; look no further than this week’s Time Out and you’ll find a trend piece on the phenomenon of the “Rock Star Chef”.

The parallel makes perfect sense. Good musicians and chefs both make their living assaulting the senses with a particular vision and confidence that inspires and rewards their audiences. Meanwhile, the lesser ones quite often can leave a bad taste in our mouths, both figuratively and literally.

We’ve spoken of a few instances when musicians turn their talents to the visual arts, but what about when they dip their big toe in the choppy waters of culinary criticism?

Considering touring musicians’ nomadic lifestyles, the crossover is fairly natural. By virtue of always having to dine at restaurants while being on the road, they can’t help but compile a daunting framework of establishments and cuisines from which to draw comparisons (it's a practice we've tried recently as well). So let's look at a few examples...

We’ve heard about Franz Ferdinand’s singer/guitarist Alex Kapranos moonlighting as a food critic for The Guardian while on tour a few years back. What struck me when reading his blog Sound Bites was how attuned he was to not only the cuisine he sampled (Kapranos was a chef before becoming a rock star, not a rock star chef, sorry Time Out) but also to the atmosphere surrounding him. This includes other patrons – “They have an unquestionable sense of privately educated self-assurance. Girl One fixes the stallholder with an upturned nose and schoolteacher gaze. She barks like a vicar's wife.” - as well as his broader surroundings – “Kelly Clarkson is on the radio. Our pints of mud-brown Colorado Fat Tyre taste of Cadbury's chocolate and smell of Kraft cheese.”

Traditional food criticism? Perhaps not, but it certainly gives a more comprehensive account of the overall experience.

Enter EF faves The Walkmen. On the “Reviews” portion of their website where you’d expect to find album accolades and press, they've instead posted their own reviews of various unsuspecting restaurants visited while on tour (go HERE and click through to the "Reviews" tab). The results are hilarious. Delivered mostly in the third person (apparently Hamilton writes most of them), these scattered accounts focus more on the overall experience of dining out, in the process offering a fleeting glimpse of the simple joys and frustrations of life on the road.

Of the restaurant Guttenberg’s in Richmond, VA, he writes: “Walt and Chris got quiche and salad, Ham got crab cakes, and Pete got the grilled dolphin. Just kidding, I can’t remember what Pete got. The food took forever to come but was so good that they left the restaurant full and delighted. After soundcheck, they dragged the rest of the boys (Matt and Paul) back for dinner and sat outside on the deck on the sidewalk. The staff seemed a little annoyed that they had to accommodate a group of 6 outside. If it was a problem, and moving a table was really that hard, they should have told them before they sat them out there – that was how the boys felt about the waiters’ possible annoyance.”

And of course, the point to all of this? Well, when you see five dudes in dinner jackets roll up to your restaurant in a beat up van, treat them as you would Frank Bruni. Rock stars, chefs, food critics, artists, the lines have been blurred...

*above image found HERE

Listen:
Franz Ferdinand - "All My Friends" (LCD Soundsystem cover)
The Walkmen - "Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone"

Watch:
"Little House Of Savages" by The Walkmen (live @ The Earl, Atlanta, GA 9 Mar 2008) on YouTube | download QT
"If Only It Were True" by The Walkmen (live @ The Earl, Atlanta, GA 9 Mar 2008) on YouTube | download QT

See also:
- 8+
- The Walkmen and Vampire Weekend @ The Earl (Atlanta) - 9 Mar 2008 (pics, video)
- The Walkmen @ Avalon - 17 October 2007

Visit Franz Ferdinand and The Walkmen on MySpace