Peter Chang’s food has created a frenzy among foodies.
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Last fall, word that a famous Szechuan chef had quietly set up in Charlottesville had foodies salivating. There was a small newspaper mention and online chatter from groupies who track his every move, but after a March 1 story in the New Yorker, diners went into a feeding frenzy.

“We were surprised that it became so popular so fast,” says restaurant co-owner John Rong during a lunch time interview last week. “We noticed business going up after the story in the Hook, too, but when that story in the New Yorker come out…”

Indeed, sophisticated palates from Richmond and D.C. began making pilgrimages to Taste of China, where— even on cold winter evenings— lines could be seen snaking out onto the sidewalk of the north wing of Albemarle Square Shopping Center.

What was happening? Ever since the New York Times discovered the C&O back in 1976, Charlottesville restaurants have been making headlines. But this crossed some lines. For weeks, “Have you eaten at Taste of China yet?” was a popular refrain.

“I’ve been there at least 12 times since December,” says lawyer Ellen Teplitzky. “One week, I went there three times. And I’m not alone.”

Rong smiles and shakes his head, free to (more)

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Dr. Peter Heymann, head of Pediatric Allergy and Respiratory Medicine at the UVA Medical Center, spoke with Rick Moore on Sunday about  food allergies. A very informative discussion if you’re interested.

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Fran Cannon Slayton
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

For a suburban-raised girl, Fran Cannon Slayton knows a lot about the romance of the railroads. She knows the difference between the sound of a steam engine and a diesel engine whistle. And she knows how the economics of a new technology killed a town like Rowlesburg, West Virginia, where her father grew up and where her grandfather was foreman for B&O in the 1940s.

Slayton never met her grandfather, but she heard all about him from the stories her father told her, stories that she channeled into a novel for young adults, When the Whistle Blows, that not only got published, but has garnered glowing reviews.

“An unassuming masterpiece,” says Kirkus. “Nostalgia done right,” according to the School Library Journal.

A former Charlottesville prosecutor, Slayton didn’t really set out to be a writer, even though a nagging idea for a book hit her about the time she started law school. “I didn’t want to admit I possibly wanted to be a novelist,” she says. “It’s like saying I wanted to be a super hero… so farfetched.” (more)

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Ryan Adams may be the reigning prince of that hippest of folky sects marketed as “alt-country,” but even he must realize that he owes a hefty debt to the Jayhawks. As one-half of that group’s core compositional duo, Mark Olson helped create country-rock that appealed to traditionalists as readily as to youth audiences before such projects came with a trendy genre label. And with successful efforts like 1992’s Tomorrow The Green Grass he managed to elevate himself to father-of-a-genre status to the point that he now shares mantle with the likes of Weezer and Lil’ Jon.
His departure from the group in 1995 was nearly a decade before its eventual dissolution, during which time musical other-half Gary Louris steered the ship solo while Olson eloped with a group called the Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers with wife Victoria Williams. Olson and Louris reunited for an acoustic tour in 2006, however, and Louris appeared last year on Olson’s latest solo album, which is spearheaded by “Clifton Bridge,” a song that Olson now says he considers the best he’s ever written. Even if he’s no longer creating entire musical worlds for others to explore, at least he’s still writing.

The Hook: I understand you were traveling a lot when this album came together.
Mark Olson: I wasn’t really planning to do a record, but I ended up in Europe visiting people I’d met while touring. They introduced me to an engineer, and I came up with “My Carol” and “Clifton Bridge.” I worked about eight months on 23 songs and got it down to the ones on the album. We really didn’t spend a lot of time on the album– it was three days of recording, a couple of days of overdubs, and that was it.
The Hook: You’ve repeatedly pointed out that travel is a major theme of the album. To what degree is it important to have gone abroad in order to connect with it?
Mark Olson: I don’t think that to connect with the album as a listener, it’s important at all. Most of the things I write about are conflicts that come from inside and how they resolve. But at that time in my life, with the things that were going down, it really helped. I was able to imagine things because I didn’t have anyone to talk to. For a long time my life has been pretty full, and all of a sudden it emptied out.
The Hook: So given that you were so tied to collaborative partners in the past, is solitude a major theme as well?
Mark Olson: That was a big deal, because I had worked all those years and put everything I had into the Jayhawks and the Creekdippers. It was sort of a survival issue– for me to make a living, I needed to have a record with my own name on it. I tend to be kind of a recluse, and I tend to stay home if I’m left to my own devices.
The Hook: Not many people would consider releasing a record a viable path to stability at this point.
Mark Olson: Oh, of course not. There’s no guarantee. But I had to take a shot. I couldn’t get shows without having a record.
The Hook: Did it feel more like a gamble?
Mark Olson: I was plenty nervous the day I went in to first start recording because I had no idea how everyone was going to play on it. For many years, I just recorded on my own, so this was a whole new thing. There was a certain amount of pressure with the record company spending the money for those three days.
The Hook: You’ve used the term “gonzo music” in an attempt to liken your creative process to Hunter S. Thompson’s. Is that what happened during the sessions?
Mark Olson: I think that was more with the Creekdippers. With the Jayhawks, it was very organized. When I worked with the Creekdippers, we would do more gonzo recordings where we would just playe 20 songs two times apiece, and that would be the album. We did one album where I wrote it in two days and recorded it in two days. I did the whole record in five days. But I reached the point where that had to stop. It goes for my writing. Once I start working on something, I pretty much get it stuck in my brain until I feel like it’s done. When I’m not writing, I don’t pick up the guitar, because once I start doing it, it’s hard to put it down.
The Hook: The CD has some of the coolest packaging I’ve seen in a while. Why did you put so much effort into dressing it up to look like a library book?
Mark Olson: Before even the Jayhawks, I thought of the lyrics first– or the theme first, or that one line that you can develop. Once you get one line, you can get a lot of other lines if there’s something good about it. The words are important to me, and I never heard a lot of people talk about that with the Jayhawks, so I figured that if I put it in a book form, people would be drawn to it.
The Hook: Did it work?
Mark Olson: No, it didn’t work out. In non-English speaking countries, they love the words.
The Hook: Why do you think that is?
Mark Olson: I don’t know. Maybe it’s because it’s difficult for them, so they have to read it, they have to listen to it, and they have to put the effort in, so it means more to them.

Mark Olso- National Express
Mark Olson - The Salvation Blues
Mark Olson - Clifton Bridge

Mark Olson performs at Gravity Lounge on May 6. $10-$15, 7pm.

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Caribou is the moniker used by Canuck multi-instrumentalist and highly credentialed mathematician Dan Snaith for the laptop albums he creates in the middle of the night. It’s wrongly filed under electronic music for two reasons: first, the electronic elements are a natural byproduct of his tendency to write complex arrangements with a computer and without collaborators. But more importantly, techno is just what everyone expects from a nerdy math student. But Snaith is a pop songwriter first and foremost, and his views on composition are far more conventional than might be expected.
The Hook: Your PhD is in something called Pure Math. Can you explain what that is?
Dan Snaith: Pure Mathematics just means it’s not applied. It’s not to do with science�€” you study it for its own merit. The one thing I like about it is that it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the mathematics people learn in high school. It becomes almost a completely different subject�€” much more abstract and creative and even philosophical. It’s also very arcane, I guess– it’s hard to explain in terms that people know. All the terminology just sounds like gibberish until you study it.
The Hook: I know you get asked about the connections between music and math all the time, but does theoretical math apply to music more than the practical and applied branches?
Dan Snaith: In a sense. I do get asked that question all the time, and I think what people expect is what they hear about Bach�€” sequences of numbers encoded in the music. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The way I make music isn’t mathematical at all�€” it’s totally aesthetic. But it’s also very abstract. You can think of it in abstract terms, and it’s that playing around with abstract ideas that bears some relation to the study of mathematics. I’ve met lots of people with those shared passions, but I don’t know why they tend to go hand in hand.
The Hook: If you had to choose between your musical career and your academic one, which would you choose?
Dan Snaith: I already have, I guess. I finished my third record when I was finishing my PhD, and that was literally the last time I ever really thought about mathematics, really�€” about three years ago. My dream was to spend all my time thinking about music and playing music�€” it’s so much more fun than sitting in the math department.
The Hook: I read an interview in which you said you’re very controlling of your art. How has that defined your music? Is that why you still work alone in your bedroom?
Dan Snaith: It’s a good question. I don’t know if I’m in a good position to answer that. It’s just such a comfortable environment for me now�€” I have an idea, and I immediately know how to go about doing it.
The Hook: Are you playing drums on tour these days? You used to play guitar and keys live; which do you prefer?
Dan Snaith: I guess since we started touring, I basically just fill in whatever needs to be done. The records aren’t arranged. That’s one tangible effect of recording the way I do�€” they don’t end up with bass, drums, guitar, guitar, vocal. If the song has loads and loads of drum parts and no vocals, then two of us end up playing drums. On more pop standards, I’d be playing guitar and singing; I just fill in on whatever is necessary. The other guys do, too�€” it just requires that we switch around a bit. But I think I like playing drums the most�€” it’s the most physical, primal thing.
The Hook: How does changing from pitched instruments to unpitched or percussive instruments change the way you approach your own songs?
Dan Snaith: My previous records were built out of loops. This time, I really consciously tried not to make the tracks in a loop-based way. I wrote them all in advance, and really wanted to think about composition. It was a completely different process for me, setting up an arrangement in my head before I started recording. I guess the rhythmic thing is a lot more innate�€” you just follow your nose, but [with] the harmonic or melodic instruments, you have to think more. You have the rhythmic elements as well, but you have more freedom to drastically change what’s going on with the music.
The Hook: Do you use prerecorded backing tracks when you play live, or are you triggering samples and loops?
Dan Snaith: There’s a laptop on stage which is kind of triggering samples as we go, things like a flute embellishment or a string sound that we want to be there, but more and more as we tour, we’ve tried to move as much away from that as possible. The laptop is also a big visual part of our sound, triggering optical effects and visuals that are sync’d up to the music, and the drummer is playing to a click track. It’s designed to give us as much freedom to play together as a band, but also to have some technology as well.
The Hook: You said in 2005 that you were trading a lot of ideas with Kieran Hebden of Four Tet fame. Is that still the case?
Dan Snaith: Kieran is one of my closest friends. He lives just down the road from me, and I see him all the time, when we’re not on tour. It’s not like he does any work on my records or vice versa, but apart from our wives and girlfriends around the house all the time, we’re the first people to hear each other’s music. Especially working by ourselves as we do a lot of the time, it’s good to have a sounding board that you can trust. He’s one of them.
The Hook: But you’re not actually collaborating?
Dan Snaith: Neither of us do any work on the other person’s records. We spend endless hours either talking or when we’re on tour [or] emailing each other. But he’s much better at being up to date with technical things than I am. I’m a real kind of Luddite. I think people think that because I make music on a computer, I’m writing my own software like Autechre does. I’ve been working the same way since I was 13 or 14�€” I’m really slow to pick up new things.
The Hook: You also sing a lot on your records even though you don’t consider yourself much of a singer. Why not farm out the vocals to a specialist like so many other electronic musicians do?
Dan Snaith: I guess I’ve collaborated with singers in the past, like on this album with Jeremy from the Junior Boys. But I make the music for myself. Being aware that I’m not a very good singer, can I still make a pop song that sounds the way I want it to sound and carries the emotion that I want it to carry? When I’m making the music, it’s oftentimes kind of like doing something that’s exciting for me and overcoming it.

Caribou performs with F*ck Buttons at the Satellite Ballroom on Monday 3/31. $10/$12, 8pm.

Caribou - Melody Day

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They Might Be Giants are almost regulars, coming up on their fourth time through since they began rocking Charlottesville at Trax in 1990 in support of their now near-classic album Flood, which featured such keepers as “Istanbul” and their biggest hit, “Birdhouse in Your Soul.”

But if they qualify as “regulars” in one sense, the Brooklyn-based duo appear to be zanier than ever. Witness their recent albums for kids, or even just their latest single for adults.

“The Mesopotamians” pictures Hammurabi and Gilgamesh as members of a poorly themed conceptual rock band hitting the road in a broken-down Econoline, squabbling over crappy haircuts and a last piece of gum– all the while entertaining serious delusions of grandeur.

It’s almost entertaining enough to make you forget that we’ve spent the past five years bombing the cradle of civilization to bits.

The choice of subject matter is no accident as guitarist John Flansburgh has adopted a pointedly philosophical approach to maintaining the thin veneer of comic idiocy that pervades his music. We checked in with him last week.

The Hook: Let’s start by talking about your recent kids’ albums, Here Come The ABC’s and Here Come The 123’s. What other subjects would work?
Flansburgh: Obviously, the alphabet is an incredibly rich jumping-off point. Doing the numbers was a little bit harder. We’re talking about doing sort of a science-based one, but that would have to be for older kids.
The Hook: Do you enjoy the thought of being played in middle school science classrooms?
Flansburgh: I guess so. We aren’t really that interested in being educators. But it’s an interesting way to do kids’ stuff, just because the topics are interesting, and there’s some poetry there.
The very first kids’ album we did was sort of open-ended, and although it was very warmly received, a lot of people found it a little bit confounding because it wasn’t really for any age group in particular.
The Hook: Your album No was also aimed at kids, but it was a little more free-form. Do you prefer having a theme?
Flansburgh: Having a theme is a very useful springboard. It just sparks a lot of different ideas, so it definitely creates a challenge. That same kind of challenge can be created by having a narrative theme. Any kind of theme is probably as good as any other, in a way.
The Hook: There are childish elements to a lot of your songs. Do you ever have trouble determining whether a given song is better suited for adults or kids?
Flansburgh: Adults are tough audiences, kids are tough audiences. We find that what people want out of songs from us is kind of always the same.
The Hook: So you’re kind of hoping that it will appeal to both camps?
Flansburgh: We don’t spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about how it’s going to land, if you know what I mean. We have a hard time writing songs that appeal to anybody.
The Hook: A couple of your songs appeared on Tiny Toon Adventures back in the day. That particular cartoon always had a little element of adult humor.
Flansburgh: I’m not really a fan of kids’ stuff that does this winky-wink thing over the shoulders of the kids to the adult audiences. I think we try to address kids on a very direct level.
The place where that’s impossible is at the shows, where you’re performing in front of a crowd that’s half adults and half really young children. It’s actually an extremely neurotic experience as a performer, because pretending that the parents aren’t there is a fantasy. It’s kind of hard to serve two masters.
The Hook: It seems like song cycles and themes are only one step removed from concept records and rock operas. Any chance that will be on the road map?
Flansburgh: You know, I wish we had a longer attention span. We’d probably have to collaborate with someone to have it actually make sense.
The Hook: For years, you ran a music-via-telephone service called Dial-A-Song until it was replaced by a podcast. Looking back, what are your thoughts on the switch?
Flansburgh: The thing that’s strange about the culture these days is everything’s on your permanent record. You can’t do the simplest thing without people going online and, like, rating it and discussing it and talking about its merits.
I think one of the nice things about Dial-A-Song is that we were doing it for years with very little idea what people were taking away from it. It was such a great way to get our scene together as songwriters in sort of a non-critical way.
The Hook: A few years ago, you did the “Venue Songs” project, which featured Charlottesville’s own Starr Hill Music Hall. Had you heard that it has since closed?
Flansburgh: Yeah. You know, a number of the places on “Venue Songs” have closed. It’s definitely a misguided project. I think when we started it we knew it was kind of nuts.
The Hook: When these places start closing– and you just said that Starr Hill is not the only one– how do you think that affects perception of the album as a whole? It seems kind of like doing Here Come The ABC’s, and then a few years later the ABC’s don’t exist anymore.
Flansburgh: I’m not worried about it seeming dated. We’ve seen a lot of things come and go in the last 25 years. All these bands that we came up with broke up, re-formed, did reunion tours, and are gone again.

They Might Be Giants perform at the Satellite Ballroom on March 16. $20-$25, 7pm.

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