I love Alsatian sauerkraut.

In the late 1980s, my wife and I spent a week in Alsace, looking at forgotten ramparts in small towns that wanted to sell us fruit wines, eating choucroute (the curious French word for sauerkraut), and wandering amid triptychs with golden halos.

My wife speaks good French from years of schooling; I speak very frail schoolbook German.

I remember once we asked in French
for directions to someplace. The fellow gave an answer that I believe was “take a right at the light and go straight on ‘till night and then boy you’re on your own”, and it was amusing to see the mystified look in his eyes when we thanked him profusely, not sure whether we had been insulted or helped, but certain we were unscathed. People in Colmar were, in general, entirely lovely to us, even when my German pronunciation showed its Arkansas roots.

Another region of France occurs to me tonight, though—the village of Chambon-sur-Lignon, where French protestants hid people from the Holocaust with a single-minded lack of self-congratulation and folderol. I love what film-maker (and child saved by the villagers) Pierre Sauvage said “”People who agonize don’t act, people who act don’t agonize”. Perhaps this is a message we can follow as we create and seek to spread our visions of shared music, in the slightest insignificant imitation of people who did so very much good.
http://www.raoulwallenberg....

Thanks for the comment, and for stirring a memory.

I know the film well, Weapons of The Spirit- one of my favorites. I am now trying to teach my son lessons about taking the path of least resistance, but still fighting for what is right. I think this film may be the perfect tool.
The Vogue food writer Jeffrey Steingarten has a hilarious choucroute chapter in his book “The Man Who Ate Everything”. And now back to the music….

I’m glad it resonated with you. I enjoyed creating it, but I know that this kind of dissonant oddity doesn’t work for everyone. I’m pleased you took the time to listen and comment!

I know it’s not at all up to those really fun samples you posted, but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.

I have begun working with your lap steel sample to do something for that netlabel lap steel compilation. As I sit typing this, my headphones are alive with sliced lap steel melody lines, in a sparse, Ry-Cooder-meets-Durutti-Column kinda thing, but I think I’m going to aim for something more densely layered when I begin the next draft.

Actually, I should have hi-jacked the term “Magma”, as Magma used to do things like this, accompanied by singing in an unknown language.

I always like the story about how 16 Germans from the Texas hill country rode into Commanche territory to negotiate a peace—and succeeded because their foolhardy audacity was considered an admirable form of courage, leading to a situation in which the Anglo-American immigrants were at war for decades, while the German-American immigrants were trading partners instead. It’s something about being willing to get out there and ride into things, heedless of arrows.