Latest news with #Smithereens
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'It's the Kinks meets AC/DC': Jim Babjak revisits 5 classic Smithereens riffs
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The Smithereens are, without a doubt, one of the greatest guitar bands to come out of New Jersey, which – scientifically speaking! – means Smithereens guitarist Jim Babjak has recorded some of the greatest riffs to come out of New Jersey. Below, Babjak goes to town on the roots and gear behind five of those riffs. And if you're gonna try to play them yourself, remember to tune down half a step, à la Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan. 'Pat came up with the opening riff, but I helped him out on some of the chords. There's an F chord in there, but I don't know what it's called, and I do a sort of unorthodox thing with the E minor. The solo is all mine. I played it on the demo because the song was originally planned for Cameron Crowe's Say Anything. In fact, that's why Pat sings, 'I'll say anything' at the end. 'We were definitely going for a heavier sound, and I needed something even tougher than my SG. I said, 'I gotta get a Les Paul.' I've never been one of those guys who will go into a guitar store and start playing Stairway to Heaven. I was always kind of embarrassed by that sort of thing. 'We were recording in California, so I went with one of our assistant engineers to a used-guitar shop by the studio. I pointed to Les Paul and said, 'Can you plug that in to see what it sounds like?' He did, and I said, 'Okay, I'll take that one.' It was 1975 Les Paul. I put it through my Marshall, and it sounded great. I still have it – I don't want to give it up.' 'There's a chord with the pinky on the E and the B of the fourth fret – I don't know what you call it. I was watching Del Shannon doing Runaway, and he was playing that chord. I was like, 'Wow, that's really cool. I'm going to start doing that.' For the riff I play in the beginning of this song, I'm keeping my pinky on the E and the B while I move around with the other fingers. 'Around this time, I bought a new SG to get a heavier sound. It was a 1987 SG with regular humbuckers. Later on I put P90s in it. It was a good guitar and worked out fine, but I think an SG from 1967 or '68 would have been better.' 'I used the same SG that I played on Drown in My Own Tears. Same Marshall, too. I never veered too much from a winning combination. It's kind of funny, though; in the video, I play a Rickenbacker because we had an endorsement with them. 'The riff is pretty Kinks-ish, but heavier. It's the Kinks meets AC/DC. I had to play around with the riff because I didn't want it to sound like You Really Got Me – you don't wanna get sued or anything. We worked everything out in rehearsals during pre-production. Mike came in with his basslines, so it all came together.' 'I came up with that riff during a soundcheck in Madrid on our first tour. There's always a lot of waiting and goofing around at soundcheck – people aren't always ready at the same time. So it's a good chance to play around with new ideas to see if anybody reacts. Back then, if you played something good, you had to play it over and over so you could remember it. 'The minute I played this riff, I was like, 'I think there's a song here.' The other guys looked at me – 'What was that?' When we got back to the States, Pat put some chords to it and wrote the lyrics, which were different at the time. 'We went to a rehearsal studio before recording the album and worked out the parts. When we recorded the song, I used the SG for the rhythm, but I played the riff with a Strat. The Strat just sounded better with the part. Don Dixon put some sort of effect on it, and it sounded weird but good.' 'Capitol wanted another A Girl Like You. It was like the Kinks following up You Really Got Me with All Day and All of the Night. We were like, 'All right, we gotta give the record company that type of song again.' They told us that's what they wanted; they even said we had to use a click track. I was like, 'Are you fucking kidding me? That would stifle the drums.' Dennis actually got really good at playing with a click, though I wasn't a fan of it. 'We did the demo of it, but I don't think Pat had all the lyrics yet. The song is in the key of A, just like A Girl Like You, and I thought, 'How am I going to make it sound different?' I don't like to play solos on demos because I want them to be fresh in the studio. I just wait till we're recording and then I do a few passes. Eventually, the producer will say, 'Okay, we got it.' 'Sonically, I tried to make the song different from A Girl Like You in that I added an acoustic guitar under the electric on the opening riff. It added a little bit of texture and made it sound different. The electric was the '75 Les Paul I bought in L.A. The acoustic was a big-body Guild D-50.' This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
Forbes
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Dill Cocktails Take Center Stage At Bars Around The Country
The Seabass cocktail at Indienne features fresh dill and a dill dust garnish. As cocktails become more culinary in nature, and modern bars continue to overlap with kitchens, the bartender's arsenal keeps expanding. Ingredients usually reserved for Greek salads and roast chickens are now stocked alongside bottles of whiskey and gin. Add dill to the shopping list. The herb once relegated to savory cooking has begun popping up in cocktails, as more bartenders enlist its unique flavor to liven up recipes. 'To me, dill has a little bit of an eye-raising character to it,' says Logan Rodriguez, the head bartender at Smithereens, a seafood restaurant and bar in New York. 'I like to think of it as a flavor underdog, since I'd wager that the main flavor association in popular culture is with pickles and possibly tzatziki.' He says the herb's grassy, anisette brightness can cut through the flavor noise in cocktails like the Goblin, a Gimlet-esque recipe that draws loose inspiration from leche de tigre. Dill is merged with other savory ingredients, including tomatillo, serrano pepper and cilantro, to provide a counterpoint to coconut oil-washed gin and orange. At Little's Oyster Bar in Houston, mixologist Oliver Brooks features a dill cordial in his Dill Breaker cocktail. The cordial is made with fresh dill, citrus, sugar and water, and then blended and strained before it's eventually shaken with vodka, lemon juice and rich simple syrup. Brooks wanted to use vodka to let the dill shine, but he says that gin can also work nicely with dill. Smithereens uses dill's grassy, anisette brightness to cut through coconut-washed gin in the Goblin cocktail. 'The real limit is just how adventurous a drinker you are,' Brooks says. 'I think if you got it just right, rye whiskey would be truly groundbreaking, but it would be tough pairing. I also think some French rhum agricole or Mexican rum would make an interesting Daiquiri–style drink.' When experimenting with dill, Brooks thinks of complementary, non-spirited ingredients like citrus—specifically lemon and grapefruit—as well as cucumber, mint and parsley. 'Yogurt would also be great, either incorporated into a syrup or as some kind of spirit wash, which would lend a nice creaminess and would soften the dill a bit.' He can even imagine a summery Bloody Mary made with a light tomato base, and suggests consulting Scandinavian, Middle Eastern and Israeli cookbooks to get more inspiration for how to use dill in drinks. Isai Xolalpa, the director of beverage at W Philadelphia, also mentions Mediterranean cuisines as inspiration for introducing dill's distinctive, aromatic flavor into cocktail programs. 'Dill offers a refreshing and unexpected savory note, perfectly suited to contemporary palates looking for complexity beyond sweetness,' he says. Patrons of the W Philadelphia's Living Room bar can get a dose of dill in the Oaxacan Negroni, which Xolalpa makes with lemongrass-dill infused mezcal, red Italian bitters, sweet vermouth and super foam, a housemade egg white substitute. The drink is garnished with a trio of pickled onions for an extra kick of savoriness. W Philadelphia's Oaxacan Negroni features lemongrass-dill infused mezcal as its base. If you want to use dill in drinks at home or behind the bar, Xolalpa says that 'infusions work exceptionally well, capturing the dill's vibrant aroma, herbal complexity and subtle sweetness. When infused into spirits, dill highlights refreshing notes of anise and delivers intriguing layers of savory flavor.' Elsewhere, Michelin-starred Indienne in Chicago serves the Seabass, a dilly drink that repurposes kitchen waste. Head mixologist Akshar Chalwadi starts by infusing gin with steamed and blended smoked salmon and sea bass trimmings, a combo that is macerated for 24 hours and then strained. The cocktail also incorporates lacto-fermented cucumbers, which are steeped with dill for 24 hours and balanced with sugar, and the finished drink is garnished with dill dust. Dalida in San Francisco turns to nearby Presidio Park for inspiration. Bar director Evan Williams wanted to capture the flavors of the park in his beverage menu, so he incorporates a number of fresh herbs, herbal teas and herbaceous spirits. The Halfdan Was Here cocktail calls for dill aquavit, clarified granny smith apple juice, celery, tarragon, musk willow water and lime. In a bit of cocktail inception, it's topped with a vegan foam made from the same cocktail so drinkers can see how the texture changes the flavor. Halfdan Was Here is a park-inspired cocktail that starts with dill aquavit. Right, so it's not just dill-spiked Gin and Tonics and Tom Collins we're seeing on bar menus. Though, to be clear, both classics are great vehicles for dill. For decades, the herb has taken a backseat to other more common ingredients, and it's still not enjoying the ubiquity of something like mint. But bartenders are taking notice and harnessing dill's unique flavor. 'As we enter an era of mainstream experimentation in cocktail techniques, there's real novelty in branching out from herbaceous staples like mint, basil, rosemary and thyme and getting a little more culinary,' says Rodriguez.
