Lo-Fidelity: First tracks with wine guru Mark Oldman — ‘Do You Feel Like We Do?’
Aspen Times columnist
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
If there’s one song that aptly sums up Food & Wine for me, it’s Peter Frampton’s dynamic, 15-minute chef-d’oeuvre “Do You Feel Like We Do?” — a virtual master class in live album sound mixology from the moody melodic intro, to the unapologetic first verse:
“Woke up this morning with a wine glass in my hand
Whose wine?
What wine?
Where the hell did I dine?
Must have been a dream
I don’t believe where I’ve been
Come on, let’s do it again.”
Then there’s the voice-box solo culminating with a swan-diving “Waaaah!” into the cork-sabering D-chord. I feel like the tune specifically informs my ideal, debauched version of this weekend. I can almost hear the Sunday morning Aspen Police radio transmission now, “Base, this Danno. We got a 10-54 (possible dead guy) underneath a lilac bush over near Koch Lumber Park. Male subject, local columnist, late 50s wearing cowboy boots, a Kemo Sabe hat, a Food & Wine laminate … and nothing else.”
Mea Culpa: I’m a wine-curious Mark Oldman fanboy and had the absolute pleasure of speaking to the nearly two-decade veteran Food & Wine presenter this week. His enthusiasm, wit, and wisdom of wine are infectious. We both share an uncannily common love of music and somewhat incidental, serendipitous personal experiences growing up.
One of my favorite random, non sequitur, pseudo interview questions is, “What was your very first concert?” Mark’s, not surprisingly, was Rush at Madison Square Garden in 1982 for the Signals tour. Mine was Rolling Stones at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse in 1981. We’re also a year apart in age. Funny enough, Oldman ended up interviewing Rush frontman Geddy Lee for his book, “How to Drink like a Billionaire.”
While dissecting the busy intersection where wine near-misses, intersects, or flat-out collides with rock and roll, Mark brought up perhaps the deepest, borderline unknown Stones cut ever: “Pass the Wine (Sophia Lauren),” a woozy blues ditty “bonus Track” off-of the 2010 “Exile on Main Street” re-issue.
“Musicians are so influenced by wine, and winemakers so want to be rockstars,” he explained, “and some of them kind of are, so there is that interplay between the two worlds, a mutual admiration or appreciation of something that’s short-lived for the senses.”
Years before his first rock concert, Mark recalled a formative performance — attending a burlesque show at the Lido in Paris when he was 12 with his sister. My similar experience was going to see “Hair” at the Santa Monica Playhouse as an impressionable momma’s boy with my sisters. Both “plays” featured generous pours of vintage nudity.
I told him one of my favorite phrases, “aged like a fine wine cooler,” and we shared some of our first escapades with wine. I mentioned how at our Aspen High School keg parties up on Smuggler Mountain, four-packs of Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers were the hot item among the female attendees who didn’t necessarily want to sit around a campfire and drink Coors with pubescent cavemen. Mark recalled giving a speech in high school and drinking two raspberry-flavored Calvin Coolers beforehand to calm the nerves.
“The key,” he said, “is to have just enough to relax you but not so much that your speech is garbled.”
That’s a well-marked, four-way stop sign I’ve blown right through before.
His mom once tasked him with picking out the best beer for family parties. His choice as a 16-year-old Rush fan? Moosehead, of course! My mom designated me the child bartender for dinner parties at our house in the West End. For an end-of-semester French-class potluck, Mark’s cool older sister hipped him to this glamorous type of red wine called “Beaujolais” that he could woo his cute from-France French teacher with. Her graciousness toward his offering was a catalyst that in a profound sense led him to pursue wine. In college, he started the Stanford Wine Club. My first year of college, my cool older sister somehow landed me a job as a roadie for Def Leppard, and I went on to be a heavy metal sommelier of sorts.
“Pace yourself,” they warn about Food & Wine weekend. Those are two words I’ve never really understood. For me, it’s a more frenetic “Get ahead, stay ahead” competition like hiking the bowl or Ajax on a powder day — a dubious, adrenaline-seeker skier’s mindset that generally leads to couples counseling, rehab, the hospital, or jail for EWI (e-biking while inebriated).
Thanks to everyone who has been working tirelessly to bring Food & Wine to fruition. Town looks absolutely stunning right now. I’d personally like to welcome all the vendors and visitors to Aspen. I hope everyone has a wild but safe weekend.
I feel like Tattoo from “Fantasy Island” when he hurriedly ascends the spiral staircase, rings the bell, and shouts, “The plane, the plane!” It’s well-worth noting back in 1977, the going rate for a three-day stay at Fantasy Island cost $50,000, or $271,138 in today’s dough after rising, proving Food & Wine in Aspen is still a real bargain. As the debonair host Ricardo Montalbán famously announced, “Smiles everyone, smiles!”
Contact Lorenzo via Suityourself@sopris.net.
Back in Time | Aspen
“Big construction crew building east approach to Independence Pass,” the Aspen Times announced on June 23, 1938. “A big construction crew is now working out of Twin Lakes on Highway No. 82, and by the end of this summer, road officials hope to have the Independence Pass route completed over the top of the Divide and far down on the Aspen side. According to information received here, a total of $100,000 will be spent on the pass by the Colorado State Highway Department in rebuilding the highway in the next few years.
