If you were planning to whip up a batch of Coronation Chicken in honor of King Charles, you might want to hold off. The chicken salad dish (which includes a lot of mayo), which was served at the coronation of Charles’ mother Queen Elizabeth in 1953, has been replaced on the royal menu by Coronation Quiche, a meatless quiche which boasts spinach, broad beans, tarragon and (here’s the secret ingredient!) lard. Buckingham Palace has released the recipe, and those who have tried it say that it’s…er…not all that good. King Chuck’s coronation will take place on May 6, with pageantry, parades and a concert. More on the musical lineup next week.
Ticket Alert
The F.O.R.C.E. (Frequencies of Real Creative Energy) tour will hit Toyota Center on Friday, August 25, with LL Cool J headlining a show that will include performances by The Roots, Big Boi, Juvenile and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Presales and VIP packages are available now, with the general ticket sale beginning Friday morning.
Drake has postponed his Toyota Center performances – part of the It’s All a Blur tour – scheduled for June. The new dates are September 17 and 18, and tickets purchased for the original dates will be honored then.
Concerts This Week
Who would have thought, when Led Zeppelin hung it up in 1980, that Robert Plant would still be treading the boards over 40 years later while Jimmy Page sits in his London mansion far from the public eye, occupying himself by feuding with his neighbor, pop singer Robbie Williams? You can catch the Golden God (well, maybe the Silver God these days) tonight at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion with Alison Krauss, the pair touring in support of their recent collaboration Raise the Roof.
Alt-rockers Ween, led by Deen Ween (Mickey Melchiondo) and Gene Ween (Aaron Freeman), will perform tonight at the White Oak Music Hall. Ween has always been considered a bit “off,” due primarily to the fact that they write songs with titles like “Booze Me Up and Get Me High,” “Piss Up a Rope” and “Waving My Dick in the Wind.” While it is an outdoor show, concertgoers are discouraged from taking the title of the last song too literally.
Remember the series of movies from the ‘60s and ‘70s that pitted Godzilla against a variety of foes (Rodan, Mothra, etc.) who (like the big green guy) were rendered huge and incredibly powerful following exposure to nuclear radioactivity? The rock and roll version of these legendary clashes comes to town this week, when the Mega-Monsters tour makes a stop at the 713 Music Hall on Friday. Prog-metal icons Mastodon and Gojira (an alternate spelling, for legal reasons, of Godzilla) have teamed up for a co-headlining jaunt that will feature these musical behemoths duking it out for the heavy metal monster crown.
When I was a lad, the guys in the school band were majorly into Chicago, and why not? When you were struggling with lessons on the trumpet or the saxophone, it provided some affirmation to hear a horn-based band with hits on the radio (“Feelin’ Stronger Every Day,” “25 or 6 to 4”). But the true afficionados were fans of Tower of Power, the Oakland band with a horn section that was borrowed by many of the biggest artists of the day, including Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, Santana and the Grateful Dead. And let us not forget the band’s contributions to what is maybe the best live album of all time, Little Feat’s Waiting for Columbus. TOP will be at the House of Blues on Saturday. “Hipper than hip?” Damn skippy!
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
