The Black Belles, an all-girl goth-rock band and the latest from producer Jack White, just played a trio of east coast dates in support of the act that would be the Butcher Blog’s house band if we, you know, had a house: Les Butcherettes.

In releasing the Black Belles self-titled debut, M. White and his Third Man Records are doing something that tickles the heart of our inner 14-year-old: talking up an offensive “banned” original cover. Yes it reminds of the Geffen Records ploy on Guns ‘N’ Roses Appetite for Destruction, which came complete with famously banned-for-being-offensive album art. Admittedly the Axl-approved robot rapist was actually pretty offensive.

The Belles are keeping their own banned-for-being-offensive album art under wraps until a show and album release party at Third Man Records’s record store in Nashville on Friday (where it will be available on “absinthe vinyl” no less — talk about your manufacturing of a collectible). Until then we can only marvel at the artwork on the single “Honky Tonk Horror”:

And the also banned-for-being-offensive video for the same single in which lead singer Olivia Jean repeatedly screams “I’ve been a bad girl” between footage of the girls a-going a-hangin’ (yeah, guess that could be misconstrued):

There are books about musicians — you know, that sad section of Barnes and Noble where 15-year old stoners thumb through frayed copies of “No One Here Gets Out Alive” — and then there are books about cooking — you know, “Mastering The Art of French Cooking.”

Well, now there is a place where these two books can meet and party down: “Mosh Potatoes.” And it has a picture of a fork making devil horns on the cover. The book, tagline “Cook out with your book out,” features recipes from the likes of Lemmy from Mötorhead, Zakk Wilde, members of Megadeth, Pantera, Quiet Riot, Queensryche, Hatebreed, and Kittie. Steve “Buckshot” Seabury, the author and mastermind behind these, as Simon and Schuster put it, “recipes, anecdotes and mayhem from the heavy weights of heavy metal,” has spent the past 20 years or so touring with, playing with, drinking with and, apparently, cooking with, some of the top metal bands. When not writing cookbooks he plays with his band Moth Eater and runs his label Giddy Up!. He was kind enough to take a moment to discuss the book and some of his heroes (appropriately, Angus) with us. And following the Q+A with Steve, a recipe from the book for Brazilian Lemon Chicken by Max Cavalera of Soulfly and Sepultura. The book hits bookstores Nov. 16, but if you don’t want to wrestle that stoner toting the Doors book, pre-order here.

Steve "Buckshot" Seabury

Could you have come up with the idea for “Mosh Potatoes” sober?
The answer is NO. I was so completely fucked up when I came up with the idea. I got home around 3 a.m. after a good night of drinking with some friends after a concert. I had the munchies, and White Castle was too far of a walk. The cupboards were bare, I had some Taco Bell Fire Sauce from the night before, a couple of eggs and some other stuff hiding in the back of the fridge that I probably wouldn’t feed my dog. I said to myself “What would Lemmy do in this situation?” The idea for “Mosh Potatoes” was created right there.

“What would Lemmy do?” is probably a sound way to approach any problem. The tagline “Cook out with your book out” is pure gold. Who came up with it?
My good buddy Glenn. He is a rock and roll Outlaw. We were talking about the book and trying to come up with a slogan over a couple of cold ones. He just blurted it out, and we both started cracking up laughing. It is absolute brilliant. I mean Rock Out With Your Cock Out to Cook Out With Your Book Out. Hells yeah. That is GOLD.

Who most surprised you with their recipes?
It’s so hard to narrow it down. Everyone has to eat, and we all have our favorite family recipes, so I wasn’t that surprised. All of these bands in “Mosh Potatoes” have toured the world experiencing foods that most of us would never get the chance to taste. There’s such an amazing diversity of food in this collection. Every page you have a different culinary experience.

Probably my favorite recipes in the book though: Evile’s Cheese On Toast, and you are going to freak out when you try the Guns & Roses Chili, Zakk Wylde’s Spaghetti & Meatballs, Pantera’s Texas BBQ From Hell, and Joey Z from Life of Agony has a kickass recipe called Stuffed Lobster Zampella.

Wait till you try the desserts. The guys in Fear Factory, Hatebreed and Megadeth can bake some badass goodies. I am getting hungry just thinking about it. The Naam Pecan Pie is to die for. Amazing.

Test kitchens can be dangerous/ scary places (at least ours can). Any mishaps in yours?
If you plan on making the Lemmy recipe I would prepare yourself with a fire extinguisher. No joke.

Who would you most like to cook with that you didn’t get to?
My favorite band of all time is AC/DC. I would love more than ever to fire up the grill with Angus and bullshit while we cook up some grub.

Outside of the book, in your experience, what’s the typical metal band’s idea of home cooking?
Loud music, alcohol and lots of good food. Period.

How would you describe your personal cooking style?
I love cooking. It’s a passion of mine. It’s like playing a Les Paul. If you are going to do it, you might as well do it right. My personal cooking style is to throw some beers back, get the best ingredients your market has to offer, and go ape shit.

That’s probably what Lemmy would do. What is the most metal way to grill?
Turn Slayer up really loud, throw the beers on ice, marinate, call friends to bring more beer to party, get the wood burning high and hot, drink more beer, throw flesh on grill (no veggies), eat till you can’t eat no more. Once you wake up from your food coma, drink beer until you completely pass out. Wake up and repeat.

What is the ultimate metal beverage and food pairing?
Stay true to the brew. Cooking and beer go hand and hand. I personally like a nice cheap American beer. Beers Up!

Will there be a sequel (and if so, can you stretch the rules to get a contribution from Mike Piazza)?
I would love to get Mike Piazza in the book. He is a metal fan and I am a massive METS fan. Its funny because in the thank you list for the book I gave everyone knick names. Like all of the bands did back in the day. All of my friends that are Yankee Fans … Well, lets just say they hate their nick names.

How about a book of cocktails?
If I wrote that book it would only be about beer and tequila.

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Now, as advertised we have Max Calalera from Soulfly’s Brazilian Lemon Chicken. This chicken is probably only Brazilian in that Max is making it (but it is lemon-y). In this video filmed in Monument Valley he’s the one with the guitar with the Brazilian flag on it:

Brazilian Lemon Chicken

By Max Cavalera from Soulfly and Sepultura

Barbecuing outside with my favorite jams on the boombox …  When I go to the store, I always look for the fattest chicken drumsticks that I can find. The key is the fresh lemons. The flavor the BBQ chicken all they way through.

Ingredients:
Chicken
Grab about 6 lemons
Olive Oil
Garlic, minced
Fresh rosemary
BBQ sauce (home made or store bought)
Salt

It pains us to see Max using the gas grill here; we'd recommend charcoal, of course.

The main accompaniment is a big dash of maniacal metal. This is a must. While I am going through my CDs for something tantalizing, the chicken legs are soaking in a ziplock bag, along with olive oil, freshly squeezed lemons, and a bit of garlic.  Sometimes I throw fresh rosemary in. The longer the chicken soaks, the more juicy and tender it will be.

BBQ the chicken. I take the juice from the bag, and baste the legs while they are cooking. I use several additional fresh lemons that I squeeze over the chicken. I do this several times. I usually coat half the chicken in BBQ sauce.  Serve up with a lot of salt.

Pre-heat the grill to 400 degrees F. Take the chicken out of the bag and place on the heated grill. Take the juice from the bag and baste the legs while they are cooking. Squeeze additional lemons over the chicken. Do this several times. I usually coat half the chicken in BBQ Sauce. Sprinkle the salt and eat.

We’re nearing the end of harvest, and as such, there’s probably no better song to have stuck in your head on a Music Monday, humming softly in the background, than Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty.”

This rendition is by the one-man-band Scott H. Biram (whom we saw open for Hank III in Baltimore once upon a time and we urge you to check out when he comes through your town).

So, think on the words of Mr. Guthrie while enjoying your light sparkling wine.

There’s nothing more to do on this Music Monday than to try to shake off the chill the way we did yesterday at the soggy second day of the Treasure Island Music Festival in San Franciso when Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene capped probably the best performance of the weekend by leaping into the crowd during an outro on “Ibi Dreams of Pavement.” Well, he more sort of gingerly waded into it like David Yow’s kinder gentler little brother, after affectionately declaring, “I’m gonna come fucking crowd surf right now, just to be close to you.”

A thoroughly soaking early afternoon rain had dampened the crowd and provided a steady chill through sets by Superchunk, Papercuts and She & Him. Drew started BSS’s set, once all dozen or so members had set up, by introducing his band thusly, “We’re Broken Social Scene, and we’re here to warm you up.” However, it seemed like the gods of the Barbary Coast had other ideas and rain drops again splashed the crowd by the time the band launched into the second verse of “Meet Me in the Basement.” A driving  “7/4 (Shoreline)” seemed to ward off whatever rain was left up there, and the night ended on a mostly dry note.

It might be getting harder and harder to listen to actual vinyl records now, but one of the great things about YouTube is that you can find a video of a guy playing his old 45 of the Pretenders’ “Back to Ohio” (B-side of “Back on the Chain Gang”) from 1984 on his wood-grain Panasonic and be a vinyl listener by proxy. There’s even a little skip down the middle. The key bit though, is the record needle lifting off at the end and the arm auto-returning to its perch. Alas, embedding is disabled on that so you get this crap bootleg version:

In keeping with our new-found tradition of emulating the pop station here in wine country by dubbing Mondays “Music Mondays” we present you with Tom Waits singing (yes, singing) the poem “Fortune” from Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the tribute to the poet this past weekend in San Fransisco. This version was recorded not by us but by another attendee, and we are glad he did.

Waits introduced the poem/song by saying that when he first read it when he was 15, it knocked his hat off. “I wore a hat then, and it was frequently knocked off,” he added. Tom basically turns the song into one of his bawlers, calling it “one of my favorite poems of [Ferlinghetti's], interpreted by myself.”

Marcus Shelby, whose band provided rock steady support to the poets and musicians throughout the show, accompanies on the stand up bass.

If we didn’t miss Brooklyn already, we do now.

Fuller versions can be seen here. (Via The Eyeball Kid.)

We were inspired by a program on local Napa radio station The Vine, which heralds Monday mornings with “Music Mondays.” And while this makes little sense for a music station, we figured it would be a neat idea for a meat blog. So today, in honor of our newly acquired hand-made knife, we present Dean & Britta’s “Knives from Bavaria” (our knife is actually from Oregon, but it’s a cool song).

Here’s our knife made by blacksmith Michael Hemmer of Oregon, pictured alongside a roll of pork sirloin straight from Primal Napa.

Welcome to the first in our new series: Butcher Bios — a few questions for our favorite meat jockeys (unless they object to being called that, then we’ll stick to butcher). Our goal is to cast about far and wide and collect a staggering database of butchery knowledge. Failing that, we’d like to have a little fun and find out what beer you all drink with your burgers.

To lead off the series,  we have none other than Mr. Tom Mylan of the Meat Hook in Brooklyn, which, in addition to being one of the only places in the city where you can find chorizo-stuffed duck hearts, is also a swell place to take classes. Some of them — all classes are in partnership with the Brooklyn Kitchen — aren’t even about meat, though the best ones (sample: “Gin and charcuterie pairing“), of course, are.

Based: The Meat Hook, Brooklyn, NY

Ethos: Local, Sustainable, Whole Animal, Hard Working, Hard Drinking, Awesome, Fun

Favorite cut: Bone-in Beef Pin Bone Sirloin

Most under-rated cut: Pork Shanks

Favorite preparation: Beef Sashimi

Something he really thought would be good but wasn’t: Anal

Favorite side dish: Caesar Salad, preferably tableside.

Best offal: Heart, any kind. It’s the gateway drug to offal: Looks wierd, tastes amazing!

Worst offal: Beef Liver, dogs love it. I don’t.

Favorite meat/beverage pairing: Cannibal Sandwich (steak tartare on a burger set-up) and a Pepsi Throwback

Favorite Bands: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Moth Super Rainbow

Favorite Book: Fargo Rock City

Favorite Meat Book: The Beef by Moriyasu Tsuneyoshi

Favorite Cookbook: The River Cottage Cookbook

Favorite Movie: Jaws

Favorite TV show: CSI Miami

Favorite whiskey: Wild Turkey Rye

Favorite beer in a can: Busch

A knife should be sharp. Beyond that it should be cheap, good quality and have a comfortable wooden handle. Plastic [handled] knives make me crazy: they’re ugly and dangerous.

The best part of a pig is the skin. You can make so many great things out of it: Ragu, Cotechino, Scrapple, Members Only jackets, Footballs…

A hamburger should be made from mature (25-29 month old) hanging weight (never cryo-ed box beef) 70-30, ground twice through a medium plate and grilled rare. Grinding a little lamb in there is never a bad idea either.

A butcher should be friendly, happy, helpful and excited to sell you something great. That whole surly, condescending butcher thing makes people scared of cooking, afraid of buying meat and leads them right back to getting the crap at the supermarket. If you’re not excited to get out of bed every morning to work hard and love people you should hang up your knives and go work at the Post Office.

A good customer should keep an open mind, not be a recipe slave and listen to their butcher: it’s in his (or her) best interest to make your dinner the best it can possibly be.

A steak should be expensive. Cheap steaks taste weak. Steak should be a special treat, a cellebration, a good time. Get a good one, cook it right and share it with the people who make your life worth living.

You can never have too many meat hooks. Wanna hang a country ham? Meat hook. Wanna hang a plate? Meat hook. Beef Leg? Meat hook. Get that 6-pack of Busch out of the way? Meat hook. It’s not like we named our shop the Meat Hook by accident.

Everyone should read Little House in the Big Woods. The hog butchering section is amazing, it’s like a nose-to-tail how-to book from the days before refrigeration!

A farm I like working with is Kinderhook Farm because Lee cares, he’s the best and he listens.

The best advice I ever received was “There is a reason why they call it a bone saw” -Aaron Lenz

The best advice I ever gave was “Stop cutting towards yourself!”

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Smith’s seminal chart-topping album, “Meat is Murder,” which came out on Valentine’s Day in 1985. On the title track the famously vegetarian Morrisey bemoans the slaughtering of “beautiful creatures,” the fanciful frying of flesh, the joyful carving of calves and the festive slicing of holiday meat-treats. As for that farmstand bacon the Butcher had for breakfast on Sunday that “smelled just as good as it looked? “Kitchen aromas aren’t very homely /It’s not “comforting”, cheery or kind /It’s sizzling blood and the unholy stench of murder.”

But 1985 was a long time ago — back in the day of feed lots and slaughterhouses. Back when the average consumer thought of meat as something that arrived on the earth ground or cubed and wrapped in plastic. The original Times (UK) review of the album called “Meat is Murder” the Smiths’ “most disturbing song to date” and “enough to make anyone think twice as they survey the freezer cabinet in [the chain supermarket] Sainsbury’s.” But now we are educated, aware and compassionate. Are we still killers? Everywhere (okay, mainly in New York and San Francisco and possibly a few pockets in LA where they don’t drink human blood for fun) conscientious carnivores are answering Morrisey’s rhetorical question: “Do you know how animals die?” with a proud and resounding, “Yes We Do! (And we think this makes it okay to eat them!)”

We even give them names.

Would Morrisey feel any different if he knew the Butcher’s bacon had been purchased from the local farmer market and carved off the ass of a free range, grass fed, heritage swine from less than 100 miles away?

Not likely. Because he is not one of those faux vegetarians who, in the organic locavore whole-animal-utilization craze have found all the rationalization they need to dust off their steak knives. Or go wrist-deep in a gallon of pigs blood as the case may be. Morrissey would likely tell all those spareitarians, flexitarians and weekend tree huggers that anyway you choose to slice that happy heifer, it’s still murder.

Mike Joyce, the Smiths’ drummer, told the Times Online that it was this song (and not apparently Morrisey’s constant nagging) that finally pushed him into the herbivorism. “All Morrissey’s ‘You shouldn’t be eating that’ just washed over me, but the lyrics of the song just got to me. I’ve been a vegetarian ever since and so is my wife.” (Because, before the song, what? He thought that meat grew on trees?)

But even those who were so swayed by Morrissey’s bellowing “MURDER” have to chuckle a little bit at the heifer angst. Because we can all laugh at ourselves. Especially if we are Morrissey

That’s right. The New York Times, our newspaper of choice for cradling fish and chips or mopping up the seepage from a hanger steak (let’s see you do that with a Kindle), has declared that butchers are the hotness of the culinary universe.

Sure chefs are the rock stars, the paper reasons, but they are in the arena windmilling and grinding out cock rock, while the butcher, well, the butcher is in a back room bathed in blood, sulking and flexing his muscles. To hear the Times tell it, butchers are a cross between Danzig and Bright Eyes, while chefs (especially Daniel Boulud) are Def Lepard (and of course Mario Batali is Meat Loaf, but that’s too easy).

They even have this quote from a butcher groupie:

“Think about it. What’s sexy?” said Tia Keenan, the fromager at Casellula Cheese and Wine Café and an unabashed butcher fan. “Dangerous is sometimes sexy, and they are generally big guys with knives who are covered in blood.”

The article (yet again, as if New York magazine wasn’t doing a good enough job of this already) lovingly caresses Marlow & Daughters butcher Tom Mylan, who the paper calls “broody” (maybe he’s Morrisey). But then the writer unearths Ryan Farr, of San Francisco, a, um, rather colorful butcher who calls himself a “producer of porcine pleasure”and gives cutting demonstrations, complete with cocktails. For $30, Farr followers can drink at a local bar while he butchers a pig (and soon, a lamb and a quarter of a steer). And then there’s this fantasy he has about Mylan, which we don’t know quite what to make of:

Mr. Farr has a dream. “I want to throw a 300-pound pig in the middle of a room full of people and just tag-team it with him,” he said. So far, Mr. Mylan hasn’t set a date.