For this year’s Thanksgiving, I posed this question to our Stuck Between Stations co-conspirators: “What music are you thankful for, and what would you suggest eating with it?” The results are posted below, including my edible playlist and helpings of pot luck from Zoe Krylova, Scot Hacker, Christian Crumlish, Benoit Baald, and Dan Haig. Need more Thanksgiving cheer? Check the heartwarming stories of Johnny Thunders struggling with a frozen turkey and the Rickrolling of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Zoe Krylova’s picks

PJ Harvey: rare steak and a baked potato
Patti Smith: hot chicken curry
Devendra Banhart: venison stew and a chimay
Vetiver: salad of mixed greens and wildflowers, elderberry wine
Bjork: dim sum
Joni Mitchell: assorted crackers and exotic cheeses
Neil Young: ribs
Classical Indian music: samosas and chai
Sun Ra: dark chocolate and smoothies
Reggae: jerk chicken & fresh lemonade

P.J. Harvey, “When Under Ether”

Sun Ra, “Pink Elephants”

Scot Hacker’s Picks

Elizabeth Cotten: For doing Fahey before there was Fahey, for being a chick doing the real gospel blues, for doing sweet folk without getting all Joan Baez on our asses, for making me float. Listen here. Note: The video above doesn’t do Cotten justice – definitely check out the Smithsonian collection of her works for the full effect. Recommended eating: Goat curry with IPA.

Music of Indonesia, Vol. 20: Indonesian Guitars: For reminding that none of us have heard the end of what the guitar is or does, or how it sounds. There’s always more pineapple to suck the juice out of, one more finger to lick. For reminding that the delta between Daniel Johnston, Japanese koto, and Bill Harkelroad converges on the Indian Ocean. Listen here. Recommended eating: Chicken satay and limeade.

Elizabeth Cotten, “Freight Train”

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What would you say to the crazy guy in the park muttering about alien spaceship landings on the day the mothership finally beams down to bring him home? The makers of Dr. Pepper must be wondering the same thing. Earlier this year, Dr. Pepper notoriously promised that if professional head case Axl Rose finally released Guns n’ Roses’ perpetually unavailable Chinese Democracy album to the public after 17 years –and thereby deprived the music world of one of its best synonyms for incompleteness–it would give a free Dr. Pepper away to every American (except for departed guitarists Buckethead and Slash). That day has finally arrived. Any time today, and today only, you can visit the Dr. Pepper website and claim your free soda.

As I’ve never really been a fan of the band, I could ignore the media hype over Chinese Democracy if it weren’t for a few things:
• It’s messing with my sense of integrity. Back in the day, I considered the head cases in the Replacements to be the anti-Guns n’ Roses, delivering mostly heart and soul where Axl and his gang delivered mostly hype and bluster. But hell must be freezing over, because Tommy Stinson of the Replacements is now Guns n’ Roses’ bassist.
• It’s reminding me that Axl Rose is an idiot savant, not just an idiot. It wasn’t just a lucky fluke that “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine” have become air guitar/ karaoke classics. As late finishers go, he’s certainly no Brian Wilson, but file the band under guilty semi-pleasure–and skip the icky power ballads.
• Since Axl Rose has been known to pen lyrics that make him come off like Ann Coulter with better hair, it’s interesting that the “new” album features a sample of Martin Luther King.
• Despite Axl’s best efforts, I still think he’s only the second-best rock degenerate to use China as a metaphor (see Johnny Thunders, below).

Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, “Chinese Rocks”

Guns n’ Roses, “Chinese Democracy”

For months, I’ve wondered what music I’d want to listen to once the long election march toward the post-Bush era was finally over. The always-reliable Carrie Brownstein had some great pre-election suggestions in her Monitor Mix blog —the Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today,” Al Green’s version of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready”—but like me, she found that on election night the only real answer was to make your own music. From NYC’s Union Square, she reported “magically becoming tolerant” of “the Bacchanalia I usually associate with drum circles, Hemp Fests and Renaissance Fairs.” Fresh off the plane from two days of voter protection work in Nevada, I had a similar moment, banging on an assortment of random percussion instruments with my three year-old son Matthew like a giddy hippie who’d staggered through one too many Dead tours asking for a miracle.

By the next morning, though, I knew exactly what I wanted to hear. On his unlikely path to the Presidency, Barack Obama kept his cool very much like vintage late fifties/ early sixties Miles Davis. Like Obama, the Miles who recorded Kind of Blue was hardly a radical; his subtle power was less iconoclastic than Ornette Coleman’s similarly timed Shape of Jazz to Come and less dramatic than the Giant Steps of his sideman John Coltrane. Yet Miles too was a forward thinker who nailed his moment in history. Sensing that hard bop’s routine of riffing had become a bridge to nowhere, he dispensed with straight chord progressions in favor of modes and shaped sounds that still seem almost as fresh as they did nearly half a century ago. After enduring a parade of hotheads, blowhards, dimwits, and trigger-happy supermodels, I’ll spend today celebrating the simple virtues of the “cool”—not in the snarky sense of “hipper than thou,” but as a credo standing for resilient grace and poise in the face of chaos.

As an occasional hothead, I can’t help wondering whether the cool President-Elect Obama who channels mid-period Miles also has a little Bitches’ Brew bubbling under the surface. Before I could even complete this thought, I discovered that someone has already done a mash-up of Obama’s speeches and electric Miles, notably “Feio” from the Bitches’ Brew sessions. There’s a new deal in town, and I can’t wait to listen.

Miles Davis, “So What” (featuring John Coltrane)