Without a doubt, the Dandy Warhols is a band, a meeting of the Velvet-y minds with Brent DeBoer, Peter Holmström, Zia McCabe and Courtney Taylor-Taylor calling the shots. But drummer-turned-guitarist/singer Taylor-Taylor is its handsome face and baritone voice who pushed the band from graceful poetic garage music (1995’s Dandys Rule OK) to guileless glam (2000’s Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia) to sleek-yet-twisted ’80s-ish new wave (2003’s Welcome To The Monkey House). While the rest of the 20th century found the band drifting through three additional like-minded albums, the outfit has grown leaner and meaner with the focused, guitar-centric This Machine (The End). Taylor-Taylor, a ruminative lyricist with a caustic lean, makes the most of this particular Machine moment. He allowed novelist Richard Morgan to write the Dandys’ press notes and found his own icy literary voice in graphic set-in-Germany novel One Model Nation. Taylor-Taylor and his bandmates are also guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
McCabe: The burrito and the margarita. Two things I love dearly, both with ambiguous histories. The more I looked into the origins of the burrito, the more I realized how ridiculous it was to try giving credit to one person or place for something so inevitable. I mean, most if not all cultures have some sort of flatbread with some sort of toppings right? Of course the burrito as we know and love it today developed over the years with history dating back to the late 1800s, starting in north Mexico (where wheat can grow) with simple ingredients like meat and beans. After crossing the border, layers of toppings like cheese, avocado, tomato, olives, etc., became popular, and today one of my favorite foods can now be enjoyed in far-reaching places such as Amsterdam, Denmark and even Australia.
Now, a burrito is great, but what really completes the experience for me is a margarita! This undeniably refreshing drink made of equal parts tequila, orange liqueur and lime served in a salted glass also has varied origins. There were two, though, that stuck out to me as being quite likely. One, the drink was named after Margarita Henkel (daughter of a German ambassador) in 1941 when bartender Don Carlos Orozco invented the drink for her in Hussong’s Cantina in Ensenada, Mexico. And two, it’s just a remade American drink, the daisy (margarita is Spanish for daisy), made with tequila instead of brandy, when during prohibition getting liqueur from across the border became a common way to get your drink on. No matter how these tasty treats came about, life would not be as good without them. Salud!
Video after the jump.
