Half and Half

Soul Disguise
Cesar Rosas, 1999

I'm not sure exactlywhy I picked this album to review instead of one of the many Los Lobos records I have. For one thing, I suppose it gives me the opportunity to talk about some of my favorite kinds of music-group dynamics: the tense duality. You see, Los Lobos derive quite a bit of their greatness from the balancing of opposites, or so it seems to me. I'm oversimplifying to a very large degree here, but in the band, David Hidalgo (and to a lesser extent Louis Perez) represents restrained pristine beauty and devotion to folk tradition, while Cesar Rosas is wearing dark shades and rocking out, loud and dirty. There are plenty of other examples of dualities like this in popular music, another recent example being the fiercely intellectual Chuck D and the trickster-clown Flava Flav.

In any case, with that in mind, I picked this disc up from a Tower Records in Greenwich Village, not sure exactly what to expect when Rosas was let out on his own. I mildly enjoyed the Hidalgo/Perez outings, but this record I really dig. Rosas shows a broad spectrum of stylistic interests, and everything is deep, like he's digging down to claw at the roots of things while still having a party.

There's a very "big" sound to the production, even on the tunes where the instrumentation is stripped down and mostly acoustic. It's not exactly slick-sounding, but certainly very professional. That's the sort of thing that doesn't usually stand out on an album for me, save for a few, this being one of them.

I've got some favorites in the set, of course. The Ike Turner tune "You've Got to Lose" is a slamming blues tricked out as a vehicle for some blazing guitar licks. "Better Way" is an affecting simple mid-tempo ballad delivered in heartfelt gravel baritone, made extra-special by an obbligato on a Veracruzano harp. "Adios Mi Vida"is pure corrido, with a guest appearance by the inimitable Flaco Jimenez. And Rosas pays homage to Stax/Volt soul with a sly 6/8 churner he calls "E. Los Ballad #13."

Really wonderful tunes here, played with maturity, zeal, and great love for the music (do you get the impression sometimes, especially from big pop stars, that they aren't even really enjoying what they are doing and just have their eyes on the afterparty?). In listening to it all through carefully, I noticed that really everything is connected to the blues spirit in some way or other, so it's as if he took his "half" of the Los Lobos duality and nurtured it till it could stand on its own. Really enjoyable.

itunes link:

Just one of over a hundred albums

Royal T
Tito Puente, 1993

Ah Tito Puente ... where to even start? The man gave James Brown a run for his money as "hardest working man in show business," and the number of albums he recorded is the stuff of legend (I'm sure there's an exact count somewhere online, but that's one thing I'd rather keep a mystery). On two different occasions, I was lucky enough to hear him and his band perform live - even got splashed with some of his sweat, a.k.a. "agua de Puente," while dancing.

This album was the first of his that I bought, and probably for sentimental reasons it's still my favorite to listen to. This was the one I listened to over and over until I figured out and internalized the tumbao rhythm of the bass, something that has fascinated me for a long time. I dissected several of the arrangements, and learned so much from them.

The album starts off with a kick-ass screaming-fast version of "Donna Lee," the lead melody carried by a piccolo, and it just smokes from beginning to end. The arrangement of Mingus' "Moanin'" is a favorite of mine too - starts off with a baritone sax line that's begging to be sampled into a hip hop track. I knew the Mingus version of this tune fairly well before I ever heard this one, but the Puente version is definitely the one that's taken over my aural imagination now. The album is really all gems, with graet soloing and ensemble work. Another stand-out for me is "Mambo Gallego," which fuses flamenco harmonies and melodic ideas with the Afro-cuban rhythmic drive. I used to use that one to teach music students to take rhythmic dictation.

Anyway, it's just a blast, stem to stern. If you like Latin Jazz, it's an excellent one to have.

itunes doesn't have it, but they have this nice greatest hits:

Tehillim

Tehillim
Steve Reich, 1981

So I've described this piece as "stunning" before, and really there's no better term. I really am just stunned by its beauty and its rhetorical power every time I listen to it.

This is a piece of music for a large chamber ensemble and small chorus of amplified singers. My first encounter with it was at a student concert, where there was the ensemble had some trouble with the score, but its wonderfulness still shined through.I bought the CD soon after, and it quickly became a favorite.

I can't get into everything that makes it so great, but I can review a few of the aspects that stand out for me. Certainly the rhythmic structures really draw me in ... all these overlapping tiny cells, most of them derived from the rhythms of the text, drawing focus down on the motion of each pulsing eighth note, and at the same time opening up larger vistas - timespans that mimic on a larger scale what's going on at the microscopic level. It's one of those pieces of music that lets you experience multiple timescales unfolding at once, which is at once invigorating and meditative.

There's the counterpoint, too, which is just gorgeous in places. Strict vocal canons skitter and swerve as the winds and strings hold long sustained tones. And some of the melodic contours have that brilliant mathematical gorgeousness that's such a rare treat in contemporary composers' work.

There are quite a few stand-out moments for me, one of them being the change end of part 2 and the opening of part 3. That change in tempo and pitch and intrumentation just is so right. I could write a whole essay on just that change (I'm sure you'd all just adore reading that). And there's the ending, which is laserbeam tight to the point of being shrill, but at the same time is precisely what is needed there. The word "alleluia" is sung over and over (did I mention that these are settings of psalms in Hebrew?), in different melodic shapes, finally resolving to a relentlessly repeated tone. Great stuff.

Besides, you gotta love any music that features the tambourine in a heroic starring role in the ensemble.

itunes link:

The Miracle that is Zoe Ellis

Full Cleveland
Cleveland Lounge, 1996

So while I'm technically talking about this one album by the band Cleveland Lounge, I'm really talking about the sublime singer Zoe Ellis. I've been listening to her sing all my adult life (and, as I believe I'm mentioned before on here, I'm kinda old), and she's never been anything less than a pure unalloyed wonder. Her tone is raw silk dragging over your forearm, her delivery full of passion and depth, her singing style just always right - somehow more divine by being so rooted to the earth.

I never got to see her perform with this band Cleveland Lounge - apparently they weren't together all that long. I have heard her perform a couple of the songs in other settings, though, and the album does a very nice job of featuring her voice. There's a certain sameness to a few of the tunes; they have that "quiet storm" radio-ready feel. Great musicianship, well thought-out arrangements, just nothing too raw or exposed here. "Drowning" (the only song available now, as a single on itunes) is the signature song, full of all the operatic grace and emotional realness I associate with Zoe Ellis - really nice vocal counterpoint at the end too. "Mood Swing," another favorite, has a stripped-down minimalist arrangement, and her voice is hushed, warm, and sort of clipped in places - perfect evocation of the lyrics, which are about the ease of slipping from love to obsession. "Someday" has a more upbeat, hopeful sound (almost, but not quite, ruined by the lame keyboard stabs on the verses), with the beautiful ascending lines you don't find often in pop music. And "Need to Know" is the closest to purely rocking out that can be found on this album.

Really amazing stuff. If you live in the Bay Area, you simply must listen to this singer live at every opportunity. If you don't, and you can get your hands on this album, at least you'll get a taste.

itunes link:

Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie

Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie!
Ella Fitzgerald, 1961

I could spend weeks just reviewing the Ella Fitzgerald albums I have, but why not start with my all-time favorite? What a gorgeous and well-conceived album, not a clunker in the whole bunch of songs.

Just jazz standards here, tending towards the ballads and downtempo numbers, which suits me well most of the time. It's just a small jazz quartet as the backing band, too, including Herb Ellis on guitar. Every song is just a gem, her voice soars and floats and dips effortlessly.

"Night in Tunisia" grooves along, forgoing the Afrocuban feel for some alternating 6/8 and 4/4 meters. "You're My Thrill" is perhaps the most purely emotive track - an interpretation that gets me every time. She takes "Born to Be Blue" from a rich deep blues to angelsong and back again. On "Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most," she delivers a performance so wantonly gorgeous that it is the closest thing to a proof of the existence of god. And "This Could Be the Start of Something Big," Steve Allen's novelty theme song, just swings like fuck.

Those are just a few of the tracks that are standing out for me at the moment - this is an album to live your life to. Yes it's hard for me to pile up enough superlatives to do this album justice. I've been listening to this one constantly ever since I bought it about 15 years ago, and it's always been there for me when I needed it. I remember listen to "'Round Midnight" in the car as I drove through one of her old neighborhoods in Yonkers (where there was an excellent Salvadoran restaurant at the time), late in a cool autumn evening, and feeling that little frisson that you get when you realize that your life is connected to everyone else's and there's a common rhythm to the world.

Not all music can do that.

itunes link:

Talking Book

Talking Book
Stevie Wonder, 1972

So I'm dipping into the more popular vein today. Listened to all of this excellent album today, and I discover new things to enjoy about it all the time. When I listened to it as a kid, I really didn't have time for anything but "Superstition," and of course that song is still the jam, but there's just so much else going on here.

One thing that makes a good singer-songwriter album stand out for me is just simple variety. I don't want a lot of the songs to sound the same, and Stevie definitely delivers on that here, expending a lot of energy and studio time to make every song a unique expression. Maybe the lyrics aren't exactly the most subtle or anything, but the musical ideas are in confluence with them to a great degree.

Some highlights: the near-hypnotic stutter-step funky drone of "Maybe Your Baby," the breezy bright almost-tropicalia arrangement on "Tuesday Heartbreak," the vocal counterpoint and meticulously-crafted melodic contours on "Blame It on the Sun," and can we talk about "I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)" for a second?

Because that song. Damn. My skin tingles a bit just thinking about it. And here's something that I rarely say about any music at all: I really think a big part of what makes this song great is the tempo. I try to imagine it even just a hair faster or slower, and it seems wrong. In fact, it used to bother me when I listened to it on a walkman (did I mention that I'm kinda old?) and the batteries were a bit old or something. The song is still really great, but there's something about the groove of it that speaks to my biorhythms or something. So nice to have it on CD and mp3, and really hear it in that in-the-pocket tempo every time.

Gorgeous album, definitely something you should own if you're any kind of fan of American popular songwriting.

itunes link:

Bach Goldberg Variations

J.S. Bach
Goldberg Variations
performed by Christiane Jaccottet

So I figured I should start off with something seminal, a "backbone" recording, and I really what's more fundamental than Bach, right?

This is a 1981 recording on some small German label, and the performer plays a harpsichord. The first time listening, it was a little strange after hearing the piece on piano a lot, but wow it sure has grown on me, and this is the version in my aural imagination whenever I think of the music now.

I think what attracts me to it most is the nice balance struck between the mathematical sublimity and the small human-scale humility. It's so easy to miss that second part sometimes, and it's really present here. The music flows and feels like part of human life, as much as it feels like an expression of the ineffable cosmos or whatever.

Some of my favorite variations (did I mention that it's a theme and variations deal?) are 9,10, and 22, but really it's all really great stuff. I feel grounded, like part of the earth, when I listen to it. We used to play it for my daughter when she was in utero, and then over and over again when she was a baby - probably that's part of why this recording is burned into my brain and why it's special to me.

There are a couple of other pieces thrown in too, including the F major Italian Concerto, also a nice rendition. But the Goldberg is definitely the centerpiece. Great stuff.

itunes link:

let's get this party started

I noticed that I own quite a lot of recorded music. Yes, probably far fewer than some, but even leaving manic collectors aside, it's quite a bit more than I should own.

Thing is, I love listening to records (excuse my use of this as the generic term - I'm old) as much as the next person, but I've got my philosophical problems with them too. In my most optimistic moments, I tend to agree with Miles Davis, that a record best serves as an advertisement for a live concert. Too often, the splendor, magnificence, humanity, charm, and gris-gris essential to music is lost in the move from performance to shink-wrapped commodification.

Ah, but what commodities they are ... artifacts, icons, lingua franca of generations. And what worlds they open up - I can't afford go to the opera every week, but I can get a used CD set of Don Giovanni for 5 or 10 bucks and listen to my heart's content. Musical traditions from far-off places and far-off decades can reach me and thousands of others, a state of affairs which is nothing short of miraculous.

The physical-medium recording is surely singing its swan-song these days. Most likely people won't flip through used bins at record stores much longer, serendipitously coming across something with cover art that's intriguing, taking a chance on the unknown. I have no problem with that at all - think it's leading to generally positive, democratic, live-music-centered changes to the music "industry." But meantime, let's celebrate records before we forget what they are.

Did I mention that I have a lot of records? I also don't sit and listen to them deeply as often as I should. I'm going to fix that now. Once or twice a week, I'm going to listen to some recording or other off my shelves, more or less at random, and I'll post about it here. A couple years down the line, I'll have a catalog of sorts here. I'm not going into this thinking of what I write as reviews or recommendations, exactly. More like reflections. Maybe that will be useful to someone else reading?