'Cause the weather is prohibiting me from concentrating on work....
and what the hell, I'll join the iTunes randomizer group today, annotated list below the fold, as it were:
1. Andar Com Fé Gilberto Gil
Beleza Tropical - Brazil Classics 1
great album! Wore out my vinyl copy, replaced with CD version a few years later. One of David Byrne's gifts to the world was introducing good Brazilian music to the U.S.
2. old love Otis Rush
Blue Power: Song of Eric Clapton, This Ain't No Tribute
Otis Rush, Chicago bluesman extraordinaire. I saw him in a small blues club in Austin (Antone's, in it's original location) have a guitar duel with a recently coke-free Stevie Ray Vaughn. Wowsa! This song is ok, nothing spectacular, and Eric Clapton, living off the fruits of his youth, should perhaps retire, about 20 years ago?.
3. I Wanna Be Your Lover
Prince Prince
Early Prince is always good for a party, even if it is only in my mind
4. Hard To Be Easy
Champale Simple Days
fair-to-middling Indie rock. Listen-able, but sort of like a pastry, ultimately empty, leaves only a lingering taste
5. ice hockey hair
super furry animals Ice Hockey Hair
Indie rock, with that “Fender Tone” made famous by somebody else (Lou Reed I believe). Feh. Worth picking up for a dollar or two. Or for free, preferably....
6. Svefn-G-Englar Sigur Rós
Vanilla Sky
OK, any movie with Tom Cruise involved is probably a B movie, or worse, but I sort of liked this one. B+. And whatever happened to Sigur Ros? This song is very trance-inducing.
7. Opel
Barrett, Syd Opel
Syd Barrett was Pink Floyd, 'nuff said
8. Kaleidoscope
Rain Parade Emergency 3rd Rail Power Trip
late 80's neo-pyschedelica. Not bad. Songs from the soundtrack to my college years..
9. Island Letter
Shuggie Otis Inspiration Information
Another David Byrne reissue. Strawberry Letter is the best track on the album, most of the rest is just ok.
10. La Allah Dayim Moulenah Maleem Mahmoud Ghania w/ Pharoah Sanders
The Trance Of Seven Colors
I love this album, sort of in the genre of Gnawa, but with Jazz master, Pharoah Sanders. Highly recommended.
From Amazon reviewer Christopher Forbes:
This disc reproduces a meeting between Sanders and the master Gnawa musician Maleem Mahmoud Ghania. Gnawa people are Morrocan descendents of black African slaves, who have maintained a spiritual and musical tradition that is an amalgam of Sufi mysticism and elements of West African spirit religion. The music is haunting. It is a vocal music, driven by an instrument called the guimbri...a bass lute with gut stings and a head made out of camel hide. The musician plucks the strings and slaps the head to create a sound somewhere between a bass guitar and a drum. The rest of the ensemble consists of a responding chorus who accompany the music with hand claps and Krkaba, loudly resounding hand cymbals. The music is equal parts Sufi ceremonial music and West African drum ritual. On it's own the music is compelling.
But over top of this on many of the tracks on the album, Pharoah Sanders let's loose on some of the most firey, spirit filled improvisation that he's done since the late 60s. Not all of this is out...some is quite beautiful and very melodic. His ballad Peace in Essaouira is deeply moving. But even when he maintains tonal structures and specific pitches in his improvising, there is a spirit here which is bracing.
