Keith Moon

Just genius. Plain genius.

Pedro Music Awards 2008

Right. Following tradition, 4th year and running of my musical picks of the year. As usual the list ranks albums I got ahold of and songs that marked my year.

I was trying to write something deep, well-though-of and thorough, but after too much wrangling, procrastination and, why not assume, utter laziness, I gave up trying to do something complicated and decided to simplify the list.

Some observations over my 2008 musical behavior:

- I purchased less albums than 07, 06 and 05; also, dowloaded actually zero new albums.
- I ventured less frequently into impulse acquisitions of unknown artists (as compared to purchases of, say, Charlotte Gainsbourg or Fela Kuti in previous years). When I tried it this past year, it was either not good (e.g. Osunlade) or good, but not remarkable (e.g. Alicia Keys)
- As a consequence of previous point, have purchased mostly compilations and soundtracks.
- I caved in and am listening to more and more pop. An influence of a stint in England with only BBC Radio 1 in the car, definitely, but also an acknowledgement that mass may be good.

Contrary to the previous editions, I will limit my list of albums to 5, and the list of songs to 8 (songs which were not in the top 5 albums).

Music - Albums
1. Blue Note Trip - Movin' On
2. Into the Wild Soundtrack
3. Gilles Peterson in the House
4. 5 na bossa - Nara Leão, Edu Lobo, Tamba Trio
5. The Departed Soundtrack

Music - Songs
1. American Boy - Estelle feat Kanye West
2. Mika - Grace Kelly
3. Let's make love and listen death from above - CSS
4. Mercy - Duffy
5. I Kissed a Girl - Kate Perry
6. Men señará - Bebe
7. 1973 - James Blunt
8. Paper Planes - MIA


Call me sold, but that's what I heard in 08. Can't lie.

But one of the first things I saw on TV in 09 was a documentary on The Who - so who knows I get back to my rock origins?

What I'm listening to

Powerful, pleasant, truthful quality pop.

"No One" has probably already played too much, but it's still good. But the rest of the songs also display a sort of Motown-esque smoothness you won't find in other RnB divas of the day (Rihanna, Mary J Blige, etc).

What I'm listening to

Absolutely outstanding soundtrack to an absolutely outstanding movie.

What I'm listening to

Men señara
Bebe

El aire se retira
Huele a tierra moja
Mi perro duerme a mis pies
Él cuida de mi hogar

El tiempo se para aqui
Mi amor está a punto de llegar
El tiempo se para aqui
Aqui encuentro la paz

Las curvas de la carretera
Me invitan a viajar
Hay tanto por recorrer,
Tanto por conocer

El mapa se hace pequeño
mi alma pide más
Mi amor llega en la tortuga
El me lo enseñará

Me enseñará
La voz del mar
Me enseñará
A no llorar

Me enseñará reconocer
Que hay daños que te enseñan a crescer
Me enseñará a ver sus ojos
Aunque él no esté

Being hip

There's an interetsing interview-cum-profile of CSS (Cansei de Ser Sexy) at today's Observer.

Not only does it shed some light into the minds of terminally hip musicians, it also gives a glimpse of how it was like to grow up in São Paulo in the nineties (ie my generation).

Plus, they're so cool. I definitely recommend.

What I'm listening to

Fantástica gravação ao vivo de 1965 - Nara Leão, Edu Lobo e Tamba Trio.

Pontos altos, pra mim, são o sambinha "O trem atrasou", os clássicos de João do Vale "Carcará" e "Minha História" e versões as instrumentais altamente jazzísticas (oito minutos cada) para "Consolação" e "O Morro não tem vez" de Tom e Vinícius.


Ou seja, Sambas, Baiões e Bossa Nova com arranjos caprichados de Jazz. Não dá pra ser melhor, sério.

What I'm listening to

Excellent compilation from the always excellent compiler Gilles Peterson. I can buy his stuff without even having heard of it before, because it's certain to be great and picked up carefully.






Disc 1 is a compilation of modern soul-jazz that winds up into house music and back. A bit too much dancefloor-oriented for me, although tracks 1-5 and the last one (the most jazzy parts of the disc) are velvet-smooth. The sticky but groovy chorus of Track 1 ("Don't Take it Personal" by Wahoo) stands out, as does track 5 ("Wishing You Were Here" by Blaze with Joey Negro remix).

Disc 2 is the highlight for me - 70's funk and soul that does not sound like whisky-soaked late stages of a wedding party. Many, many highlights here -
- "Could Heaven Ever Be Like This" by Idris Muhhamad (starts corny but ends up in an uplifting metals solo)
- "Let Your Feelings Show" by Earth Wind and Fire (a familiar voice, a familiar beat, but with a novelty feeling)
- "Circles" by Rufus and Chaka Khan (powerful vocals invite with a more serious tone than the rest of the tracks)
though my favorite song is probably "Boogie Oogie Oogie" by A Taste of Honey, which just makes me feel like getting on up on the floor and boogie-oogie-oogieing till-I-just-can't-boogie-no-more.

Disc 3 is a raw drum-and-bass compilation which is not the reason why I purchased this album. My verdict is, even if only for Disc 2 and half of Disc 1, listening to this is a trip into dancehalls and jazzbars that is well worth.

My "BBC Radio 1 pop chart" mix-tape winter 2008

As I said last week, I have had very little option these past days but to listen to BBC Radio 1 everyday.

After a while, I have to admit, pop is addictive like a cigarette. I have to concede I'm gonna miss it, and therefore am putting together a mix-tape of the catchiest songs. (Mix-CD, more precisely)

Here are the YouTube videos of my mix-tape. I sorted with my preferred tracks on top, which, in addition to making the pop charts, are actually great songs.

1. Duffy - "Mercy"

2. Amy Winehouse - "Valerie"

3. Adele - "Chasing Pavements"

4. Plain White T's - "Hey there Delilah"

5. Kaiser Chiefs - "Ruby"

6. Amy Winehouse - "Tears Dry Up On Their Own"

7. Mika - "Grace Kelly"

Not so great (all a bit cheesy) but definitely catchy:

8. Sugababes - "About U Now" -

9. Girls Aloud - "Call the Shots"

10. Mika - "Relax (Take it easy)"

11. Kylie Minogue - "Wow"

12. Nickelback - "Rock Star"

13. Estelle feat Kanye West - "American Boy"

14. Rihanna - "Don't Stop The Music"

15. OneRepublic feat Timbaland - "Apologize"

Pop music

One memorable quote from John Cusack's character in "High Fidelity" is:

"Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable
Or am I miserable because I listen to pop music?"

I am in the Uk right now, with a rental car, without CDs, having to drive some 10-20 minutes to work, in a region with not a lot of radio stations. Which means I have been indulging in pop radios, even though in my homeland I avoid them like a vampire avoids sunlight. I mostly go from BBC1 to Capital FM and back.

Surprise surprise, some things are actually pretty good in there. Especially Duffy, a young welsh singer that sounds like an old New Orleans mama in her hit "Mercy". Adele is quite good as well (though a bit reminiscent of American Idol winners Carrie and Kelly Clarkson). And of course they play a lot of Amy Winehouse, which had been a great addition to my CD collection earlier in the year.

But then I cannot dodge from Kylie Minogue. She's everywhere. And "Wow" (her latest single) is one of those addictive songs that are no good but can't leave one's head. It is very British, I have to say - a song that I totally imagine being played in a pub, with a bunch of drunken girls dancing to it in a hen's party. Just like Jamelia's "Superstar" 3 years ago (God, time flies).

What do I make of this whole thing the end? Not sure yet. But maybe the moral of the story is that pop music is unescapable, and if you can't defeat it, join it. Well, it's certainly not edifying, but at least I found out that it's harmless.

Pedro Music Awards 2007

Keeping on with the tradition from 2005 and 2006, here are the albums and songs that have marked my year. They are not necessarily albums that were launched this last year, but instead albums that came to my knowledge in the past twelve months - by eaither purchasing, receiving as a gift, or downloading them.

As I said before the list this year shall come as no surprise, for I have been anticipating my predilection for some of the winners from as early as January.

It was a year of female singers, of jazz, and of introspection.

Top Albums I've discovered in 2007:

1) A Love Supreme, John Coltrane
2) 5:55, Charlotte Gainsbourg
3) Acústico MTV Paulinho da Viola
4) The Cosmic Game, Thievery Corporation
5) Universo ao Meu Redor, Marisa Monte
6) There's a Riot Goin' On, Sly and The Family Stone
7) Reservoir Dogs Soundtrack
8) A Kind of Blue, Miles Davis
9) Transformer, Lou Reed
10) Segundo, Maria Rita

Songs that have marked my year:

1) "A Love Supreme, Part 4: Psalm", John Coltrane
2) "A Love Supreme, Part 1: Acknowledgement", John Coltrane
3) "Everything I cannot see", Charlotte Gainsbourg
4) "Meu canário", Marisa Monte
5) "Marching The Hate Machines Into The Sun", Thievery Corporation featuring The Flaming Lips
6) "A sign of the ages", Gil Scott-Heron
7) "Timoneiro", Paulinho da Viola
8) "Family Affair", Sly and The Family Stone
9) "Little Green Bag", George Baker Selection
10) "A Brighter Day", Ronnie Jordan featuring Mos Def


Still heard a lot of:

Songs In The Key of Life, Stevie Wonder
At War With The Mystics, Flaming Lips
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Gil Scott-Heron
Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin III
Machinehead, Deep Purple
The Velvet Underground and Nico
Under The Iron Sea, Keane
What's Going On, Marvin Gaye



Now comes 2008!!!!

What I'm listening to

This is definitely a year of female singers for me. Marisa Monte, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and now Maria Rita.


Soon I'll be compiling my yearly lists of favorites, as in the previous years. But`it'll probably be no surprises.

We were singing...

An excellent article on a classic song.

American Pie and the day the music died
Joe Queenan on Don McLean's classic slice of 1950s nostalgia

Friday October 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
http://music.guardian.co.uk/vinylword/story/0,,2199890,00.html

American Pie is a song that has been mocked by sophisticates ever since it first aired in 1972. Lyrics like "I was a lonesome teenage bronkin' buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck" helped the ridicule gain traction, though not among McLean's fellow bronkin' bucks, whose numbers presumably included Bruce Springsteen, a stripling who would later make a fortune writing this kind of ebullient malarkey.
But unlike other songs that have been mocked by sophisticates, American Pie was not, and is not, universally hated, not even by hipsters. This puts it in an entirely different class than Ebony and Ivory, Tuesday Afternoon, Achy-Breaky Heart or Piano Man, songs whose very existence seems to presage the dawn of the Apocalypse, songs that shatter one's faith in the inevitability of human progress, songs that from the very first time you hear them make you want to move to another solar system.

American Pie falls into the same broad class as Bohemian Rhapsody and La Vida Loca, bouncy, peppy, massively overplayed songs that quickly become so much a part of life's rich tapestry that despising them is like despising your pajamas. These songs may be pretentious. They may be pompous. They may be ridiculous. They may be on the radio 24 hours a day, even in the basement of a freezing Smolensk whorehouse. They may be sung partially in Spanish. And yes, at a certain level, they may be inane. But they mean no harm. They do not threaten our faith in the universe. Most important of all, they remind us that given the choice between the silly and the idiotic, the silly wins hands down.
American Pie was written by the then-unknown Don McLean in the spring of 1971, the same year Carole King's mega-platinum Tapestry appeared. With such songs as It's Too Late and So Far Away, Tapestry decisively signaled that the manic Sixties were over, that it was time for young people to step back, take stock, simmer down, chill out, nest. From this point on, the tens of millions of Baby Boomers born shortly after the Second World War, the raucous, seditious don't-trust-anyone-over-thirty crowd, would spend the rest of their lives waxing nostalgic for the Sixties, obsessing about their implausible children, buying reasonably priced home furnishings, and waiting for Sting to learn how to play the lute.

American Pie is notable because it is not nostalgic for the decade that precedes it, but for the Fifties, and particularly for the music of the late Fifties, and particularly for the music of Buddy Holly. Being nostalgic for the Fifties just 18 months after the Sixties ended took a certain amount of chutzpah, because the whole point of the Sixties was across-the-board rejection of the bland, featureless 1950s. By the time McLean's song was released, the doo-wop band Sha Na Na, who had performed at Woodstock, were already making a name for themselves. But Sha Na Na was a joke. Fifties nostalgia would later dominate the musical Grease, but the makers of Grease also viewed the Fifties through the prism of irony. McClean, by contrast, took the 1950s seriously and deeply mourned their passing.

"The day the music died" referred to in the lyrics is February 3, 1959, when a small plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and an artist known as the Big Bopper crashed on its way to Fargo, North Dakota, with no survivors. To McLean, this was a tragedy beyond repair, not only because the music of the Fifties - and particularly Holly's - was so beautiful and chipper and innocent but because America itself was beautiful, chipper and innocent. The specific date when America lost its putative innocence has been the subject of many songs, books and newspaper editorials, not to mention films like Quiz Show and Platoon. Some say it occurred in Vietnam, others when John Kennedy was assassinated, still others when Martin Luther King went down for the count. Purists contend that after Hiroshima and Nagisaki, any further discussion of America's lost innocence was veering toward the tasteless; hard-core chronology buffs go all the way back to Wounded Knee and other massacres of defenseless American Indian women and children to buttress their case that America had lost its innocence far earlier than Oliver Stone or Don McLean might suspect. In all likelihood, few of the young black men being lynched by the Klan in the years leading up to the Big Bopper's tragic death would have agreed with the verdict that America had not yet lost its innocence.

Eight and a half minutes long, American Pie was chopped up into two parts for its original commercial release. Zippy, rollicking, congenially repetitive, with a chorus so infectious that the irrepressible Madonna once used it in a completely unexpected graveside sing-along in The Next Best Thing, American Pie is the sort of song it is easy to make fun of, and is often ridiculed by music critics whose literary skills do not approach Don McLean's, much less Buddy Holly's. But for many of us, the very fact that someone could live the rest of his life off the royalties from a song containing the words, "The three men I admired most, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast" affirms that in America, literally anything is possible and foreigners should never dare screw around with us.

McLean, who also wrote And I Love Her So for Elvis Presley and the precious Vincent (Starry Starry Night) for himself, attended Villanova University, a tony institution located a few miles outside Philadelphia. Villanova's tony student body would later include Jim Croce, famous for the nostalgic, wistful hit Time in a Bottle.

Jim Croce died in an airplane crash in 1973.

Oh-ee-oh.

What I'm listening to

I had long been a huge Velvet Underground fan, but only recently acquired Lou Reed's solo album Transformer.

It's raw, harsh, shocking.

It's reality.

It's amazing.

I'm hooked.

A sign of the ages

The title in the last post was actually an attempt to quote this great song. You can actually hear its first 15 seconds clicking on this link, then pressing Play besides the song title. Depressing, yes.

A sign of the ages
Gil Scott-Heron

It's a sign of the ages
Markings on my mind
Men at the crossroads
At odds with an angry scab

There can be no salvation
There can be no rest
Until all old customs
Are put to the test

The gods are all angry
You hear from the breeze
As night slams like a hammer
Yeah, and you drop to your knees

The questions can't be answered
You're always haunted by the past
The world's full of children
Who grew up too fast

Yeah, but where can you run
Since there ain't no world of your own
And you know that no one will ever miss you, yeah yeah yeah
When you're finally gone

So you cry like a baby, a baby
Or you go out and get high
But there ain't no peace on Earth, man
Maybe peace when you die, yeah

More Charlotte

As promised... more on this highly addictive singer.

Here are links to the videos of 5:55, The Songs That We Sing, and The Operation.

Let yourself be caught by her.

A cinq heures cinquant-cinq

I came to Paris to spend the long weekend, and rented a car to wander around. I had learned from my previous stint in France that driving around Paris (instead of taking the subway) is a priceless pleasure - you get stuck in traffic, that's a fact, but you're surrounded by so many mesmerizing pieces of sculpture and architecture that it feels like a stroll in an art gallery. As I say, in Paris, I don't care about getting lost (which I often do), cause there's always a pleasant new scenery to look at from the car window.

Yet another thing I recall from when I lived in France is that the joys of Parisian wanderings are enhanced by a fitting soundtrack. I used to drive from Fontainebleau to Paris, stuck for ages in A6 and the Périférique, but to the tune of chansons françaises like "L'Eté Indien", "L'Envie d'Aimer" and "En Se Retrouvera" it felt like touring, not commuting. This weekend, though, I found myself with a rental car, but no soundtrack.

There are harder problems in life than that, I know, and that one was easily solved as I stepped into my long-time favourite Fnac store at the Forum Les Halles mall and headed for the "Noveau" shelves. I spotted Charlotte Gainsbourg' debut album, "5:55", which I had read about somewhere, and decided to give it a try. After listening to it some 3 or 4 times in one day, I got completely addicted and can't let it go.



I wouldn't be able to label it, honestly - something like mood music with virtuoso pianos mixed to electronic drum beats - but it is marked, above all, by Charlotte's delicate voice, whispered in a way that lend the songs an intimate and sexy edge. It sounds like she in a room, looking through a window in a rainy afternoon, while her lover takes a nap in the bed.

Lyrics that talk about love and worship to the lover accentuate the sensuality, like in "Everything I cannot see", the "poppiest" track. But the lyrics of the title song (and arguably best track) dwells on a different level - "5:55" talks about subconscience, about being half-awake and half-asleep at the same time. It is a song I would like to wake up to every day.

Given my enjoyment on the first 24 hours of ownership of this album, expect plenty more about it in the days to come in this page.

What I'm listening to

Marching the hate machines
Thievery Corporation (featuring Wayne Coyne)

Well let's start by
making it clear
who is the enemy, here

And we'll show then
that it's not them
who is superior

It's gonna be bad,
It's gonna be wrong,
It's gonna feel... good.

Marching the hate machines into the sun

Marching the hate machines into the sun

Recommendation

When in the UK a couple of months ago I first heard Gnarls Barkley, which were kind of hyped there then.

Now I'm addicted. I'd say it adds the modernity and inventiveness of my beloved Flaming Lips with jazzy black vocals.

To know what I'm talking about, click here to check the videos of either Crazy or Smiley Faces in YouTube.

It's summertime

To my friend Roberto Sakura.

(The Flaming Lips)

It's summertime
and I can understand if you
still feel
sad…

It's summertime
and though it's hard to see its true
possibilities…

When you look inside - all you'll see...
When you look inside –
all you'll see is a self-reflected inner sadness!

Look outside!
I know that you'll recognize
it's summertime!