Here's my Christmas present, to you, right off the bat, no foolin' around like usual, because this is IMPORTANT: Marisa Monte, "Infinito Particular" (EMI); buy this album right away. Especially if you like Brazilian music, and extra-especially if you like both Brazilian music and the Beatles, because that's how melodic and lilting and perfectly crafted this stuff is -so good, it makes you resort to using the B-word. Or, perhaps more accurately, the C-word, as in Caetano, Caetano Veloso, for many years the cornerstone of MPB, which stands for "Musica Populiera Brasileira", i.e. modern Brazilian popular music.
Both Marisa and Caetano draw from the well of Joao and Astrud Gilberto, who first popularized Brazilian samba music in 1964 with the latter's famous recording of "The Girl From Ipanema" with Stan Getz, which established a template that's still very much in evidence in modern Brazilian pop: samba rhythms, sophisticated chord voicings (very frequently on acoustic guitars), and an aversion to breaking a sweat. Astrud Gilberto never sounded like she was working -she sounded like someone humming idly and carelessly while swinging in a hammock in a hillside breeze.
One difference is that while Marisa Monte's singing is equally effortless, it's a good deal more polished. A friend of mine who saw Gilberto sing confirmed that she that it was part of her style to sing just a little flat, as if singing in tune might've been a little too much trouble (in fact, he said she sang the one note in "One Note Samba" flat enough that it wasn't much fun.) Monte's pitch, on the other hand, is flawless, yet it sounds so easy that you imagine she couldn't sing a bad note if she tried. She never pushes, never betrays any sign of exertion, like singing was breathing, and the effect is remarkable.
She's been around for about 15 years or so, and she's a superstar at home; and her latest releases "Infinito Particular" and "Universo Ao Meu Redor" (both of which she released simultaneously this year on EMI) are all I know about her (except for a cut on David Byrne's Cole Porter compilation a few years ago, and a smattering of her work with New York producer Arto Lindsay, both of which they easily surpass; among her other fans are Laurie Anderson and Ryuichi Sakamoto). "Infinito Particular" is especially wonderful, an album that's just gorgeous all the way through -there isn't a bad song on it.
Care for a test drive? Go to marisamonte.com, and check out her video of a song called "Ate Parece." Now, I could be wrong about this, but I'm fairly certain I've never recommended a video in this column - I probably watch about three of them a year. However, this one is as stunning as it is simple and unassuming: just a single close-up of Monte singing the song directly to the camera, which occasionally starts to absent-mindedly drift off to the side as if it were slightly distracted -at which point the singer the singer gently bats the lens back toward her face. Again, hypnotic, effortless, perfect -you've just got to check this out.
A good American companion piece would be the BMG re-issue of Sam Cooke's "Night Beat" album, which completely surprised me. For one thing, I thought I'd heard pretty much all of his best stuff already, and that much of it was over-produced and over-commercialized, needlessly gussied up with strings and ultra-white sounding background choruses, and a portion of his catalog does lean that way. Not "Night Beat", though, which is sparse, atmospheric, and economical throughout, like a soulful version of Sinatra's "In the Wee Small Hours Of the Evening", with the same late-night vibe, and nary a string or a background vocal anywhere!
Other faves of '06: "The Essential Yo Yo Ma" (Legacy/Sony Classical); "The Harry Smith Project", Hal Wilner's fascinating box set of live, modern performances of obscure folk material by Elvis Costello, Wilco, Beck, Garth Hudson, the McGarrigle Sisters, and many others, which features a coupler of wild, hilarious David Thomas (Pere Ubu) performances, one to an arrangement by Van Dyke Parks (an unlikely but delightful match); Paul Simon's "Surprise", which features some swell sonic landscaping courtesy of Brian Eno; the Beatles by way of Sir George Martin (and his son's) re-workings for Cirque Du Soleil, which is sometimes heinous but frequently pretty swell if you can get over some ill-advised mash-it-ups; Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint's enjoyable "The River In Reverse"; Los Lobos's "The Town and the City"; and an ancient album of the 12-string Portuguese guitar called "Guitarra Portuguesa" by Carlos Paredes that I saw Costello had recommended on Amazon that -sure enough- blew me away.
I was also grateful for Bob Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour" show; for "Deadwood" and James Spader and William Shatner's hilarious turns on "Boston Legal"; and even for "Dancing With the Stars" for some reason I totally can't explain (yo, Emmitt!)
Not to mention an old book by former chef Anthony Bourdain called "Kitchen Confidential" that I can't seem to buy enough copies of (there's always been one friend or another who I think needs it desperately); or the movies "Hustle and Flow", "Millions", "Prime", "Winter Passing", "Northfork", and "The Best of Youth"; and the deep-fried turkey and oyster dressing dinner they serve at the Coast in Orleans. Go forth and purchase, and Merry Christmas!
Friday, December 29, 2006
Friday, December 1, 2006
Thanks for Robert Altman
Well, so it's a few days after Thanksgiving, and I'm just starting to get the hang of being anywhere other than the couch, and resuming less frantic feedings; right now (for instance), as I write this, my mouth is, at least relatively, unfull. I may possibly be getting to the end of the prolonged period of procrastination so many of us embrace at the back end of a holiday, where you feel like you live in a huge, slow, heavy house for big fatsos.
We take Thanksiving very seriously here at Kelp Manor -in fact, it has always been our favorite holiday - and this year's festivities were second to none. We ate everything we could get our pudgy little hands on, and then sloshed it down with the same horrendous swill I always lay in for my guests at holiday time. There's nothing like buying some really cheap, awful wine, safe and secure in the knowledge that your victims will all be too ossified to know the difference.
The stage diving was more accomplished, and the incomprehensible babbling in tongues was more eccentric than ever, as a particularly varied and charming group of contestants vied for the honor of being designated "Mayor of Drunktown" (a non-paying, not particularly complementary or honorable annual honorarium with non-valedictory arboretums.) This year's campaign was even more hotly contested than usual, with the outcome in doubt until the very last moment, when the judges awarded the mayoral seat to one Ellen Prell "Hot Dog" DeSilva, who only stopped twirling just recently. (Congratulations also to the First Lady, and to his extensive retinue.)
The trouble is, nowadays I look like this no matter what, and nobody knows the trouble I've seen voluntarily.
Which brings me around to something that's very much on my mind the last few days, which is the loss of Robert Altman, one of history's best and most iconoclastic directors, not to mention most lovable rogues. He made big, generation-defining movies like "M*A*S*H", "Nashville", "McCabe and Mrs. Miller", and "The Player"; great experiments like "Short Cuts", "Popeye", "Gosford Park", "The Company", and "California Split"; even utter flops like "Quintet". He earned the right to flop every now and then, because he was taking chances, doing anything other than making the same movie over and over again.
For me, he's on that short list of directors whose movies I always needed to devour instantly on release, regardless of the subject or the cast. Not that he was ever remotely cast-deficient; most of his films feature hilariously large and fascinating collections of the coolest actors playing the smallest parts for the lowest dough. If he won less than his share of awards, he made up for it in a steady avalanche of peer approval, and not just because he made good movies, but because making them was fun.
He was prolific, creative, edgy, and funkily elegant throughout his life: the last movie he completed, a collaboration with Garrison Keillor called "The Prairie Home Companion", is just as casual and funny and profound as anything he ever did, and, as usual, chockful of great actors (Lily Tomlin, Tommy Lee Jones, and especially Meryl Streep, all at their best.) Now that we've lost him (how could we be so careless? -first the Sagamore rotary, now Altman!), it feels like a beautifully nuanced, lingering goodbye. Though frequently hilarious and joyful, the movie somehow also has the feeling of a friend holding your hand through a difficult time. Apparently, Altman knew he was dying of cancer when he made it, but kept it to himself- as he also did, amazingly enough, with a heart transplant he had more than a decade ago without anyone finding out about it until he mentioned it at an awards show about a year ago.
He seems to have been a remarkably generous, non-meddlesome type (especially for a director!), and one of the lucky by-products of this attitude (and of his apparently unflagging energy) is that he did director's commentary tracks for a large number of his films, and they tend to be the exception to the rule in that he actually sounds engaged and focused, and the commentaries as a result are relatively informative and charming. "The Prairie Home Companion" hits the spot on that level, too, as Kevin Kline actually asks him some good, pertinant questions, and Altman has enough respect for his audience and his work to answer them graciously, and occasionally even seriously.
He said some interesting things: he doesn't necessarily read his scripts before he starts filming (didn't on "Prairie Home Comapanion", for instance); he's also well-known for not being overly fussy with his actors, who seem to bask in the autonomy he routinely awards them. He seemed to place a particularly high value on finding the right collaborators and letting them loose.
He seemed to have an uncommon respect for his audience, evinced by his fluid, flowing idiosyncratic camera work, which always had a feel and a rhythm that was all his own. In his last movie, the camera almost never stops moving; even on close-ups, it's still in motion, albeit very slowly, sometimes almost undetectably. It's a sort of amiable, relaxed drifting, and in the voice-over, he says that he always avoided telling the audience where to look. He also avoided telling them what to listen to, his patented overlapping dialogue a case very much in point. But he sure gave us some faulous choices!
Usually, when someone dies, you're sad for them and their family, but you get over it. Sometimes, though, a person is just plain irreplaceable, and you never stop thinking about them or missing them. For me, that list includes John Lennon, Andy Kaufman, a personal friend or two, and now, Robert Altman. There'll never be another like him.
We take Thanksiving very seriously here at Kelp Manor -in fact, it has always been our favorite holiday - and this year's festivities were second to none. We ate everything we could get our pudgy little hands on, and then sloshed it down with the same horrendous swill I always lay in for my guests at holiday time. There's nothing like buying some really cheap, awful wine, safe and secure in the knowledge that your victims will all be too ossified to know the difference.
The stage diving was more accomplished, and the incomprehensible babbling in tongues was more eccentric than ever, as a particularly varied and charming group of contestants vied for the honor of being designated "Mayor of Drunktown" (a non-paying, not particularly complementary or honorable annual honorarium with non-valedictory arboretums.) This year's campaign was even more hotly contested than usual, with the outcome in doubt until the very last moment, when the judges awarded the mayoral seat to one Ellen Prell "Hot Dog" DeSilva, who only stopped twirling just recently. (Congratulations also to the First Lady, and to his extensive retinue.)
The trouble is, nowadays I look like this no matter what, and nobody knows the trouble I've seen voluntarily.
Which brings me around to something that's very much on my mind the last few days, which is the loss of Robert Altman, one of history's best and most iconoclastic directors, not to mention most lovable rogues. He made big, generation-defining movies like "M*A*S*H", "Nashville", "McCabe and Mrs. Miller", and "The Player"; great experiments like "Short Cuts", "Popeye", "Gosford Park", "The Company", and "California Split"; even utter flops like "Quintet". He earned the right to flop every now and then, because he was taking chances, doing anything other than making the same movie over and over again.
For me, he's on that short list of directors whose movies I always needed to devour instantly on release, regardless of the subject or the cast. Not that he was ever remotely cast-deficient; most of his films feature hilariously large and fascinating collections of the coolest actors playing the smallest parts for the lowest dough. If he won less than his share of awards, he made up for it in a steady avalanche of peer approval, and not just because he made good movies, but because making them was fun.
He was prolific, creative, edgy, and funkily elegant throughout his life: the last movie he completed, a collaboration with Garrison Keillor called "The Prairie Home Companion", is just as casual and funny and profound as anything he ever did, and, as usual, chockful of great actors (Lily Tomlin, Tommy Lee Jones, and especially Meryl Streep, all at their best.) Now that we've lost him (how could we be so careless? -first the Sagamore rotary, now Altman!), it feels like a beautifully nuanced, lingering goodbye. Though frequently hilarious and joyful, the movie somehow also has the feeling of a friend holding your hand through a difficult time. Apparently, Altman knew he was dying of cancer when he made it, but kept it to himself- as he also did, amazingly enough, with a heart transplant he had more than a decade ago without anyone finding out about it until he mentioned it at an awards show about a year ago.
He seems to have been a remarkably generous, non-meddlesome type (especially for a director!), and one of the lucky by-products of this attitude (and of his apparently unflagging energy) is that he did director's commentary tracks for a large number of his films, and they tend to be the exception to the rule in that he actually sounds engaged and focused, and the commentaries as a result are relatively informative and charming. "The Prairie Home Companion" hits the spot on that level, too, as Kevin Kline actually asks him some good, pertinant questions, and Altman has enough respect for his audience and his work to answer them graciously, and occasionally even seriously.
He said some interesting things: he doesn't necessarily read his scripts before he starts filming (didn't on "Prairie Home Comapanion", for instance); he's also well-known for not being overly fussy with his actors, who seem to bask in the autonomy he routinely awards them. He seemed to place a particularly high value on finding the right collaborators and letting them loose.
He seemed to have an uncommon respect for his audience, evinced by his fluid, flowing idiosyncratic camera work, which always had a feel and a rhythm that was all his own. In his last movie, the camera almost never stops moving; even on close-ups, it's still in motion, albeit very slowly, sometimes almost undetectably. It's a sort of amiable, relaxed drifting, and in the voice-over, he says that he always avoided telling the audience where to look. He also avoided telling them what to listen to, his patented overlapping dialogue a case very much in point. But he sure gave us some faulous choices!
Usually, when someone dies, you're sad for them and their family, but you get over it. Sometimes, though, a person is just plain irreplaceable, and you never stop thinking about them or missing them. For me, that list includes John Lennon, Andy Kaufman, a personal friend or two, and now, Robert Altman. There'll never be another like him.
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