My Own Biggest Fan

Something light and warm for a bitterly cold, snowy day. Once again, I can’t say much about this. I don’t know much about Cuban music. I bought this record mostly for its beautiful cover. My only real thoughts are that it sounds like a less gimicky (and therefore less interesting) Esquivel, whom I quite like. The vinyl itself is in pretty rough shape, so I couldn’t really get the subtleties out of this music.

But like I said, it made me feel warm for about an hour.

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Ok, so I wrote the above around noon yesterday, before I was able to download a new version of this album. I have to say, the little I was able to make out, between the skipping, crackling and needle wear, intrigued and charmed me enough I had to find a digital copy to review. I wasn’t giving it the respect it deserved.

Then I found someone else’s blog entry, written on the author’s mother’s 94th birthday, where they told me that this album was their mother’s favourite. How could I possibly dismiss this music with a short 87 word non-review. So, I downloaded it and listened.

It’s lovely, and inspiring, and each song has a personality that carries you up and down on a journey that reinforces my deep seated desire to visit Cuba. It’s a shame that the lounge fad of the mid 90′s (there’s that 90s reference again) didn’t actually bring about a long lasting respect for the musicians and arrangers that made this music. I mean beyond Esquivel and Ferrante & Teicher. Or, maybe people like me are the resurgence’s legacy.

This is the sort of thing that people need more of in their lives. Real musicianship. Not to say we don’t have that happening at all, but it isn’t happening with such accessible emotional zeal.

Here’s the download link I used for this album’s second chance.

Verdict: 1 out of 1 second chances.

Another album from someone else’s past. I’ve mentioned old friend’s musical tastes a couple times in these posts. It’s a recurring theme for these albums because I’m often picking up older music because I find myself thinking “I remember when so-and-so would talk about this album, I should really give it a go.” Month of New Music is giving me a chance to do this.

For those as green as I am to The Who, you probably won’t recognize many songs on Quadrophenia. I am pretty sure I’d heard the album’s finale, “Love, Reign O’er Me” before, but I can’t be sure. It was released as a single, as was “The Real Me” which I am even less sure I’d heard before.

I’ll give you a quick explanation of a complex album: it’s a semi-autobiographical concept album, dealing with all the members of The Who rolled into one character, Jimmy, a mod. It revolves around events stemming from the 1964 Battle of Brighton between the Mods and Rockers. If you aren’t familiar with the history, you might have to do a bit of research to know what they are talking about, but not much. The bulk of the meat here is Jimmy wrestling with his inner demons.

Because of the scope of its subject matter, it would be premature of me to write any sort of review on this album. I’m sure this post will elicit much head-shaking from those that consider this album required listening. I’m tempted to agree that it may be, it’s a stirring work, and it also begs for multiple plays. I also messed up when playing the album, I ended up listening to it in the wrong order. It’s a two record set, and it was pressed for play on a record changer, for a listen interrupted with only one flip of the records rather than three. I didn’t notice this and I didn’t notice until after I heard side 4 before I’d heard sides 2 and 3. This made the experience a little disjointed. I’ll have to remedy that soon.

Rating: 4/4 personalities.

Odd chord choices, lo-fi recording, abstract noise washes. These are the ingredients to the kind of music most of my art school friends were listening to in the mid-late 90s. I liked some of it, but much of it just sounded boring to me. I inherited this record when one of these art school friends moved to New York a couple years ago. The Sonora Pine is from 1996, and it sounds like it, but that’s not to say it doesn’t sound great. I doubt I would have liked it then, but my tastes have developed a little in the past 14 years. There is enough of a hook to these songs that you actually can find yourself swaying to them or tapping your foot. That’s the sort of connection I wasn’t able to make back then. Thanks, Angela, for leaving this record with me. Glad I finally got a chance to listen to it. Perfect music for lounging on the couch when you are stuck in the house on a snow day in the middle of the afternoon, which is lucky, because that’s exactly what today has been like.

ALSO: I’m not sure I’ve been clear, but my plan for The Month Of New Music is that I’m listening to 31 records from my vinyl collection that I haven’t heard yet. I listen to vinyl very differently than I do mp3s — which is my other main source of music. (I turn my CDs into mp3s when I want to listen to them) I don’t often listen to whole albums off the computer or iPod, but you really have no choice but to with vinyl. So, while I might gush over an album when I listen to it on one medium, I might totally ignore it in another. I also don’t often buy music I’ve never heard before on vinyl, unless it’s flea-market price. So, considering these factors, me listening to a month of new vinyl is a very interesting experiment, at least personally. It’s a hard thing to explain. I hope I’ve done at least a mediocre job of doing so.

Don’t blame him for stealing me, you let him.
And where your love stopped, he went a little bit farther.
You changed so much, I was more at ease with a stranger.
But it wasn’t hard, our love was already in danger.

When I bought this album, I assumed by the slick design and the fact that Sammi Smith looked African American (she is not, as you can see by this Google images search) on the cover, that I was buying a soul album. I was in fact buying a little known album by one of the few women welcome in the “outlaw country” genre. I am not the biggest country fan, but I LOVE Cash, Nelson, Kristofferson, Jennings, Cline, Jones, etc. Being surprised with this type of country is not unwelcome.

I don’t know who’s writing the songs on this album. From what I can figure, she is most well known as the voice for Kris Kristofferson’s Help Me Make It Through The Night. (which I’ve never heard — probably) If she is writing these songs, all the better, if she is delivering songs she did not write, any songwriter would be hard pressed to find a more perfect vehicle. If you are not a fan of outlaw country, then you will find nothing here to make you a fan… maybe. (I’d be tickled to find someone who was given a new appreciation for this music after hearing this album) But!… (and PLEASE don’t think that I’m being derisive when I say this) there is much here for those that dissect feminist poetry. In Why Do You Do Me Like You Do she describes a tragic domestic violence situation, and makes it so real and emotional within a three minute country song it’s hard to take. In Foxy Dan, she is the vivacious young minx (or at least that’s how I imagine this character), seduced by a dangerous, charismatic gangster. There are themes within each tune that can resonate for young women and seduce young men or even break the heart of either sex — over and over.

My only real fault with the album is that twice Ring Of Fire is evoked as an embarassingly obvious melodic influence on the songs (and once I heard something uncomfortably close to the beginning of Harper Valley PTA). At the time, there were probably much more blatant lifting of melodies, so I guess I can forgive this transgression. Truly, the good deeds outweigh the sins in this case.

Verdict: Recommended for fans of the genre. No numerical rating because if this intrigues you at all, you should just seek it out and make up your own mind. That’s what this music is all about.