Even though The Girl from Ipanema (link to mp3), the first track on this album, has been played to death in countless piano bars and late night lounges long ago it still has got a certain charm. The seventeen year old Helô Pinheiro inspired Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes in 1962 to write this song. Sitting in a cafe they saw her every day going to the beach of Ipanema, a district of Rio de Janeiro. The rhythm of this bossa nova tune really gives the listener the image of a woman strolling by gracefully and swaying slightly in the hips. The sad measured melody expresses the aloofness of the young beauty. Pinheiro apparently never got a penny from this smash hit and the heirs of Jobim and de Moraes even tried to bar her from opening a store named The Girl from Ipanema in 2001 (NYT).

For a long time I did not realize the magic of this music. I found it boring easy listening stuff. Somehow too soft to be memorable. Nowadays I find the softness and mellowness extremely appealing. Everything is smooth and relaxed here. The gentle and peaceful voices of João and Astrud Gilberto which are almost genderless but sensual at the same time. The pleasant harmonic Brazilian accent without the rough edges of the Portuguese. The lyrical impressionist tenor saxophone lines of Stan Getz. João Gilberto's fingerpicked guitar giving the samba dance element. The occasional piano which Jobim plays with an intense tenderness as if he would caress a new-born baby. And finally the reserved but effective rhythm section made of Tommy Williams bass and Milton Banana's drums.

This is cool chill-out or chill-in music making me dream of being served a caipirinha by a carioca (someone from Rio) in a bar in a warm night on the Copacabana, looking over to the giant illuminated Christ statue on top of the Corcovado.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part VII was this post.

listened to the first disc of escalator today. against all odds i enjoyed it. usually i fervently dislike classical operas, musicals and rock operas in an ascending order. there is broadway and there is rock in this but i suppose the free jazz component saves it for me. all that brass. pieces with six different kinds of them: trombone, trumpet, french horn, bass trombone, tuba and tenor sax (made of brass but a woodwind instrument!). all those old acquaintances. john mclaughlin, gato barbieri, charlie haden, paul motian, jack bruce, don cherry, linda ronstadt etc. gato's tenor sax sounding like someone screaming for his life. the second hour is for tomorrow night.

i just listened to paul bley for the first time in my life. homage to carla from 1992. and i am flabbergasted. if this had been a blindtest i'd have said it is an unreleased recording by keith jarrett. from the 70s when jarrett was solo. the same lyricism, the same kind of restraint, the same flow but without the melodic transcendental climaxes. paul was on ecm as well in the early 70s.

i am going to explore the annette peacock (wonderful reissue my mama never taught me how to cook), gary peacock, paul bley, clara bley complex further on. next album i ordered: carla bley's jazz opera thing escalator from over the hill. funny that there are quite a lot of paul bley/gary peacock collaborations, the last one from 2001 even called annette. i mean both of them were married to her. not sure if she is still married to paul gary but i doubt it.

gary peacock has been keith jarrett's bassist for the last 20 years or so by the way.

LC, the title of the second Durutti Column album from 1981, stands for "Lotta Continua". The struggle goes on. This could be Vini Reilly's struggle with food. Apparently he has got an inclination to anorexia and must force himself to eat. Therefore he is thin like a match. In an old NME article I read that in 1980 he used to have his main meal around 5pm. And it wasn't a good idea to meet him after the meal as he would be feeling very weak and ill.

The guitar and the singing of LC were recorded at home at night when his mother slept in the next room. Maybe this is the reason for his unobtrusive almost ghost-like singing style. They then added Bruce Mitchell's drums and the piano in the studio (interview source).

Sketch for Dawn I The first song on the album. The way the drumming, the guitar, the piano and the singing on this track meld is perfect. There is this typical floating quality of the guitar and piano which is reinforced by the unorthodox drumming. Vini's voice adds the melancholic touch.

The Missing Boy This is the favourite song of many Durutti Column aficionados including me.

Vini is singing about the epileptic Ian Curtis here, the lead singer of Joy Division who had hanged himself the year before. I can hardly imagine a song more sad and beautiful. One of those songs of which I'd want to say that you cannot be my friend if you are not moved by it. Stupid and not very mature probably, I know but this is how I feel.

Sandpaper sleeve -> situationism -> 1968 -> anarchism -> Spanish civil war etc. If I had had the sandpaper LP of the first Durutti Column album it would have damaged Nick Drake's Fruit Tree box and Bob Dylan's Gaslight Tapes box. The damage would have been limited as those are solid cardboard LP boxes.

Sketch for Summer Are those electronic or real birds? Is it important? There is a guitar there which is real. It is Vini's guitar. Vini says that he never saw a point in trying to play like Jimi Hendrix. Because nobody will ever play more hendrixish than the master himself. Therefore Vini plays the guitar his way. Without a plectrum. It sounds as if someone is putting beads on a braid to create a beautiful chain. In the morning sun. The chain is glimmering and shimmering. You can't take your eyes away from it. Vini can say whatever he wants about his music (that it is bad and rubbish) but it will always be his.

Madeleine A bonus track from the CD. Skip the first 45 generic seconds. But then there is this magic in the arpeggiated guitar chords which evokes a sparkling glistening diamond. Reflecting the sunbeams in all directions. Or the haziness in the distance on the road in summer. When the fata morgana is more real than the oasis.

Why did nobody tell me that there is a new Giant Sand album out? I loved Howe's last jazzy solo piano album Ogle Some Piano which only came out in spring. Unfortunately I didn't listen enough to it. Is All Over...the Map (nice pun) was produced by John Parish and Howe. Vic Chesnutt sings on one track. Neither John Convertino nor Joey Burns appear on the album. They seem to have left Giant Sand for good. Calexico is a safer source of income I suppose. Apparently there is lots of distorted guitar noise on the new album. Pf compare it to Center of the Universe. One of Giant Sand's highlights in terms of rockin out. I am quite excited. Metacritic link to reviews.

The Throwing Muses The Real Ramona didn't age well. It was so much better in memory. Now it is too energetic in a bad way. Too unfocussed. Kristin Hersh's voice is so much inferior to Tanya Donnelly's. One of those records I didn't buy because a friend did. I taped it from him. Sometimes it is not a good idea to try to stir up memories. Or didn't I age well?

The Pale Saints In Ribbons on the other hand is maybe even better than it used to be in 1992. The dreamy variant of shoegazing. The singer can't sing (too thin a voice) but that was a necessary ingredient of shoegazing (see Ride, see Catherine Wheel and even My Bloody Valentine). As if the thick texture of the music wouldn't allow for a masculine voice. Only girls' voices fit. Belinda Butcher, the girl from Lush, Rachel Goswell from Slowdive, Liz Fraser who was the grand-mother of shoegazing. This was the music which seduced me into the realm of indierock. Very hard to resist for a man like me.

p.s. i have to find out who is the girl singing occasionally on in ribbons.

In the winter of 1991/92 I saw a movie in the Utopia in Luxembourg called Tous les matins du monde. In the beginning there is a scene where you see a very slow zoom into Gérard Depardieu's face which lasts for about an eternity in film time, i.e. five minutes or something. And there is this strange calm music playing. French baroque music from the second half of the 17th century by amongst others Sainte-Colombe. Whom Depardieu is actually incarnating in the film. The music is played on the viola da gamba, a kind of missing link between the violin and the guitar, I'd like to think.

This film was about the most boring movie I ever saw in my life. I don't remember any dialogues. There was just this enervating quiet unknown classical music and some images of people moving around in a cottage on the country side, in the forest. I am not sure if the music made me dislike the movie or vice versa. Probably they just complemeneted each other. And I wasn't ripe for them.

A friend of mine who usually likes the music I like gave me this CD by Hille Perl. I listened to it first the day before yesterday on the way to work. It was just before 7 o'clock, I drove into the sun which was rising in between the Frankfurt skyscrapers. The sky was in a light-coloured blue. There were lots of interbreeding vapor trails in it. I had no expectations concerning the music and no idea about it as well. It took me by surprise. So relaxed, so pure, so human. There is an incredible strength in this music I didn't notice the first time. Hille Perl plays the seven string viola da gamba. The seventh string supposedly added by Saint-Colombe. On her page there are two quotes I have to cite, the first one as you can hear it in her play:

The second one for its maybe unintentional humour

Should I see the movie again? I don't think so. Maybe in another twenty years.

God this is so gorgeous, I can't believe it. It's spinning in my shitty kitchen Philips CD player for the second time now and I am already overwhelmed. It's moody, atmospheric stuff with some jazzy elements like a trumpet and piano. Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden isn't too far. Some weird electronic and not so electronic sounds but not too many. Rather dark than bright. Rather monochromic than black and white. Rather a maelstrom than a cataract. Music that draws the listener in and embraces him without asking him. There are beats but they are hardly danceable. I could bathe in this relaxing ocean of blue forever. Maybe my new favourite album of this year. Though it is definitely too premature for such a bold statement. And Riot on an Empty Street is a masterpiece almost impossible to best.