Hey it's good to see some life in the list lately, and very good that
Our Man In Japan is back! Here comes a long rambling post vaguely
related to a couple of recent threads.
I've been on a downloading spree thanks to a generous cousin who gives
me birthday gift certificates to BestBuy, which I mostly convert to
iTunes prepaid cards. Got a 30 track comp of great doo-wop called The
Fire And Fury Story which includes perhaps the only love song ever to
rhyme "stump" and "lump." Also the Ska Cubano group which Geoff
mentioned a while ago, Jean-Jacques Perry and Dana Countryman (the
previous release, not the very latest one), and lots of the Delmore
Brothers and other good stuff.
I searched on iTunes for Stolen Idols, but in vain, alas.
I heard a performance by George Gao at a local music festival this
summer and I dug him a lot. He plays a two-stringed Chinese instrument
called an erhu (and however you pronounced that word in your head, I can
almost guarantee it sounds nothing like that when he says it). He played
some pieces based on Chinese folk songs and some original compositions,
accompanied by guitar and bass, and his virtuosity and the beauty of the
music were both memorable. There's more than a bit of a New Age vibe in
what he does, sort of like a Chinese Riverdance without the dancing, so
maybe I should consider it a guilty pleasure, but I really enjoyed his
performance. And now I have some of his music on my computer, again from
iTunes. On these recordings he's accompanied by a female vocalist and
the selections are almost all standards, including list-friendly tunes
like Desfinado and The Shadow Of Your Smile, so the sound is a bit
different from the live set but also very enjoyable, IMO.
A Podsville fan once sent me a cut from a CD called Cool Music by Water
Melon Group. I liked it and Amazon had it, but at some ridiculous import
price. Checked the other day and one of their "sellers" was offering a
sealed copy for around $15 - bingo! I just got it and it's good fun,
some tracks are old-school Exotica and some, like Fly Me To The Moon,
are pretty strange, but it's all worth hearing.
Also in the category of CDs that are cheaper than they used to be, Don
Ralke's Savage And Sensuous Bongos paired with his But You've Never
Heard Gershwin With Bongos has been released on the Collectables label
and goes for $15 on Amazon. I'm afraid this one was a bit of a
disappointment, though.
I downloaded the Sad Salamanders album from CDBaby for a buck - what a
deal! - thanks to the listmember who provided that tip.
And thanks to everybody who took a look at my photo of the ultra-60s
building on a small college campus near here. I've uploaded another shot
of the interior, which I attempted to Shag-ify a bit in Photoshop:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/podsville/2839320489/
and also an exterior:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/podsville/2840157404/
--
Bill
www.customphotousa.com/podsville
www.flickr.com/podsville
