sunday samba

now playing -- cafe bossa by sitti

some good ol' fashioned bossa nova on a sunday night should be a nationwide ordinance. seriously.

got myself a copy of sitti's Cafe Bossa; found it to be occasionally brilliant debut with audible flaws. Her accent seems to vary on random tracks and arrangements on covers such as "tatooed on my mind" and michael franks' "lady wants to know" sound mundane and uninspired. in contrast, sitti's take on several brazilian standards are a clinic of fluid, linguistic weaving as she yo-yo's from portuguese to english to tagalog without breaking a sweat. listening to her version of the legendary stan getz/astrud gilberto collabo "the girl from ipanema" finds sitti in a comfort zone, sounding like a confident, seasoned vet. "samba song", "one note samba" and "wave" round out the standards' highlights.

though the album and the singer's flaws are hard to ignore, it has enough exuberance to carry the duds on the cd. Cafe Bossa is a welcome break from the burdgeoning local rock scene, a fit for weary minds on stoney sundays.

the world's greatest drummer

i was 11 during the time guns 'n' roses were at their peak popularity wise, the time when the seminal double disc rocker Use Your Illusion I and II hit record stores. i remember wearing out the tapes in my walkman riding the hour long schoolbus trip to my school kelapa gading, north jakarta. my family and i lived in pondok indah at the time, which was all the way down south of jakarta, so bus rides were the perfect opportunity for me to listen to the tapes i had bought at pondok indah mall for about 9,000 Rupiah (numbers are misleading; the amount mentioned was roughly equivalent to about 60 pesos at the time). it was difficult suppressing my growing urge to mosh while i sat quietly at the back of the bus like the african-americans pre-Rosa Parks as i watched cars, millions of bajais and occassional election rallies pass me by. anyone whoever listened to that record will always remember spandex-clad axl rose and company rocking joints such as "yesterday," "civil war" and "live and let die". my friend even lent me the laser disc of the band's concert in japan i always used to marvel at drummer matt sorum. with a gajillion music blocks in my cranium yet to be filled, i believed that he was the world's greatest drummer.

i always thought it was his bandana that gave him superhero drumming abilities ...

fifteen years later, as i am presently listening to a wayne shorter album he recorded in 1964 (when i was about NEGATIVE sixteen years old), i laugh at my previous choice of the baddest man with the drum sticks. i laugh because had i known that elvin jones had existed previously, any debate concerning drumming supremacy would've been the shortest discourse in the history of recorded arguments. part of the incomparable coltrane quartet in the 1960s (along with jimmy garrison and mccoy tyner), he was hailed by life magazine as the "world's greatest rhythmic drummer." he appeared in over 500 jazz albums over the next three decades and has sessioned with fellow jazz legends sonny rollins, ron carter and freddie hubbard among others. though this wayne shorter features extended conventional sax solos by the session leader, jones explodes on the drums, waltzing his way a la Love Supreme on some tracks, intense, offkey and cymbal-driven on the others. his drums made all his songs (to borrow a hipster term) "jump." it's a combination of boundless musical energy, sheer intensity and joy so gratifying that even jones himself is occasionally left in awe of his own abilities.

mr. jones, jazz drummer extraordinaire

elvin jones died of a heart failure on may 18, 2004. he was 76. matt sorum is still actively playing, part of the g'n'r-stp reincarnation, velvet revolver. fifteen years ago, i worshipped the ground that matt sorum walked on. today, that honor goes to elvin jones. fifteen years from now, i have a feeling that resurrecting such a debate would just be another form of baseless procrastination.

what's the f****n' point?

now playing -- where fortune smiles by john mclaughlin

new year's resolutions
are mindless absolutions
that fizzle like rainbow fireworks
permeating the nebulous
haze of gray

after all the unfiltered noise
the hollering in the streets
after the last light switch
turned off unceremonious

the lunar calendar
increases in number
the fireworks are left to rot
another 364 days
sleeping in anticipation
of similar resolutions
unfulfilled --

on the road

now playing -- "driving (acoustic mix)" by everything but the girl

" ... the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"

- jack kerouac

all i really want

now playing -- blue by joni mitchell

i wanted to scream, i really did. my stomach had been churning splendidly in anticipation of what treasure i would be uncovering today. i hadn't bought a single record in almost eight months, and i knew that my next trip to bangkal would make up for countless times of broken promises when i had planned to go digging because i had been financially challenged for the majority of the year.

located in lacuna street, the inside of the house that had previously been a disaster of a place was now neat and polished as it has been transformed into a modest art gallery. the scattered crates that had stored hundreds of lps, the shabby, torn couches that encircled a 29 inch tv were all gone; the only things that remained were a single glass table and what looked like a newly upholstered sofa directly facing the assembly line of paintings that were on display on the dirty white walls that were no longer bare. the only records left were stored in a wooden, shelf-like compartement below where the turntable and amplifier resided on the left side of the uneven room. on estimate, there were only about a hundred records there. i was optimistic, nevertheless, and began flipping through one vinyl after another. what i found was fairly remarkable.

revolver, beatles. abbey road, beatles. let it be, beatles. bird parker on verve. another bird on verve, volume 2. brubeck live in concert with gerry mulligan. 'ol blue eyes, sinatra. after a couple of rather mediocre records, i had found my first treasure: blue, joni mitchell. my eyes glowed in excitement the same way innocent male adolescents did the first time they saw a woman other than their mothers in the flesh. i held my breath and tried to maintain a poker face as i felt that showing any form of emotion would only give more leverage to the owner to jack up the prices to unreasonable proportions. that wasn't it; my next discovery completely floored me. meditations, john coltrane.

(coltrane records in this country are something of a rarity. the only ones i've seen have been ridiculously overpriced, the cheapest one was his ascension lp which was being sold over at makati cinema square for 500 pesos, and it was defective. a friend of mine saw a blue train record, brand new, over at montage in greenbelt. price? approx. 3,000 bucks.)

i grabbed my wallet and checked how much money i brought. exactly 600 pesos. i slowly gathered myself and clutched both records on my left arm and approached the owner. magkano po? after minutes of explaining me how rare these records were in this country and what seemed like infinite seconds of further deliberation, the owner, a soft-spoken man probably in his late thirties and sporting thin, dark-rimmed glasses, slowly looked up and said in tagalog: normally, i'd sell both of these for 500, but i'll give them to you for 400 pesos. my poker face almost disintegrated that very instant, but i managed to stay calm. sold! as soon as the transaction had been finalized, i imagined myself tap-dancing my way back to the car, a la mary freaking poppins, but ultimately decided against it and drove away from the outskirts of makati and back to pasig where i devoted the rest of the trip debating on what record to play first.

Jing

– under street bulbs flickering and oppressive
where the glow of the crooked crescent moon
was comforting as the cool November wind –
I met Jing in New Manila
inside a bordello under a building
dank deteriorating and aged.

She came at the snap of a
pony-tailed man’s capitalist fingers
(bearer of a mouth quicker than Western gunslingers)
and sat me down
on a raggedy patched leather couch
among blurry-eyed, middle-aged men
in torn shirts and wandering rubber sandals.

she inched closer after every word uttered,
her qualified hands stroking my left leg
as she spoke, unperturbed
by alcoholic slurs reverberating
from tin can beats
and contrived noontime television jingles.

she departed Davao
eager and enthusiastic, focused
on reversing family doom impending,
unaware of lurking shadows
and deep water puddles
that promulgated city streets.

her eyes were strained
yet her voice remained unruffled,
indifferent to the frequent retailing of
her twenty year-old body
to anonymous sex fiends
looking for a meaningless charge.

(my hand –

which had, for the duration of time,
caressing her whirling crossed legs –

retreated as her skin
once velvety as
ancient chinese silk
turned prickly
as the crown of Christ
at Golgotha)

she beamed approving
of our solemn but brief bantering
before lumbering towards an improvised stage
to mimic choreographed gyrations
with languid strumpets in parallel predicaments.
the whistling and woo-hooing,
the condescending howling
escalating with every movement;

I remained heavenly sedated
by each cancerous cigarette puff
as my frozen soul exhaled
every single notion of delightful malice
that had encapsulated me New Manila beforehand
were nothing but repugnant and infuriating ignorance
unacceptable for memory banks
of men who have toyed with their spirit
cantankerous for 25 fucking years.

(dis)connect the dots

now playing -- "jazz at the cove" by the sound providers, "leaving the past" by immortal technique

... spent the majority of the past couple of nights reading kafka's the trial and listening to music. i listened to coltrane's meditations album and finally felt rewarded after the fourth go. the connecting tracks 3 and 4 ("love/consequences") perfectly ingrains images of a relationship's gradual progression, the emotional peaks and valleys, 17 minutes mixing complex serenity with atonal dissonance. the man was out of his goddamn mind.

... man, that "ever after" song is really starting to get on my fucking nerves. whenever i hear that crap, i seriously contemplate having my ears cut and just have them sold as some kind of local souvenir or something. locally, hale and sponge cola also have me pining for mankind/mick foley disfigurations.

... remember the fab five? jalen, ray, chris, juwan and jimmy, michigan basketball circa '92-'93? scoop jackson talked of how they revolutionalized the game over at page 2 over at ESPN recently.