“I SEEN Em First!”

This is one of my favorites scenes from one of my favorite movies:

I seen 'em first!

Malo

Ordinarily, I can’t stand women with husky, raspy voices. Not that anyone—particularly the female sex of the husky-voiced persuasion—gives a shit about this my particular form of neurosis, but there is one particular strain of husky-voiced females in which I allow this aberration: Spanish singers.

Here presented for your listening pleasure is Bebe with her Malo:

The Blues

Ovation TV has some brilliant programming; the other day, I recorded then sat with a great Scotch and watched a history of Blues music. Personages with quite interesting names from ‘Blind Willie’ McTell to Howlin’ Wolf, this contains some of my most favorite music of all time.

There’s something about the lonesome quality of that guitar twanging to the accompaniment of the scratchiness of a 78rpm that gets me every time.

From the Internet Archive, here’s a recording of Statesboro Blues by Blind Willie:

Miriam Makeba, Singer

Miriam Makeba was a staple in my life growing up. God, what a voice! Do yourself a favor and check her out.

She died of a heart attack in Italy, aged 76. Wonderful woman, she’ll be missed.

(h/t Jeremy)

Guru And Other Things

Yawn.

I'm relaxing here in the dark of my study, such as it is, listening to something I downloaded by someone/thing named Mocean Worker titled Chick a Boom Boom Boom from his/its Enter The Mowo! album.

Okay, crazy titles but very cool jazz breaks.

Anyone remember Guru?  Loved his combination of rap/Hip-Hop and Jazz.  Also very cool.

Here's some poetry, to ease the bitters:

The Lawyer's Invocation To Spring

Whereas, on certain boughs and sprays
Now divers birds are heard to sing,
And sundry flowers their heads upraise,
Hail to the coming on of Spring!

The songs of those said birds arouse
The memory of our youthful hours,
As green as those said sprays and boughs,
As fresh and sweet as those said flowers.

The birds aforesaid — happy pairs —
Love, 'mid the aforesaid boughs, inshrines
In freehold nests; themselves their heirs,
Administrators, and assigns.

O busiest term of Cupid's Court,
Where tender plaintiffs actions bring, —
Season of frolic and of sport,
Hail, as aforesaid, coming Spring!

By Henry Howard Brownell from A Treasury of Humorous Poetry.

Finally, a little history:

The Roman way of naming people was very different from ours.  Roman men from distinguished families always had three names, as in Marcius Porcius Cato or Gaius Julius Caesar or Marcus Tullius Cicero.  Just like us, there was a first name, called the praenomen ‘forename’, though with the difference that there were very few first names, no more than about twenty in all. It was possible to abbreviate most of them to one or two letters without misunderstanding. Marcus was shortened to M, Quintus to Q, and so on. The name Gaius is, strangely enough, abbreviated with the letter C, because this letter was once, when the alphabet was in its infancy, used both for the ‘k’ sound and for the ‘g’ sound. For the most part these first names did not have meanings as far as we know, but some of them are easy to interpret: Quintus means ‘the fifth’, Sextus ‘the sixth’ and Decimus ‘the tenth’. Families with many children evidently resorted to the numerals as a way of keeping tally!

The middle name, which ended in –ius, was called the nomen ‘name’ or sometimes nomen gentis ‘family name’. This represented the wider family or lineage to which one belonged and might be borne by a large number of people. Compare the Scottish use of clan names such as Campbell, McDonald, and Stewart. Finally, there  came the cognómen or surname, which indicated one’s immediate family, a much smaller group of people.

Roman men who did not belong to one of the leading families but who were nonetheless free citizens for the most part only had two names, a praenomen and a nomen, and no distinction was made between lineage and family. At the very bottom, of course, were the slaves, who only had one name. It was never a Roman first name, but was often a descriptive label such as Syrus ‘the Syrian’.

Women in Rome mostly had one name too, even if they belonged to a distinguished family. That name was often quite simply the name of the father’s lineage in the feminine.The daughter of Marcus Tullius Cicero was called Tullia. There were also other patterns. The daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was called Vipsania Agrippina, and her three daughters were called Agrippina, Livilla, and Drusilla. The first got her mother’s name and the next two were called after their famous great grandmother, Livia Drusilla, who had been married to Augustus.

Names then clearly showed a person’s position in society: the more names you had the higher up the social ladder you were. To have three was very good, but important people could have even more, as they were given different honorary names which recorded real or invented exploits. Most men, though, had to make do with two, and women and slaves had to put up with one. Sometimes people were given an extra name because of a change in status.We mentioned earlier that the young Gaius Octavius was adopted by Caesar in his will, something which to us rings very strange, but adoption was quite a common practice among Rome’s leading families. It was done partly to ensure suitable heirs for large fortunes and partly to strengthen ties between families. The person who was adopted would then get his new father’s nomen and cognomen. The young Gaius Octavius therefore became overnight Gaius Julius Caesar, taking the names of his dead adoptive father, but he added to these Octavianus, which shows that he previously belonged to the Octavius family. Finally, the Senate gave him the honorary name Augustus, and his complete name became Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus.

Slaves who were given their freedom also acquired new names. As free men they were allowed to have both a first name and a family name, and for the latter they usually took the name of their former owner. The very rich dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla set a great number of his slaves free, with the consequence that there were suddenly thousands of people with the name Cornelius in Rome.

Which name people actually used in their everyday lives clearly varied. Famous people were generally referred to by their last name or cognomen. Marcus Tullius Cicero is known as Cicero, and Gaius Julius Caesar was usually called Caesar. But there are exceptions. The successor and stepson of Augustus was named Tiberius Claudius Nero but was always known as Tiberius, which is one of the few Roman first names. Later one of his nephews became emperor. His name was Tiberius Claudius Drusus, but he was always called Claudius. In principle one could be known by any one of the three names.

G'night.

GOB

Every time I hear The Final Countdown by Europe, I remember “GOB” Bluth of Arrested Development, one of the funniest shows ever—at least the first and second seasons.

Robert Brockaway puts it at #10 in the list of The 10 Most Terrifyingly Inpsirational ’80s Songs with the following hilarious commentary:

The synthesizer riff in this 1986 track is as fist-pumping as music gets without involving an actual instrument. We're not clear on what he's counting down to, but somebody's about to get their ass kicked. If we were wrestlers and it was 1986 again, we'd totally have this as our intro music.

The Only Way It Could Be Better:
The song takes a sharp decline after the chorus, when it slips from the vaguely threatening line "It's the final countdown!" into sci-fi-gibberish wails like "we're heading for Venus, and still we'll stand tall!"

"The Final Countdown" needs some serious trimming. If a remix were to come out that consists only of that synthesizer riff and the cry of "It's the final countdown!," it would doubtlessly rank higher on this list. But, hey, it's European. Just be grateful it's not about scat fetishes and exceedingly thin cigarettes.

Also, let's face it. That distinctly '80s synthesizer sound didn't exactly age well. Those too young to remember the Cold War, in fact, tend to laugh upon hearing it.

Best Things to Do While Listening:
Any activity which may seem like a good idea initially, but soon becomes completely ridiculous. May we suggest Ultimate Frisbee, riding a pocket bike or watching the second season of Lost.

ABBA

I blame it all on Mr. Jose and his daughters.

Mr. Jose was the Principal of the school my mother taught at in the 1980s. Lovely man, really. His two sons were about the same age as my brother and me. His daughters were a bit older and in high school. They were all brilliant. No really, they were. His first daughter graduated from medical school when she was 21. His second beat the first by a year. Yes, you read that right, medical school.

Since the boys were in primary (grade) school as we obviously were, Mr. Jose did my mother a huge favor: she would get us all to her school and from there, the boys would all pile into the school's bus and the driver would drop us off one by one to our respective primary schools, a privilege the principal was due, I guess. Before this, my mom was always late to work after dropping us both off at our school before making it to hers so this was really a god-send.

Afterwards, the school's bus would also pick us all up and since we got off at 1pm, we (my brother and I) would have to wait at Principal Jose's for about two hours until my mom got off work to take us home. While there, I was always fascinated by the older girls (guess why). They'd be ensconced in their not-so-secret boudoirs, reading their romance novels and listening to music that was mostly Abba.

God, what sound. Of course, since they liked Abba, naturally I did too, but this was something else beyond simple infatuation-linked love. This music was rocking my boat, blowing holes in my experience. Everything I heard was dead great and I just had to get more of it. Within a few weeks, I had a small music library of Abba cassette tapes.

My favorite Abba songs: Fernando, Dancing Queen, Take a Chance on Me, Waterloo, Angel Eyes. My very favorite: Eagle. Psychedelic, trance-inducing, otherworldly, awe-inspiring joy and a kick ass story, man where could you go wrong? I don't care if you think I'm a corn ball: I love Abba!

Bitter Sweets

Is Roopa Farooki's first novel. I'm having this sent to me for review as part of Amazon's Vine program. From the following extract, it seems there's much to look forward to:

Henna was thirteen when she was gleefully married off to the eldest son of one of the best families in Calcutta, and her marriage was achieved by an audacious network of lies as elaborate and brazen as the golden embroidery on her scarlet wedding sari. Henna's paternal family were liars by trade, shopkeepers from the Bengal who had made their money by secretly selling powders and pastes of suspect origin, to alleviate the boredom and fatigue of the British expats serving out their purgatory in local government in pre-Independence India. Those glory days had fled with the British some ten years previously, but Henna's father was still never one to miss a business opportunity—when he heard the the wealthy, landed, and unusually fair-skinned Karim family from Calcutta would be visiting their farms around Dhaka, he wasted no time in undertaking an effective reconnaissance.

     His initial modest plot had been to nurture a business alliance, but he became more ambitious when he discovered that a rather more lucrative and permanent alliance might be up for grabs. he learnt that their son Rashid, who preferred to be called Ricky, was of marriageable age, but was so bizarre in his preferences that his frustrated family had not yet managed to find him a wife. He had been educated abroad, and insisted that his wife be someone he could “love,” and educated, literate girl with the same interests as him.

     Nadim Rub looked at his wilful, precocious daughter, who constantly missed school and cheeked her tutors, who stole her aunts' film magazines to pore over the photographs of the movie stars in thrilled girlish detail. She was athletic enough to avoid him whenever he tried to beat her for these misdeeds, sometimes nimbly running away over the neighbor's rooftops where he couldn't follow. His daughter had inherited his cunning, and her dead mother's looks. She still had an adolescent slimness but had suddenly developed enough of a bosom to pass for a woman, rather than a girl. He formulated his plan.

     A shopkeeper is also a salesman, and Nadim knew exactly how to persuade his daughter to go along with him. He caught her hiding at the bottom of their overgrown garden one school day, lying flat on her stomach behind the coconut palms, while she nonchalantly studied magazines instead of her books. When Henna saw her father approach, she leaped up and prepared to run, but he appeased her with an unusually jovial smile, and offered her a paper bag of dusty sweets that she took warily.

     “Henna moni, I know you hate school. And you're too good for this provincial backwater. you should be somewhere better, like Calcutta, the honored daughter of a wealthy family, who could buy you all the sweets and magazines you could ever desire. It's what your mother would have wanted for you.”

     Henna listened with interest—Calcutta was glamorous, the sort of place where the movie stars came from. And for once, her fat ignorant Baba was right—she did hate school.

     Enlisting the help of his sisters, Nadim made sure that Henna learned to carry herself in a sari with rather more elegance than she had hitherto shown, and with careful application of kohl, rouge and powder, managed to maker her look older than her years, and almost as pale as the Karims. He had her tutors teach her to play tennis, Ricky-Rashid's favorite sport, which with her nature athleticism, she picked up quickly. He found out through bribing the Karim's servants which books were to be found in Ricky-Rashid's room, and bought cheap copies for his daughter to read. He discovered she was still illiterate, and almost beat her again—all his dedicated preparation ruined because his lazy harami of a daughter had wilfully chosen to waste her expensive schooling. He stormed impotently at her while she pranced elegantly on her aunt's makeshift tennis court during one of her lessons, her precise strokes cruelly making her plump teacher race breathlessly from one side to another.

     “Baba, you're being silly. Just get one of these monkeys to read out some bits to me, and I'll memorize them. It's easy,” Henna said calmly, swinging her backhand return dangerously close to his ear; “monkeys” was the disrespectful term which she used for her long-suffering gaggle of tutors. She was enjoying the charade, the pretty new clothes, the make-up, the dissembling; she even looked forward to the prospect of learning lines from the Shakespearian sonnets her Baba had bought. It was like she was an actress already.

Don't you just see yourself reading this novel in two shakes? Reading this is almost like singing, effortless and highly enjoyable.

Oh, by the way, Zero 7's Give It Away is fucking awesome!

Sundry

Busy, work, etc. This is a “catch-up” post.

Music

Has anyone seen these cool commercials for Lexus music systems? One of my favorites is the one of Diana Krall listening to Jazz pianist Oscar Peterson's Night Train:

Oscar Peterson, wow, what a great musician!

Speaking of which, here's a very interesting article about Pete Seeger, dubbed in the article as “America's Most Successful Communist.” It traces the history of the somewhat malevolent (at least to me) Leftist politicization of American music personified in Seeger and his ilk.

Hurricane Assholes

I learned in the news (CNN) this morning that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Feds provided trailers, free of charge, to house evacuees. Guess what happened to these? Showing their superior sense of decorum, gratitude, and above all, citizenship, a lot of them were trashed and ransacked. These people stole the air conditioners in them, all the appliances, lights, and even the toilet!

Some of them were used as meth labs, even. FEMA is now attempting to sell these trailers at auction for a fraction ($600) of the cost of purchase ($20,000). Your tax dollars at work, people.

Movies

I just saw, for the first time, the 1996 movie, The Crucible. I liked it very much as it had all the great touches and none of the onerous baggage of historical movies. I later learned it was adapted from the 1954 play by Arthur Miller. Brilliant.

Daniel Day Lewis, apart from a very few moments in which he over-emotes, is terrific and very sympathetic. Winona Ryder delivers a great performance. The movie is filmed brilliantly—there were some utterly suspenseful scenes shot dynamically from absurd angles that briefly elicited heart palpitations.

Highly recommended.

Whatever Happened To ...

That pedophile's (R. Kelly) trial?  I have no idea, but it's a brutal miscarriage of justice that the prick is continuing to walk around a free man after abusing a 13-year-old girl.

CNN has an update.

Rostropovich, RIP

Damn! I can't remember the composer or the piece of music Mstislav Rostropovich played that held me spellbound. I believe it was a Tchaikovsky Cello Concerto ... I will have to find it and listen again.*

Rostropovich died today in a Moscow cancer hospital. He was 80-years-old. Rest in peace.

* Found it on Amazon: Dvorak Cello Concerto and Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra. The Tchaikovsky is transcendent!

Smack My Bitch Up

One of my all-time favorite videos (and songs) - NSFW:

Dark Side Rap

(h/t: Hudnall)

Pussycat Trolls

Have you ever seen a Pussycat Dolls video? Have you noticed what I've noticed? The only person the camera focuses on for any amount of time is the lead singer! Eh? Anyone else?

I always wondered why but no more. Except (maybe) for the lead Diva, they are all buttfuckingly ugly! I never noticed how much until yesterday, watching some "throwaway" show about finding the next PCD (Pussycat Doll) and saw one of the singers. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: Aha! So that's why they never let the camera settle on anyone for too long. A quick Google Image search led to me exhibit number 1 (as if I need another one!):

[click for larger ... be warned, it'll melt your face off!]

Woooof! How old are these bitches? All right, grandma, put your fucking clothes back on and no, bitch, I don't wish I had a "girl"friend like you!

Drums

Growing up, the night air during the weekends were filled over Benin City with music as one group celebrated a birthday, another a wedding and yet others a funeral.  Everything, but everything was cause for music.  And man, the drumming!

I loved those drums, they kept me awake and were a real pain in the ass, but I loved them.  I would lie there on my bed in the dark because, as usual, the electrical power authority (NEPA--Nigerian Electrical Power Authority, or Never Expect Power Always as it was better known) was asserting its authority.  All over the city, generators would rattle away, eating gasoline, belching black smoke and producing the electricity to power high-wattage speakers. 

Stringed lights, like garish Christmas displays only with multi-colored 60 Watt bulbs would light up the party tents and produce a glow that could be seen for miles around, drawing the unscrupulous hungry and destitute like moths to the flame, hoping for free food and drink.

The musicians and their always-present, always-necessary backup dancers would flare up--it always felt like there was a fire starting up when they started to play.  The electrical blast of music would power its way through the night, keeping thousands awake; not that it was easy to sleep with the mosquitoes buzzing and the stifling heat and humidity almost assured nightmares.  I hated that part, but ... when the conga drum solo would ultimately start, god, what a sound!  It made it all worthwhile.

Traveling funeral processions would also have a drumline of sorts and sometimes, I'd follow along at a distance to hear the drummers.  Something in that sound stirred my soul and I would "dance" with my feet, tapping along, and that would somehow move my body which in turn would have my head weaving, drawing a circle in time to the beat.  When the tempo would inevitably become faster, I'd give up any pretence at decorum and start my "antelope" dance, as my mom used to call it.

I can't hear the Conga drums today without that old disease flaring up.

A few I found on Youtube:

A Cuban conga drummer:

Yoruba "bata" drummers--now these guys are really something!

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Crazy River

This song instantly transports me far away ... I'm a passenger on a slow boat on the Amazon, the night is still and stifling with humidity and hidden dangers, snakes slithering by unseen, huge flying insects intermittently committing suicide in the flame of the hanging lanterns around the boat.

A small radio has this song playing and a fellow passenger, a woman, some mulatto mixture of ancient Indian and Spanish blood sways to the music, her sweat forming  a glowing sheen in the lantern lights ...

Robbie Robertson's Somewhere Down The Crazy River:

Worst Commercial Ever. EVER!

This guy should have his Black Card revoked, stat!

Then, this one posted in response which is, on the other hand, fucking hilarious:

Supa Dupa Fly

Am I the only who thinks Missy Elliot is a musical genius? I love this song, the first I ever heard by her.  I like the original--by Tina Turner?--but this is beautiful.

Enjoy:

I Lost My Baby

Linus Sings The Police

Wonderfully "synchronicitized" video of Linus and the Peanuts gang singing Every Little Thing She Does Is Peanuts Magic: