From the film Hootenanny Hoot (1963), an entirely different space and time. God, Youtube can seriously do some marvels.
The two's focus was creating harmony with Joe singing tenor and Eddie singing baritone. The rich blend created the sound that identifies Joe and Eddie. Throughout each album, the music stays raw, simple and within the genres of African-American gospel music, folk tunes, and Blues with a little jazz flavor. Songs contain little background instrumentals, since the "main objective was to focus on Joe & Eddie's singing...". This duo was known for their "rapid-fire delivery" and vocal improvisations, as can be heard in the songs "Green Grass" and "Children Go". - Wiki
I was listening to this album on my friend's car and it reminded me of home, because my Dad's a huge fan of Faye Wong's (王菲)... Went to her concerts, got her CDs, VCDs, and even youtube-d her... You see dedication when you see a 50+ man try on some new technology... Oh and this is healthy admiration, not some distorted obsession, by the way. Haha, he said he likes her voice and her 'take-it-or-leave-it' attitude.
Anyway, her last album was released in 2003 and last official concert was in 2005. Other than the appearance she made earlier this year for a fundraising effort for the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, it is still uncertain whether she'll return to the music business.
If you're totally out of the loop like me and don't know what the hell is going on with the economy, go check out the show by This American Life. Pretty informative. Even though I spaced out here and there throughout the show.
If you feel like this crap is just too depressing and just like all over the place, then yeah... skip it.
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview. This was in the midst of Lennon’s “bed-in” phase, during which John and Yoko were staying in hotel beds in an effort to promote peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries traditional pen sketches by James Braithwaite with digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.
June Taylor has a respect for food that is becoming more and more rare these days...
An example of the lack of respect for food can be seen in a recent scandal in China, where diary products tainted "with the industrial chemical melamine has caused the death of four infants and sickened tens of thousands of others". It's easy to point the finger at capitalism (or even at China, which is commonly perceived as an 'inhumane', authoritative country) and say that all corporate producers care about is profits, profits, profits and could care less about people's wellbeing.
But I think it's also useful to think about how the profit-oriented capitalist system is contributing to our culture of food. Now, it's more common to view food in terms of its monetary cost, rather than its quality. But then there's the problem that it's not like people don't want to buy quality food, but they're just too expensive. Then there're the questions, "Why is our system set up in such a way that quality food is hard to purchase?" and "Are there other ways that we don't need to perpetuate this industrial food system?"
But on a lighter note, haha this summer my older bro's ex-gf went to France. And to be nice to the family, she bought a jar of orange tea jam for our family of 5. It was so good + exotic that it was finished within 2 days. Haha and my mom told my brother to ask his then-gf if she had anymore. And she was like, '...No...I didn't know you guys will finish it that fast...It'll take me a whole semester to finish that jar...So I don't have anymore...' She doesn't understand that with a family of this size, you have to fight for food. There's the thinking that who ever's the slowest will just miss out, so that just perpetuates the system of food fighting and make the food disappear quicker, bla bla... Haha
This performance was broadcasted in 1973, on a MPB Especial series called Ensaio. Check out the rest of the show here. I love the fact that she seemed to have enjoyed herself in the performance.
Similar to its predecessor, MPB (Brazilian popular music) was born out of an attempt to produce a Brazilian "national" music, thus revitalizing traditional styles. The beginning of MPB is often associated with Elis Regina´s interpretation of the mysterious Arrastão, by Vinícius de Moraes and Edu Lobo. The song was almost censored by Brazil's new ruling junta, because it told the story of a fisherman, while hauling in his nets, prayed to St. Barbara for aid. It was a story that hit a little too close to home for the everyday man.
Bob Dylan played another song of hers on his Theme Time Radio Hour, but recalled that by the end of her Arrastão rendition, Regina posed in a crucified position, with tears streaming down her eyes. This emotional song performance won her awards and widespread popularity in Brazil.
The earliest MPB borrowed elements of the bossa nova and often relied on thinly-veiled criticism of social injustice and governmental repression, being based on progressive opposition to the political scene characterized by military dictatorship, concentration of land ownership, and imperialism.
The conjuncture that created the MPB movement ceased to exist after 1969, but the acronym has survived, albeit with a less specific meaning. Transforming from a left-wing musical movement, MPB became the core of Brazil's urban middle-class music, and the term still indicates a certain aesthetic quality in modern Brazilian music.
First heard about Elis Regina on Dylan's radio show, he played a cover called "Aquarela Do Brasil" that she did with Jean Toots' Thielemans. It's a song that's really hard to find, butttt with my skilllzzz I've gotten hold of it! Just click on the link to the song.
