Rush to Queue

Paco De Lucia

rushtoqueue — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:41:50 +0000

I’ve stated that I’ll try not to rant, however, this one has been burbling in my belly like a bad batch of raw oysters on a mid week binge at Long Doggers. I don’t like jazz. I hate ‘smooth jazz’. I sometimes enjoy ‘Nola ‘ Jazz. I don’t like and rarely listen to Paco De Lucia , though I do respect him as a great musician who has…..whatever. Flamenco/Jazz fusion is what I consider elevator world music pooped in a bag, lit on fire and left at the doorstep of all who want to feel cuddly because they listen to ‘ethnic’ music and are ‘down’ with what was once the songs of outcasts and is now ‘stuff white people like’. That is an unfair assessment and I really don’t believe that all who listen to jazz are enjoying the tonal equivalent of a flaming bag of crap (except for smooth sexy jazz ). I know jazz and all its bastard fusion variants take a lot of technical ability as well as inborn talent. I get it. A lot of people love jazz. That’s great. I don’t. I have always loved music in it’s rawest form, especially, Flamenco and Blues. Corey Harris has an entire album dedicated to exploring and juxtaposing delta blues with its Mali origins. I dare not link the two musical genres together as they are mostly disimilar.

Have you ever seen something original that was good, maybe great, then saw a remake and decided to pull the good ‘ol suicide note out of your copy of Purpose Driven Life and tie the chord to the chandelier after realizing there is no hope mankind. Who gives a damn about global warming when there are Michael Bay movies. This isn’t the battle of generations. I listen to a lot of contemporary new music. Radiohead, Muse, Nuerosis, Interpol, Last of the Shadow Puppets, Libertines, Babyshambles, Mastodon, Melvins, they are all great bands in my opinion. This is a battle about bastardization and taste.

Ultimately I see Paco De Lucia as the father of Flamenco-Jazz Fusion. Every time I hear it I feel like howling like a slowly dying dog.

Garden in the courtyard of a catholic church in Tularosa or La Luz, I forget which. It doesn’t matter.

rushtoqueue — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:21:49 +0000

In this Garden

This blessed oasis

Solitude is not enough

to alleviate my desperation

Cupped in a united palm

of the three magi

They are the rays reaching out through the campanario

In the shadow of St. Francis de Paula

Toll for my sorrow

The garden never thirsts

It drinks from the mountains Sacramento

Drink from my sadness

An elixcer for the cottonwoods

To forget spring

Ciudad sin Seuño

rushtoqueue — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:38:49 +0000

Enrique Morente with Lagartija Nick from the album Omega. A wonderful mix of cante jondo with rock. It builds to a chilling climax. The video is very creative and fitting for the lyrics which are from Federico Garcia Lorcas poem Cuidad sin Sueño (The Dreamless City).The poem translated to English is also quite chilling, ideal for a conte jondo with plenty of duende. This song reminds me of the skeletal song Bells for the Poet or Companas por el Poeta (video below) from Morente’s Lorca release. I am unsure of who the female singer is inBells for the Poet, it could be his daughter Estrella Morente (whom I have read sings often with him) or The Bulgarian Choir who sing with him on the song Song of the Soul from the same album Lorca.

Learning to Read Music and Play the Guitar

rushtoqueue — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 23:55:28 +0000

I have always wanted to play guitar. I never took the time to try very hard. Once as a teenager I bought a blues DVD but all the instruction was in tablature form. When I was in my late teens I listened to one of my fathers LPs, The Best of Carlos Montoya, and became more and more impressed and appreciative of Spanish guitar, Classical guitar and flamenco in general. From that moment I poured into classical guitar and flamenco. I borrowed CDs from the library. I ordered imports from Europe. My first real gritty flamenco CD was Enrique Morente and Sabicas in their record Nuevo York. I ordered CDs from the Naxos label. One of my favorites being a Nakita Koshkin composition The Princes Coach performed by Artyom Dervoed. At the end of the song Dervoed taps the four fingers of his right hand from the lower bout of his guitar all the way up the neck to the tuners making the sound of a horse galloping away. Oops I digress, back to learning guitar. I ordered a beginners flamenco guitar book, An Introduction to the Flamenco Guitar, by Anita Sheer and Harry Berlow. Unfortunately in this book all the songs are in musical notation. Years have passed and I have decided to mess around with some music theory as tablature seemed so incomplete to me.

I found a great website to help me learn some theory and get me started plucking some songs. The website is www.learnclassicalguitar.com. The instructor supplies PDF files and video showing how the songs are played. He also provides countless instruction via his website as well as a very well written music notation and theory primer sent through email. I started out with Hush Little Baby and now on lesson #9 which is a simplified Bach.

I have yet to open my beginners flamenco book again but I am very happy with what I have learned thus far.

New song tagged from NPR

rushtoqueue — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 05:18:10 +0000

I was able to tag a great song while listening to NPR this morning. Calexico‘s Praskovia. It’s an eastern European inspired instrumental waltz containing some reverb electric guitar riffs. I wasn’t surprised when I found out it was Calexico. They’re a good band and instrumentals tend to be their strength as the singer has too much of an contrived alt-country twang just like the rest of the 98% of all alt-country I have had the misfortune of hearing. The song is below, enjoy.

Long Live Absinthe

rushtoqueue — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:08:37 +0000

As I’ve always said……………