SOUNDTRACK:LOS HACHEROS-Tiny Desk Concert #546 (July 5, 2016).
Los Hacheros play “Afro-Caribbean music that provides the source material for modern salsa and all of its permutations.”
This music swings and bounces and with such simple instrumentation: an upright bass and a guitar. With the main melodies constructed by the trombone and vocal (the trombonist doubles on violin). But the rest of the band is there for percussion–cowbells, shakers and the conga.
The band plays three songs all sung in Spanish. It’s fun to watch them get into the groove and begin to sway in unison to the music.
“Baila Con Los Hacheros” features a violin solo that is pretty intense “Papote’s Guajira” features an acoustic guitar solo that is complex and fun to watch. It also has a lengthy flute solo (the violinist also plays the flute!). “Bambulaye” features NPR’s own Felix Contreras on congas–he gets a solo–apparently he has been playing in bands for years. What a nice surprise.
[READ: November 3, 2016] The Complete Peanuts 1997-1998
This is the second to last book of collected strips from Schulz. Rerun features quite prominently and Linus has faded somewhat. Snoopy is no longer playing characters (except for the soldier..always soldiers) and Charlie is still pining for things he won’t get.
1997 opens with Charlie showing Linus his autographed Joe Shlabotnik baseball. But Linus thinks it’s a forgery. Cue a week of strips about an autograph forger (who tries to hire Charlie as his accomplice). I love that Schulz went on strange little tangents like this, but I always feel like he doesn’t follow through with these funny ideas. The whole premise of this just ends never to be heard from again.
And then in a surprise to me, Snoopy starts acting like a Revolutionary War patriot standing guard at Valley Forge. He seems to have given up on WWI and gone back in time to a far less dramatic role–he mostly just stands around in the cold. Strips about that occur from time to tome with him talking to General Washington. The last one is in December 1998 where he realizes he is only guarding snow. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: THE REPLACEMENTS-Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash (1981).
Since I’ve been talking about The Replacements so much, it made me want to go back and listen to their stuff. The Replacements are the quintessential band that “grew up” or “matured” and for better or worse sounds utterly different from their first album to their last (a span of only nine years!). In fact, I don’t imagine that there are too many people who would enjoy all seven of their discs. One suspects that if the band themselves were given a copy of their All Shook Down disc in 1981, they would have smashed it.
I Just Read About That... 