#072
Restos de Colecção VI
E assim chegámos à Music for the Weekend número setenta e dois e ponto final desta terceira temporada. Ou seja, mais um Restos de Colecção que desta é finalizado com uma escolha do Filipe Faísca.
Decidi começar com Floating Away, colaboração de Yukihiro Takahashi com o pai do cyberpunk William Gibson originalmente no album Technodon de 1993. Sobre o baterista dos YMO já muito se falou aqui por isso passo logo à segunda escolha, Raga Bhairav gravado em 1982 por Charanjit Singh no delicioso proto-house de Synthesizing – Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat. Uma cópia original em near mint vende-se hoje entre 3 e 4 mil euros. Até mesmo a maravilhosa edição de 2010 que eu tenho tem um valor de mercado superior a 200 euros.
Sigo logo para 2-6-5-8-0 de uma miss Kim Wilde quando em 1981 ainda se achava muito rude girl de Chiswick no Middlesex. Wilde viria a virar o bico ao dito da sua pop tentando a nossa paciência com mais uns quantos pregos nas charts mas à sua imagem Goldilocks decidi contrapor a de Olinda a Cigana pela voz de um José Cid em modo pós Quarteto 1111 no album José Cid Canta Coisas Suas editado pela Orfeu em 1979. Ele e mais uns quantos tugas deixam aqui uma bem assinalada marca anti-Ventura: Tony De Matos com Romance Cigano e Hermínia Silva, que tanta vez teve de envergar “essa fatiota”, com Fado da Cigana.
Tudo panóplia de músicas que ficaram de fora nas ultimas onze m4wes, tudo coisa fina e mirabolante, da nossa vizinha Espanha a banda de bascos sediados na movida madrileña e saída das cinzas do projecto La Banda Sin Futuro, Derribos Arias. Aprenda Alemán En 7 Dias está no seu único longa duração, En La Guia, En El Linstin. O “líder” Ignacio María Gasca Ajuria, mais conhecido como Poch, continuou uma carreira a solo com ajuda de outros membros da banda, Alejo Alberdi e Juan Verdera, este ultimo ficou mais tarde conhecido como um dos percursores da cena mais trance de Ibiza.
Vou entremeando tudo com umas fatias bem finas de bom recorte musical. Como os Simple Minds num This Fear of Gods gravado no ultimo disco de jeito que fizeram, Empires and Dance e que eu trouxe de Antuérpia ainda fresco e numa altura em que ainda ninguém por cá ligava à banda de Jim Kerr. Ou o maxi Helden / Heros comprado na Fnac dos Halles, numa edição tipo Google Translate do clássico de Bowie. Ou ainda Devil Train, canção de Cash aqui interpretada pelo seu maior doppelgänger, um senhor Stan Farlow que andou a gravar uma multitude de compilações de canções tornadas famosas por Cash sob o nome de Johnny Doe, designação generalizada para um chamado pseudónimo colectivo usado quando se desconhece o nome verdadeiro de uma pessoa. Nos EUA a designação é de frequente utilização na referencia a um cadáver de identidade não confirmada.
Two giants live in Britain’s land,
John Doe and Richard Roe,
Who always travel hand in hand,
John Doe and Richard Roe.
Their fee-faw-fum’s an ancient plan
To smell the purse of an Englishman,
And, ‘ecod, they’ll suck it all they can,
John Doe and Richard Roe
Em 1963, ano em que nasci, uma Lesley Gore de 17 anitos gravava You Don’t Own Me com arranjo de Claus Ogerman e produção de Quincy Jones. Escrita pela dupla criativa de Philadelphia de John Madara e David White, é muitas vezes citada como instigadora de um segundo movimento de libertação feminina. A música alcançou o segundo lugar na Billboard Hot 100 e por lá permaneceu por três consecutivas semanas sempre na incapacidade de superar I Want to Hold Your Hand dos Beatles, tornando-se o segundo hit de maior sucesso de Gore depois de It’s My Party.
Apesar de ter nascido na Alemanha em 1944, Klaus Sperber emigrou para Nova Iorque nos anos 70 e muito contribuiu para a selvagem onda artística que varreu a cidade nos finais dessa década, fazendo parte de uma clique que contava com futuros pesos pesados como Joey Arias, Keith Haring, John Sex e Kenny Scharf ou mesmo Jean-Michel Basquiat, então conhecido pelos seus graffitis que assinava como SAMO. No seu primeiro disco datado de 1981, o contratenor Klaus Nomi decidiu fazer uma cover da canção de Lesley Gore e foi esta versão que enviei ao meu convidado destes Restos de Colecção, o criador Fílipe Faísca.
Ele por sua vez decidiu responder-me com a escolha de Eartha Kitt a cantar Alone que encerra o espectáculo Live At The Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Editado em 2008, esta canção tem a particularidade de ser a que encerra o CD enquanto um mero extra na edição em DVD. Cantora e actriz, verdadeiro portento na área do cabaret, verdadeira amostra da raça americana (afroamericana, cherokee e caucasiana), Eartha Kitt falava quatro línguas e cantava em sete. Um dos seus inúmeros ex-lovers, Charles Haskel Revson, o bilionário fundador da marca de cosméticos Revlon, até criou um baton para ela, de nome Fire and Ice. Na década de 60 Eartha assumiu na série Batman o papel de Catwoman e tornou-se na primeira mulher negra a ter sucesso numa série de TV mainstream transmitida na América, chegando mesmo a quebrar tabús raciais no seu screen flirt com Adam West.
Um dia, num almoço na Casa Branca a convite da primeira dama Lady Bird Johnson, Kitt não aguentou mais e ao fim de quarenta depoimentos constrangedores ergueu-se em cima de uma cadeira e disse “you send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street… They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam”. Lógicamente o presidente pediu à CIA para arranjar toda uma pasta sobre a “sadistic nymphomaniac” que ficou de tal forma marcada no biz que teve de ir trabalhar para a Europa.
Orson Welles um dia referiu-se a ela como a “most exciting woman in the world”, algo a que ela um dia se lembrou de comentar dizendo que “the most exciting men in my life have been the men who have never taken me to bed”. Como sempre perguntei ao meu convidado qual a razão da escolha dele. Faísca retorquiu que “pelo dramático da interpretação”. Kitt iria falecer nesse mesmo ano, uns meros oito meses após esta gravação com que encerro a terceira temporada de Music for the Weekend.
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And so here we get to Music for the Weekend number seventy-two and the end of this third season. In other words, one more Restos de Colecção finishing with a choice by designer Filipe Faísca.
I decided to start with Floating Away, Yukihiro Takahashi’s collaboration with cyberpunk’s godfather William Gibson, originally released on the Technodon album dated from 1993. A lot has been said about YMO’s drummer here so I’ll move on to my second choice, Raga Bhairav, recorded in 1982 by Charanjit Singh in the delicious proto-house LP Synthesizing – Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat. An original copy in near mint sells for nowadays between 3 and 4 thousand euros. Even the wonderful 2010’s edition that I have has a market value of over 200 euros.
I go straight to 2-6-5-8-0 by a certain miss Kim Wilde in 1981, when she was still just a rude girl from Chiswick in Middlesex. Wilde would sail into other creative seas allowing her pop to test our patience with a few more nails scratching the charts but it was her Goldilocks looks that i decided to juxtapose with Olinda a Cigana in the voice of a José Cid in post-Quarteto 1111 mode, on the album José Cid Canta Coisas Suas, published by Orfeu in 1979. He and a few other “tugas” leave here a well-deserved anti-Ventura seal: Tony De Matos with Romance Cigano and Hermínia Silva, who so often had to wear “such a costume” with Fado da Cigana.
All in all a vast panoply of songs that were left out from the last eleven m4wes, most of everything fine and forward, from our neighbouring Spain the basque band grounded in the movida madrileña and coming out of the ashes of La Banda Sin Futuro, Derribos Arias. Learn Alemán En 7 Dias is in their sole LP, En La Guia, En El Linstin. “Leader” Ignacio María Gasca Ajuria, better known as Poch, continued a solo career with some help of other band members, Alejo Alberdi and Juan Verdera, the latter also known as one of the precursors of the trance scene in Ibiza.
I intersperse everything with a few very thin slices of mighty fine sonic protein. Like Simple Minds in a This Fear of Gods recorded on Empires and Dance, the last album they did while they still mattered or cared about anything, album that I brought back from Antwerp still fresh and at a time when no one around here cared about Jim Kerr’s band. Or the maxi Helden / Heros bought at the time of its release at Les Halles Fnac, a sort of Google Translate edition of Bowie’s classic. Or Devil Train, a song by Cash performed here by his biggest doppelgänger, a Mr. Stan Farlow who recorded a multitude of compilations of songs made famous by Cash under the name Johnny Doe, generalized designation used when one doesn’t know a person’s real name. In the USA it is frequently used in reference to a corpse of unconfirmed identity.
Two giants live in Britain’s land,
John Doe and Richard Roe,
Who always travel hand in hand,
John Doe and Richard Roe.
Their fee-faw-fum’s an ancient plan
To smell the purse of an Englishman,
And, ‘ecod, they’ll suck it all they can,
John Doe and Richard Roe
In 1963, the year I was born, a 17-year-old Lesley Gore recorded You Don’t Own Me, arranged by Claus Ogerman and produced by Quincy Jones. Written by Philadelphia’s creative duo of John Madara and David White, it is often cited as the instigator of a second women’s liberation movement. The song reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and remained there for three consecutive weeks, failing to surpass The Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand, becoming Gore’s second most successful hit after It’s My Party.
Despite being born in Germany in 1944, Klaus Sperber moved to New York in the 70s and contributed a lot to the wild artistic wave that swept the city at the end of that decade, being part of a clique that included future heavyweights such as Joey Arias, Keith Haring, John Sex and Kenny Scharf or even Jean-Michel Basquiat, then known for the graffitis he tagged as SAMO. On his first album, dated 1981, countertenor Klaus Nomi decided to cover Lesley Gore’s song and it was this version that I sent to my guest, the designer Fílipe Faísca.
In turn he decided to answer me back with a choice of Eartha Kitt singing Alone, curtain call to the show Live At The Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Put out in 2008, this song has the particularity of being the one that closes the CD as well a being mere extra in the DVD edition. Singer and actress, a true wonder of the cabaret circuit, a real example of the American race (African-American, Cherokee and Caucasian), Eartha Kitt spoke four languages and sang in seven. One of her countless former lovers, Charles Haskel Revson, the billionaire founder of cosmetics brand Revlon, even created a lipstick for her, called Fire and Ice. In the 1960s Eartha took on the role of Catwoman in the Batman series and became the first black woman to succeed in a mainstream TV series broadcast in America, shattering racial taboos in her screen flirtations with Adam West.
One day at a luncheon at the White House at the invitation of first lady Bird Johnson Kitt couldn’t take it anymore and after forty embarrassing statements got up on a chair and said “ou send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street… They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam”. Of course, the president asked the CIA to organize a whole dossier on this “sadistic nymphomaniac” that was so ear marked in the biz that she had to go work in Europe.
Orson Welles one day referred to her as the “most exciting woman in the world”, something she one day remembered to comment on saying that “the most exciting men in my life have been the men who have never taken me to bed”. As always I asked my guest the reason for his choice. Faísca replied that it was “the dramatics of the interpretation”. Kitt would pass away that same year, a mere eight months after this recording with which I close the third season of Music for the Weekend.
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Yukihiro Takahashi – Floating Away
Charanjit Singh – Raga Bhairav
Kim Wilde – 2-6-5-8-0
José Cid – Olinda a Cigana
Derribos Arias – Aprenda Alemán En 7 Dias
L.U.M.E – Bugalu
Bisca – Lo Sperma Del Diavolo
Human League – Love Action (I Believe In Love)
21 Guns – 21 Guns
Dorothée – Maman
Tommy Dorsey & Frank Sinatra – You Lucky People, You
Simple Minds – This Fear of Gods
The Impressions – Gypsy Woman
The Yardbirds – Still I’m Sad
Mughal-E-Funk – Akbar
Fra Lippo Lippi – The Treasure
Kandace Springs – Devil May Care feat. Christian McBride
The Specials – Ghost Town
De Brassers – Kontrole
David Bowie – Helden
Jimmy Reed – The Devil’s Shoestring
Bruce Cloud – Lucky Is My Name
Tony De Matos – Romance Cigano
Kings Of Survival – Devil In Disguise (V’s retouch)
Miki J – Playing Games
Ghost Rhythms – Paraglider
Thomas Dolby – She Blinded Me With Science
Mark Foggo’s Skasters – Skadansk
Johnny Doe – Devil Train
Spandau Ballet – To Cut A Long Story Short
Jalen Baker – Obey Disobey
They Must Be Russians – Nagasaki’s Children
Underworld – Something Like A Mama
Hermínia Silva – Fado da Cigana
The Normal – T.V.O.D.
René Costy and The New String Sound Orchestra – Jeux
Judy Thomas – Never Say Devil Woman
Richard Pryor – Blackjack
Klaus Nomi – You Don’t Own Me
Eartha Kitt – Alone