Robert Christgau's Music Criticism Blog - Expert Witness - MSN Music

Bachata Roja/Vijana Jazz Band

Oldies but Goodies, Pained and Jocose

By Xgau Dec 20, 2011 2:08AM
Bachata Roja: Amor y Amargue (iASO)
This introduction to Dominican son was "recorded live to 2-track," sniffs the same label's co-released Bachata Legends, in which the original artists re-record decades-old classics smoothly and even beautifully but seldom enthrallingly. What the original vocals lacked in accomplished ease they made up and then some in quirky intensity, and they weren't anything like amateurish. With more at stake professionally and personally, these young singers grabbed onto the "bitterness" at the heart of their barrio-bohemian genre so as to dramatize not only the pain of thwarted love but the hunger for public identity that eats at a people after half a century of tyranny. Sometimes it's almost like they're crying. A MINUS

 

Vijana Jazz Band: The Koka Koka Sex Battalion: Rumba, Koka Koka & Kamata Sukuma: Music From Tanzania 1975-1980 (Sterns)

One band with two names so it could record over quota when it managed the journey to the studio in Nairobi, Vijana Jazz Band and its Koka Koka Sex Battalion doppelganger favored the typical East African iteration of soukous's rippling guitars. Sometimes this approach is compared to country music, but that's a metaphor, not a musical analogy‑-these guys aren't true soloists, and rarely is Nashville guitar so ramshackle. In East African rumba, guitars provide atmosphere more than content. The content's in the jocosely hectoring vocals and single-line saxophone interjections, which with this enjoyable little band are numerous and various enough to engage non-Swahili speakers who find some of the melodies warm and others tepid. B PLUS

 

168Comments
Dec 23, 2011 8:27AM
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the Clown DJ 4 oughta start a band

Hahahahahhaaa. Yes. We made a really hald-a$$ed non-attempt. I spent most of my time thinking about what I would wear and Jock just thought every drunk utterance he made was the core of our next great song. :) :) ClownDJ was the only one with any musical instruments....

Dec 23, 2011 4:47AM
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joey -- 
Early "Can't Hardly Wait"
i've always loved this version.  true story:  it was the first version i ever heard of the song.  can't exactly remember why that was the case....  but when i finally listened to Please to Meet Me having known the song would be on there i was like whatthe****??.  then of course i was like oh this is awesome and plus i love horns in pop songs.

i'd still take "Alex Chilton" over both though.  that song makes me go nutz
Dec 23, 2011 4:08AM
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the Clown DJ 4 oughta start a band (just sayin').
Dec 23, 2011 3:56AM
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Chris: Buddies!  Some people call the finished one overproduced.  Nah.  It's the band's most triumphant moment.
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Early "Can't Hardly Wait": goo.gl/d2Lji
"Can't Hardly Wait" is one of my favorite Mats tunes. Heck, in a given mood I'd be inclined to say it's one of my fave tunes full stop. Found myself missing the horns in the demo version, and some of the lyrics clearly needed work (some of the lines feel crammed and forced). A great demo, but I prefer the finished one.
Dec 23, 2011 12:41AM
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Some of the most valuable reissues of all time are those recent Placemats ones.  Here are a few songs that should have made Tim instead of the two I mentioned.

Chilton-produced "Kiss Me on the Bus": goo.gl/D40ES
Early "Can't Hardly Wait": goo.gl/d2Lji
"Nowhere Is My Home": goo.gl/5hyBK
Dec 23, 2011 12:29AM
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Yeah, Clown isn't tops. But Gatsby is feeling like life itself right about now.
Dec 23, 2011 12:28AM
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But if you happen to be a professor of geobiology, allow me to submit my transcript and GRE score.
Dec 23, 2011 12:28AM
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Love Tim.  What I'm disappointed by is "Dose of Thunder" and, sorry, "Lay It Down Clown."
Dec 23, 2011 12:23AM
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Re-reading The Great Gatsby and listening to Tim tonight 
Two things I feel rather disappointed by these days.
Dec 23, 2011 12:16AM
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rstay: The thing is, I don't really want to avoid employment. What I want to avoid is bad work (and I'm sure many of my peers would agree). 

Re-reading The Great Gatsby and listening to Tim tonight. It seems that early adulthood has been a consistently harrowing experience for generations of white males, who knew. It must get redundant for you old folks to watch your juniors discover this truth cohort and cohort again. But, hey, it isn't our fault. We're just here to inherit the world we didn't create.

Lay it down, clown, lay it down.
Dec 22, 2011 10:57PM
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Clown,

 

Forget the singularity, grad school is the ticket to avoiding employment--and building up the debt that makes employment a necessity.  Oops.

Dec 22, 2011 10:42PM
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The Tusk accusation is accurate; we were fools for that album. A large fraction of my junior year of college was spent inside an ersatz fort (ping pong table + bedding), getting stoned/drunk and listening only to Fleetwood Mac. It was one of those perfect experiences that would be really pitiful were I to attempt to recreate it, even at age 24.5.

EDIT: Man, my weirdo internet made it so I typed up the fort story a million years before Jock posted it but NOW I'VE BEEN BEATEN TO THE PUNCH.

And for a (slightly) less insular comment, I'd like to join the people who, a while back, were listing their favorite musical moments/song appreciated of 2011:

- Crying to "Cruisin'" by Smokey Robinson during the false start breakup w/ ClownDJ
- A really, really good tape made by that guy ^^ (& a couple other would-be really, really good tapes that didn't record quite right)
- Watching Die Antwoord's catalog of videos in wonderment
- Realizing I knew how to rhumba to "Three Girl Rhumba" and could cha-cha to "Who Loves the Sun"
- Marianne Faithfull's "Hold On Hold On"  and subsequent discovery of original by Neko Case
- Various tunes: "Erotic City," Prince; "Lipstick," Imperial Teen; "The Word Girl," Scritti Politti; "Big Thighs, NJ," Low Cut Connie; "Having an Average Weekend," Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet; Patti Smith's cover of "Midnight Rider;" "That's Not My Name," Ting Tings; "Everybody is a Star," Sly and the Family Stone; "Moves Like Jagger," Maroon 5; Present Tense about 1000 times (ClownDJ)
- Cleaning the house/jogging while taking (prescribed) amphetamines and listening to Girl Talk
- Blasting "Don't Talk to Me About Work" while doing errands for my shitty ex-job
- Everything played during the Great Double Move-Out of 2011 (http://goo.gl/NfNdZ,)
- Rediscovering Britney Spears and what a perfectly glittering concept she is

Dec 22, 2011 10:39PM
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rstay: Your students likely aren't listening to Tusk. Instead, they're probably getting wasted to Skrillex and beckoning the singularity so they won't have to look for a job. Excuse me, unpaid internship.
Dec 22, 2011 10:28PM
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One result of my A-album finding labors since I initiated this format is that I'm even further from the pop charts and certain pop phenomena such as Friday and Move Like Jagger than in the past. I'm not happy about this, but it's not as if as I've slacked off on my listening except that I watch more TV and especially Netflix flix at night. I watched Friday once as I recall and it made little impression on me (little enough that I'm not sure I did). Heard Move Like Jagger once on a Now! comp and it seemed aces. Theoretically I'm in favor of such stuff as long as nobody takes words like "universal" literally, and also more than ready to assume it's pretty good. But once isn't enough with such stuff. Immersion is part of the experience.


Dec 22, 2011 10:27PM
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For about one month in college, we listened to Tusk all day every day in a fort we made out of a ping pong table and a blanket.
So that's why my students don't turn their homework in on time...
Dec 22, 2011 10:17PM
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Is there a rewards program for EW referrals?

When I started reading Xgau, it was pre-EW. Please at least give me the small bit of credit I deserve, Clown.

"you only don't like it cuz Xgau doesn't!"

Fairly sure this analysis of Clown's (not) listening is accurate. However, Irene and I did convince him "Moves Like Jagger" is good even though, as far as I know, Xgau hasn't said anything about it. Clown is more pious than I, though, so it's possible he found a Xgau rec of the song on some other blog.


For about one month in college, we listened to Tusk all day every day in a fort we made out of a ping pong table and a blanket. That is true.

Dec 22, 2011 9:30PM
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There are better places to declare one's heretical break with Xgau dogma

Cave art.

Dec 22, 2011 8:15PM
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"Ruby Vroom" is a great one: crack band, weird sound effects, dead pan vocals, and superb use of "Powerhouse" on "Bus to Beelzebub".  There are better places to declare one's heretical break with Xgau dogma ("Born in the U.S.A." anyone?  Those keybs are so grating.  Yeah, okay, I'll lose that vote.)
Dec 22, 2011 7:16PM
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My piety has its limits. "Ruby Vroom" by Soul Coughing comes immediately to mind.
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about the blogger

Robert Christgau

Starting in 1967, Robert Christgau has covered popular music for The Village Voice, Esquire, Blender, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He teaches in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, maintains a comprehensive website at robertchristgau.com, and has published five books based on his journalism. He has written for MSN Music since 2006.

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