Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute To Cole Porter

Written by Ladron de Tebeos

Greeting, all you fine and wonderful folks who’ve decided to stop looking at porn for five minutes and tune in to my little review. Today’s topic of conversation is a 2-disc special edition of Red Hot + Blue, which if you remember, was originally issued in 1990 as a Tribute To Cole Porter that created massive media attention for AIDS relief and became the first release in a 15-album series. It featured such world-class artists as U2, Annie Lennox, Tom Waits, and Sinead O’Connor, and such acclaimed directors as Wim Wenders, Alex Cox, and Jonathan Demme, and is now finally being released with the care that it deserves. An eclectic musical homage to the legendary songwriter Cole Porter, it went platinum, spent 24 weeks on the Billboard charts, and generated $3 million dollars for AIDS charities worldwide, but its companion piece, a VHS collection of music videos, (you remember VHS, don’t ya?) was somewhat relegated to the background. That changes with the 2-disc Special Edition package of Red Hot + Blue, which contains all the music videos on a DVD and the remastered album on a CD together.

The assemblage is in the form of a television special that promotes AIDS education and support, which is rather appropriate being that this is the reason the Red Hot project was kicked off in the first place (and all of the proceeds of the DVD still go to that cause). The program does get a bit preachy, along the line though, with lectures from such personages as Richard Gere and John Malkovich, who looked as uncomfortable as your father, persistently advising use of a condom. I had to fast forward through him (sorry, John).

Several of the videos (most notably the rap versions of songs, such as Neneh Cherry's “I've Got U Under My Skin”) bring the message into the lyrics of the songs themselves. One of the videos, directed by John Pellington is The Jungle Brothers' rendition of “I Get a Kick Out of You” that cleverly incorporates latex into many of its visuals, underlining the theme without being overtly obvious.

The AIDS theme is carried on in several other videos, such as the most political contribution, Erasure's “Too Darn Hot”, incorporating then-current protest movements such as ACT-UP, (No, I don’t remember them,) while running AIDS factoids across the bottom of the screen. Several of these caught me by surprise, such as the facts that the U.S. and South Africa are the only two industrialized countries to deny healthcare to people without money and that the U.S. spends more money on defense in one hour than we spend on health care in one year. I haven’t looked these up myself, so don’t write me any pissy e-mails if either of those turn out to be wrong. One of the more touching videos is k.d. lang's “So in Love”, directed by Percy Adlon, which takes a look at the everyday struggles of dealing with the disease in a loved one through the simple expression of lang doing her laundry.

Although most of the videos dodge expressions of male homosexuality, Jimmy Somerville’s “From This Moment On” directed by Steve McLean, embraces it wholeheartedly; there’s men rolling around and groping all over the place, so I had to fast forward through this too (sorry, Jimmy), but at least this is certainly a highlight of honesty in the program.

Several notable directors are along for the ride: Jim Jarmusch gives “It's All Right with Me” by Tom Waits a strange hyper activity despite using slow motion, heightening the already disturbing vibe of Waits' rendition. It’s like watching Tom run around drunk for four minutes, highly entertaining. Neil Jordan presents Kirsty MacColl and The Pogues as a nightclub show for “Miss Otis Regrets/Just One of Those Things”.

On the whole, however, the videos are somewhat lacking in originality or in adding extra dimension to the music. Wenders directs U2’s version of “Night and Day” and both the song and the video do absolutely nothing interesting, it’s like both the director and the band decided to phone it in. The rest of the videos all too often are rather literal or bland, though the presentation of Sinead O'Connor as an ersatz Veronica Lake on “You Do Something to Me” is undeniably inspired (and may I say, she looks pretty hot with hair).

That said, however, the music still holds up very well, with only a few slow moments: the dull and synthy “Do I Love You?” by Aztec Camera being the biggest pain to sit through. (fast-forwarded through that too; sorry, Aztec) Most of the songs have an undeniable energy, with some great favorites being Salif Keita's tribalized version of “Begin the Beguine”, the unlikely duo of Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry showing these young kids how it's done by rocking out to an energetic version of “Well, Did You Evah?” Plus, there's no going wrong with Porter's “In The Still of The Night”, and The Neville Brothers do a nice, if rather uninspired, rendition of it. The finale is the touching rendition of “Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye” by Annie Lennox, seen tearfully watching old home movies. It's quite emotional, doubling the effect of the music to give a palpable sense of loss that drives the entire project. Even with the shortcomings of some of the videos, still a very worthwhile disc with messages that still need to be spread.

Nina Simone: Silk and Soul & The Soul of Nina Simone

Written by Ladron de Tebeos

Welcome back to my lair, my fellow carbon-based life forms, sorry I’ve been gone so long, I’ve been trying to raise funding for my new film, Brokeback Catholic Church. (Send all comments regarding my hell-bound soul to the owner of this website) Today we’ll be playing a little game called “Chasing the Dragon” and we’ll be spinning a CD or two from the High Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone. Let’s roll.

The album starts with a pounding drum and shrieking guitar that overwhelms your senses and…hmmm, I’m sorry, my CD changer started playing Led Zeppelin I by mistake…actually, this is pretty cool, I think I’ll review this instead…whoop, hang on a sec, the phone’s ringing…Okay, apparently the owner of this site, Mr. El Grande Bastardo, a.k.a. El Bicho, has told me that the Nina Simone review needs to be reviewed tonight, and if I do this review while high, he’s going to revoke my papers and send me back to El Salvador, stupid puto.

Silk and Soul is the follow up to Nina’s first album Nina Simone Sings the Blues. Here again, she has taken songs and molded them around her sensual silken voice to create an album that would best be experienced ‘making sweet sweet love’ as Chef would say. Nina wrote the song “Consummation”, a beautiful love song that reveals the tender side of her soul. “The Look of Love” is a Burt Bacharach written song (not a cover of that classic ABC song) from the motion picture Casino Royale. She also does a cover of that old Association song “Cherish” you remember that one; ‘Cherish is the word I used to describe, all the feelings that I have’, blah, blah, blah, it’s gay, but she makes it work. There’s a sense of longing on songs like “I wish I knew how it would feel to be free”, and “Why must your love well be so dry”. In truth, almost all of the songs on this album are well done, and fine examples of the way Nina can take a tune and make it her own, capturing the spiritual and melodic message of the writer.

Next up, The Soul of Nina Simone is a CD/DVD collection of greatest hits and live songs put together on one CD/DVD. (Does that make sense? oh well, who cares) The songs are more soulful and less pop-sounding than Silk and Soul, and this is a good thing as it gives her more of a chance to use her expressive vocals to capture all sorts of subtleties and nuances in this collection of songs. “Just Like Tom Thumb Blues” is a cover of an old Dylan song that tells of a man let down by everyone, society, government, and friends. “I think it’s going to rain today” is a heartbreaking song written by Randy Newman that looks achingly into a grey future. “To Love Somebody” is a cover of the old Bee Gees tune, turned from some bubble gum pop crap into an anger cry of betrayal. “Feeling Good” is just a great song that received some airplay on HBO promo’s for Six Feet Under, you know how it goes, ‘birds in the sky, you know how it feels, etc.’ I would say, if you could only get one of these two CD’s, definitely grab this one.

The DVD portion of this disc consists of several live performances from the ‘60s, including her performance on The Ed Sullivan Show and several songs from the Harlem Festival in ‘69. It’s all very good stuff, although I would have liked to have seen her in a more intimate setting, a small smoke-filled jazz club, maybe. But in spite of the settings, her voice shines through and connects with the audience to the point where the surroundings don’t matter, it’s just that voice and that presence and that’s all you need.

Samite: Embalasasa

by Ladron de Tebeos

Howdy, howdy movie fans, just got back from checking out some Oscar footage. You’ll have to pardon me if I’m a little incoherent; staring obsessively at Jennifer Garner’s pregnancy-induced cleavage has caused the blood to leave my brain.

Today, we’re going to be reviewing a new album called Embalasasa, by the artist Samite. Now this sounded like the kind of album where I might want to purchase a little verde from my good friend Fumo Verde to enhance the experience. However, he’s currently residing in the local lock-up at the moment. Something about public nudity and committing unnatural acts with an animal. So, I’ll have to roll sober on this one.

Embalasasa is the beautiful, multi-colored, but poisonous lizard that surfaced all over Samite’s Ugandan homeland when he was 12-years-old. “Whenever an embalasasa came into the house, we all climbed on top of a table and called my grandfather to come and kill it. We knew we were safe as long as grandpa was around; he used his walking cane to protect us.”

“On the title song, I call my grandpa to come with his walking cane and kill the modern embalasasa, AIDS, a deadly disease transmitted through the most beautiful, vibrant and natural act.” The albums songs draw on Ugandan folklore, geography and struggle to express words of allegory, healing and hope. In addition to AIDS, his curative songs address war, intolerance, the death of a loved one and survival.

This is one of those albums you need to be in a mellow, happy kind of mood to enjoy, (hence my desire for some verde) because the music itself is melodious and kind, and Samite sings in the warmest and mellowest of gentle voices, picture Bobby McFerrin on tranquilizers, being backed by flutes and kalimbas. If you don’t like being lulled then it will drive you batty.

“Give me something a little up-tempo,” you’ll eventually say. “Why does he have to be so pleasant and earnest all the time? It’s like having a Jehovah’s Witness at your door for 45 minutes. Despite some definite good moments, the song "Nawe Okiwulira" sounds like one of those Afro-funk fusions the Talking Heads attempted, only a lot better, this is why people write off most world music as New Age niceness. It’s not bad, but yaaaaawwwwnnn…

The album moves from flute to percussion to guitar to singing, and overall, I’d say there’s enough good moments here to half-heartedly recommend Embalasasa. Kind of a rainy day album to put on when you felt like being slow and lazy. Of course, truth be told, I find it kind of hard to criticize Samite, simply because he’s far more of an awesome human being than me and most everyone I know or have known—he works with war orphans and he’s the director of the Musicians for World Harmony organization—but there are less-awesome guys out there who are making much more compelling albums than this.

Cabruera: Proibido Cochilar

by Ladron de Tebeos

Hola, mi amigos, como esta? Okay, that’s about it for my Spanish, so, in an act of immense bravado, I will be reviewing an album where the lyrics are entirely in Spanish…hold your applause…

Today’s album is Proibido Cochilar: Sambas for Sleepless Nights by the group Cabruera. Cabruera was formed in 1998 when six nordestinos, (no idea what a nordestino is, does it mean Eskimo?) all with backgrounds in the contemporary Brazilian music scene, joined together to find a way bring their folk roots into the modern era. They sought counsel from an indigenous Tupi oracle who told them that they needed to start a band to bring a new injection of life to the communities of Campina Grande and Joao Passoa. The oracle also said that the band was to be called “Cabruera,” from the word “cabras,” meaning “a group of goats.” Then I think the oracle told them that they were “The One” and they had to fight Agent Smith in one good movie and two crappy sequels…Anywho…to get in the proper spirit of the music, I’m gonna throw back some tequila and give this a spin.

One Tequila, two tequila, three tequila

Damn, this music rocks, I’m jumping around shaking my ass all over the place. Not sure if this is considered dancing or it just looks like I’m having a seizure, but who cares, the dorky, uncoordinated white boy is rocking. This album is supposed to be a mix of Forro (again, no idea what that means, I’ll guess fire), rock, jazz, funk, rap, reggae and drums and bass, under-girded by the syncopated beat of samba…hmmm, sounds kind of complicated, all I know is that it’s kicking my ass right now…there go the neighbors, banging on the wall, let me turn it up louder…

4 Tequila, 5 Tequila, 6 Tequila

I’m not sure who this guitar player, but swear to god, he’s like a Spanish Jimmy Page or something…It’s weird, all the women on TV are starting to look like Jessica Alba…I’m not dancing anymore, I shook my ass (and skull) into a wall. But this is really, really, really good music & stuff. I could listen to this all the time, even sober. I’m even starting to understand some of the lyrics, I’m pretty sure they’re singing about chicks and stuff…Oh wait, I know what Forro means, I read it on the notes, it’s the name for the region’s country parties, at which musicians and dancers get down in an athletic form of dance that makes the lambada look tame, “At a good Forro party, the air is thick with dust raised by the feet of tireless dancers.” Screw it, where’s my tennis racquet, I’m gonna air guitar my way into history and show you all how to Forro your asses off…STOP POUNDING ON MY WALLS OR I’M GONNA RIP YOUR HEART OUT AND EAT IT!!!...Stupid neighbors, no appreciation for good music.

7 tequila, 12 tequila, 1 tequila more…

Fuckin’, it’s the fucking government man, they’re doing stuff to piss my shit off, like buttons and stuff, that makes my room spin around like this, do you know what I mean? That’s why I love you guys, you’re my fucking bitches…Oh pissballs, now the police are knocking on my door, I’m gonna go teach these guys not to piss me off, I’ll be right back…

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

by Ladron de Tebeos

Greeting my fair-weathered, review-reading friends. Just got done overdosing on massive amounts of Olympic coverage and it’s time to pull my mind from those nagging questions that the Olympics always bring me: namely, can those figure skaters spin around real fast like that when they’re….uhhh, crouched on a different surface than ice? Speaking of which, maybe one of you linguistic folks out there can help me out: is Bode Italian for Fat, Drunk Loser? Just curious.

Okay, today I watched the film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Now, try as I might, I have a hard time walking into this objectively, my thoughts even before viewing were that Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and the whole gang should be taken out back and be severely beaten and then tossed into a jail cell where they can be severely butt-fucked. This, in my twisted little world view, would be justice. Enron, to me, is symptomatic of what is wrong with our political system as a whole; elected officials slash whores, who don’t really give a flying fuck about you or I, average Joe Taxpayer, but about the companies slash johns and rich folks who feed them their bribes, errr, I mean campaign contributions. So, having gotten my little rant out of the way, let’s see how this plays out.

The film, narrated by Peter Coyote, does a very good job of guiding us through this whole shit storm, using graphics, interviews, footage of shareholder meetings and taped telephone conversations of Enron traders, who sound like a gang of Soprano-ish type thugs as they conspire to plunder the California economy.

Director Alex Gibney takes shots at all the scum bags, (see, I told you I was angry) who knowingly or unknowingly held up this fraud, including the Bush administration and the Wall Street establishment, pointing in particular at Merrill Lynch, which, on Lay's complaint, fired the only stock analyst who dared question the Enron bubble as it was expanding.

There seems to be a general impression that Enron was a good corporation that went bad. The movie argues that it was a straight up B.S. con game almost from the start. It was "the best energy company in the world," according to its top executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Of course, at the time they said this, they knew that the company was bankrupt, had been worth big piles of zip for years, had inflated its profits and concealed its losses through bookkeeping practices so corrupt that the Arthur Anderson accounting firm, who in the interest of full disclosure used to employ Mil Peliculas, was destroyed in the aftermath.

One Enron tactic was to create phony offshore corporate shells and move their losses to those companies, which were off the books. We're shown a diagram tracing the movement of debt to such Enron entities. Two of the companies are named "M. Smart" and "M. Yass." Showing how smart they really are: One stood for "Maxwell Smart" and the other one ... well, take out the period and put a space between "y" and "a."

The level of arrogance these peckerheads, Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Andy Fastow, and Lou Pai enjoy due to their wheelings and dealings, due to their abject refusal to take responsibility for their own actions, and the powerless consumers taking it up the back door, makes it all seem like some kind of sick joke, these ass-wipes are almost caricatures of the evil businessman.

Enron is a movie you can’t help but become emotionally involved in; by the end you feel as drained as the thousands and thousands of employees 401(k)s.

Based on a best-selling book by Fortune magazine writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, this is a movie that needs to be seen. The Enron scandal was swept under the rug, (google Ken Lay Trial and ask yourself how much of the now recent events you’ve seen on the nightly news) in the fever to push Iraq as America's agenda. It's frightening to find out how much you didn't know.

And did I mention that it really pisses me off?

BORN INTO BROTHELS

by Ladron de Tebeos

Born into Brothels is a documentary where photojournalist Zana Briski, while doing a story on prostitutes and drug addicts in the red light district of Calcutta, becomes friends with their children, who are fascinated by her camera. She teaches them how to use cameras, and then gives each of them one to use. This part of the film is interesting in that the children shoot and edit the world they know: the crowded, nasty and downright shitty conditions in which all of these people live. The rooms are packed sometimes with three generations worth of family members. There is garbage on the floor. The streets are dirty and the people are obnoxious, often cursing at the children for taking their pictures. Prostitutes stand “in the line” as they call it, waiting for customers. There is a lot of conflict in the red light district and we hear people cursing each other, using a lot of profanity. Briski then decides to try to help these children escape their fate of poverty and abuse.

She tries to obtain a passport for one of the boys so he can attend a photographic conference in Europe and runs headlong into a demoralizing bureaucracy, where people type away on old, worn-out typewriters in front of giant stacks of paperwork. She tries to get several of the kids enrolled in a boarding school, so they can have a chance at a real life, maybe even higher education and a professional career. The trouble is, most schools will not take these students because they are the children of prostitutes. She also runs into resistance from parents, relatives and guardians. The whole project becomes increasingly difficult.

The children themselves are mostly upbeat and often happy despite all of this. At the same time, however, they have the wisdom to realize that their lives are likely to be as unpleasant as their elder family members. Any one of the children's stories could have been the subject of a very good, full-length documentary. But Briski and her co-director Ross Kauffman have decided to take a more all-encompassing approach, with each of the kids getting at least a few moments in the spotlight. The film also gives us a look at the lives of prostitutes in Calcutta. Needless to say, their lives are not like those of prostitutes depicted in Hollywood movies. These are not whores with hearts of gold. They are women who are working hard just to stay alive, and some of them don't make it. The worst part of all is that the children, with no other options available to them, are slowly pulled into a life of prostitution and crime themselves, part of an endless cycle. Some prostitutes want a better life for their children. Others, by their actions or inactions, doom their children to a life of prostitution, drugs and crime. The rest of society as a whole basically doesn't give a rat's ass and ignores them. I found myself really caring about these children and their stories and even took in the special feature “Where are they now” on the DVD copy. All in all, a very fine movie that I would whole-heartedly recommend.

In another feature, I will be psychically reviewing films from the future that have yet to be released. My first review will be The Pink Panther starring Steve Martin. My prediction is that this movie will suck much ass. Also, I predict that Steve, after the realization that he used to actually make great films way back when, (see, The Jerk, All of Me, etc.) will take a long hard look at the spectacular crap fest that he's been foisting upon the world lately (Cheaper by the Dozen Un et Deux) and in a flash of ironic creative comic brilliance, will take his own life, by, yes, jamming an arrow through his own head.

So, to quote Dr. Nick, bye Everybody