The following remembrance is inspired by the terrific and prolific writer Odilia Rivera Santos who as part of her People for the Ethical Treatment of Puerto Ricans project at http://peopleforpuertorico.blogspot.com has asked writers to - among other suggestions - address their experiences as a Puerto Rican. As such, I'd say the next piece describes more a coming-to-awareness than a coming-of-age.
A Memory
by Richard Torres
I was ten years old and wearing my dark blue Easter suit in the middle of July. The reason? My parents had been invited by friends of theirs to a celebration of their daughter’s christening being held at a community center in what the tabloids at the time referred to as Spanish Harlem but what my family – who all hailed from and/or still lived there – lovingly called El Barrio. So we gift wrapped presents purchased from Alexander’s department store – which I carried in an Abraham & Straus shopping bag – got dressed up in our finest going-out garb and made the lengthy trek from Bushwick, Brooklyn to the aforementioned Barrio. While the summer air was predictably warm, it was nothing compared to the heat inside the windowless community center. I remember instinctively raising my right hand – the one not carrying the gifts – to loosen my blue and yellow striped tie. When my father saw what I was about to do, he quickly grabbed my hand. Shaking his head, he quietly but firmly informed me that ‘we don’t do that.’ He then pointed at the people already in the center. I looked and noted that every man was wearing a suit and tie. (Even the Joe Cuba Sextet which was setting up in the far corner.) Not one had removed his jacket nor had they loosened much less taken off their tie. Understanding, I nodded. My father smiled and lifted me onto a nearby stool in front of a makeshift bar. The bartender smiled at me as I ordered a cream soda on the rocks. The hostess of the evening - and proud mother - came over to us. At my mother’s urging, I handed her the shopping bag. She thanked me with a kiss on my forehead. I smiled my Kool-Aid smile while my mother remarked that I obviously enjoyed that very much. ‘Very much,’ my father repeated with a smile of his own. I realized his smile was a lot like mine. Then Joe Cuba and his band began to play. The song was “A Las Seis.” My father reached for my mother’s hand and they strode to the dance floor. It was an action repeated throughout the community center by every couple. Within seconds of Joe’s first downbeat, the dance floor was as crowded as Times Square on New Year’s Day. Out of the corner of my eye, I could spot an old man making his way to the bar. I instantly put up the invisible barrier I’d been taught to whenever an adult stranger entered my airspace. (Basically, this consisted of mimicking my father’s do-not-mess-with-me posture.) I could tell by his unsteady gait that the old man was drunk. He ordered a Bacardi and Coke. The bartender warily gave it to him. The old man quickly gulped down half of it then looked at me. I made sure not to look away. (After all, I wasn’t a kid; I was ten years of age.) After a brief staring match, he smiled at me and gestured to the dance floor. I carefully turned my head making sure to keep sight of him in the corner of my eye. The moment was magical. It was as if it were choreographed. Well-dressed men in their suits and ties turning their beautiful women in their dresses and heels as the band exhorted them to move even faster. (To my ten-year old eyes, it was like watching folks of various hues wearing various colors becoming an iridescent dancing rainbow.) And they did, wiping out whatever woes they had with each step, shake and shimmy. The Kool-Aid smile returned to my face. The old man smiled back at me and said before he walked away: “Now, aren’t we a fucking elegant people?” I looked back at the dance floor with my parents in the epicenter of it and proudly agreed that yes, we are. Yes, we are.
December 29, 2010
December 27, 2010
Teena Marie's Path To Soul City
With the untimely death of the great Teena Marie, I decided to dig into my archives and reprint portions of my first – and a personal favorite - article on Lady Tee from the December 5-11 1990 issue of The City Sun newspaper. The result follows....
Teena Marie’s ninth album Ivory is another chapter in the continuing saga of one of music’s most idiosyncratic performers. Tunes by this professional multihyphenate (singer-producer-musician-songwriter-arranger) contain such disparate influences as Marvin Gaye, Nikki Giovanni, Stevie Wonder and, of course, her mentor and frequent duet partner, Rick James.
Marie’s albums have always been an interesting mixture of flower-child lyricism, unabashed romanticism, street-wise posturing within a neo-traditional R&B/urban structure. In other words, homegirl wants you to cry a little, make love a lot, then party afterwards.
Much like Wonder, she’s a classicist; her music seems to evoke rather than provoke. A Marie production is professional in the highest sense of the word. The sound is crisp. The ballads are replete with gorgeous harmonies (Irons in the Fire’s title track, It Must Be Magic’s “Portuguese Love.”) The dance tracks pump with the rhythm section out front, augmented by melodious keyboards and a light sweetening of strings (Irons in the Fire’s “I Need Your Lovin’” and Lady T’s “Behind the Groove.”) The self-proclaimed Lady Tee isn’t interested in breaking new ground; she’s a refurbisher, a nurturer. Her songs are the progeny of the past. They’re subliminal aural candy.
Her career can be divided into two periods: her internship at Motown and her attempts at crossover marketability at Epic. Her first album, Wild and Peaceful bore the distinctive touch of its producer Rick James but the LP seemed more a James project than a Teena Marie one. Except for “I’m a Sucker for Your Love,” Marie’s personality didn’t come through. The result was listenable but disposable.
The follow-up Lady T, produced by Richard Rudolph, was much better. It contained the blueprint for future Teena Marie albums: start the first side with a long dance cut and slowly wind down till it’s time to flip the record. Here was her first outstanding single, “Behind the Groove” and superb slow jam, the introspective “Aladdin’s Lamp.”
“Aladdin’s Lamp” was the prototype of what would become the Teena Marie ballad: an overflow of dense imagery sung with an innocent romanticism. In anyone else’s hands (or voice) “Aladdin’s Lamp” would’ve been utter drivel but because Marie believes what she’s singing and understands what the song is about in relation to her personal views, she becomes convincing. Like Gaye and Wonder, Marie is basically an uncoverable artist. With them, one must listen to their records as a whole for it is their voices that give their songs conviction.
The next two albums, Irons in the Fire and It Must Be Magic, were Marie’s first self-productions and followed the Rudolph formula to a Tee. Both were entertaining and contained many worthwhile cuts. Besides the Magic jam “Square Biz” - with her quintessential line “You’ve heard a boatload of other ladies rap/but they ain’t got nothing on me” - there was Fire’s sensual “You Make Love Like Springtime” and Magic’s “Portuguese Love.” These two discs, together with the incendiary duet on James’ Street Songs, “Fire and Desire,” showed Marie as a comer. They seemed warm-ups for her Talking Book or What’s Going On. Instead, there was a contract dispute with Motown and her career became Epic in label only.
Robbery, her first album for Epic, was, with the exception of “Casanova Brown,” unmemorable. Starchild seemed a smooth recovery with “Lovergirl,” “Out on a Limb” and the very best of the Marvin Gaye tributes, “My Dear Mr. Gaye.” But all forward motion ceased with Emerald City, a misguided attempt to climb aboard the Prince bandwagon. For the first time Teena Marie was churning out product and it showed.
Naked to the World was a back-to-basics album. Intimate and closely scaled, the LP had an emotional weight the bloated Emerald City lacked. With soulful songs like “Ooh La La La,” Marie was concentrating on her strengths and succeeding.
Ivory, her latest album, is a direct result of that confidence. “Here’s Looking at You” is another funk-rap hybrid. “Sugar Shack” begins with a man reciting tributes to such musical legends as Sarah Vaughan and Charlie Parker over a jazzy orchestration with Teena Marie’s scatting and segues into an all-out dance jam with an outrageous cameo by Bernadette Cooper. “If I Were a Bell” and “Miracles Need Wings to Fly” are typically sumptuous torch songs. “Mr. Icecream” is the obligatory Teena "cutesy" track, a punning song that only she can get away with. Here she dishes out every frozen allusion you can think of. Every.
Where Teena Marie has succeeded is in exploding stereotypes. She isn’t your typical white girl trying to sound Black nor is she promoted in that freak-show fashion. Marie isn’t part of that glossy urban-contemporary scene. She’s one with the culture, as gutbucket as she can be. Hers isn’t a minstrel act or an approximation of Norman Mailer’s White Negro myth. Her music isn’t wrapped in the guise of homage like a George Michael. It’s a logical outgrowth from a woman immersed in a sea of Blackness and enjoying the swim.
Teena Marie’s ninth album Ivory is another chapter in the continuing saga of one of music’s most idiosyncratic performers. Tunes by this professional multihyphenate (singer-producer-musician-songwriter-arranger) contain such disparate influences as Marvin Gaye, Nikki Giovanni, Stevie Wonder and, of course, her mentor and frequent duet partner, Rick James.
Marie’s albums have always been an interesting mixture of flower-child lyricism, unabashed romanticism, street-wise posturing within a neo-traditional R&B/urban structure. In other words, homegirl wants you to cry a little, make love a lot, then party afterwards.
Much like Wonder, she’s a classicist; her music seems to evoke rather than provoke. A Marie production is professional in the highest sense of the word. The sound is crisp. The ballads are replete with gorgeous harmonies (Irons in the Fire’s title track, It Must Be Magic’s “Portuguese Love.”) The dance tracks pump with the rhythm section out front, augmented by melodious keyboards and a light sweetening of strings (Irons in the Fire’s “I Need Your Lovin’” and Lady T’s “Behind the Groove.”) The self-proclaimed Lady Tee isn’t interested in breaking new ground; she’s a refurbisher, a nurturer. Her songs are the progeny of the past. They’re subliminal aural candy.
Her career can be divided into two periods: her internship at Motown and her attempts at crossover marketability at Epic. Her first album, Wild and Peaceful bore the distinctive touch of its producer Rick James but the LP seemed more a James project than a Teena Marie one. Except for “I’m a Sucker for Your Love,” Marie’s personality didn’t come through. The result was listenable but disposable.
The follow-up Lady T, produced by Richard Rudolph, was much better. It contained the blueprint for future Teena Marie albums: start the first side with a long dance cut and slowly wind down till it’s time to flip the record. Here was her first outstanding single, “Behind the Groove” and superb slow jam, the introspective “Aladdin’s Lamp.”
“Aladdin’s Lamp” was the prototype of what would become the Teena Marie ballad: an overflow of dense imagery sung with an innocent romanticism. In anyone else’s hands (or voice) “Aladdin’s Lamp” would’ve been utter drivel but because Marie believes what she’s singing and understands what the song is about in relation to her personal views, she becomes convincing. Like Gaye and Wonder, Marie is basically an uncoverable artist. With them, one must listen to their records as a whole for it is their voices that give their songs conviction.
The next two albums, Irons in the Fire and It Must Be Magic, were Marie’s first self-productions and followed the Rudolph formula to a Tee. Both were entertaining and contained many worthwhile cuts. Besides the Magic jam “Square Biz” - with her quintessential line “You’ve heard a boatload of other ladies rap/but they ain’t got nothing on me” - there was Fire’s sensual “You Make Love Like Springtime” and Magic’s “Portuguese Love.” These two discs, together with the incendiary duet on James’ Street Songs, “Fire and Desire,” showed Marie as a comer. They seemed warm-ups for her Talking Book or What’s Going On. Instead, there was a contract dispute with Motown and her career became Epic in label only.
Robbery, her first album for Epic, was, with the exception of “Casanova Brown,” unmemorable. Starchild seemed a smooth recovery with “Lovergirl,” “Out on a Limb” and the very best of the Marvin Gaye tributes, “My Dear Mr. Gaye.” But all forward motion ceased with Emerald City, a misguided attempt to climb aboard the Prince bandwagon. For the first time Teena Marie was churning out product and it showed.
Naked to the World was a back-to-basics album. Intimate and closely scaled, the LP had an emotional weight the bloated Emerald City lacked. With soulful songs like “Ooh La La La,” Marie was concentrating on her strengths and succeeding.
Ivory, her latest album, is a direct result of that confidence. “Here’s Looking at You” is another funk-rap hybrid. “Sugar Shack” begins with a man reciting tributes to such musical legends as Sarah Vaughan and Charlie Parker over a jazzy orchestration with Teena Marie’s scatting and segues into an all-out dance jam with an outrageous cameo by Bernadette Cooper. “If I Were a Bell” and “Miracles Need Wings to Fly” are typically sumptuous torch songs. “Mr. Icecream” is the obligatory Teena "cutesy" track, a punning song that only she can get away with. Here she dishes out every frozen allusion you can think of. Every.
Where Teena Marie has succeeded is in exploding stereotypes. She isn’t your typical white girl trying to sound Black nor is she promoted in that freak-show fashion. Marie isn’t part of that glossy urban-contemporary scene. She’s one with the culture, as gutbucket as she can be. Hers isn’t a minstrel act or an approximation of Norman Mailer’s White Negro myth. Her music isn’t wrapped in the guise of homage like a George Michael. It’s a logical outgrowth from a woman immersed in a sea of Blackness and enjoying the swim.
October 5, 2010
The Post-Civility Generation
It’s the callousness of it that’s so disturbing. It’s the inhumanity of it that’s so heinous. It’s the senselessness of it that so heartbreaking. I’m referring to the tragic death of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi. Here are the reported details so far. On September 19th, Clementi’s roommate, Pharun Ravi and his friend Molly Wei set up a webcam in his dorm room, spied on a Clementi date, streamed it on to the internet and later tweeted to his followers to watch an upcoming sexual encounter. (This according to various articles in the New York Daily News.) Upon finding out what Ravi and Wei had done, Clementi tried to go through university channels, grew despondent over this invasion of privacy and committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge on September 23rd. The Clementi tragedy raises so many important issues from homophobia to voyeurism to bullying to the inept bureaucracies which fail to protect our children that it’s hard to know where, as a writer, to begin. After all, we now live in a time where civil discourse has been distilled to the diss. He who yells the loudest gets the most attention no matter what the subject or the substance. It’s anything goes for this post-everything generation. Oh, marketers and headline writers have tried to come up with a definitive moniker like post-racial or post-9/11 but the true term for them is post-civility. Again, in the modern age, it’s all about me, my opinion, what I want and that I want it right now. If your needs and opinions fall in line with mine then we’re cool. If not, than you’re scum that should be silenced. Is that too extreme for you? Well then consider this. Thanks to the proliferation of computers, we live in an age where the internet rules all. Now on the internet, anybody can anonymously write anything about anybody so outrageous rumors abound. (At least, in newspapers, when penning a letter to the editor, one must use one’s real name.) Your social network photograph can be disseminated without your permission. Your words, your image can be twisted and reedited into a falsehood. And in a rush to be first, the so-called mainstream media corporations will broadcast with a somber face the refigured images thereby legitimizing the lie and turning rumor into fact. Don’t believe me? Then talk to Shirley Sherrod, a smeared victim whose cautionary tale has already receded into the ether of memory. Yes, there’s meanness afoot in the culture; a viciousness oft hidden in the cute-and-cuddly term: snarky. (Snarky sounds like a character on a Saturday morning cartoon.) Sacha Baron Cohen exploited snarkiness in the smash Borat and Bruno by letting the audience in on the joke. It’s a canny move that enhances the protagonist’s and the viewer’s feeling of superiority. As he and several MTV shows like Punked and Jackass demonstrate, it’s “funny” to deride da common folk. (Unless, of course, you’re the object of ridicule). In this world, it’s the person with the camera crew who triumphs. (Or, in the Clementi case, the one with the webcam.) The irony is the same tools that once caught quack doctors on 60 Minutes and pedophiles on Dateline are now used to clown the ordinary Joe. And speaking of clowns, isn’t that the real reason reality shows are so popular? So that the viewer feels superior to those people/clowns on-screen. It’s instant gratification of the basest level. “Are you not entertained?” screamed Russell Crowe at the bloodthirsty Roman throng in his Oscar-winning role as Maximus in Gladiator. Well, a decade after that film’s release the question Maximus posed still resonates. See, the internet and television has become the arena and we, the viewers, the bloodthirsty throng. And the price for our merciless cold-hearted amusement, was the life of a young gay man, a gifted violinist, a beloved son, who was found floating in the East River, an apparent suicide. Ask the question once more: “Are you not entertained?” Then let your answer ring loudly: “No, we are not.”
March 31, 2010
Steven Seagal
Spring is here and I’m suffering from some serious Steven Seagal withdrawal. Doubt me? Please don’t because there was a point this past winter when it seemed every guy-oriented cable channel – Spike, USA, etc. – had some sort of Steven Seagal film or program on that day. Some even ran 24 hour Seagal marathons! (More on that later.) For a long time Seagal aficionado such as me, this was movie manna from action flick heaven.
See, I’ve been a fan of the lethal one since his auspicious debut in 1988’s Above The Law. How well I recall that opening day screening. It was a Friday night and I was in line for a midnight show at the Loews Orpheum II theater on 86th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan. I was out with my then-paramour, and the line we were on snaked around the block. We were in the midst, to put it kindly, of the sort of rough & rowdy crowd usually found in a 3 a.m. showing in a Times Square grind house. She expressed her concern and inquired why we were seeing this movie starring this complete unknown Seagal. I responded that I didn’t know about Seagal but I was there for 2 important reasons: Pam Grier. Well, the larger-than-large thug behind me thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard and repeated it to each and every person behind us in the line who also laughed uproariously. As a result, my lady and I were assured by this rather immense fellow that we’d be safe in the theater no matter how bad the movie. (There’ll be much more about this incident in my upcoming book How To Win Friends And Gain Needed Physical Protection or The Art Of The Well-Placed Wisecrack.)
With that reassuring fact in mind my lady and I took our seats in the abbreviated orchestra section – five rows - in the front of the theater. Now, the Orpheum II had stadium seating and normally I like to sit at the very top row of the balcony to get the true panoramic view. But as I explained to my date, I felt considering the restless energy in the audience, the closer we were to the street-level exit, the safer we’d be. Judging by the number of physical confrontations during the coming attractions, my hunch proved to be a correct one. A number of individuals were tossed down the steps only to land a few feet from us. Then they would get up and slowly limp towards the exit door never to return. The movie started but the noise and fighting didn’t. At one point, a man – to my recollection, the only Caucasian in the theater stood up and demanded silence. He got it – for a second. Then he was pelted with sodas, candy bars, popcorn buckets and whatever else could be picked up and tossed from the Orpheum floor. Cowering, he ran out of the theater screaming in fright. Too bad for him. Had he managed to stick it out just a couple of minutes, he would have seen Steven Seagal accomplish what he could not.
Okay, here’s the scene. Seagal, a tough pony-tailed cop named Nico, has his gun trained on a number of bad guys on a Chicago street. He informs them if any of them moves, he’ll kill them. One of the bad guys, realizing they outnumber the bullets in Seagal’s gun brazenly tells him that he can’t kill them all then moves towards him. Seagal instantly shoots him in the heart – killing him – and challenges the others to meet the same fate. With that single gunshot, the audience in my movie house, gasped then went as silent as Sunday morning churchgoers. From then on, the silence was only broken whenever Seagal demonstrated his martial arts moves. First, we’d never seen a big man like him – he’s nearly six-five! – move so fast, so gracefully, so fluidly with his hands. Second – with the exception of Sonny Chiba – we’d never seen so many broken bones on screen. The result was wild cheers. There was even prolonged applause at the film’s end. As we left the theater, I caught the eye of the head thug I’d amused pre-screening. “That Em-effer’s serious!” he enthused. I had to agree. Seagal’s fierce fighting skills and his nonchalant soft-spoken presence had even made me forget my disappointment of Pam Grier’s rather small role as his partner.
His follow-up, Hard To Kill, made me even more of a true believer. Here he was police officer Mason Storm – still his best character name – who discovers a top elected official is corrupt. Unfortunately, so too is everybody in his unit. The result? His wife – Sharon Stone! – is killed and he’s shot and presumed dead as well. But he’s not! See, he’s been in a seven-year coma and the nurse taking care of him – his then real-life wife Kelly LeBrock – has fallen in love with him. (Proving once again, fellas, that conversational skills are overrated.) But the really bad cops have found out he’s still alive so it’s a really lucky thing he awakes from this deep slumber and with the aid of Nurse LeBrock, leaves the hospital, takes some herbs, does some acupuncture, runs a few laps and gets back into fighting shape. Now this is when the movie really takes off as Seagal kills everyone by every possible means including pool cues and a literal kick-in-the-ass delivered to former Renegade co-star Branscombe Richmond! Again, Seagal delivered another satisfying effort.
His next two films were far more uneven. Marked For Death had him as – surprise! – a cop fighting a Jamaican drug gang. The best part? After killing the ruthless ringleader, Seagal is surprised that the villain has reappeared. Turns out the gang was led by identical twins! So Seagal proceeds to break every - and I do mean every - bone in the bad guy’s body, gouge his eyes out then throw him down an elevator shaft where he’s impaled on a giant coil! Seagal’s response brought the house down: ‘Sure hope he wasn’t triplets.” Out For Justice cast Seagal as a Brooklyn cop – shocking, ain’t it! – trying to stop psycho William Forsythe who killed his partner from starting a mob war. Besides seeing of such future television stars like Jerry Orbach and Julianna Marguiles in small roles, the surprise of Out For Justice is the three – count ‘em – long expository-filled monologues Seagal gives himself before each action set piece. It’s like he wanted to show casting directors he could actually act. But as a boisterous brother at my screening profanely shouted at the screen, Seagal fans didn’t come to see him act, they came to see him kick considerable ass.
Fortunately, with his next film, Under Siege, he did. The film was notable in many ways. It was the first without a three word title; the first without his trademark pony tail; the first that he wasn’t a cop. Here he was Navy cook Casey Rybeck. Granted, he was a cook who was an ex-Navy seal but he still wasn’t a cop. Here, in what was basically Die Hard on a boat, Seagal not only battled terrorists but A-list actors like Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey – who, believe it or not, was A-list at the time – and more than held his own. Under Siege was a box-office blockbuster which propelled Seagal to the then top of the action-movie heap with Schwarzenegger and Stallone.
Then came the slow-but-steady descent to direct-to-videoville. He next starred in and directed On Deadly Ground an environmental action flick where he took on the oil companies as well as Michael Caine made up to look like an Elvis impersonator. Unfortunately, it was more deadly dull than anything else. Then came a series of flicks where Seagal’s waistline expanded while his moviegoing audience seemed to shrink. Some were underrated – Fire Down Below, The Glimmer Man and even the inevitable sequel Under Siege 2 or Die Hard on a train – and others like The Patriot were just bad. Even his fine extended cameo in Executive Decision – Die Hard on a plane - which starred Kurt Russell and Halle Berry didn’t get him much attention.
So Seagal – blessed with a devoted inner-city audience – took another career path. The pony-tailed one went hip-hop teaming with DMX in Exit Wounds and Ja Rule in Half Past Dead. Unfortunately for Seagal, the results on screen were as mixed as the box-office results. (It’s interesting to note that few white actors are as relaxed onscreen around performers of color as Seagal. Perhaps it’s because he brings his own brand of confident hipness and doesn’t deign to condescend to some sort of stereotypical White Negro slang.)
Next stop for Seagal was the made-for-video action market. He wasn’t the first to do so. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the for rental shelves were chockfull of flicks starring folk not-ready-for-theatrical-release-prime-time like Oliver Gruner, Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Lorenzo Lamas and Dolph Lundgren. In the dawn of the new millennium, these same shelves became the refuge of such fading action stars as Jean Claude Van Damme and Wesley Snipes. But no one made as many with such vim and vigor as Seagal. (Usually garbed, by the way, in the same ¾ leather coats.)
In Submerged, he was a mercenary fighting terrorists. In Flight Of Fury, he’s a fighter pilot fighting insurgents. In Urban Justice – with comedian Eddie Griffin – he was a former government agent who moves to the hood to get his son’s killer while in Shadow Man, he’s a former government agent trying to find who kidnapped his daughter. In Today You Die – featuring Treach from Naughty By Nature – he’s an ex-con thief seeking revenge. In Belly Of The Beast, he’s an archeologist fighting Asian gangs while in The Keeper – which is Taken meets The Bodyguard – he plays a Texas – what else? – bodyguard. You get the point. Not a Noel Coward farce among them. (Although Seagal was quite funny in The Onion Movie satirizing himself.)
Now there were some – dare I say – risky projects? In Driven To Kill, he’s a former Russian – replete with accent! - gangster-turned-novelist – yes, you read that right – who returns to New York City’s Brighton Beach to protect his daughter. And in Kill Switch – Seagal’s version of Seven which he wrote – he’s a southern-accented Louisiana homicide detective haunted by the memories of his twin brother’s murder. Now remember that accent because it comes in handy in his latest and perhaps greatest project.
See like a kung-fu Zelig, Seagal uses it throughout his recent reality show entitled Steven Seagal Lawman. Turns out that for the last twenty years, Seagal has been a reserve deputy chief in Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish. Lawman takes us inside his regular patrols to provide what is, in my ever-humble opinion, one of the greatest reality programs in the history of television.
C’mon, you’ve got to love a show where you actually get to see an undercover agent’s non-pixilated face! A show which has what I call Seagalvision where they zoom into his ever-watchful face with a whoosh sound effect then give the viewer a slow-motion POV of what Reserve Deputy Chief Seagal is seeing from his passenger side seat of the police SUV cruiser he’s patrolling in. A show where the people in the parish are consistently surprised to see him even though he’s been patrolling these streets for we've been told is two decades. A show where a suspected drug dealer calls him ‘Mr. Stallone.’ A show where he calls Van Damme ‘a gnat.’ A show where he actually shoots off the head of a match at a distance of several yards away. A show where he demonstrates his still-formidable hand speed by tossing fellow officers to the ground during training exercises. And I’m not even getting into his musical appearances with his band or his practicing of acupuncture on his police brethren. (Let’s see Van Damme try that!) I’ll just tell you Steven Seagal Lawman is riveting television Not only can I not wait for next season, I can’t wait for the DVD of this season! In the meantime, I’ll just have to make do with the next Seagal marathon on the tube where no doubt he’ll be fighting international gangsters or street thugs or crooked accountants or even vampires. What can I say? He's still a serious Em-effer.
See, I’ve been a fan of the lethal one since his auspicious debut in 1988’s Above The Law. How well I recall that opening day screening. It was a Friday night and I was in line for a midnight show at the Loews Orpheum II theater on 86th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan. I was out with my then-paramour, and the line we were on snaked around the block. We were in the midst, to put it kindly, of the sort of rough & rowdy crowd usually found in a 3 a.m. showing in a Times Square grind house. She expressed her concern and inquired why we were seeing this movie starring this complete unknown Seagal. I responded that I didn’t know about Seagal but I was there for 2 important reasons: Pam Grier. Well, the larger-than-large thug behind me thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard and repeated it to each and every person behind us in the line who also laughed uproariously. As a result, my lady and I were assured by this rather immense fellow that we’d be safe in the theater no matter how bad the movie. (There’ll be much more about this incident in my upcoming book How To Win Friends And Gain Needed Physical Protection or The Art Of The Well-Placed Wisecrack.)
With that reassuring fact in mind my lady and I took our seats in the abbreviated orchestra section – five rows - in the front of the theater. Now, the Orpheum II had stadium seating and normally I like to sit at the very top row of the balcony to get the true panoramic view. But as I explained to my date, I felt considering the restless energy in the audience, the closer we were to the street-level exit, the safer we’d be. Judging by the number of physical confrontations during the coming attractions, my hunch proved to be a correct one. A number of individuals were tossed down the steps only to land a few feet from us. Then they would get up and slowly limp towards the exit door never to return. The movie started but the noise and fighting didn’t. At one point, a man – to my recollection, the only Caucasian in the theater stood up and demanded silence. He got it – for a second. Then he was pelted with sodas, candy bars, popcorn buckets and whatever else could be picked up and tossed from the Orpheum floor. Cowering, he ran out of the theater screaming in fright. Too bad for him. Had he managed to stick it out just a couple of minutes, he would have seen Steven Seagal accomplish what he could not.
Okay, here’s the scene. Seagal, a tough pony-tailed cop named Nico, has his gun trained on a number of bad guys on a Chicago street. He informs them if any of them moves, he’ll kill them. One of the bad guys, realizing they outnumber the bullets in Seagal’s gun brazenly tells him that he can’t kill them all then moves towards him. Seagal instantly shoots him in the heart – killing him – and challenges the others to meet the same fate. With that single gunshot, the audience in my movie house, gasped then went as silent as Sunday morning churchgoers. From then on, the silence was only broken whenever Seagal demonstrated his martial arts moves. First, we’d never seen a big man like him – he’s nearly six-five! – move so fast, so gracefully, so fluidly with his hands. Second – with the exception of Sonny Chiba – we’d never seen so many broken bones on screen. The result was wild cheers. There was even prolonged applause at the film’s end. As we left the theater, I caught the eye of the head thug I’d amused pre-screening. “That Em-effer’s serious!” he enthused. I had to agree. Seagal’s fierce fighting skills and his nonchalant soft-spoken presence had even made me forget my disappointment of Pam Grier’s rather small role as his partner.
His follow-up, Hard To Kill, made me even more of a true believer. Here he was police officer Mason Storm – still his best character name – who discovers a top elected official is corrupt. Unfortunately, so too is everybody in his unit. The result? His wife – Sharon Stone! – is killed and he’s shot and presumed dead as well. But he’s not! See, he’s been in a seven-year coma and the nurse taking care of him – his then real-life wife Kelly LeBrock – has fallen in love with him. (Proving once again, fellas, that conversational skills are overrated.) But the really bad cops have found out he’s still alive so it’s a really lucky thing he awakes from this deep slumber and with the aid of Nurse LeBrock, leaves the hospital, takes some herbs, does some acupuncture, runs a few laps and gets back into fighting shape. Now this is when the movie really takes off as Seagal kills everyone by every possible means including pool cues and a literal kick-in-the-ass delivered to former Renegade co-star Branscombe Richmond! Again, Seagal delivered another satisfying effort.
His next two films were far more uneven. Marked For Death had him as – surprise! – a cop fighting a Jamaican drug gang. The best part? After killing the ruthless ringleader, Seagal is surprised that the villain has reappeared. Turns out the gang was led by identical twins! So Seagal proceeds to break every - and I do mean every - bone in the bad guy’s body, gouge his eyes out then throw him down an elevator shaft where he’s impaled on a giant coil! Seagal’s response brought the house down: ‘Sure hope he wasn’t triplets.” Out For Justice cast Seagal as a Brooklyn cop – shocking, ain’t it! – trying to stop psycho William Forsythe who killed his partner from starting a mob war. Besides seeing of such future television stars like Jerry Orbach and Julianna Marguiles in small roles, the surprise of Out For Justice is the three – count ‘em – long expository-filled monologues Seagal gives himself before each action set piece. It’s like he wanted to show casting directors he could actually act. But as a boisterous brother at my screening profanely shouted at the screen, Seagal fans didn’t come to see him act, they came to see him kick considerable ass.
Fortunately, with his next film, Under Siege, he did. The film was notable in many ways. It was the first without a three word title; the first without his trademark pony tail; the first that he wasn’t a cop. Here he was Navy cook Casey Rybeck. Granted, he was a cook who was an ex-Navy seal but he still wasn’t a cop. Here, in what was basically Die Hard on a boat, Seagal not only battled terrorists but A-list actors like Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey – who, believe it or not, was A-list at the time – and more than held his own. Under Siege was a box-office blockbuster which propelled Seagal to the then top of the action-movie heap with Schwarzenegger and Stallone.
Then came the slow-but-steady descent to direct-to-videoville. He next starred in and directed On Deadly Ground an environmental action flick where he took on the oil companies as well as Michael Caine made up to look like an Elvis impersonator. Unfortunately, it was more deadly dull than anything else. Then came a series of flicks where Seagal’s waistline expanded while his moviegoing audience seemed to shrink. Some were underrated – Fire Down Below, The Glimmer Man and even the inevitable sequel Under Siege 2 or Die Hard on a train – and others like The Patriot were just bad. Even his fine extended cameo in Executive Decision – Die Hard on a plane - which starred Kurt Russell and Halle Berry didn’t get him much attention.
So Seagal – blessed with a devoted inner-city audience – took another career path. The pony-tailed one went hip-hop teaming with DMX in Exit Wounds and Ja Rule in Half Past Dead. Unfortunately for Seagal, the results on screen were as mixed as the box-office results. (It’s interesting to note that few white actors are as relaxed onscreen around performers of color as Seagal. Perhaps it’s because he brings his own brand of confident hipness and doesn’t deign to condescend to some sort of stereotypical White Negro slang.)
Next stop for Seagal was the made-for-video action market. He wasn’t the first to do so. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the for rental shelves were chockfull of flicks starring folk not-ready-for-theatrical-release-prime-time like Oliver Gruner, Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Lorenzo Lamas and Dolph Lundgren. In the dawn of the new millennium, these same shelves became the refuge of such fading action stars as Jean Claude Van Damme and Wesley Snipes. But no one made as many with such vim and vigor as Seagal. (Usually garbed, by the way, in the same ¾ leather coats.)
In Submerged, he was a mercenary fighting terrorists. In Flight Of Fury, he’s a fighter pilot fighting insurgents. In Urban Justice – with comedian Eddie Griffin – he was a former government agent who moves to the hood to get his son’s killer while in Shadow Man, he’s a former government agent trying to find who kidnapped his daughter. In Today You Die – featuring Treach from Naughty By Nature – he’s an ex-con thief seeking revenge. In Belly Of The Beast, he’s an archeologist fighting Asian gangs while in The Keeper – which is Taken meets The Bodyguard – he plays a Texas – what else? – bodyguard. You get the point. Not a Noel Coward farce among them. (Although Seagal was quite funny in The Onion Movie satirizing himself.)
Now there were some – dare I say – risky projects? In Driven To Kill, he’s a former Russian – replete with accent! - gangster-turned-novelist – yes, you read that right – who returns to New York City’s Brighton Beach to protect his daughter. And in Kill Switch – Seagal’s version of Seven which he wrote – he’s a southern-accented Louisiana homicide detective haunted by the memories of his twin brother’s murder. Now remember that accent because it comes in handy in his latest and perhaps greatest project.
See like a kung-fu Zelig, Seagal uses it throughout his recent reality show entitled Steven Seagal Lawman. Turns out that for the last twenty years, Seagal has been a reserve deputy chief in Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish. Lawman takes us inside his regular patrols to provide what is, in my ever-humble opinion, one of the greatest reality programs in the history of television.
C’mon, you’ve got to love a show where you actually get to see an undercover agent’s non-pixilated face! A show which has what I call Seagalvision where they zoom into his ever-watchful face with a whoosh sound effect then give the viewer a slow-motion POV of what Reserve Deputy Chief Seagal is seeing from his passenger side seat of the police SUV cruiser he’s patrolling in. A show where the people in the parish are consistently surprised to see him even though he’s been patrolling these streets for we've been told is two decades. A show where a suspected drug dealer calls him ‘Mr. Stallone.’ A show where he calls Van Damme ‘a gnat.’ A show where he actually shoots off the head of a match at a distance of several yards away. A show where he demonstrates his still-formidable hand speed by tossing fellow officers to the ground during training exercises. And I’m not even getting into his musical appearances with his band or his practicing of acupuncture on his police brethren. (Let’s see Van Damme try that!) I’ll just tell you Steven Seagal Lawman is riveting television Not only can I not wait for next season, I can’t wait for the DVD of this season! In the meantime, I’ll just have to make do with the next Seagal marathon on the tube where no doubt he’ll be fighting international gangsters or street thugs or crooked accountants or even vampires. What can I say? He's still a serious Em-effer.
February 4, 2010
A Valentine's Day Soundtrack
My friend Liz Langley – a terrific writer - posed an intriguing question to me the other night: if I had to pick three albums – a “sexy,” “romantic” and “goofy” one – for a Valentine’s Day soundtrack, which would I select? Well, here they are and the reasons why.
Sexy: Let’s Get It On by Marvin Gaye. As my choices show, I’ve been in an old-school mood lately. (For the musically-challenged, old-school refers to the pre ‘90’s period of the 20th century when both radio and melody mattered.) Now, I could’ve selected discs by Maxwell, Robin Thicke, Usher, R. Kelly, even Prince but why bother when I can go to the source. See, in the ’70’s with albums like What’s Going On, I Want You and Let’s Get It On, Marvin Gaye set the musical template that today’s “sexy” singers fervently follow. Of the aforementioned Marvin trinity, Let’s Get It On states its case with a then-uncommon frankness. Just the song titles tell you exactly what was on the marvelous one’s mind: “Keep Getting’ It On,” “Come Get To This,” “You Sure Love To Ball,” “Just To Keep You Satisfied” and, of course, the sublime “Let’s Get It On.” (Already in possession of his fans’ hearts and minds, Marvin decided this time to aim for their nether regions.) Finally, I gotta say that if you can’t do the deed with the sounds of the ultimate love man at his cooing best then stop, get up, power up the computer and Google ‘nearest monastery” cause that’s where you’re headed. (Pun intended.)
Romantic: Promise by Sade. There was many a contender for this title. Performers from Luther Vandross to Luis Miguel to the Isley Brothers to Roxy Music to Johnny Mathis to Miles Davis to John Coltrane to Barry White have created multiple works of undeniable sensual satisfaction. (Shoot, with the right combination of candlelight, wine and person, even Barry Manilow, Ol’ Dirty Bastard or the Ramones can work. Trust me on this.) But on this – her second LP – Sade hit a sustained sensual peak few performers have ever matched. Sinuously slinking through tunes like “Is It A Crime,” – still her most emotional song –“The Sweetest Taboo,” “War Of The Hearts” and “Never As Good As The First Time,” the combination of Sade’s smoky vocals and the pseudo-jazz instrumentation anchored by a mournful saxophone creates a sumptuous ambience than transcends the depressing lyrics. It’s a downer of an album but an uplifting experience, if, wink-wink, you know what I mean.
Goofy: Love To Love You Baby by Donna Summer. This was the toughest choice to make. I mean, you’re talking to a guy who with the right lady can have, ahem, fun to, say, the theme to Ren & Stimpy. (And I’ve got the affidavits to prove it.) So I thought about quirky albums like Stevie Wonder’s great, much misunderstood masterwork The Secret Life Of Plants. (Think of it as the aural equivalent to Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno series and you’ll get what I mean.) Or stuff from artists as far-flung and disparate as Rammstein, Paul Anka, Method Man, Ennio Morricone, Fleetwood Mac, the Clash, Public Enemy, Cher, Def Leppard, Reba McEntire and the Spice Girls. (I plead guilty – with a big smile – to all of the above.) Well, you understand my dilemma. That’s why I went back to the birth of disco’s sexual frankness. I’m referring, of course, to Donna Summer’s groundbreaking – and, for some, backbreaking – moan-a-thon Love To Love You Baby. Now forget the other five tracks on this LP. They don’t matter and 93% of you won’t get to them anyway. See, the trick is to last, to survive the 16 minutes and 51 seconds of the album’s title track. Clocking in at an unofficial 2000 moans and 1769 orgasms – that’s counting every hiccup, sigh and stammer – Love To Love You Baby is an exhilarating showcase for Ms. Summer’s ahem, skills. (After hearing this song again recently, I now believe a reason she later became born-again is that she was just too tuckered out to sin). While it may have set the Olympian standard for orgiastic oratory, I urge each of you reading this to put this track on Valentine evening and - to quote Sly Stallone in the neo-Shakespearean cinema classic Rocky III - “Go for it!” (Records were made to be broken, right?) In the interim, feel free to send in your own picks and remember to have a happy VD, everybody!
Sexy: Let’s Get It On by Marvin Gaye. As my choices show, I’ve been in an old-school mood lately. (For the musically-challenged, old-school refers to the pre ‘90’s period of the 20th century when both radio and melody mattered.) Now, I could’ve selected discs by Maxwell, Robin Thicke, Usher, R. Kelly, even Prince but why bother when I can go to the source. See, in the ’70’s with albums like What’s Going On, I Want You and Let’s Get It On, Marvin Gaye set the musical template that today’s “sexy” singers fervently follow. Of the aforementioned Marvin trinity, Let’s Get It On states its case with a then-uncommon frankness. Just the song titles tell you exactly what was on the marvelous one’s mind: “Keep Getting’ It On,” “Come Get To This,” “You Sure Love To Ball,” “Just To Keep You Satisfied” and, of course, the sublime “Let’s Get It On.” (Already in possession of his fans’ hearts and minds, Marvin decided this time to aim for their nether regions.) Finally, I gotta say that if you can’t do the deed with the sounds of the ultimate love man at his cooing best then stop, get up, power up the computer and Google ‘nearest monastery” cause that’s where you’re headed. (Pun intended.)
Romantic: Promise by Sade. There was many a contender for this title. Performers from Luther Vandross to Luis Miguel to the Isley Brothers to Roxy Music to Johnny Mathis to Miles Davis to John Coltrane to Barry White have created multiple works of undeniable sensual satisfaction. (Shoot, with the right combination of candlelight, wine and person, even Barry Manilow, Ol’ Dirty Bastard or the Ramones can work. Trust me on this.) But on this – her second LP – Sade hit a sustained sensual peak few performers have ever matched. Sinuously slinking through tunes like “Is It A Crime,” – still her most emotional song –“The Sweetest Taboo,” “War Of The Hearts” and “Never As Good As The First Time,” the combination of Sade’s smoky vocals and the pseudo-jazz instrumentation anchored by a mournful saxophone creates a sumptuous ambience than transcends the depressing lyrics. It’s a downer of an album but an uplifting experience, if, wink-wink, you know what I mean.
Goofy: Love To Love You Baby by Donna Summer. This was the toughest choice to make. I mean, you’re talking to a guy who with the right lady can have, ahem, fun to, say, the theme to Ren & Stimpy. (And I’ve got the affidavits to prove it.) So I thought about quirky albums like Stevie Wonder’s great, much misunderstood masterwork The Secret Life Of Plants. (Think of it as the aural equivalent to Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno series and you’ll get what I mean.) Or stuff from artists as far-flung and disparate as Rammstein, Paul Anka, Method Man, Ennio Morricone, Fleetwood Mac, the Clash, Public Enemy, Cher, Def Leppard, Reba McEntire and the Spice Girls. (I plead guilty – with a big smile – to all of the above.) Well, you understand my dilemma. That’s why I went back to the birth of disco’s sexual frankness. I’m referring, of course, to Donna Summer’s groundbreaking – and, for some, backbreaking – moan-a-thon Love To Love You Baby. Now forget the other five tracks on this LP. They don’t matter and 93% of you won’t get to them anyway. See, the trick is to last, to survive the 16 minutes and 51 seconds of the album’s title track. Clocking in at an unofficial 2000 moans and 1769 orgasms – that’s counting every hiccup, sigh and stammer – Love To Love You Baby is an exhilarating showcase for Ms. Summer’s ahem, skills. (After hearing this song again recently, I now believe a reason she later became born-again is that she was just too tuckered out to sin). While it may have set the Olympian standard for orgiastic oratory, I urge each of you reading this to put this track on Valentine evening and - to quote Sly Stallone in the neo-Shakespearean cinema classic Rocky III - “Go for it!” (Records were made to be broken, right?) In the interim, feel free to send in your own picks and remember to have a happy VD, everybody!
January 27, 2010
Teddy, Teddy, Teddy
In the land of rhythm & blues, if Smokey Robinson was the master of romance, Marvin Gaye the king of eroticism and Barry White the maestro of sensuality then Teddy Pendergrass was the sultan of straight-up, sweaty, satin-sheet sex. (This is the man who over the course of a triptych of sensational sultry slow jams - "Come Go With Me," "Close The Door" and "Turn Out The Lights") proposed breaking out the candles, some boiling oils and, if that wasn't enough, promised to reach into his bag of tricks and pull out 'a little bit more.' He also asked his prospective partner at the end of "Close" to let him 'do do do do.' Insert easy joke here.) As terrific as those tunes were, they only give a hint of Pendergrass' greatness and influence. (About the latter, all I can say is when Teddy decided to sport a cowboy hat and shearing jacket on the rear cover of his 1978 LP "Life Is A Song Worth Singing," a week after it came out I spotted brothers of all shapes, sizes and shades wearing western garb all over El Barrio and Harlem.) As a singer, Pendergrass was simply superb. His authoritative, supple baritone first came to prominence in the early Seventies as the lead singer of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes on Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's Philadelphia International. (Got all that? Good because there's gonna be a test later.) In Pendergrass, songwriters/producers Gamble & Huff found - with the possible exception of the O'Jays' Eddie Levert - the perfect voice for their compositions. And what songs they were! From uptempo jams like "The Love I Lost," "Don't Leave Me This Way," and - best of all - "Bad Luck" to ballads like "If You Don't Know Me By Now" to message music like "Wake Up Everybody," Pendergrass' powerful voice and percussive phrasing - he was a former drummer - transformed these tunes into classics. In 1977, after leaving Melvin and the Blue Notes allegedly due to dissension and jealousy within the group, he found instant solo success with a terrific eponymous LP featuring "I Don't Love You Anymore" and "The More I Get, The More I Want." (The rumored rift between Melvin, the nominal leader of the group, and Pendergrass, the true voice of the Blue Notes brought an added edge to the three-way duets between them and Sharon Paige: "Hope That We Can Be Together Soon" and "You Know How To Make Me Feel So Good.") By that time, he'd been transformed into a bonafide sex symbol replete with special concerts designated 'for ladies only.' (Just listen to his live double CD "Teddy Live Coast-to-Coast" to hear the unbridled passion and unleashed excitement of these shows. Talk about aural sex.) But the hoopla served to obscure Pendergrass' brilliance. He was a great singer and songs like "Is It Still Good To Ya," "Love T.K.O.," "It's Time For Love", and especially "My Latest, Greatest Inspiration" with his falsetto coda proved it. (Not to forget to mention two excellent duets with the diminutive Stephanie Mills: "Two Hearts" and "Feel The Fire" which featured Mills' unforgettable moan of 'Teddy. Teddy, Teddy.') Then, tragically, in 1982, Pendergrass was paralyzed in an auto accident. After a lengthy recuperation period, he left Gamble & Huff for Elektra Records. There he made some fine LPs and although he lacked the booming power of his halcyon days, he still had enough sex appeal left in the vocal tank to show them youngsters how to do it. (That alone was reason enough to be chosen by director Alan Rudolph as the musical voice of seduction on his great film "Choose Me.")Then musical tastes changed and Pendergrass slowly faded out of the picture. (It's one of the continuing shames of America that far too many times an artist of color must to die before his/her professional output is even partially appreciated or taken seriously.) Let us then use his passing to celebrate his brilliance. Plan an intimate rendezvous with a special someone, break out the bubbly, light the incense and the scented candles, lay out the rose petals and the oils, dim the lights and put the man they called Teddy Bear on the stereo and let nature take its course. (In other words, do do do do.) It's a just tribute to a terrific - and terrifically underrated - artist.
January 14, 2010
The Best Music of 2009
A confession. I’m not the biggest fan of year-end top ten lists. Let’s face it, some years – like this one – you can’t come up with ten albums you absolutely love. Also, it’s not like I’ve heard every album released during the year. Although I am Rich in name, spirit and friends, I am not in terms of bank accounts. As such, I tend to restrict my lists to the music I’ve purchased or have been given by a generous pal or kind publicist. In addition, I like to live with an album for a while. See, in many ways listening to an album is like dating. There are the ones you dislike instantly and never see or hear from again. There are the ones that you think you love at first but, three encounters later, you realize everything that can be said has been said and all that follows now is boredom. Then there are the ones with nuance which reveal different pleasures with each listen. The following six albums - presented from number 6 to number 1- meet the preceding requirements and are, so far, the keepers.
“The Fall” by Norah Jones. Like another overnight sensation, Alanis Morrissette, the critical chatter of Jones’ work since her meteoric debut has been more about declining CD sales rather than artistic growth. That’s a shame because also like Morrissette, Jones’ music has deepened with each successive album. Centering on a relationship’s demise, “The Fall” is her best yet. Think of this as her Millie Jackson album with Jones convincingly singing with an angry, brokenhearted weariness. Whoever this guy Jones is warbling about must be feeling mighty low now. Seems like he drove her out of Brooklyn – as on the album’s best cut “Back To Manhattan” – and straight into the studio for one terrific finger-wagging record.
“King Of Latin Soul” by Joe Bataan. This is a totally sentimental pick. Among my treasured earliest memories as an infant are of sitting on my late much-beloved grandmother’s living room sofa while my uncles and aunts danced to the latest boogaloo 45’s. Backed by the fine Spanish group Los Fulanos, Bataan recreates that signature sound and ably reproduces the sonic excitement as well.
“Stronger With Each Tear” by Mary J. Blige. In which the greatest soul singer of the last 25 years proves why she’s deserving of such a title. Even when the material isn’t up to her ever-improving vocal powers, Blige’s commitment to truth in the grooves elevates it. And when the songs are worthy of her - as the last three “Kitchen,” “In The Morning” and “I Can See In Color” are – the results are as miraculous as she is.
“Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel” by Mariah Carey. In which the most underrated diva of the last 25 years continues her winning streak. Since her “Vision Of Love” debut, Carey has consistently put out one entertaining album after another. Forget the pampered image and drunken award acceptance speeches and just listen to that glorious voice. It’s no wonder she’s directly influenced a generation - for good and bad – of hitmakers from Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears to Jordin Sparks. It’s that powerful and expressive. And when she’s pissed off as on the Eminem diss “Obsessed,” well, let’s just say there’s no other pop singer that can hit high C with a snarl.
“Together Through Life” by Bob Dylan. Dylan hasn’t sounded this fresh, funky and, yes, funny in ages. The highpoint? His evil chuckle at the end of “My Wife’s Hometown.” (Which just happens to be Hell.)
“BLACKSummers’ Night” by Maxwell. Not only is this the best album of the year, this is the best soul man album since Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You.” With this sultry R&B work with jazz underpinnings, the previously-underrated Maxwell enters the musical pantheon. The first thought after hearing the superb album opener “Bad Habits” is that he has never sung with such unadulterated passion. The realization a few months and dozens of listens later is that few male singers ever have. What makes the album great is that he dares to start at such a high emotional peak and then maintains it for the next 8 tracks. A masterwork.
Honorable mentions: “Cantora” by Mercedes Sosa: a worthy coda to a glorious career. “MPL Sound” by Prince: the Purple One’s best dance disc since “The Black Album.” “Music For Men” by Gossip: an exciting effort which almost equaled the hype. “Let’s Do it Again” by Leela James: finally, Shanachie releases a covers album that nearly matches the originals.
Song of the year: “Empire State Of Mind” by Jay-Z & Alicia Keys.
In which Hova proclaims himself to be the new Sinatra and bolsters his case by providing the Big Apple – and, later, the Yankees – with the best anthem it’s had since Ol’ Blue Eyes hijacked “New York, New York” from Liza Minnelli. The funniest thing about it is as much as I love it, now that I’ve heard Alicia Keys’ quieter take on it on her “The Element Of Freedom" album, I prefer her version. Where Jay-Z swaggers through the streets of New York, Keys provides a slower, sensitive tour through the city that never sleeps. It’s the difference between traveling by limo and a gypsy cab. One’s about being sleek and styling while the other’s about necessity and negotiation. Yes, they both get you to your destination but only the latter’s going to give the grit and bumps of the city. While Jay-Z gives you the panoramic view; Keys not only zooms in on the faces on the corners but also their souls. Great stuff either way.
“The Fall” by Norah Jones. Like another overnight sensation, Alanis Morrissette, the critical chatter of Jones’ work since her meteoric debut has been more about declining CD sales rather than artistic growth. That’s a shame because also like Morrissette, Jones’ music has deepened with each successive album. Centering on a relationship’s demise, “The Fall” is her best yet. Think of this as her Millie Jackson album with Jones convincingly singing with an angry, brokenhearted weariness. Whoever this guy Jones is warbling about must be feeling mighty low now. Seems like he drove her out of Brooklyn – as on the album’s best cut “Back To Manhattan” – and straight into the studio for one terrific finger-wagging record.
“King Of Latin Soul” by Joe Bataan. This is a totally sentimental pick. Among my treasured earliest memories as an infant are of sitting on my late much-beloved grandmother’s living room sofa while my uncles and aunts danced to the latest boogaloo 45’s. Backed by the fine Spanish group Los Fulanos, Bataan recreates that signature sound and ably reproduces the sonic excitement as well.
“Stronger With Each Tear” by Mary J. Blige. In which the greatest soul singer of the last 25 years proves why she’s deserving of such a title. Even when the material isn’t up to her ever-improving vocal powers, Blige’s commitment to truth in the grooves elevates it. And when the songs are worthy of her - as the last three “Kitchen,” “In The Morning” and “I Can See In Color” are – the results are as miraculous as she is.
“Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel” by Mariah Carey. In which the most underrated diva of the last 25 years continues her winning streak. Since her “Vision Of Love” debut, Carey has consistently put out one entertaining album after another. Forget the pampered image and drunken award acceptance speeches and just listen to that glorious voice. It’s no wonder she’s directly influenced a generation - for good and bad – of hitmakers from Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears to Jordin Sparks. It’s that powerful and expressive. And when she’s pissed off as on the Eminem diss “Obsessed,” well, let’s just say there’s no other pop singer that can hit high C with a snarl.
“Together Through Life” by Bob Dylan. Dylan hasn’t sounded this fresh, funky and, yes, funny in ages. The highpoint? His evil chuckle at the end of “My Wife’s Hometown.” (Which just happens to be Hell.)
“BLACKSummers’ Night” by Maxwell. Not only is this the best album of the year, this is the best soul man album since Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You.” With this sultry R&B work with jazz underpinnings, the previously-underrated Maxwell enters the musical pantheon. The first thought after hearing the superb album opener “Bad Habits” is that he has never sung with such unadulterated passion. The realization a few months and dozens of listens later is that few male singers ever have. What makes the album great is that he dares to start at such a high emotional peak and then maintains it for the next 8 tracks. A masterwork.
Honorable mentions: “Cantora” by Mercedes Sosa: a worthy coda to a glorious career. “MPL Sound” by Prince: the Purple One’s best dance disc since “The Black Album.” “Music For Men” by Gossip: an exciting effort which almost equaled the hype. “Let’s Do it Again” by Leela James: finally, Shanachie releases a covers album that nearly matches the originals.
Song of the year: “Empire State Of Mind” by Jay-Z & Alicia Keys.
In which Hova proclaims himself to be the new Sinatra and bolsters his case by providing the Big Apple – and, later, the Yankees – with the best anthem it’s had since Ol’ Blue Eyes hijacked “New York, New York” from Liza Minnelli. The funniest thing about it is as much as I love it, now that I’ve heard Alicia Keys’ quieter take on it on her “The Element Of Freedom" album, I prefer her version. Where Jay-Z swaggers through the streets of New York, Keys provides a slower, sensitive tour through the city that never sleeps. It’s the difference between traveling by limo and a gypsy cab. One’s about being sleek and styling while the other’s about necessity and negotiation. Yes, they both get you to your destination but only the latter’s going to give the grit and bumps of the city. While Jay-Z gives you the panoramic view; Keys not only zooms in on the faces on the corners but also their souls. Great stuff either way.
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