"Reverse Review" for Rosalind

Profuse apologies to Nancy for the delay in posting this review.

No big - life gets in the way sometimes, I know.


3rd of July - The Jody Grind
Lovely, mellow song with a slight Latin tang. Doesn't send shivers up my spine exactly but I'd enjoy chilling out with this in the background.

I never noticed anything Latin in this song. Hmm. It's the first song I ever learned to play on the bass, and one of my favorites of their brief collection.

¿Donde Estabas Tu? - Omara Portuondo
This is the full-throated, hip-grinding slinky, Latin Real Thing. This one makes me want to grab somebody sexy and drag them onto a dance floor for some serious intertwining of limbs.

I don't know if you know Spanish, but the whole song is an angry lament to the missing guy, who is most likely off with some other woman. The singer was profiled in Buena Vista Social Club, my favorite music movie of all time, and this is from a solo album she released after the soundtrack. If you like this, I recommend the album for more of the same vibe.

Gold Mine - Take 6
More mellow chill-out music. Starts out sounding like an orchestra tuning up, and segues into something between Manhattan Transfer and the Swingle Singers complete with cool piano-bar finger-clickin'. Nowt wrong with that, but it's music for drifting off to.

This is actually a gospel song by a gospel group, though their style of music is clearly jazz. We have very different reactions to this one, because it makes me want to move. Something about it is exhilarating to me, although the feeling isn't coming from religious sentiment.

Falling For A Funny One - Eye to Eye
Still smooth and slinky. This time with a dollop of something close to soft seventies soul. I like this one. It's got a nice beat to it and I can imagine running along Walney beach with this in my earphones, gliding along to the rhythm.

This song is exactly what the eighties sounded like to me. The singer is Deborah Berg. I wonder what's become of her and her beautiful voice. I also like the words to this. It reminds me why I married my husband. :-)

Gone Daddy Gone - Gnarls Barkley
And now a complete change of time and tempo. There's something of the 60s West Coast counterculture about it, except that it's been sanded down and given a coat of varnish. Plummy arrangement with all rough edges rubbed off, and a growly voice devoid of menace. I can't help feeling it should be more thrilling than it is.

This is one of my new favorite groups. I never heard them until Mark (spouse) played it in the car on vacation this summer, even though they'd won an emmy a couple years ago. The two members are Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo Green, both from this area. Danger Mouse actually lived and worked in Athens, GA for a long time. Cee-Lo is a rapper from Atlanta.

Stella - Ida Maria
This one I do like. I've never heard of Ida Maria before but I'd like to hear more. Sexy little lesbian love call.

She's a Norwegian singer, also a recent discovery to me. There are several really memorable tunes from this album.

New Experience - Michelle Malone
And here's more 60s stuff given a 21st-century twist, in this case a song incorporating an original twist on John Phillips's San Francisco. Nice voice.

I always thought so, too. She's from Atlanta, was popular in the early nineties.

Since I Met You Baby - BB King and Katie Webster
Absolute classic 1950s gospel blues. This is real spine-tingling, toe-curling stuff and they don't make 'em like this any more. So what if the production sounds its age?

This is from a CD of BB King duets. I heard Katie Webster for the first time in 1989 on a blues program when I was living in Eugene, Oregon. This one song of hers, "My Sexy Red Negligee" got a good bit of airplay, and I tracked down an album of hers after that. Unfortunately, I don't know how to convert vinyl to digital. Anyway, I'm glad you liked this one.

Eight Ball - The Jody Grind
Somebody likes The Jody Grind a lot around here - I'm building up a fine collection now. Ah yes, they take their name from a classic Horace Silver jazz tack from the 60s, and that figures. Here they are again, and this time they're doing something like vintage Jefferson Airplane which I like.

This was from their first album, which was much less polished than their second (and last).

Jimmy Olsen's Blues - Spin Doctors
At first I thought I was going to really like this, judging by the opening. Afterwards it turns into a routine piece of guitar rock which does little for me. I must be getting old!

I'm not a particular fan of mainstream guitar rock either, but this, for me, is a fine specimen of its type. I always want to get up and dance around the room to this one. Early nineties again.

Micky's Monkey - Mother's Finest
This is also guitar rock but there's something in the play of the voices that sounds a little more dangerous and therefore more satisfying.

I love this group and debated many times which track to include. Mother's Finest was an Atlanta band in the seventies. They were still popular when I was in high school (early eighties) and it was cool to wear their tour t-shirts, embossed with the big letters "MF."

Sunday Morning - K-OS
Nice solid beat to this one. The vocals sound deceptive, as if this is one that is going to grow on me. The arrangement is clever and demands to be listened to. I can imagine this one going out running with me.

This song is totally off my beaten path, and I love it. They're a Canadian group - Canadians are always surprising me.

Rose Garden - Southern Culture On The Skids
Country standard with a memorable tune, performed here with great gusto. Maybe it's being taken a tad too fast, as if they are rushing through it without stopping to savour the venom that runs through the song.

This is a southern rock group that parodies southern rock. I loved their version of this old song with the rock and roll guitar. I saw them play one time at a local club - lots of fun!

Honeysuckle Rose - Holly Cole
Lovely rendering of the Fats Waller classic. Whimsical, theatrical, camp as hell and with a glorious fiddle accompaniment.

Another Canadian, and yes, camp is the word! Great voice, though, huh?

David - Nellie McKay
I had the singer's Ding Dong on a previous Mix Club sample and I came to love that. This is another in the same mould of original and disturbingly chirpy psychosis. Nellie McKay is a real discovery for me and I will be hunting her music down.

"disturbingly chirpy psychosis" - great description!

Mary Ann - Steve Miller
I like this. Smooth, cool, jazzy and infectious. I'm a sucker for this kind of louche, piano-bar stuff, don't you know?

Me, too. The album is Born 2 Blue - you would probably like the whole thing.

Ruby - Walter Hyatt
Hmm. Here's more of the piano-bar stuff. Somebody is getting to know my susceptibilities too much. There's a real old-school Tin Pan Alley feel to this, even though it can't be. Waiter, another martini if you don't mind. Straight-up, rocks on the side, and an extra olive please.

Walter Hyatt is one of my favorite musicians of all time. He was a protegee of Lyle Lovett, and died much too early - age 45, 1996 - in an airplane crash.

The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In Her Kiss) - The Nylons
Gorgeous doo-wop twist on the great Betty Everett song. Betty's is the best version (step aside, Cher) but this one has an infections campness about it.

The Nylons are lots of fun. I got to hear them live one time - very impressive show.

Lounge Axe - The Jody Grind
Hello, here's the Jody Grind again. I have a feeling that seeing these guys live is quite an event. I can't easily get over to Atlanta but maybe they'll play Forum 28 one day. And I is Annie Lennox!

As you might have guessed by now, they never will. Their lead singer, Kelly Hogan, is still performing solo and with other musicians in the alt country genre. She's based in Chicago now, so doesn't get back to Atlanta much. The guitar player, Bill Taft, is still playing in Atlanta, in a band called Hubcap City. Bass player Robert Hayes and drummer Walter Brewer died in a car accident after the release of their second CD. I heard them play many times in Athens and Atlanta, and it was always a great experience!

Poupée de cir poupée de son - France Gall
Blimey, this takes me back! Not that I'm familiar with the particular song, but certainly of the form - the peculiarly French kind of 60s pop music associated with Johnny Halliday and Françoise Hardy that bravely tried to hold the line against les Anglo-Saxons. Pleasant, and unmemorable but for hinted-at memories of warm baguettes and artichauds au vinaigrette!

I heard this one time, and it was like one of those drug-resistant bacteria - I have never really gotten it out of my head since. For all its cuteness, the song is laden with an irony that makes it more interesting than it might be. Written by Serge Gainsbourg and sung by teenager France Gall, it won the Eurovision prize in 1965.

So, a lovely, mellow compilation. Not everything grabbed me in a what-have-I-been-missing way (as happened with my last mix from Nancy), but there's nothing here I wouldn't enjoy hearing again, and one or two that are a delight. Others will, I'm sure, grow on me.

Glad you liked it. I was aiming for a more upbeat mix for you, but it didn't seem to work out that way in the end!