Category: music

One of the things I like best about where I work is that there’s a ton of music around, because Lawrence has its own Conservatory. I go to stuff all the time; a few weeks ago I caught a lecture/performance of Cuban music and since then have been poking around, asking people like my parents (who cha cha cha’d their way into marriage, as it were, & are Xavier Cugat fans).

A tiny detail: Tito Puente wasn’t himself Cuban but Puerto Rican, but the music he popularized (but didn’t invent) was Afro-Cuban. Benny More was known as the “Sinatra of Cuba” and there’s a cool book about him called Wildman of Rhythm: The Life and Music of Benny Moré.

Maybe not entirely forgotten, but highly neglected: The Polecats song is just charming as hell, and I can’t think of another song that has the word “oscillator” in it. Fine Early Geekage Period. The Hoodoo Gurus actually had a couple of other tracks people might remember – notably “Bittersweet” – but this was always my favorite, mostly for the yes yes yes yes i’m impressed bit.

Prototypes is a new band; I have no idea where I found them. Air is from the late 90s, Les Rita Mitsouko were around in the late ’80s, when this track – and the video – got play in plenty of clubs (at least the ones I went to).

You may as well start off the year right, so here’s Rufus. Apparently he’s someone people either hear & love or hear & think “What?” For me, it was all about the Gap commercial, back in the day. I’m one of those people, who will probably always prefer the first record for it’s lovely vaudevillian richness.

The tracks are mostly in chronological order:

• Foolish Love from the eponymous Rufus Wainwright (which has that lyric of all lyrics, “so the day noah’s ark / floats down Park / my eyes will be / simply glazed over”)
• Greek Song from Poses (when I’m not paying attention, & he hits that first “All” of “all the pearls of China” I just cry. It’s pathetic, but it’s true.)
  
• Beautiful Child from Want One (the song Radiohead should cover, or Rufus should perform with Thom Yorke).
  
• The One You Love from Want Two (let’s fuck this art party, indeed.)
  
• Between My Legs from Release the Stars (all i can say is : i can’t fa a a aa aaaaaake it; the voiceover is from I, Claudius)
  
• & an older soundtrack song, Instant Pleasure, which he didn’t write but – well, just listen & you’ll understand why Rufus fans still want to hear it live.

There are so many more I love, songs that make me cry or laugh out loud. He is absolutely, a million percent great to see live.

Thank you, Rufus. & Long live Rufus.