Song of the Day
Ye Me Le - Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66
Blame it on the bossa nova- Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66
Okay...okay, I confess. I'm guilty as charged loving for dance oriented electronica groups who play bright bouncy pop music. Blame it on the bossa nova and Brazil 66.
My shameles craving for coma inducing saccharin pop goes way back to my childhood. It all began with my father's martini-before-dinner ritual when I was growing up. Every night without fail, my father would come home from work, mix up a martini then go straight for his prized hi-fi set and put on a song. He usually put on the jazzy bossa nova offerings by Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66 then he headed over to his Lazy Boy recliner, took a sip of his beverage and closed his eyes and drift away into some girl from Ipanema fantasy.
My father worked a thankless and stressful job and I firmly believe his nightly ritual of a martini and music were his own form quaint form of psychoanalysis.
Whatever name you want to call his ritual, it worked. My father never raised his voice or his hand to any family member, he never made nasty remark about anyone, and the only time I ever saw him lose his temper was when a sadistic Catholic nun left welts all over my legs as a result of a severe beating she gave me with a barber's strap for talking in class.
Brazil 66 played pop oriented songs fearturing exotic samba rhythms and two comely female vocalists doing seductive renditions Brazilian bossa nova and samba classics along with Latin infused covers of current American pop songs.
For many years Brazil 66 was dismissed as a lightweight, easy listening pop band by it's critics. When the public interest in international music came to the fore in the Nineties, it slowly dawned on Brazil 66's former detractors that the group was one of the earliest if not the first band to experiment with the fusion of global music rhythms with jazz and popular music.
From my father’s love for this dreamy pop music, I learned of the mystical properties of music and it's p[ower to cure pain and restore the human soul.10 years ago when I was still in grad school studying clinical psychology, the medical literature on music therapy was just beginning to emerge.
In my own personal experience I’ve seen music heal more far more folks with mental health problems than drugs, self help groups or counseling. With every one of my therapy clients I use music as way to earn their trust and form a theraputic bond with them. Music will become an even more important curative tool when the rest of the medical research world finally realizes what Bob Marley already told us in Trenchtown Rock:
One good thing about music
When it hits you feel no pain
So hit me with music
Hit me with music now
It doesn't matter if your taste in music is Sergio Mendes or Bob Marley, the end result is what's important. I can even imagine that
William Shatner's stark raving, straigh outta of the looney bin rendition of Mr. Tamborine Man helps a few troubled souls to make it through the night.
Ummm, well... maybe not.
There has been a sudden interest by deejays, rappers and remixers in the sambanistic riddims of Brazil 66. The Brazil 66 song
Mas Que Nada has been sampled, remixed and rapped over by dozens of prominent artists and club deejays during the past year. If you browse YouTube you will see a large assortment of remixes of the Brazil 66 by younger deejays.
Two of my favorite bands Stereolab and Saint Etienne were influenced by Brazil 66's breezy pop approach. On Stereolab's earliest albums the vocal harmonies of Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen sound strikingly like Lani Hall and Janis Hansen's blended vocals with Brazil 66. Listen to the Sadier and Hansen’s vocals on the first four Stereolab albums and you’ll see what I mean. Saint Etienne’s similarity to Brazil 66 is less obvious and has more to do musical tonality and timbre.
Electronica stylists like Ivy, Annie and Owl City have explored and expanded the musical territory of Brazil 66 opened up.
On the video below if you listen to Lani Hall's modulating voice when she sings the chorus "ye me le" the timbre her vocal like is remarkably similar to that former Cocteau Twin vocalist Elizabeth Frazier.
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Bonus Video
Smile of the Century
The video posted below is a remix by a group called the Rapture Riders and it's a great mashup of the Blondie's
Rapture and the Door's
Riders of the Storm that's been around on the internet for a couple of years now.
The music isn't the reason I embedded the video.
The real star of the video has made his appearance in the first 10 seconds of the video and disappears back into immortality before the music ever begins.
At the opening is an old newsreel film of Jim Morrison sauntering up to a customs counter at an airport. Wacth for the reaction on Morrison's face when the customs agent asks him for his occupation. The clip is only 10 seconds so keep your eye on it.
That two second moment frozen in time, tells you more about inner workings of Jim Morrison's mind than the all the words in the in the dozens of biographies of his life.
A printed screen shot of Morrison's devilish smile at that very moment, should be hung next to the Mona Lisa where it's on display in the Salle des États at the Louvre.
Jim's spirit undoubtly prowls the street of Paris and when gets bored with his afterlife in the Père Lachaise Cemetery just down the boulevard; I'm sure he spends more than a few restless afternoons roaming the halls of the Louvre. If Jim came across a framed picture of his own smiling image next to Mona, he may give us all one last enigmatic smile to remember him by. For now all we have is this priceless video on YouTube.