PART 9: ISMAEL RIVERA

Aaaaaannd we're back. I know I haven't posted a new entry in awhile, but...well, I've been busy with jazz (got an obit for Andrew Hill running in the Village Voice I think next week) and metal (interviewed French doom metal band Monarch for Metal Maniacs magazine) and other, non-Fania Latin discs, too. I got three amazing compilations in the mail recently: New York Latin Hustle!, a typically great 2CD set on Soul Jazz; ¡Gozalo!: Bugalu Tropical Vol. 1, a terrific pile-up of rare Peruvian tracks mixing bugalu, jazz, psychedelic rock and more, all from the late ’60s, on Vampisoul; and Colombia!, a compilation of tracks from that country’s Discos Fuentes label, on Soundways. (The relentless deployment of exclamation marks in all these album titles might seem silly, unless you’ve actually heard the records.) Plus putting together one more issue of Global Rhythm...But anyway, I finally had some time to return to this project this morning, on a leisurely walk around town, and based on advice from someone who knows way more about salsa than me, I picked this album off the pile.

Ismael Rivera's got a great voice. He kind of makes me think he could be Tego Calderón's uncle or something; they've got similar vocal timbre and share a thick Puerto Rican accent, though Rivera's about 1000x more comprehensible than Tego - I can pick out whole lines of lyrics on this album, whereas El Subestimado is pretty much a brick wall of macho mumbling. The band on this record is tight, without seeming tense or jumpy. The relatively small horn section (one trumpet, one trombone, one saxophone) doesn't have the gleaming blare of some of the other records I've been listening to, offering more of a jazzy, blurry warmth, without sacrificing the punch that salsa depends on. The guy playing the tres is really good, too; not as jagged as the guy I called out earlier on the Celia Cruz et al. disc, but still cutting right through the group sound with that weird barbed-wire jangle that only that instrument seems to produce. (Avant-jazz guitarist Joe Morris should get himself one of those; he could do amazing things with that sound, I bet.) Anyway, this album is the sound of a guy completely at peace with himself and his style. He doesn't seem like a performer - you never hear him sweating, or striving to convince you, the listener, of something he's not convinced of himself. He's got a kind of...proletarian mixture of gruffness and placid joy to his voice that's really captivating. He's not going over the top, but he's not talk-singing either. I guess I'd compare him to a saxophonist like Hank Mobley, a guy who was regarded in his time as kind of middle-of-the-road and even decried as bland by folks who wanted more fire 'n' fury from jazz, but whose work stands up incredibly well 40 or even 50 years later. I could listen to Hank Mobley all day, and this album makes me feel the same way about Ismael Rivera.

PART 8: ADALBERTO, CHEO, LA LUPE AGAIN

I'm way behind on posts and don't have time to go into a whole lot of detail, so I'm gonna bang out the three albums I listened to last week in quick capsule-review style. Here we go!

Adalberto Santiago's got a big voice that almost reminds me of a mariachi singer. Adalberto is a good, mostly upbeat album (except for "Luces de Nueva York") with some great, bright trumpet work by I don't know who. The only song I actively hate is "Las Puertas de Mi Casa." Checking Amazon, I see he's got an album called Adalberto Santiago Featuring Popeye El Marino, which cracks me up. I might have to try and get a copy of that one.

Cheo Feliciano's Cheo is even better. His voice kinda reminds me of Ruben Blades', but with more gravitas to it, and the slower songs, some of which bust out some almost-flamenco guitar, are the real keepers. Great timbales here, especially on the jazzy opening cut, "Ancaona," where they're paired against the vibes. Highlights: "Pa' Que Afinquen," "Mi Triste Problema," "Poema de Otoño." Very cool.

Finally, I'm back to obsessing over La Lupe again. Reina de la Canción Latina might be even heavier/more berserk/more world-crushingly awesome than La Lupe Es La Reina. She's in damn-near-unhinged territory from almost the first notes of "Amor Gitano," and the strings and horns back her up in full blare. She sounds like some dude might get stabbed to death in his sleep. What's weird is that in some ways this album is more tasteful and subdued than the other one - there's only two psychobilly-speed salsa numbers on it (four or five upbeat tracks in toto, but only two where the rhythm section sounds like their friggin' arms are gonna fly off, they're playing so fast), and a lot of big brass-'n'-orchestra ballads, and there's no Santeria track this time out. But then it all goes out the window with the berserk bilingual version of "Fever," which is, like, indescribable. Again, her accent makes Charo sound like Jane Seymour, but somehow this time it works better. It's official - I could listen to La Lupe all day long, and I'm definitely gonna seek out more of her stuff.

PART 7: WILLIE COLON

Willie Colón's El Malo kinda reminds me of the Joe Bataan disc I reviewed last week, except with fewer sappy love ballads - none, to be exact. It's a short (30:11), eight-song album with a couple of instrumentals and a couple of songs in English. (Actually, "Willie Baby" is half in English, half in Spanish.) The vocals are by Hector Lavoe, and he's as good as he's reputed to have been. Though he doesn't sound a damn thing like Marc Anthony, so it's no wonder that friggin' biopic, El Cantante, got disappeared. Does anybody know what happened to it? Is it out on DVD? Is it supposed to hit theaters, like, ever? Anyway, this is not a "pure" salsa record; it's got some bugalu tracks and other stuff like that, one of which, "Willie Whopper," would be my favorite track on the album if the (English) lyrics weren't so dumb. It's got some great organ, and handclaps. I like handclaps. My absolute favorite track on El Malo is the title cut, which has tons of energy from Lavoe and terrific, almost distorted trombone blowing from Colón. I also really dig the piano on "Skinny Papa." Every track on this album has something to recommend it; I love the florid backing/chorus vocals on "Chonqui," plus it's got an almost free-jazz piano breakdown (as in, it sounds like the keys are gonna break off the instrument if it goes on much longer). Then there's a pause, and the whole band comes back in, with Colón blasting air into and out of his trombone like he's got a small rodent trapped in the bell or something. "Chonqui" is probably the dramatic high point of the album. The closing track, "Quimbombo," is (just) another high-speed, high-energy workout to finish things off, with the whole band playing at the top of their abilities. There's no reason in the world not to own this album. I'm very glad I do.

PART 6: CHARLIE PALMIERI

Well, we've hit our first stumbling block. Charlie Palmieri's El Gigante del Teclado is the first in this series of albums to leave no impression on me whatsoever. I'm not saying it's a bad record (he can certainly play, as "Sedante de Rhumba" makes very clear), but there's nothing unique or particularly interesting about it, to my ear. The seven songs all sort of blend together - except for "Que Se Vaya," which busts out the heavy reverb and finds Palmieri switching from piano to organ - in a way that makes me think of cruise-ship music. The album cover has that same effect - there's Charlie's big grinnin' head, and okay, but is there any larger significance to this record beyond innocuous, temporary listener pleasure? Sure, there are plenty of circumstances under which that's enough and more, but not for me, not right now. Most of the records I heard last week had, if not "hidden depths" per se, at least the impact of revelation. Maybe it's because the novelty of listening to salsa and related musics has worn off and only now am I starting to consider these discs on their own merits, but I don't think so. There was a lot of good stuff last week. This one is pretty good, but it's nowhere near as world-shaking (my world, anyway) as La Lupe Es La Reina was, or Siembra, or even Recordando El Ayer for that matter. Tomorrow, I'm gonna hedge my bets and go with something I feel confident will slap my head around - Willie Colón's El Malo. (BTW, I dug through the Colón section of my local CD store this weekend, and just about every album I saw was working that silly musician-as-gangster/trombone-as-Tommy-gun thing. I can see that being cool for one record, but there were at least a half dozen, it seemed to me, and they were probably all recorded within a three-year span. I'm just sayin' - get a new gimmick.)

PART 5: LA LUPE

Today's selection is La Lupe's La Lupe Es La Reina. And damn right she is. Lupe's voice is ferocious; she's like a Spanish-language Shirley Bassey - in fact, the first two songs on this album, "Puro Teatro" and "Sueño," begin with string-and-horn fanfares that sound straight copped from "Goldfinger" and/or the James Bond theme. Total mid-'60s spy-jazz orchestration, and that roar over the top. "La Lupe" is the wrong name for her; she should be called "La Leona" (the Lioness). She looks kinda like Eartha Kitt in the cover photo, and she totally tears into every song on this album. The only ones I don't like are the final two. "That's The Way It's Gonna Be" finds her singing in English, a huge mistake because her accent is cartoonishly thick, and there's no way she can sell the meaning of the lyrics when you can't stop snickering at her pronunciation. And "Guaguanco Bembe" abandons the orchestral, smooth-but-furious production of the rest of the album for some straight Afro-Cuban drumming 'n' chanting. This was a very personal thing for her, I guess, because she was apparently a big believer in Santería (at least, until converting to evangelical Christianity late in life) and wanted that to be reflected in the album, but it's a bad way to end the disc. Anyway, I really like this kind of super-strong female vocal, or any female singer who presents a tough front, whether that's matched by vocal histrionics or not. Joan Jett, Angela Gossow from Arch Enemy, Bebe, Shirley Bassey, India, Amy Winehouse, female flamenco singers, whatever...don't gimme no wispy singer-songwriters, gimme an ass-kicking chick who'll shout you through the wall. I got one other album by La Lupe in this box of Fania discs (La Reina de Canción Latina), and if it's as good as this one, I'm gonna buy a bunch more when this project winds down. She rules.

PART 4: CELIA, JOHNNY, JUSTO & PAPO

Celia, Johnny, Justo & Papo: Recordando El Ayer. Now this is what I was talking about w/r/t salsa vocals in the first post in this series. Celia Cruz had one of the biggest voices in all of music, and on this album she absolutely blows the walls down, accompanied by male vocalist Justo Betancourt (one of whose albums I'll get to sometime soon, I guess; it's in the pile). It's an insanely bright and upbeat album from the first blaring horn notes of "Besito de Coco" on. Betancourt sings with almost as much force as Cruz sometimes, but other times his voice is kinda nasal and subdued, which I don't really dig. But the percussion and horns are absolutely relentless, and even more interestingly, there's some great guitar on this album. On "Se Que Tu," the guy sounds like he's playing a plywood box strung with piano wire; my fingertips started to hurt in sympathy pangs the way he was whacking away at the thing about the 2 1/2 minute mark. If you don't like salsa, this is exactly the kind of album you would absolutely not want your downstairs or upstairs neighbor to own, because it's big, brash, and pretty much demands to be played at top volume. A couple of years ago, this kind of thing could have inspired me to fits of homicidal rage (because I almost certainly would have encountered it booming through the walls and/or floor, rather than through my own iPod headphones), but now that I've decided to dive in head-first, I'm really digging it. And wow, that album cover!

PART 3: JOE BATAAN

So yesterday I listened to Joe Bataan's Riot. Like "Pedro Navaja," from Siembra, it opens with tape of sirens and other city sounds, but that's where the similarities end. This album's from the late '60s, but it actually sounds a few years older than that to me. It's more like a soul record with somebody playing timbales; there are only three songs in Spanish, out of nine, and they're doing versions of songs like "For Your Love," "What Good Is A Castle" and "Daddy's Coming Home" that are straight off some Fifties street corner. In fact, that's the impression that sticks with me most strongly about this album - not how Latin it is, but how New York it is (not like those two are exactly mutually exclusive, but you see what I mean).

At first, I thought the sort-of title track "It's A Good Feeling (Riot)" was gonna be more politically engaged; Bataan starts off talking about how "everybody's doin' it, they're doin' it in Vietnam too" and like that, but then it becomes a straight positive-thinking track, talking about how there's always somebody there to make you feel good no matter how bad things get, and blah de blah de blah. I was looking forward to some kind of ironic pro-rioting anthem, talking about how good it feels to break shit, but no such luck. Anyway, this album reminds me of a bunch of songs I've heard before (and I'm not talking about the original recordings of some of the tunes covered), but I can't remember exactly which ones. What it really reminds me of most, though, is some soul singer from the Lee Marvin movie Point Blank. There's this amazing scene where Marvin goes into a club while this guy is performing, goes backstage, gets jumped by some other thug, and just whips the living shit out of the guy. It's an absolutely savage beating, one of my favorite movie fight scenes of all time, and the director, John Boorman, keeps cutting back to the singer, who's just screaming and howling like he's possessed or something. And I feel like some of the songs on Riot, especially the Spanish-language ones like "Muñeca" or "Mambo de Bataan," could have worked just as well in that context. At the same time, there's a lot of energy even in the sappy romantic songs like "My Cloud" and "Daddy's Coming Home," and the raw feel of it is pure New York. Another winner - three for three so far. Me likey the musica Latina.