Once again, it’s that time of year when the cherry trees go full blossom riot in the old town of Bonn, and many of the local residents and others stick their bric-a-brac on fold out tables outside their front doors for the rest of to wander round and gander and poke at. A lot of it is kids or their parents selling clothes and toys they’ve grown out of – my wife’s the expert at snuffling out worthy truffles in that area, so I leave that to her, and I wander off in search of cheap books, DVDs and CDs.
Each year I wonder if it’s worth it – few books will be in English, and in these days of streaming audio and video, is it worth cluttering up valuable home space with plastic of uncertain quality? But it can be interesting to rummage through people’s collections that they are dumping – who knows if it’ll be more than just best sellers and greatest hits?
This year, partly because of the sudden shower of hail (?) which led to hasty covering up with plastic sheets, there was very little on offer and I almost went home empty-handed. But then I saw a solitary CD looking lonely and the vendor said it is really great, so I bought “The Kooks-Junk of the Heart”. (I just listened to a few tracks and it isn’t. I can’t stand the vocals and the songs are bland). Heartened, I stopped off to pick up two more for a Euro (Henry Cherry – Man & The Style Council – Confessions of a Pop Group), then ended up at my favourite stall – run by a guy who has a Latin American food shop. About 20 CDs, almost all of which were by artists I’d never heard of – fantastic! The fact that one of the only ones I recognized was by one of my all time favourites – Fluke – gave me very positive signals. Here are some of the names:
Akasha, Super Seven, Soon E MC, Josh Roseman Unit, Daniele Mercur, John Beltran, Strata Institute, Yohimbe Brothers, Harry Sokal, Caetano Veloso, Holy Fuck, Juryman.
The 3rd, 5th, 8th and 11th of those were intriguing and I’ll be investigating them more, but it was Caetano Veloso who was the revelation. Beautiful music, so evidently loved by his audience, and possibly incredibly famous in Brazil and beyond, but new to me. Such grace, such confidence, such joy!
His eponymous album, one called Transa and another called Domingo are all faves here. There are a lot of others to explore too, but most are harder to find. He needs a Five Classic Albums box, that’s for sure.
I’d certainly buy that box.
Milton Nascimento, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze and Jorge Ben are all Brazilian artists of his era well worth exploring.
On the female side, Elis Regina and Joyce Moreno (sometimes just known as Joyce) are also well worth a listen.
Yes, I picked up a few in Fopp last year (sniff) when they had a promo for a label called, IIRC, Mr Bongo or similar.
BTW, Gal Costa is Caetano’s co-conspirator on the Domingo album.
Useless cherry-blossom related fact:
The famous cherry blossom festival in Japan is down to a Victorian Englishman who went there and “saved” the native cherry trees by taking cuttings from one and propagating them on. So all of the trees are of the exact same variety, with the exact same ancestor, so they all come into blossom at the exact same time.
His biography was on Radio 4’s book of the week a while back.
Strata Institute, cutting-edge funk-informed black jazz at the time (the 80s). Also in the 80s, the Vienna Jazz Orchestra made some excellent double-LPs for Hat Hut records out of Switzerland: Sokal was in their sax line.
Still get played here.
Another Jorge Ben fan here.
Caetano Veloso live early `70`s album `Temporada de Verão – Ao Vivo na Bahia` is a favourite around here. That`s when `Forever Changes` isn`t on the Linn.
@salwarpe
Nowt to do with music this but I never made it to Bonn when I was in Germany – always believed it was one of these modern capitals- it has an alt stadt?
Thank you for all your comments – particularly the suggestion of other, related artists – who I will look into and listen to with interest.
@Freddy-Steady – Bonn has a long history – back to the Roman times, and was the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne for many centuries. It has a well-respected university, founded in the 19th century (so comparatively young). It was made the capital after WWII partly because it was the hometown of Konrad Adenauer, the Chancellor, but also because there was a hope to have Berlin one day as the capital again. The current city, with the HQ of DHL, Deutsche Telekom and several UN agencies is spread over not just Bonn, but many surrounding villages and smaller towns. The Altstadt is a recent invention – a built up area of old tradesmen’s houses, until recently, it was quite a poor area, and the Sudstadt could be said to have a higher claim to be the real old town – even though it’s full of big houses where all the posh people live. (Probably TMI)
Where’s @Kaisfatdad when he’s needed?