New as of today

Just to keep the blog breathin' heres whats rocked my world recently.

Chapelle's Block Party:

It's fantastic. It rocks and is very funny. You want chappelle to be your best friend. It's the greatest concert video ever made - and i'm including the woodstock doc AND Don't look back (I'll even include Renaldo and Clara too.)

The music is fantastic and urgent and smart and made me run to the library and fill in my knowledge of Dead Prez, Talib, the Roots - all of them.

The fugees weren't that impressive to me - so maybe, i'll say that woodstock and renaldo and clara edge this out. but the rest - oh man - and the urgency.

Rent it soon - buy it. These folks deserve to be heard and your life will be better for it.

Good Stuff from eMusic:

Ever since I found out about "manha de carneval", from the film Orfeu Negro - i've been kind of obsessed with the song. The film has been re-released by criterion and it's pretty awesome - but I'm digging just the soundtrack myself. I've got about 6 different interpretations, and i'm learning the changes in my real book as much as I can. Which brings me to my real point - I love Vince Guaraldi's Charlie brown Christmas record (you have NO soul if you don't) - but I didn't know where to go to explore his other works - and lo an behold, he's got a record called "Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus", and i'm digging it. It's not really a bossa nova record - he takes the melody and harmony, but then kind of straightens out the rhythm to be more North American regular swing. But its still pretty rockin'.

I'm learning that my Jazz tastes seem to run to the mid 50's west coast jazz flavor. Chet, Vince, Gerry Mulligan. But I also picked up a couple of bedrock famous Monk records, and I'm digging those as well.

Also - i grabbed some Bach. Which is a big step. But its just the cello suites, which you here in every high and low budget merchant ivory picture but still - you can not funk with the nasty dunk that is Bach writing for a solo cello. It is rock and roll when Tennessee was still without the white man for the most part.

And that's the new stuff. What's rocking your boat?