#0076: Astrud Gilberto - Beach Samba [**]

"Stay and we'll make sex with music."  It's a pretty clumsy opening line, you've got to be honest.  But her voice, with its light, airy quality and the slight Hispanic hue to her accent seem to give it charm.  The flute work is of particular note.

I don't have a good history with Latin music but like anything, if it's done well it can satisfy my finicky tastes.  This is done well but if I close my eyes I can smell the disinfectant on the floor of the supermarket this is playing in.  I can feel the mechanism of the elevator.  I can see the credits of the 1970s couple caper on TV.  It's cheese.

Then A Banda.  Sounding like Billy Smart's Circus is in town but at least having the decency to have lyrics pertaining to the big top, it trumps across the aural landscape, parping and tooting like an old people's home on mouldy sprouts Thursday.

Normal service is then resumed.  And by normal service, I mean this well executed, softly intoned, ice-cream-headache-inducing-ly inoffensive wank.  The string arrangements and the interleaving of the flute are expert.  There's really nothing wrong with it but that's kinda the problem.  Who is this woman?  "I had the craziest dream last night".  Really?  Did you finish a game of mahjong with a tile left over?  Did you find your Sound Of Music DVD in the Wizard Of Oz case?

I mean Christ.  Ted Rogers wouldn't've booked this shit for 3-2-1 during the World Cup.

Oh but the flute.

You know what?  Fuck the flute.  I'm half way thru and I'm already sick of falling back on that as the saving grace.

My Foolish Heart has to be a standard, though.  It's a beautiful song.  I'm guessing she was some kind of mind-spinning hottie cuz her voice is only a song's worth of charming.

There was a show in the 80s that David Jacobs (God rest his soul) presented called "Where Are They Now?".  If you're looking for this chick, try La Tasca first.  She'll be the haggard, slightly surly waitress, foundation-soaked, fighting-the-HRT-flab and being careful not to smile too broadly cuz her teeth might put you off your food.

Now she's singing with a kid.  In unison.  Big mistake.  Kids don't hold a tune so well.  What you end up with is a quarter-tone discord.  Why do you think school choirs sound so shit?  They're all out by that much.  Utterly horrifying.

Okay, get me the scissors.  I'm five tracks from the end and there is no end in sight.  I've now figured out what it is about her voice I don't like.  There is absolutely no expression in it.  It's like she doesn't really speak English and the producers have told her the songs are about futures contracts on shoe lace wax.

Call Me, not the Blondie song, is probably famous.  Billy Crystal sings this in When Harry Met Sally during the montage of him calling her over and over.  He does a better job on a shitbox karaoke machine than this insipid bint.  I like the song very much but she's pissing in its mouth.  And not in a good way.

Can we just assume the remaining tracks passed without incident?  No, actually.  There's a classy piano solo on Tu Meu Delirio.  Skip to 2 minutes in to avoid the vocals.  Unless you like ghosts singing.  That's not really fair to ghosts, I grant you.  I've seen Corpse Bride.