Due to unforseen circumstances Mayor Dixon has prevented Chris from posting today, so as an apology for missing last Friday (and the many Fridays before it) I will do a special post for the day. I just got back from a great trip to San Francisco (a recommend all in itself!) and visited my favorite record store in the world, Ameoba Records. If you are ever on the West Coast, a visit to Ameobo is the strongest recommendation I can give. If I walk out of that store spending less than $100 I am suprised, proud, and ashamed of myself all at the same time. It doesn't rival the iternet for amount of music (obviously) but I often miss walking into a record store and being able to actually find something that I want.
I had been looking for this recording of Gavin Bryars' "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" for a while now. It actually came via recommendation from TJ a couple of years ago. He played it for me, and I really liked it, and then I forgot about it. Recently one of my bosses at Loyola mentioned it, and since we've had this love/hate debate of Tom Waits going on at Friends Recommend this seemed like a good chance to bring it up.
Gavin Bryars is a well-known English classical composer. If you really want to know of his background that is what this Wikipedia entry is for...although he is also a double bassist which earns him points in my book. Basically the whole piece is built around a homeless man singing a folk song. The original recording was for a documentary about homelessness in England. When Bryars heard this particular clip he noticed that it was in tune. He made a loop out of it and played it over and over again, improvising harmonies on the piano to match the vocal part. Apparently while he was doing this he would loop the sample again and again at his place of employment and after time everyone around would be crying. I don't know how valid this is but just hearing the original vocal part (the original singer is labeled Tramp on the recording) caused people around to start crying. It is pretty powerful, so I could believe it.
The essential CD of the recording is 74 minutes long. It begins with just the tramp singing Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, and you have no idea what is going on. Is this a joke? It goes on for a couple of minutes with him just singing alone. Eventually a quiet string quartet enters in the background, and it sneaks it so perfectly that you barely know it's happening. Throughout the course of the recording it gets the full-blown orchestral treatment, but the finale is where it's at. At the very end Bryars enlisted none other than Tom Waits to sing with the orchestra and loop of the tramp, and it is fantastic. This is one of the lesser known Waits pieces among a lot of his fans, so I wanted to put it on the table.
The Youtube clip I've included is of the ending with Waits singing. The way the whole piece unfolds is pretty special, but this gives it to you in a much smaller and still special package. OK, see you Friday:
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