I drive to Tilburg every tuesday and friday. At Tilburg I stand in front of the class, or sit together with my students, as teacher in architecture and urban design. Everything goes back to that. Architecture, teaching, music.
On the second drive of the week I took this tape of Lee Ritenour form 1993. "Wes Bound". The only CD's I could get from the innaccesible collection of César.
But there was a good reason. Maybe I just made it that way. I always called this CD the compensation CD (el cd del desagravio).
César didn't have a part on it. He was just there when the "guaro" girls embarrassed me in front of my new girlfriend at Jóse's birthday party. Terrible terrible moment. They just warned her about my driving, talking about the car accident where we all got involved, on which I was driving. No need for that. They thought they were funny, but they were unpolite and scary. Poor Jenny...
Now that I think about it, in that story I crashed the car quite badly, a Corolla we used to call "half a million"; but in the aftermath of the crash, I asked Marly to take the the tapes that I had in the car back to her house. In the coming weeks the tapes were no longer important. The insurance, the stitches of Camila, the whole mobility issue, that was important. Still, some tapes didn't survive. Did they? I forgot them, or they landed in the hands of our infamous cleptomaniac friend. Do I still have them somewhere in a shelf back there at Sol's house in Caracas? Who knows.
I walked away of the party. later I got the CD and I lent it for months. I used to think: -"this is some kind of compensation".
What about the tracks? Nice, good, smooth. Mr. Ritenour playing music from Wes Montgomery. The perfect sound of Ritenour (Ritenur or Ritenauwer?). One of those jazz recordings with a top 40 hidden between the tracks; "Waiting in Vain" with Maxi priest.
That tape, that reminds me of those parties at Jóse's in Santa Monica, Caracas. That specific party, the guaro girls, the innaccesible collection, the missing tapes, the missing girl.
Labels: Antonio, camila, caracas, césar salazar, jennifer, tapes
¶ 10/11/2008 03:06:00 PM 0 comments
What should we do with our old tapes? We don’t have an answer yet, so for the moment I’ll play them one more time to see what happens.
I picked up this one with Joni Mitchell and a bit of John Lee Hooker and brought it along to my ride between Rotterdam and Tilburg. An old tape from 1991. And now I don’t know what to do with the old tapes.
Because there was a story attached to this cassette, as there are many stories attached to the other many tapes that have survived. Even the fact that they have survived is a feature difficult to replicate with our digital equivalents.
And the story goes to the making of the tape, to the moments the tape was played, and the listeners, their reactions, and all the associations.
“Shadow and Light”, Joni Mitchell live on a tape of a cd (which missed a couple of numbers from the LP Album). A tape that I recorded back there in Caracas, from a CD that Umberto Pepe lend me for a couple of weeks. Well, in those days we did that. There was this circle of friends that used to exchange CD’s or LP ‘s, just to exchange a bit of music and expand ones appreciation or tape collection. Anyway, there were these legendary collections, like that of Umberto, Oscar Rodriguez or the inaccessible César Salazar. My friend Juan Castillo had good music, but the collection he accessed was more the disperse, incomplete collection of 8 brothers. It was vast and vague, with particular owners and no owner at all.
The tape played in the car. Joni played together with her magnificient band; Pat Metheny, Don Elias, Lyle Mays, Michael Brecker and Jaco Pastorius. There on the cassette cover a couple of stars written next to “Hejira” , “Amelia” and “Pat’s Solo”. Well, stars! A little bit ahead of (iPod) time. Of course, a tape is a tape of 60 minutes, or 90. How many LP’s or combination of them fit into a tape perfectly? One had always to search the extra numbers, the additional artist who was going to fill the gap. For some people, a terrible dilemma. Not for me. So there was John Lee Hooker, with some numbers from “ The Healer”, but not the title track. I once told Umberto: “ that CD from John Lee Hooker, be careful, it is better to listen it at night, after eleven perhaps” And still there was this cassette with some tracks on it, ready to be played at any moment. Day or night.
Labels: Antonio, caracas, music, tapes
¶ 10/10/2008 04:01:00 PM 0 comments
