Musical Chairs
Posted on September 8, 2010 – 3:53 AM | by OldManFoster
Davis singer/songwriter Garrett Pierce works in a traditional folk rock format (think cerebral sixties/seventies era folkies like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell) with thoughtful lyrics and tasteful, largely acoustic accompaniment. Both the SF Weekly and SN&R have raved about his stuff, and with good reason – he’s very good at what he does. He’s just tidying up his latest record City of Sand, which is due out in a few months, but he took some time out to run though some of his musical faves for us.
Ganksta C – Ganksta Rymez
I was on the last bus headed from Midtown to Davis when I felt a tap on my shoulder. A tall, lanky guy in a long, black leather jacket shouted a question my way “Do you like Rap & Hip Hop!?” I gave him an ambiguous answer as he forced a tiny mp3 player my way. “Check this out”. Expecting the worst, I hesitantly put his earbuds on, and what I heard surprised me. The beats pulsed with a funk-jazz sample, and his vocals flowed with a fast-paced fire to them. I was stunned! Most of my bus rides had been filled with weekly-motel-rate-ex-cons and spent-meth-metal-heads, but Eddy, aka Ganksta C, was different. He was on the constant hustle, and although I met him hawking CDs on the Yolobus, his product was worth a damn! I bought a copy of Ganstka Rymez (2009) on the spot. I talked with Eddy for a while and found out he was living in Richmond. I got the feeling that he had been in the game for a while. After later research, I came to find that he had released an album in 1995 on Profile Records-home to Run DMC and Tone Loc!(Run DMC, Tone Loc!). What occurred between recordings is anybody’s guess,but listening to Gangksta Rymez, you hear references to jail and “getting one more strike”. The real question is, do you call this album a comeback album if most people don’t know who he is, and he’s forcing CDs on unsuspecting patrons of public transit? I say yes!
Chalino Sanchez – A Todo Sinaloa
What Ganksta C really reminded me of was the buses in Mexico where musicians often play and sell CDs to make a living. Many of these humble ranch-hands play all day, entering and exiting buses in dusty terminals across the countryside. Although I don’t currently own any albums from these wandering minstrels, I do own Chalino Sanchez’s A Todo Sinaloa, one of many groundbreaking records from the king of the ‘corrido’- a narrative ballad- or more notoriously known as the king of the ‘narcorrido’ genre – a subgenre in which the themes center around the drug trade. After reading a great deal about the growing drug, murder and kidnapping problems in the Sinaloa and border regions of Mexico, I heard the legend of Chalino Sanchez – the Bob Dylan-meets-N.W.A. of Mexican banda music. I compare Chalino to Dylan because his vocals are coarse and sometimes out of tune, favoring the bite of his lyrics to the more typical operatic wail of the mariachi. I liken him to N.W.A. because he took an existing form, the Corrido and brought it out of the violent underground to jukeboxes from Sacramento to South America.
Chalino’s music was banned from most radio stations, but word-of-mouth was too strong, and he became a star. A Todo Sinaloa is an early record of his, and it’s as rough around the edges as Chalino himself. His backing group, Los Guamuchilenos, sounds like an unpolished band that walked right out of the Sierra Madres. Trumpets and tubas – a hallmark of polka-influenced banda music – clash rhythmically while their bombastic drummer beats out flurries of fills. But through it all, Chalino rides his torrid storylines like the country-gangster he is – forever-shouting, with his voice about-to-crack. Chalino was one of many Mexican singers to be cut down by the iron that they so boldly sang about. Narcorrido music is often backed by drug money, and songs will feature local kingpins as the hero. But what happens when the rival drug-dealer learns of these songs? Sometimes the singer must pay. Nobody really knows why Chalino was abducted, tied with rope and shot twice to the back of the head after one of his concerts. But we do know that he wasn’t a “studio gangsta”. A Todo Sinaloa shows that he was much bigger than that.
Ellie Fortune – Matriarch
Moving topics from the cantinas of Mexico to the house parties of Sacramento, I can’t give enough praise to Ellie Fortune’s 2010 release – Matriarch. I met Jesse Phillips – the man behind Ellie Fortune- back when he was playing bass with Silver Darling, and was excited by the murmurings of a solo project. When I finally got around to seeing him, I was blown away by his haunting falsetto; a combination of John Jacob Niles and early Devendra Banhart. What really sets him apart from the rest of the singer-songwriters in the scene is his transcendence of genres. Watching him is like thumbing through an encyclopedia of music starting with gospel, moving to the delta blues and finishing in some future realm of indie-folk. When I finally acquired a copy of Matriarch, that same vibe was there. From what I understand, the tracks were released in the chronological order in which they were recorded, making this an album that grows as it goes along. But beyond the big picture of Matriarch lies truly infectious tunes. I dare you to listen to “Summer Fable” or “Upholding” and not have that shit stuck in your head for the rest of the day.
Lord Rhaburn – Calypso Is Power
I want to leave you with one more quick review, and if you can find this album, pay any price it takes to have it: Lord Rhaburn’s Calypso is Power. Holy Jah! This is the best calypso I’ve heard. It’s fun, hilarious, driving, and the keyboards are weird and utterly unique. From all accounts Lord Rhaburn is the most important calypso alyspo performer in the history of Belize, and after spending my whole summer bumping tracks like “Former Brown Jackass,” I can see why!
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Tags: Garrett Pierce