Friday 25 March 2011

18th March 2011 9:1:13 & 7:1:33

Apart from helping me rediscover my CD collection, this little project of mine seems to suggest a pattern of human thought.

The majority of random selections so far have resulted in people choosing a higher end bay number (usually 7-9). I am not sure what this means, but I am sure someone who is more versed in human decision making would be able to shed some light on to the matter.

I took an unusual step with this Choose My Music selection. I decided to let someone make the selection the day before. Usually I ask for selections in the morning just before I go to work, but in time when we can communicate with people globally with nothing more than a click of a button I felt that my timing was excluding a lot of people.

So last night the request went out to Choose My Music for today’s commute to work – I got some very quick responses – the quickest came from someone who I have only recently started following on Twitter by the name of Peter O

He chose the combination 9:1:13 (Bay 9, Row 1, CD 13) which meant on the drive to work I got to listen to:

Various Artists - Barrio Nuevo – Latin Funk .Latin Rock. Latin Disco. Latin Soul



There were three things that struck a chord with me as my hand counted along to CD13.

Firstly this album is on the rather brilliant Soul Jazz label. A compilation with their name of it is always a sign of quality.

For those not aware of Soul Jazz, they are a British based label who specialise in releasing compilation albums that predominantly feature black music such as Reggae, Soul & Jazz although more recently they have delved into post-punk and electronica.

I first came across the label through their excellent Reggae collections – most notably their Studio One and Dynamite series. You would do very well to check them out.

The second thing that came to my mind was this album came to me during the height of the Cuban music explosion following the release of Ry Cooder’s release of Buena Vista Social Club. Working in independent record stores at the time we were inundated with requests (from usually middle class, wax jacket types) for not only the BVSC album but also various other Cuban / Latin albums.

The beauty of Barrio Nuevo (as with all other Soul Jazz albums) is the tracks they pick – they are always great examples of the genre but are also not choice you would be familiar with. The Patti Labelle track ‘Teach Me Tonight (Me Gusta Tu Baile)' is one such song plus slightly lesser known War tracks like ‘War is Coming’ and ‘Me and My Baby Brother’



There are also 2 ‘unknown’ tracks on this album which is due to a printing error. The track list on the back of the CD misses out tracks 5 & 6 entirely. One of them I know is ‘Jungle Fever’ by The Chakachas…which brings me on to my third memory…

….We used to love to play this CD and watch the uncomfortable faces of the OAPs who used to frequent our little market town shop on a week day morning when ‘Jungle Fever’ was played in its entirety.

Happy Days



My second Choose My Music selection this week was made by a brilliant music loving twitter person who goes by the name Substandard Nerd

He picked the combination 7:1:33 and picked out this little gem

Ben Sollee - Learning to Bend


Ben Sollee is a vocalist and cellist, originally from Kentucky. The fact that he was billed as a such instantly appealed to me, with my love of all things unusual.

I first discovered Ben on a music website called Aurgasm, who bill themselves as featuring 'your favourite music you've never heard of' and I was instantly struck by him.

Firstly his vocals are stunning. Second, I couldn't quite pitch his music. One minute he is playing Bluegrass, the next he is on Folk before going off on a bit of a Jazz tip. Thirdly, how often do you hear someone playing the cello and singing? Not that often I bet you.

This is a really nice album, although more suited to a Sunday read of the papers as opposed to doing housework - which I was at the time.

I strongly suggest you check out his version on Sam Cooke's 'Change is Gonna Come'. It is simply brilliant and amazingly beautiful.

Ben Sollee - A Change Is Gonna Come by diegosan

Panning for Gold is also a very good stand out track

08 Panning For Gold by Bensollee

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