Vacation...

Joao Kartoshka is off on vacation for about 7 days- до встречи!

Paul Desmond and Jim Hall- Bossa Antigua

I have won several prizes as the world's slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.
—Paul Desmond.
Highly regarded in the West Coast's "cool jazz" scene, the self effacing Paul Desmond was the alto player in the Dave Brubeck Quartet.
In 1964, following the lead of Stan Getz, he made this really cool album in the Bossa Nova style.
This CD reissue has bonus tracks


Paul Desmond- alto
Jim Hall- guitar
Eugene Wright- bass (Gene Cherico on track 9)
Connie Kay – drums.











Link:http://rapidshare.com/files/299749938/Paul_Desmond_Bossa_Antigua.rar

Italy 1934...

Uruguay didn’t make the trip to defend their world title in Italy- a unique occurrence in the history of the tournament. This was said to be in response to the way in which European teams had snubbed ‘their’ finals in 1930- there was also some suggestion that the top Uruguayan clubs discouraged their players from going to Europe for fear that it would prove to be a one way trip. There was a vogue for South American players to ‘return’ to their countries of origin- which brings us on to Luisado Monti.
One of 3 such oriundi in the victorious Italian side, Monti had played for his native Argentina in the 1930 final- now with the Azzurri he became the only man to play in a World Cup final for 2 different countries.
Africa was represented for the first time through the participation of Egypt (managed by Scotsman, James McRea), who steamed across the Med to Naples to lose their only game to Hungary. Their goalkeeper, Mustafa Kamel Mansour, who later played for Glasgow side Queens Park, maintained until his death in 2002 that the Egyptians were robbed in this match.

Auto seat covers...

Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.

Mark Twain.

But look at these seat covers!

I would buy a car merely to be able to have these seat covers.
Can you imagine how matted and stained they would get? I would think that they would moult, leaving staticky fibres clinging to your clothes, before they eventually became threadbare and smooth...

Mr Caution...

I’m sure that many readers will have spotted that the Joao Kartoshka lookalike in my profile pic is in fact the great Mr Eddie Constantine, in a still from Jean Luc Godard’s 1965 classic Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution.
Reams have already been written about the postmodernist appropriation of traditional hero Caution, transferring him from the mean streets of the 20th century to a dystopian city of the future in a distant galaxy (in fact, Paris c.1965- the same streets…) and of Godard’s Marxian critique of society.
I’m not going to add to that canon.

Edward Constantinowsky was born in Los Angeles- his parents were Russian.
He studied singing in Vienna, but was unable to esablish himself as a singer on his return to the USA. Following a spell as a movie extra,Eddie Moved to Paris, where under the mentorship of Edith Piaf his singing career took off.
From 1953, his tough guy manner was put to good use in French B movie imitations of American Noir, such as La Môme vert-de-gris (1953) in which he first played Lemmy Caution.
Lemmy Caution was the creation of the English writer of hardboiled fiction, Peter Cheyney (1896 —1951), and Constantine played him on screen no less than a dozen times.

The New German Cinema revived Constantine and his persona, most notably Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte (1971). Constantine also appeared in a number of German TV dramas in the 70s and 80s and, late in life, reprised his most famous role in Godard's reflection on German re unification Allemagne 90 neuf zéro (1991).
Constantine also appeared in the intriguing Malatesta, Peter Lilienthal’s 1970 German language biopic of Italian anarcho-communist Errico Malatesta . I’ve never seen this movie- can anyone share their views on it with us?

Lisa Ono- Ipanema

I’m sure that most readers will be aware that Bossa Nova is very popular in Japan- in the future we will look at some native Japanese Bossa artists. But this lady is a bit special…
Lisa Ono was born in São Paulo in 1962 and moved with her family to Tokyo at the age of 10, afterwards spending half of every year in Japan, and half in Rio.
While living in Brazil her father owned a club, and was also Baden Powell's agent.
Her singing career began at a restaurant and her earliest recordings were for TV commercials.

Lisa had collaborated with a number of major stars during her career, including Tom Jobim, but this lp was made in 2007 to mark the 80th anniversary of the great man’s birth.
Here are some sleeve notes:
Thanks to Paulo & Daniel Jobim, and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s long time friend Miucha, I was able to record this Antonio Carlos Jobim song collection to celebrate his 80th birthday. While recording the songs, I devoted myself to expressing the spirit Antonio demonstrated in his arrangement so that the listeners could thoroughly enjoy the beauty of the songs that he created. This album is filled with our love for Antonio.Paulo & Daniel Jobim appear on the record.

Link: http://rapidshare.com/files/296436640/Lisa_Ono_-.rar
A lot of info on Lisa here: http://www.onolisa.com/english/index.html

Incidentally Brazil is home to the largest Japanese population outside of Japan, over 1 million people. In 1907, the Brazilian and Japanese governments signed a treaty permitting Japanese migration to Brazil, and the first Japanese immigrants (790 people - mostly farmers) arrived in Brazil in 1908.

Rock...

Summer is but a distant memory now- but on those long hot days what better way to relax- get into the shade and cool off in your dazzling white cotton shorts, listening to some smooth sounds on a neat portable.

Sinatra? Burl Ives?
Mr Rock Hudson here was certainly in for a laid back time...

Agua De Beber...

Tom playing live- great song, great performers, great arrangement...

Uruguay 1930...

...of which here is the first:
Uruguay 1930.Bolivia, who went into the tournament having never won an international game, had an eventful time. Keen to pay tribute to their hosts they played their opening match wearing shirts each emblazoned with a single letter, spelling Viva Uruguay.
In this opening fixture against Yugoslavia Bolivia had four goals disallowed and were down to 10 men after 55 mins. Yugoslavia

prevailed by four goals to nil.

As you can see from the picture(which I'm guessing was taken after the match, with Gomez, the injured player accounting for the missing 'U'?)the Bolivians also sported some interesting headwear.

Their next opponents were Brazil, definitely a case of 'come on you whites' as both teams bizarrely wore identical shirts for much of the first half. Bolivia swapped their shirts but their fortunes were unchanged, Brazil running out four nil winners.
The tournament was over for Bolivia, still without an international win to their name. For their coach, Ulises Saucedo, however, there was more action to come, as he refereed the match between Argentina and Mexico!

Uruguay went on to defeat neighbours Argentina in the final- a game in which the match ball was changed from an Argentinian model to a Uruguayan one for the second half.
Strange days indeed...

FIFA World Cup- South Africa 2010.

Here at Kartoshka 167 we are, of course, looking forward to the FIFA World Cup 2010.
Now that the qualifying is all but decided we are going to start our build up in earnest. I won’t be producing any wallcharts or issuing any commemorative coins, stamps, etc, but there will be an occasional article about previous tournaments…

Bossa Nova at Carnegie Hall...

The bossa nova phenomenon reached the United States via Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd’s Jazz Samba LP. A Brazilian diplomat who wanted to promote the country's musical accomplishments abroad hit on the idea of putting on a major bossa nova concert at New York's Carnegie Hall.
The show, in November of 1962, featured a mouth watering array of Brazilian musicians (Jobim, Bonfa, Sergio Mendes, Joao Gilberto, Milton Banana…), but the concert was not a critical success. The Brazilians did not take too well to November in the Northern Hemisphere. Brazilian critics disapproved of the use of English translations. However, the Carnegie Hall concert succeeded in raising the profile of Brazilian writers and performers- Bonfa and Mendes became long term USA residents whilst Jobim enjoyed collaborations with a host of American performers.
This concert has been reissued on CD a couple of times, but I don’t think that it’s currently available.
Link:http://rapidshare.com/files/293072039/Bossa_Nova_at_Carnegie_Hall.rar

Tretchikoff in movies...

Here's something that I had not noticed before.
I recently watched Performance (1970) by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg- one of my favourite movies. In the scene where Moody and Rosenbloom are in Tony Farell's bedroom we see Chinese Girl by Vladimir Tretchikoff...


Performance.

This is not he only time, of course, that Tretchikoff has featured in movies. Here are two other notable examples:


Frenzy.

As Charles Darwent wrote in The Independent newspaper's obituary of Tretchikoff in September 2006:
A Tretchikoff had only to appear over Bob Rusk's chimneypiece in Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972) for the audience to know that Rusk was odd; the Green Lady on the wall of Alfie's Ruby in 1966 marked her out as irredeemably modern.
As a maker of cultural artefacts, if not of art, Tretchikoff was a master.


Alfie.

Based on Tretchikoff's enduring popularity I'm guessing that there must be literally hundreds of other such examples of his work appearing in movies or TV, either as signifiers as shown by Darwent or nowadays as a shorthand for retro kitschism.

Henri Salvador (1917 - 2008)

Quem não sentiu o swing de Henri Salvador? (Who hasn't felt the swing of Henri Salvador?)- from Reconvexo by Caetano Veloso.
In 2005 the Brazilian Minister of Culture, the artiste Gilberto Gil , presented French singer Henri Salvador with the Order of Cultural Merit in recognition of his influence on Brazilian culture, particularly on bossa nova.
So, what was the connection?
The 1959 Italian film Europa Di Notte *(Nuits D'Europe/Europe by Night) directed by Alessandro Blasetti, proved popular in Brazil. Europa Di Notte was a risque "mondo" documentary featuring a selection of nightclub and striptease acts from across Europe, including the Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris. The soundtrack of the film featured Dans Mon Ile by the French Guianese born Salvador .

The song’s influence on bossa nova is immediately apparent, and it was later covered by Brazilian artists Eumir Deodato (1964) and Caetano Veloso (1981).
2005 proved to be a good year for M.Salvador- he came in on 52nd place in the election of Le Plus Grand Français (The Greatest Frenchmen). (Put into perspective: Rimbaud came in 82nd, Jean-Paul Sartre 96th)...

Link: http://rapidshare.com/files/293387411/Dans_Mon___le.mp3
*Scenes from Europa Di Notte are also featured in Do You Remember Dolly Bell?, directed by Emir Kusturica (the real Dolly Bell being one of the acts featured in Blasetti’s movie…)

1966 Was a Great Year for English Football…

I didn't study; I live… Eric Cantona

No sardines, no trawler...
Anybody who was fortunate enough to have watched top flight English football between 1992 and 1997 will have seen a genius at work. That they might not like to admit it could be down to two things-the jealous dislike of the club for which this genius was displayed and the nature of the man himself. It would certainly not be down to his attributes as a player, but here was an obvious chanel for the English distrust of otherness, of cleverness. The spirit of Rimbaud, of Camus' Mersault, of Raoul Vaneigem. Cantona, with imperious confidence in his convictions- is it, after all, only a game?; The British public would rather their Gazzas.

During his six seasons in England Cantona collected 5 league champions medals and two FA cup winners medals- in 1992 he took Leeds United to their first championship for 18yrs, in 1993 he was instrumental in Manchester United securing top spot for the first time in 26 years…
Despite a widely held belief to the contrary Cantona did enjoy some success at international level- he represented France 45 times and scored 20 goals before he pissed the authorities off irredeemably.

Mrs Kartoshka...

It was back in 1986 when Mrs Kartoshka was a high school student and an active member of Komsomol that she was selected as the model for this fantastic poster:

Antonio Carlos Jobim - Verve Jazz Masters...

Antonio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim (aka Tom Jobim or Antonio Carlos Jobim -1927-1994) was a giant of Brazilian music who has been hailed as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was central to bringing Brazilian music to a global audience and many of his compositions have become jazz standards. His works are almost ubiquitous- it seems that his name appears somewhere in the credits of just about any bossa nova or easy listening LP that you pick up! Of course, I’m exaggerating here, but the worldwide popularity of what is now instantly recognizable as Brazilian music owes a great deal to the canon of this remarkable gentleman.
By the way- if you’re off to Rio for the World Cup (2014) or the Olympic Games (2016) you will notice that The Rio de Janeiro international airport is named in his honour.

This LP, which features contributions from Stan Getz, Elis Regina, The Stan Getz Joao Gilberto Quintet, Astrud Gilberto and the Nelson Riddle orchestra, as well as performances by Jobim himself, is the closest you can get to a satisfactory anthology of his work on one record. Link:http://rapidshare.com/files/290869425/Antonio_Carlos_Jobim.rar

Françoise Hardy, bonitinha mas sofisticada…

I make no secret of the fact that, second to Mrs Kartoshka, I consider Mlle. Hardy to be the paradigm of female beauty.
Here she is on the cover of a Brazilian magazine from September 1964:



Check out this site for more of the same... http://www.all-over-the-world.com/FrancoiseHardy/magaz.shtml

And here, from 1968, is Françoise with Comment Te Dire Adieu.

Goalkeeper...

So, when considering the footballing greats, why not choose a goalkeeper with the knack of scoring goals?
There is a widely held belief that all goalkeepers are mad. There is also a theory that they are, at heart, frustrated outfield players.
Yashin would come out of the box to sweep up behind his defenders, Schmeichel would go up for corners, Higuita would join his outfield colleagues, sometimes with disastrous consequences, Ramón ‘El Loco’ Quiroga was equally rash in his excursions from the penalty area, but Chilavert…

As well as being solid between the sticks, Paraguayan José Luis Félix Chilavert González also had a reputation for banging them in. he was a free kick specialist as well as a regular penalty taker. Consequently he has a record 62 career goals, a goal every eight games.
Chilavert was also known for his eccentricity and at times fiery temper; during a qualifying game for the 2002 World Cup, he spat on Brazil's Roberto Carlos. He also angered the Paraguayan government by refusing to take part in the Copa America of 1999, as he claimed the funding would be better used for education.
Chilavert played most of his football in Argentina with Vélez Sársfield, helping them win the Argentine championship four times as well as the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup, both in 1994
He was voted World Goalkeeper of the Year by the IFFHS in 1995, 1997, and 1998.
In 1996 he was named South American player of the year- the only goalkeeper to win this accolade.

FIFA named Chilavert on the France '98 tournament All Star Squad.

1999, he became the first goalkeeper to score a hat-trick in the history of football, while playing for Vélez against Ferro Carril Oeste, scoring all three goals through penalties. He also scored a memorable free-kick from behind the half-way line against River Plate.
He has 74 international caps for Paraguay and an impressive 8 international goals

Domingo

This is the loveliest record in the Kartoshka vault…


Released in 1967, Domingo (Sunday) was the album debut of both Caetano Veloso (b.1942) and Gal Costa (b.1945). In 1965 Costa had recorded a duet with Veloso’s sister, Maria Bethânia, as well as an EP, Maria da Graça (her given names) , but this was Veloso’s first record. Veloso (his actual family name, Velloso appears on the cover of this record, but he has used the single 'l' variant from then on) went on to take a leading role in the development of Tropicalismo, but Domingo is a subdued work in the Bossa Nova style. Unsurprisingly Veloso’s musical idol was Joao Gilberto.
A former student of philosophy, Veloso is a political activist who was imprisoned and exiled by Brazil’s military dictatorship, and has been described as The Bob Dylan of Brazil (although he can sing and play).
Link: http://http//rapidshare.com/files/289036638/Gal_Costa_Caetano_Veloso_Domingo.rar

Winter...

Here in the northern hemisphere winter is creeping up on us. When I feel that chill in the air and notice that it's still dark when the old alarm clock rings there is one thing that consoles me. I know that Mrs Kartoshka will soon be reaching for her kniting needles...

Luiz Bonfá - Black Orpheus Impressions

Luiz Bonfá (1922 - 2001) was a Brazilian guitarist and composer who reached a global audience via his association with Marcel Camus' legendary film Orfeu Negro (1959).
Bonfá was essentially an exponent samba-canção style that predated the arrival of the more refined subdued bossa nova style. When Camus' film and artists such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd did much to bring Brazilian popular music to the attention of the world, Bonfá became a highly visible ambassador of Brazilian music in the United States , where he lived from the early 1960s until 1975. He was on the bill of the famous 1962 Bossa Nova concert at New York's Carnegie Hall (coming soon!).

On this LP, recorded in 1968, we have the epitome of 1960’s easy listening.
Personnel:
Luiz Bonfá on guitar, vocal
Eumir Deodato on piano, organ
Ron Carter on bass
Dom Um Romão on drums
Marvin Stamm on trumpet
Maria Helena Toledo on vocal

Link:http://rapidshare.com/files/287510365/Luiz_Bonfa-Black_Orpheus_Impression.rar
There is a really good Bonfá discography at this site: http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/Bonfa/

Cassettes...

What a world that was.
Warbling, fuzzy music, flimsy cases.
Joao Kartoshka has lost count of the number of ‘tapes’ that he has had over the years- all lost now, of course, gradually consigned to the garbage as they turned up in drawers or in the backs of cupboards. A record- now you’d never throw a record in the trash, would you? Regardless of how damaged it was it always seemed to retain some inherent worth as an object- but a cassette. Even the pre recorded ones seemed destined for a short life- the ghastly miniscule sleeve art, unreadable text, the discouraging loose shuck of the spools in the casing and the very fragility of the ribbon of magnetic tape itself. When I form a mental picture of a cassette it is unlabelled, lying discarded on the floor of a dirty car.
And of course the cassette players, from these early surreal toothy pianos to the silver ghetto blasters of the nineties, always with their promises of superior sound. It is tempting to condemn the cassette as ultimately being music packaged for people who did not have much space in their lives for music, whose tastes were fleetingly transient, and who just didn’t care about quality…
On the other hand cassettes might be viewed as the great populist format, giving us our first entree into music piracy- home taping, large collections created at low cost, mass production and distribution of material, easily portable. For sharing. And of course, a means of recording demos without access to a studio. In other words, despite their failings when it came to quality and durability, indispensible.