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Father-in-Law Vinyl Purge 2012 – #3 Harry Belafonte (1973)

Published July 27, 2012

When I was four or five, I was a huge Raffi fan.  I played his tape over and over in my My First Sony tape player until I simply misplaced it.  Coupled with the fact that I watched the movie Beetlejuice so many times that I knew the “Banana Boat Song” by heart, it must have been fate that I came into the custody of Harry Belafonte’s career retrospective, Harry Belafonte (Pickwick/RCA/Camden Records, 1973).

Let me lay it down for you.  Harry Belafonte is a genuine crooner.  When I wasn’t completely melting in my chair while listening to Belafonte slowly instill a little romance in my life on this album, I was imagining how fun it would be to be Lucille Ball in the ’50s, dancing and falsely singing along to music from the islands.  Calypso music is fun!

The text on the back blunted my perception of the music a bit, with one of his producers having written:

You envision a tall, athletic looking, immensely handsome man whose appearance in a low cut shirt and tights pants is a mere prelude to the total entertainment to follow … Harry Belafonte is a beautiful human being!


Clearly, the record execs envisioned this music for women.  I am not one to beat that down.  I fell in love with Belafonte on “Windin’ Road”, and secretly wished for a large teddy bear to hug while listening to the rest of the album.  You go, Harry!

Verdict: Keep.

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Father-in-Law Vinyl Purge 2012 – #2 Bernard Lavilliers

Published July 8, 2012
Tonight, unlike last time, I felt like I could listen to the entire album of Bernard Lavilliers (O Gringo!, Barclay Records, 1980).  It would tell me a story, I thought.  As the first song poured into my amplifier and out of my speakers, I got the sense that this was going to be a punk story.  The bass line recalled Social Distortion’s rhythmic backdrops.  Well, that’s about the only parallel that I could draw between Bernard Lavilliers’s brand of punk music and that of the Anglophone world’s.  Some synthesized glissés of guitar noise made a mental image of David Lee Roth pop into my mind.    
Then, we moved on.  To different avatars of Bernard Lavilliers, or simply, Lavilliers.  Air pipes from Ecuador.  Musical stylings from central Asia (despite the fact that this album’s work was supposed to specifically represent that of the western hemisphere).  I think Bernard fancied himself as a young Tony Bennett at one point.  Boy, there were many twists to this tale.
His vocals dominated the tracks, giving more fuel to my general burning distaste for the chansons à texte.  Random shout-outs and what I perceived to be rapping stoked the flames.  Really, if you subtracted the words, you would be left with easy listening: three cyclically repeated tones and a handful of big band instruments inching themselves in every so often, lengthwise .
Sometime after realizing that I had listened to the majority of the record and with two more songs to go, I looked up at the album’s cover from across the room.  Mr. Lavilliers was laughing at me.  Yes, sitting in his decrepit bedroom, which I can only guess was couch-surfed before absconding to New York from France, he seemed to laugh/say, this wasn’t really an album.  It was really a sampler of the large variety and styles of songs that, I, Lavilliers, can perform at your next wedding reception.  Gotcha!  I suppose if that was his story, I didn’t like it.

Verdict?  Toss.

 

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