HAPPY MAYDAY!

It's Mayday, and we're celebrating International Worker's Day and the accomplishments of the labor movement--a good thing to celebrate in this season of layoffs, bankruptcies, and billion dollar bailouts. The economy looks shaky, but the weekend is here (thanks to unions) and today we're looking beyond our shores for some good music to kick it into high gear. The Cold War is over, they tell me, and since we're already trading with Vietnam and China (those commies drink a lot of Coca Cola) perhaps it's time to get off our high horse and recognize the people living on a tiny island just ninety miles off the coast of Florida. Let's celebrate Mayday with some Cuban soul. Adelante!

In the 1940s, the Buena Vista Social Club was a members only club that regularly held dances in old Havana. A half century later, musician and musicologist Ry Cooder hurdled the blockade and traveled to Cuba to meet with the surviving musicians of the legendary club, including Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Rubén González and Eliades Ochoa. The result was a brilliant and popular album that brought international attention to Cuban music, and a worldwide tour. Enjoy the music and humanity of this fine documentary by Wim Wenders.

I dare you to not like this music!

MEMO FROM TURNER

Here is a clip from "Performance" (1970), a strange film by Nicholas Roeg starring Mick Jagger and James Fox. Fox is a thug on the lam hiding out with a dissolute rock star named Turner, played by Mick in extremis. Identities shift in this X-shaped plot, and a drug-addled Fox loses his mind and starts to believe he's Turner, while Turner tries out the thug life. Here, a gangster of wealth and taste gives Fox the news. A memo from Turner.

A head trip in classic sixties style, with slide guitar played by Ry Cooder. Rent the movie.

RY COODER

Ry Cooder is an amazing guitar player. As a session man, Ry has played with everyone from Captain Beefheart to Taj Mahal, Randy Newman to Ali Farka Toure. He reassembled the Buena Vista Social Club and helped bring the talented Cubans to worldwide acclaim. Ry played guitar on "Let It Bleed" and "Sticky Fingers" with the Rolling Stones. (That crazy slide guitar on the bluesy "Memo from Turner" sung by Mick in the film "Performance" was all Ry) On top of that, he came up with some fantastic solo albums, such as "Bop Till You Drop," shown above. Blues, rock, soul, latin, African...you name, he's been there, done that.

The word on the street is that Ry is coming out with "I, Flathead," an album about offbeat Los Angeles in the 1950s. It's the third in a series of LA slices of life that includes "Chavez Ravine" and "My Name is Buddy."


The above clip is classic Ry Cooder, playing with The Moula Banda Rhythm Aces, an all-star lineup, from a film by Les Blank taped at The Catalyst, Santa Cruz, CA on March 25'th 1987.

Band:
Ry Cooder: guitar, vox
Jim Keltner: drums
Van Dyke Parks: keys
Jorge Calderon: bass
Flaco Jimenez: accordion
Miguel Cruiz: percussion
Steve Douglas: sax
George Bohannon: trombone

Singers:
Bobby King: tenor
Terry Evans: baritone
Arnold McCuller: tenor
Willie Green Jr: bass