Relisten

1:42:03
Taper:
Jamison Waddell
Transferrer:
Jamison Waddell
SHNID:
hgelb2010-03-19.flac16
Source:
onstage Schoeps CCM4's > Korg MR1000
Lineage:
mastered in 32bf/88.2kHz - weiss for conversion to 16bit/44.1kHz - trader's lil helper for FLAC8 SBE Free
Taper Notes:
View Notesthanks to Jim Blackwood for his support

recorded with onstage Schoeps CCM4's > Korg MR1000
mastered in 32bf/88.2kHz
weiss for conversion to 16bit/44.1kHz
trader's lil helper for FLAC8  SBE Free

Recording and Mastering by Jamison Waddell

support the musicians and buy their albums, please.

From HoweGelb.com

"Howe Gelb and a bunch of Flamenco gypsies flowing freely from Cordoba, Andalusia.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE SOUTHWEST (of Spain)

Let's redefine the meaning of crossover. The album recorded by Howe Gelb and a bunch of flamenco gypsies in Cordoba, Spain, sounds like absolutely nothing else you have ever heard before, yet it maintains the familiar flavor of the Arizona desert Gelb has been shaping throughout the years, both solo and as the leader of seminal alt.country pioneers Giant Sand. It flows as naturally as if it had always been there, waiting for someone to grasp its pieces and put them together.

Back in the late 80s when Howe Gelb used to live in Joshua Tree he only had three tapes he could listen to in his car: Tom Waits, Miles Davis and Tomatito, the virtuoso flamenco player. Many years later, a lucky combination of hazard and destiny found him jamming in a home studio in Cordoba (the studio has now gone professional and is named Recordoba after these sessions) with some local musicians: Lin CortŽs, Juan Punky and A–il, Ramos, Inma, çngela, Roc’o, Prin' La L‡. C—rdoba, the same city mentioned by Obama in a recent speech as an example of tolerance and cross of different cultures living together: Arabs, Jews and Christians lived together in C—rdoba for centuries, and the town retains a certain magic atmosphere you can't find anywhere else.

The gypsies didn't speak English, but they could play Spanish guitar and cajon like only drunk devils can. Howe doesn't speak Spanish, apart from a few useful words he learnt by the Mexican border, but he's got a grainy voice that disarms any listener, and started playing piano in a way the gypsies had never seen. They all instantly fell in love with
each other and played for hours without end. Words didn't work, but glances and chords did the job. That same night, in the room downstairs from the studio, Howe wrote four new songs inspired by the intensity of the moment.

In the control room was Fernando Vacas, one of the Spanish top producers of the recent years (the man behind the enormous mainstream success of young Spanish female folk- singer Russian Red). Recording everything and thinking ahead: there might be a record there, not only a friendly meeting. New songs, new sound, a million ideas in his head. On the second session, Raimundo Amador popped in, and that unleashed the magic and took it to even higher grounds. Raimundo is a huge star in Spain, a super talented guitar player who has played with the likes of Bjšrk and B.B. King. He invented the crossover between flamenco and psychedelic rock back in the late 70's with his bands Veneno and Pata Negra, and his contributions to the album are truly mindblowing, including a superb pure flamenco guitar introduction to one of the main tracks on the album, "Cowboy Boots on Cobblestones".

Mixed in Bristol by John Parish, this album, 'Alegrias', by Howe Gelb and A Band of Gypsies, is still a country-folk record, but soaked with the collision of flamenco flavor, latin rhythms and indie-rock. Gelb, Vacas, Amador et al. have managed to capture the magic of this new music and present it in the form of an astonishingly beautiful album."