Marc Anthony: Search and Destroy

marc anthony. um, he can sing well. though i don't particularly care for anything he does, especially not "i need to know" which is utterly ruined by the use of the phrase "baby girl" in the chorus.

As you can probably guess, I think one eye would still be a better fate than that.

Did you ever learn Spanish, DeRockMi?

I have been vaguely getting into salsa through downloads the classic hipster way: starting with the old stuff... I have a Celia Cruz comp. and a few other random tracks.. Is there a compilation that you would recommend I start with?

I discuss so compilations on that generic salsa thread. There's a new three-CD one from Nascente (Beginner's Guide to Salsa) that looks pretty good, although it does seem to draw from a limited number of labels. (The choice of who is included appears to be dictated a little too much by what label they are on.)

For the material included, I still think the 20th Anniversary of the NY Salsa Festival contains is good, but there are a couple bad transitions between tracks. It doesn't flow well all the way through, but some stretches do. Also, the first disc is much better overall than the second. That's because of the salsa romantica overproduction of the stuff on the second side. Still, if you can get past some of the trinkly synths on these songs (and they don't all have that all the way through), and what sounds like dubbed in audience sounds, there are some pretty good songs. But I recommend it primarily for the first disc worth of songs.

I have a Colombian salsa compilation on order, so I will say something about that once I hear it.

If you aren't immersing yourself into it by going to clubs, then starting with the old stuff is probably the best way to approach it.

This new compilation I just bought Lost Classics of Salsa Vol. 1 is really very good, even though I wouldn't say any of the singers here are major league--but the energy coming off of this thing is very consistent. And isn't the other hipster approach to pick up the most obscure patch of a genre? This is all stuff from little bands on little labels, making it onto CD for the first time. (I'm not sure any of this is being mastered from original tapes. In most cases, anyway, it's obvious that it's being mastered from vinyl copies, but despite that, the sound is pretty good. Hell, it's better audio quality than a lot of VAYA or Cotique reissues, and those labels are owned by FANIA!) I'm not exactly recommending this as a starting point, but you could do worse. The bad thing is that it won't introduce you to any really major performers.

Still haven't worked on this seriously. It's a good thing it wasn't on my long list.

racist idiots on twitter didn't like NYC born Anthony singing "God Bless America" during the 7th inning stretch of the baseball Allstar game

http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/55715208108/baseball-fans-super-angry-hispanic-american-superstar

While we are on the subject of Marc Anthony he will have a new salsa album out shortly and while I was pretty pessimistic about it based on "Vivir Mi Vida," now that I've heard a bunch of other clips it sounds like it could be quite good.

(Though it's probably going to have to be very very good indeed to compete with the new Grupo Niche.)

Whoa, those comments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckMlp--d_N8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nscATxcVp8U

He has a new album out and it's good. Not sure how good, but it's good. It's surreal to be sitting here listening to new Marc Anthony salsa when he hasn't put out an album of new salsa in about ten years. On this song I like best the Barry Mainlowesque chorus at the very end. Sound quality less than stellar on this youtube copy so go to Spotify if that's an option:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlxHmW8MzeI

His voice is still incredible and I'm still ambivalent about the overall sound of the songs and I'm sure I'll still enthusiastically get up to dance to some of them, if given the chance.

Kind of freaky (but why?) that it picks up right where he left off stylistically. Sergio George and his hand-claps. Sergio George and his Copacabana choruses. Sergio George and his Salvation Army brass sections (think "Celos"). Still there's often enough solidity to the percussion to make me want to dance (though I know others don't feel the same way), and after all salsa romantica/salsa monga whatever you want to call it was a lot of what I heard when I was just a complete beginner at this dance I almost never dance for reasons so far out of my control.

It certainly makes me nostalgic.

(I like hand-claps but Sergio George's are just a little too respectable.)

i listened to this today. found the production a bit much to overcome on some of the tracks but it's got some good stuff on it.

This album might be more consistent than Valio la Pena was, but nothing jumps out as exceptional the way "Valio la Pena" did. Seems kind of slim pickins after a ten year hiatus. Quality for what it is, but I don't know.

x-post:

Glad you checked it out anyway. Yes, the production is a challenge for me at times. Like I say, I'm very ambivalent about the Sergio George sound, but my favorite stuff is more on the salsa dura side of things at this point. The Colombian band Grupo Niche just put out an album and it's much better than this. They're pretty commercial too, and their production might be too much at times. I would recommend skipping the title track (in two versions) if you listen. The context is that it's a tribute to Jairo Varela who was the music director and basically the center of gravity for Niche over the years. So I think that comes out especially in the title track in a more sentimental way.

I don't think I mentioned on this thread that I don't really like the "Vivir Mi Vida" the first single from 3.0.

So the Niche album is still very heavily produced but it's got a hard edge a lot of the time, plus they have done some interesting things with production over the years. It actually backs away from their last couple albums which I think went overboard with trying to for some sort of studio perfectionism. They leave more edges in the sound.

yeah it's very glossy, MORish almost but once i get used to that sound i hear thru it - liked the "pop" version of "Vivir" better than the really bombastic album opener. the softer tracks like "Dime Si No Es Verdad" come out of the mix better for me, but either way it's fun to listen to a big bucks mainstream Salsa album in 2013, and it suits the weather a treat

"Vivir Mi Vida" might as well just be a pop song. I don't know if you know, but it's an adaptation of a Cheb Khaled song. (There was a pretty popular salsa version of his "Aicha" too, which really annoys me at this point.) Happy listening.

Haven't kept up with Cheb Khaled but he wasn't too impressive on the clip I saw from Arab Idol, from this year.

(Lol, listening to this Grupo Niche and it's really not that much edgier, but it is on some songs. My favorites are La Novia and Eres Tu, plus Aprieta, which is very adventuresome musically in its incorporation of Cuban elements, and some other things it does.)

In a funny way 3.0 is, if not stripped down, a little less cluttered at time than I remember earlier releases sounding like. Parts of "Dime Si No es Verdad" are surprisingly spare.