Gal Costa

by teabog on May 24th, 2007

Gal Costa
“Samba Rosgado” (From the album Gal Tropical)

Ever since I saw Os Mutantes’ last year, I’ve made it a habit to pick up every “Island Beats” or Brazillian LP that I come across. And, man, I come across a lot. Most of the records that I buy are at Goodwill, and most come in big piles since after an old person dies his or her kids send all their music to Goodwill for psychopaths like me to paw through. Aside from Christian music and classical, tropical and Brazilian albums are far and away the LPs that are most commonly found in Goodwill stores in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls metro area. I can’t explain it—it just is.

Anyhow, the majority of these albums sound exactly the same, but there have been a handful that have stuck out. Gal Costa is consistently brilliant. This track is off her 80’s release, “Gal Tropical,” and it sounds kinda like the theme from “Moonlighting” if “Moonlighting” was made in Brazil.

Buy the album at Amazon

Fox “S-s-single Bed”

by teabog on February 5th, 2007

Fox
S-s-single Bed

I downloaded this off of Fluxblog ages ago, and once I got past the fact that it was unapologetically a piece of sleazy 70’s dance music—free from any sign of kitsch or self-awareness—it became my campy anthem of the summer.

The key word is “camp,” not “kitsch.” I’ve read Susan Sontag’s half-coherent essay that tries to differentiate the two terms, and even though I found it very interesting I thought it was way too prolix and muddied the terms more than they needed to be. To little old simplistic me, the difference between the two terms is that “campy” things are good in spite of being campy, while kitschy things are only good within the context of being kitsch. Lime green stretch pants were never good, until they were worn by self-aware people who embraced and appropriated their badness to a new end. Campy things are good things that, for whatever reason, are grouped in with bad things. The films of John Waters and Douglas Sirk, for example, or the music of Girls Aloud or Annie.

Back to this song…this song is one that you probably shouldn’t play in front of new company for fear of getting dirty looks. When you first listen to it, it just feels wrong, like you’re listening to something you should hate. But then you start to realize how goddamn sexy it is, how it’s not the coked-out, superificial disco fantasies of some dumb cunt that you’re listening to, nor is it a run-of-the-mill 70’s psychedelic track. Instead, the blending of the two styles yields something that’s much filthier than you would expect, something that maintains its playfulness in spite of its sexiness. The end result is sounds like a blend of Cyndi Lauper, Goldfrapp, and Blondie, and I like it a whole bunch.

Buy Fox’s debut album at Amazon