While perusing my favorite local CD shop (Lucky Music, just outside and up the block from the back gate here at the Yokosuka Navy base) I just picked up Astrid Gilberto's I Haven't Got Anything Better To Do LP (on Verve the 1998 Japanese re-issue of a 1968 release)...
I think it's a worthy LP. According to "legend," Herb Alpert got the inspiration for Warm from a visit to Brazil. After listening to this Gilberto release, I'm inclined to think this LP was Herb's single biggest inspiration on that trip. Not only because it contains both "The Sea Is My Soil" (a long favorite among the Moderators here), but Nilsson's "Without Her" (in this case retitled "Without Him.") It also contains "Weeping of the Willow" which would suggest that that particular cut off Lost Treasures quite possibly came from the Warm recording sessions....
Most striking is hearing "Sea" with lyrics. The arrangement is nearly identical with Alpert's, except that what we Herb fans identify as the "LOUD" passages are not so much "loud" as they are "festive." Gilberto's singing (with which I am unfamiliar beyond the oft-compiled "Girl From Ipanema") strikes me as either "Claudine Longet on steroids" or "Lani Hall on Prozac." And I mean those descriptions only in the most positive way.
On "Without Him (Her)" the parts we Herb fans would describe as "loud" are more sudued and the arrangement overall is a bt more "upbeat" than Herb's. Also, comapred to Herb's "mumbling" of the lyrics, it is nice to hear that my decyphering of what Herb was saying is indeed correct when compared to Ms. Gilberto's clear vocals...
All in all a great purchase and I'm sure I'll be buying more Astrud Gilberto before I depart Japan next year...
--Mr Bill
I think it's a worthy LP. According to "legend," Herb Alpert got the inspiration for Warm from a visit to Brazil. After listening to this Gilberto release, I'm inclined to think this LP was Herb's single biggest inspiration on that trip. Not only because it contains both "The Sea Is My Soil" (a long favorite among the Moderators here), but Nilsson's "Without Her" (in this case retitled "Without Him.") It also contains "Weeping of the Willow" which would suggest that that particular cut off Lost Treasures quite possibly came from the Warm recording sessions....
Most striking is hearing "Sea" with lyrics. The arrangement is nearly identical with Alpert's, except that what we Herb fans identify as the "LOUD" passages are not so much "loud" as they are "festive." Gilberto's singing (with which I am unfamiliar beyond the oft-compiled "Girl From Ipanema") strikes me as either "Claudine Longet on steroids" or "Lani Hall on Prozac." And I mean those descriptions only in the most positive way.
On "Without Him (Her)" the parts we Herb fans would describe as "loud" are more sudued and the arrangement overall is a bt more "upbeat" than Herb's. Also, comapred to Herb's "mumbling" of the lyrics, it is nice to hear that my decyphering of what Herb was saying is indeed correct when compared to Ms. Gilberto's clear vocals...
All in all a great purchase and I'm sure I'll be buying more Astrud Gilberto before I depart Japan next year...
--Mr Bill