Kicking High Down South

We dearly love both Charlotte Greenwood and Argentina. Put the two together with a dash of Nicholas Brothers, and it's heaven beyond heaven.

El Artista

¡Hernán el Corsario!

El Veterinario para el Indio?

País de los Juguetes

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What to Wear for Carnaval 1938

El Ventrilocuo

Buenos Aires en Bicicleta

Ay, Salon Marcel!

Ay, Gomina!

Patoruzú y el el Ladrón..de Niños!

Mas Juana

Escaping Argentina for Paris with her parents during the nightmare years of the 1970s, Juana returned and had a lucrative if questionable career in comedic television. Was she the Spanish language version of Tracey Ullman? Thank goddess she pursued music!

Juana Molina, Hoy Por la Noche

Can't. Hardly. Wait.

UPDATE: OMFG. I had high hopes for the show with Juana, but I now have a new #1 chanteuse. She is beyond description. Besides the fact that she sings most of her tunes in Spanish, there is little that is quintessentially Argentinian about her unless you recall that Buenos Aires has the highest per capita rate of folks going to shrinks of any major city in the world. More than Vienna. Repetitive, obsessive rhythms from an alien place. Ah how Freudian. How Southern Cone.

She opened with "Un Dia" (as seen below), and it was just a tight, cool show, every step of the way as she and the two other musicians seemed to make more sounds than most symphonic orchestras. Dressed in a classic little black dress, she belied the fact that she turns 47 this year.

My only complaint was that this glorious artist was at the Great American Music Hall. Yes, I love the look of the building, but the folks that go there! We're at a concert not the Super Bowl, people. There were a couple of times that I wanted to turn to the couple next to me -- who looked at the stage maybe 15 seconds the entire evening but babbled along to each other a pitch volume for two hours straght -- "Did you come to watch the show or perform your version of Love Letters." Or, more to the point, I wanted to say, "Why are you littering this otherwise perfect evening with the inane chatter of your tedious, pointless lives?"

I was probably the person who clapped the loudest about midway through the show when, as she looked out at the chattering crowd and said. "What are you talking about? " There were a couple of giggles and then the babbling continued. "I wasn't sure if you were talking about the show or something else." As a woman who grew up in two of the world's most cultured cities -- Paris and Buenos Aires -- I am sure this was a shock to her.

She soldiered on and gave an incredible show.

Interactive Monday: Name That Band!

Okay, I've really been thinking about taking it from being a joke to reality of finding a bandoneón teacher and start a band because they look and sound so cool. Oh, I guess that I should also actually buy a bandoneón, but first things first.

I would see our band also having an oboe, pedal steel guitar, tuba, banjo, glass armonica, at least three harps, timpani drums, Vietnamese unicord and charangos. We'd also have occasional guest tambourine players who don't need to have any particular sense of rhythm but need to be really cute and popular to attract the right crowds.

We'd need to have some cute uniforms too, and we'd play a mix of Wagner with a country twang, tango songs with a klezmer swing, hillbilly ditties with operatic flair, Barry White tunes in German with me playing my Jew's harp to augment the banjo and big harps plucking away, a disco version of "Feelings" but with a polka beat and Bacharach tunes as if sung by Sid Vicious.

So, now here's the biggest dilemma. What should we call this band? That's where the interactive part comes in. Chose from the list below and also let us know if you'd like to join the band and which instrument you'd like to play:
* The Dangling Participles
* Gregg and the Egg
* The Outside Agitators
* I Can't Believe It's a Girdle
* The Manic Monkey Operatic Operators and Taxidermy Tax Accountants
* Shirley Pimple and the Pus Cats
* Gravy on a Stick
* Band
* The Duke of Hairdo
* Suddenly Salad! Suddenly Susan! Suddenly Last Summer!
* Tell Me Where It Hurts
* The Patty Hearst Avengers
* Strom Thurmond and the Grave Robbers
* Oh No She Didn't!
* The Thing That Ate Sarah Palin's Brain
* Wholey Night, Bloody Night
* With Six You Get Empanadas
* East Dakota/West Dakota
* We've Fallen and Can't Get Up
* Ocean of Motion
* The Cannibal Sea Kittens
* Pork
* Nosehair
* The Glow Worms
* The Breasts of Burden

When the Walls Come to Life

I've not been to Buenos Aires in at least seven years and really need to get back. It's such a simultaneously arrogant and chaotic city, two flavors that speak to me. I'm getting really addicted to the works of Blu who makes public art and murals that make the ones in the Mission look downright tepid by comparison. Blu's animation with the music of Andrea Martignoni will mess with your head in a very good way.