Gratias á Lulu, Esta Noche y Monica Naranjo

In 2010 I began to exchange emails with several men about Latin music and gay Madrid. I hope to learn a lot about Latin music and my new correspondents were great resources. But there is one Latina star I already admire enormously.

When I took visiting friends out for a night on the town in San Francisco, I tended to end the festivities at Esta Noche on 16th St.

This Latin gay club had been in that once-seedy neighborhood for more than 20 years. Now it’s gone. The neighborhood became hip, and the new neighbors are not the kind to patronize Latin drag shows, but Esta Noche was welcoming and lively. 

But I’ve seen more than a few very memorable moments at Esta Noche during my San Francisco days: it was there that Ken MacDonald was kissed in the bathroom by the most handsome man within miles–a high compliment—this is San Francisco after all. It was there—at the bar, not the bathroom—that Miguel Pou taught me to distinguish between the popular music of Spain, and Mexico, Central America plus Colombia and Argentina and a few other countries in the Southern Hemisphere. I usually can pick up that distinctive Brazilian samba-like beat, and of course the lyrics are in a different language though that is not easy to distinguish when you know only a few words in Spanish and Portuguese, fiesta, siesta, libertad, y “Et tu mama tambien”—just because I saw the movie and loved it.

But it was “Lulu” who introduced me to Monica Naranjo. Lulu was definitely not a gorgeous drag queen (by design), but she was one hell of a performer and knew her divas. During her show, I heard this voice that felt like a combination of Madonna, Bette Midler and Janis Joplin, with a touch of Maria Callas. “Who’s that?” I asked the bartender. “Monica,” he said, “THE star of gay Madrid.” I have since learned that she is much more than that. Monica moved to Miami so now I won’t be able to hear her live though I still plan a Madrid expedition soon. I’ve socked away enough dinero.

OK, OK, here is her iconic Sobrevivire. Sometimes her staging and orchestration is a bit cheesy but listen to the quality and strength of that voice! Music unleashes the animal!

I am planning that trip to Spain and hope to hear some great music. Monica is still performing but this year only in Mexico. Hope to find some other great Spanish divas!

I’m on the lookout! Suggestions?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xErS7G3-tCQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYvqf2ws_cU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1Oc3oZv_QA

TV advertising and the “Truth”

 Originally posted December 11th, 2011

From my friend, Ken MacDonald, a wonderful musician and zennist in Canada (it’s not America but an economic superpower, so it counts).

In Canada they are airing a Brita TV ad. On screen there is a drinking glass on the counter which the camera fixes on the whole time. We see what we assume to be a bathroom door in the background. We hear the toilet flush and at the same time we see the water in the glass ‘flushing’ down and refilling. A woman then comes out to drink her water out of the ‘flushed’ glass (and by the way she didn't wash her hands, which is certainly more of a health hazard than drinking municipal water), visually indicating, you get it, that she’s drinking out of the toilet. If we didn’t get it, the voiceover says, ‘Water from the tap and the toilet come from the same source’.

The ad's been altered twice since its first airing. The first time (as noted in the letters between various water and health agency people, and Brita) was to put a legal caveat on the ad to indicate that municipal water has been treated to make it safe for drinking. Then, recently, they added a four-second insert at the end of the ad visually demonstrating a Brita filter change, while the voice-over tells us for best results to change the filter regularly.

The copy reads:

BRITA.

It’s Tasteless!

Nearly 40% of the developing world’s population lacks clean drinking water and about 2 million die each year because of it.1 By 2025 nearly ⅔ will live in water-stressed countries.2

In the developed world we take our supply for granted, flushing it away mindlessly. But BRITA’s latest ads seem to imply that since the water we use for all our purposes “comes from the same source,” it’s as if we are drinking sewer water. Do you think that’s tasteless?

But if you do buy a BRITA filter, don’t expect it to protect you from anything…it doesn’t filter bacteria,

Notes

1 World Health Organization.

2 Morris BL, Lawrence ARL, Chilton PJC, Adams B, Calow RC, Klinck BA. Groundwater and its susceptibility to degradation: a global assessment of the problem and options for management. Nairobi: United Nations Environmental Programme, 2003

This Culture Jamming ad is the opinion of the author. Brita is a trademark of Clorox Corp.

What’s really at stake here is that we have a limited amount of potable water on the planet. Pretty soon we’ll all be buying water. What will we do with all those damn plastic bottles?

Yes, we still need to clean up the bullshit of political advertising. But how will we do that drinking vodka instead of water (and NO, that is not a solution even if it looks like the only way out).

Music, Genius & Surprise

Music, Genius & Surprise

December 2nd, 2007

I wanted to show the Garapons that we have some culture in San Francisco with a trip to Davies Hall and a concert by the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas. MTT never disappoints. When we bought the tickets, I found out that MTT was not on the podium. Disappointment.

Let’s go anyway. Wednesday was the only night Jean and Marie-Christine had for un spectacle musical!

As we sat down, I began to read the program; by the time the musicians had taken their places, I knew that we had really lucked out.

There are some moments in life that astonish, that knock your socks off. This was one. With music, somehow, it seems that your body can respond if properly tuned, even if words fail. You just sit, stirrings arise from deep inside, and then sometimes are followed by a completely different set of feelings. It is like a journey. Then the last cords sound, and there is applause. The culture tells the body to respond. The emotions choose the decibel level.

I have often wondered what it must have been like to hear young Mozart play. Despite the fact that he was promoted by his father as a kind of musical sideshow to make lots of money, not much different from the parents of any child actors today in Hollywood, or some very famous personalities from the more recent past, such Judy Garland whose experience was not entirely happy, I still have impression that Mozart loved music. A person could not compose Don Giovanni or the Magic Flute under duress or carrying mental scares.

No question that he was a genius born into the world with such extraordinary gifts that you might think that they come from the angels. And still he had to have some kind of training.

Listening to the remarkable Lise de la Salle play Rachmaninoff’s 2^nd Piano Concerto, questions like these flooded my mind, that is after the last astonishing bars had faded. She was born in 1988, began playing at 4, was at the Paris Conservatory by age eleven, and to my ear, at age 19 has the grace and command of an Arthur Rubinstein at the end of his career. Clearly she is a musical genius of the highest order, and it is also clear that she loves the piano. Here is a link to the program notes about Lise.

And what a performance it was. To give a hint of her command of the powerful Russian feeling, the emotions of those opening lines, I found a short video of Mme de la Salle playing the amazing Toccata in D minor Op.11 of Prokofiev.

A spectacular evening. Applause please!

Toute la Mémoire du Monde

Toute la Mémoire du Monde pics