Gulag Orchestar – Beirut
Often bands do not live up to the hype. This one does. It has taken me an age to get around to listening to ‘Beirut’ but it has been on repeat play ever since.
It’s like the Hawk & the Hacksaw’s flirtation with Hungarian gypsy music, It’s the soundtrack to the Jodorowsky film not made yet & a blend of all the best bits of 3 Mustaphas 3, Penguin Café Orchestra, Muzikas & the most beautiful Beach Boys harmonies that mad, mental Transalvanian vampire hunters can muster.
On the subject of vampires, we kept a dvd on lesbian vampires in the workroom, but after a heated discussion, we decided that in this so-pc world, surely lesbian vampires have their rights too, so we will have to put the dvd on display.
Remember those back streets in Zagreb & the gypsy violin & brass that drifted from the open windows in the dark.
As we approach the marching season (again) you often wish those bigoted, misguided, drunkards would play something like this, instead of those old anthems of hatred.
Those trumpets take me back to a Scotch Sitting Room in rickets-riddled, Govan, eating brown bread & butter & sugar (no wonder my teeth are scoobied!), Eddie Calvert ‘Oh Mein Papa’ on the radio, my father over the water (where I was to end up) – a temporary split-up & me touched by the hand of God for the very first time.
No comments:
Post a Comment