I Can't Help It; I'm The King!! Ambitious Lovers---Greed: No Não York

I love it when a plan comes together... Those were the inspirational words of Hannibal Smith the charismatic  leader of America's lovable 70's TV mercenaries the A-Team.

You Know The Damage You Do

I don't know if you have been to the phenomenon of a fusion restaurant. In America there have been a profusion of Pan-Asian Restaurants, where you can get some Chinese, Sushi & Hibachi, some Thai, maybe if you are lucky a few other things. They may be happening because restaurateurs think that a place serving solely Vietnamese or Thai cuisine would get not enough traffic from the locals to stay open. Or maybe the places are just too unfamiliar (Americans stink at geography) and they are worried they will have to eat armadillo brains or cockroaches. In any event, I find most of these lacking because they give you a little of this and that and it doesn't add up to much. Sometime I have been to restaurants that serve Mediterranean cuisine from Morocco, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, etc, and these seem to work a little better.

As long as they don't try to blend things together. As appetizing as it may sound on paper, when you try to mix and match different cuisines in one dish, there is usually a lot of failure. I think you need a true culinary genius as a chef to pull this off. The same principle goes for music, so when you see musical traditions blended together seamlessly in a unique and compelling way, you need to grab on to it. And The Ambitious Lovers pulled this ambitious feat off with a lot of panache. Greed, their second album has been a long time favorite in my household and is a wonderful blend of Brazilian pop music, punk rock, funk, and experimental noise courtesy of the duo of Arto Lindsay (vocal,guitar) and Peter Scherer (keyboards), with a panoply of guest musicians.

My personal view is that this was a visionary album, at the least ahead of its time, and is long overdue for rerelease in the US. When Ambitious Lovers were together I don't think there was much of a market for an album like this (1990), but today with the recognition and growing popularity of Brazilian music, I think our country is more than ready. It seems on this album Arto combined his collective experiences together and it all somehow melded together. He spent his formative years in Brazil during the time of the Tropicalia movement. Eventually he wound up in New York and was a guitarist in DNA, an experimental noise band that was included on the influential album No New York.

The first song Copy Me is a super funky jam that should have been a hit. Melodious and upbeat, but skronky noise interspersed throughout. The super bass playing of Melvin Gibbs (Rollins Band,Defunkt) propels this song along. Guitar polymath Vernon Reid plays rhythm on this little number. In a way on the uptempo numbers Arto Lindsay comes off like a cross between James Brown and Don Knotts and he sounds great. On the quiet numbers he has all the nuance and cadences of a great Brazilian singer, whether he is singing in Portuguese or not. But when he sings in Portuguese, it is simply sublime and sexy. Portuguese to me is one of the most beautiful languages, and in Brazil the use of space and rhythm sends it to another level entirely. When I first heard Brazilian music, I just didn't understand it at all, it was something that was completely alien to my background. Now I appreciate all its magic and beauty.

These qualities are in abundance on this album. Admit It is funky, erotic and flirtatious--It sounds like it was written in Portuguese and translated into English. It has that Brazilian feel to it. On some of the tracks there are massive amount of percussion, like the cocky booty shaking bounce of King. Arto crows on and on about being the master of the universe, but like in chess "A King can't beat a Queen". Then you have the beautiful ballad Para Nao Contririar Voce. Arto makes this sound deceptively simple, but I know that is surely impossible. The kinetic keyboard driven Quasi You is another high point on the album, with Lindsay testifying over the dance beat. Nana Vasconcelos is featured on percussion here and on many other tracks here.

Vernon Reid is prominent on another great track Love Overlap, which should have been the 2nd single in the US. The song is much in the style of Copy Me but with more synth, and it is another killer. Caso is another exquisite Portuguese ballad languidly crooned to perfection. Privacy is noise funk with rap vocals and a sweet screechy sax cameo by down jazz veteran John Zorn. "Privacy is My Poverty", Arto offers. The lyrics are fantastic on this album, at times so descriptive, at other times full of emotion, and more often than not wonderfully surreal. He is "working on a tan, in my fireplace" during Privacy. On Admit It, he croons "You're no exception, to the laws of symmetry". Tres Sexy.

And speaking of sexy....It Only Has To Happen Once is one of the sexiest songs ever. When you hear this song, the humidity in the room approaches 100%. "All it takes, is a quick constellation, of shadows, lashes and implication...", Wow. Definitely one of my personal favorites. Great lyrics, equally great delivery with a heartbeat rhythm. I originally bought this on vinyl and I taped this album onto cassette for my car. I think I accidently stepped on a cord during this song as I was recording and the heartbeat cuts out for a fraction of a second. And it gives the song an eerie yet amazing moment, one that registers with us as humans, like when you hear the vibrato of a violin in a live setting. It's not easy to describe.

I can't be more adament in my esteem for this record. On so many levels this is great. It's one thing to admire a band like the Len Price 3--I mean wouldn't it be great if they found another Who album from the 60's in the vaults that nobody knew about? But this kind of album walks a tightrope of styles and is on a completely different level artistically. If you are someone like me, who appreciates a gamut of musical styles and gets real pleasure out of inventiveness and creativity, you need music like this. Americans are driving hybrids these days, why not listen to one?

This video is for my buddy, also known as The Man Who Would Be King...Of Brazil!! It's his imaginary theme song, he just doesn't realize it yet. 

Stay Thirsty My Yankees