Sunset Blvd
The Most Beautiful Girl
I guess it all started just after Baltimore Days" a noon at one of Hilton’s cafes. It was early February and the only thing I was sure about was the album’s title: "The Most Beautiful Girl". I had just finished putting together an mp3 compilation in Itunes with the worst tracks I had ever heard. I was trying to understand how can someone combine in such an awful way Do in the minor with Sol. Mi in the major with La.
Every night in youtube Blind Willie Johnson was singing the depression era blues "Black was the night, Cold was the Ground". The "Rainy Night In Georgia" was teaching me how simple a song could be, while Marvin Gay with "Inner City Blues" was reminding me that even 40 years later life is still cruel that "makes you wanna holler"…
I could stop at delta gospel and blues samples. I chose f***** reality. The broken story of a waitress somewhere in Nebraska, there, where the west begins. The desperation and extreme feelings of a looser in "That Kind Of Man". After an electric dubby version in March, I resolved in the tranquility of an almost unplugged, remorseful version. I could stay in just 10’’ of John Lee Hooker’s hobo chorus in the legacy of "Ladies and gentlemen Elvis left the building"….I chose the lyrics from a cutting edge tech sound. The acoustic guitar and the piano in the beginning of "Think of Me", the trumpets in "Shea Town" and M1 Korg’s I15 vibraphone in "Rain in 57th". Only a bossa could let me balance the lyrics in "Loving You". Something almost neutral next to Leave me there, close enough to the ocean…Something melancholic like the train in "Train comin".
Many times you result on something, you reach to a conclusion : Protection has no end… and you know that the only way to express this is a runaway blues like "Laetitia".
Today, 8 months later "The Most Beautiful Girl" looks like a musical sequence that started with "Tell Me About America" without being able to know when it will be finished…. Today, 8 months later I am sure that music cannot anymore be characterized with meaningless definitions like jazzy, bluesy, loungy and even worse, chill.
Today I spend my days drinking, smoking, wandering, stepping to the a.m.. And all the times I remember them saying: "honey you are the most beautiful girl, the most beautiful girl in the whole world…"
Sunset Blvd
September 2008