Gilberto Gil/Jorge Ben - "Gil E Jorge"

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I usually don't care for the jam band aesthetic, I usually don't have the patience for tracks over 6 minutes unless they go somewhere.

So why am I enjoying this so damn much? I mean, two guys "getting into a groove" playing the mostly the same two bars ad infinitum for at least six minutes each track and upwards of 14...but...

Incidentally, this is my first exposure to Gilberto Gil.

― Matt Chesnut, Wednesday, 2 February 2005 06:32 (8 years ago) Permalink

You and I have wildly different ideas of what constitutes a "jam band aesthetic."

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 06:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

Eh, I guess that was a mischaracterization, really. I guess I should've said I don't usually care for loooong improvised songs that don't really go anywhere in particular.

― Matt Chesnut, Wednesday, 2 February 2005 06:38 (8 years ago) Permalink

Do you like that period of Brasilian music overall or is this among your first tastes? Have you heard Jorge Ben before?

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 06:39 (8 years ago) Permalink

My experience with Brazilian music is with a little bossa nova (Jobim, Joao and Astrud Gilberto), Os Mutantes, favela, and capoeira. I'm relatively fresh ears on all this.

― Matt Chesnut, Wednesday, 2 February 2005 06:46 (8 years ago) Permalink

there's not really much improvisation going on there, though, just a lot of grooving. this is one of my favorite albums ever, btw.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 07:26 (8 years ago) Permalink

OK, not "just" a lot of grooving. but the improvisation seems fairly incremental and less the point than the grooving does. anyway, nitpicks aside, it's just such an uninhibitedly beautiful record! they both sound totally open to each other, it's really great to hear them in sync like that.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 07:42 (8 years ago) Permalink

OTM. It really is all that. Beautiful is the word. "Taj-i Ma-hall..."

― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 11:27 (8 years ago) Permalink

best points about this record:

a) they were liquored the fuck up
b) Gil is almost defiantly off-key in large portions of the song
c) Jorge did not want it released
d) neither one was all that fond of long-ass "jam" tracks either before or after this
e) it does not have a lot of antecedents or followers in Brazilian music, and yet it is the second-most Brazilian-sounding album I can think of from the 1970s (first: Nascimento/Borges, Clube da Esquina)

― The Obligatory Sourpuss (Begs2Differ), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 14:29 (8 years ago) Permalink

It's real good, real good. They're loose and I don't generally enjoy this kind of thing all that much, but Gil is such a motherfucker of a guitar player, one of my favorites.

Matt, perhaps you should go buy Ben's "Africa Brasil," which is pretty basic to any library of Brazilian music from the '70s. Gil's stuff varies a lot, but the '68 "Gilberto Gil" is pretty much classic. Or get "Tropicalia Essentials" on Hip-O, which is all that Gil/Velsoso stuff from the late '60s--the best intro to both of them I know. Mercury at one time had a Gil best-of from his classic period with pretty much all his great songs on it, "Aquele Abraço," "Louvação," "Chiclete Com Banana," etc. '98, "Brazilian Collection from A to Z," Mercury 314-536-814-2. Stupid cover but great music. Also, the Gil stuff from the '70s varies but I think the three "Re-" albums are pretty great: "Refazenda," "Realce" and "Refavela."

― es hurt (ddduncan), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 15:49 (8 years ago) Permalink

my fave Gil album is his second self-titled, the one with "aquele abraco" and "volks-volkswagon blue"; second-fave is expresso 2222. that stuff rocks like psychedelic lava.

― The Obligatory Sourpuss (Begs2Differ), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 16:08 (8 years ago) Permalink

for maybe all the gil you need, find the 10cd compilation of almost all his early albums + some unreleased and live stuff. so so so so great

Gilberto Gil "Ensaio Geral" (Mercury/Polygram, 1998) (10 CDs and book)

described here:

http://www.slipcue.com/music/brazil/gil_comps.html

(the best purchase I ever made from dustygroove.com)

― Matt Sab (Matt Sab), Wednesday, 2 February 2005 16:43 (8 years ago) Permalink

Slipcue is a great site, BTW.

"Gil E Jorge" is one of those classics like "Rough Mix" by Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane - I know it's good but I never listen to it. I second the recommendation on Africa Brasil, although the truth is that the Jorge album I listen to most often is a 2CD live set from the late 90s. [I think it's a repackaged version of the Live in Rio albums.] Stupid and fun.

― Mitch Mitchell, Thursday, 3 February 2005 07:17 (8 years ago) Permalink

1 year passes...

i just nabbed this yesterday and i'm enjoying it beyond words. honestly it sorta makes me wish gil and ben woulda gone longer more often, but i also don't see how they could have done that on much of their material. in any case, i want to listen to "taj mahal" every day for the rest of my life.

― ZR (teenagequiet), Sunday, 12 February 2006 20:43 (7 years ago) Permalink

So much better than that Rod Stewart song!

― jimnaseum (jimnaseum), Sunday, 12 February 2006 20:53 (7 years ago) Permalink

Yeah this record is amazing obv, I used to actually like the Rod Stewart song but "Taj Mahal" ruined it for me! Rod should countersue.

― deej.. (deej..), Sunday, 12 February 2006 21:26 (7 years ago) Permalink

Haha, this might be my first ILM thread. Embarrassing.

This album still rules beyond comprehension, though.

― what does this confusing fream mean? (Matt Chesnut), Sunday, 12 February 2006 21:42 (7 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...

i got this because of this thread and listened to it last night and it was rad.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 2 March 2006 18:48 (7 years ago) Permalink

3 months pass...

Some of the vocals remind me of that wanker from Cat Empire. This is definitely a bad thing, but I try to blame the 'empire, not gil e Jorge.

― cnwb (cnwb), Wednesday, 7 June 2006 03:55 (6 years ago) Permalink

3 years pass...

Not exactly related to the above, but has anyone seen Gil lately on tour with his son on guitars and cellist/producer/conductor Jaques Morelenbaum ("The String Concert"). It's coming to DC March 13th

― curmudgeon, Sunday, 28 February 2010 15:11 (3 years ago) Permalink

And yeah, I love this Gil/Ben cd too. Thanks y'all.

― curmudgeon, Sunday, 28 February 2010 15:13 (3 years ago) Permalink

saw gil last year, but with a different lineup. It was pretty horrible, cruise-y kind of music

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Sunday, 28 February 2010 17:58 (3 years ago) Permalink

That's not good. Hopefully with a different band it will be better.

― curmudgeon, Monday, 1 March 2010 18:46 (3 years ago) Permalink

Just saw Gil do a 2 hour show--he played acoustic, with his son also on guitar and Jacques Morelenbaum on cello. I thought it was a pretty good concert. The person I saw the show with liked it better than his recent full band tour that she thought was too busy and better than his solo tour that she found a bit dull. This one she thought he got just right. I had not seen those prior tours.

― curmudgeon, Sunday, 14 March 2010 05:34 (3 years ago) Permalink

lucky you. I saw him at Ravinia here in Chicago summer 2008, and it was borderline terrible. OK, maybe not "terrible" -- just seeing and listening to Gilberto sing (my first time ever) makes it good. But yeah, material pretty lacking. too-slick band. but hey, sounds like you lucked out! would've loved to see that!

― Stormy Davis, Sunday, 14 March 2010 05:39 (3 years ago) Permalink

Gil was rocking the "headset mic", which is never a good thing

― Stormy Davis, Sunday, 14 March 2010 05:45 (3 years ago) Permalink

Not for tonight's show. Too late to splurge for the upcoming April 2nd Chicago show?

― curmudgeon, Sunday, 14 March 2010 05:49 (3 years ago) Permalink

oh, that's the one at Symphony Center? great space! I'd imagine you could still get tickets. speaking of the Brazilians, I say Milton Nascimento at Chicago Symphony Center around 1.5 years back, and Milton was GREAT! I don't think non-subscriber, non-classical, stuff at the Symphony sells out, you should be able to get tix easily

― Stormy Davis, Sunday, 14 March 2010 06:07 (3 years ago) Permalink

"I say". lol. Obviously meant "I saw"...

― Stormy Davis, Sunday, 14 March 2010 06:08 (3 years ago) Permalink

I meant you could go. Here's Gil with the current trio last year in Spain doing a song with French lyrics that he wrote for a festival in Senegal “La Renaissance Africaine,”

― curmudgeon, Sunday, 14 March 2010 06:36 (3 years ago) Permalink

A jazz expert friend of mine who says he loves Gil's albums thought his voice sounded terrible last night. While it might not be what it once was, and his high-note yelping was not as good as it once was, I don't think it was that bad (but I spent my college years listening to punk rock so maybe my tolerence for rougher-edged trilling is greater than that of others).

― curmudgeon, Sunday, 14 March 2010 19:31 (3 years ago) Permalink

2 years pass...

I see that Gilberto Gil just did a North American West coast swing with a band and he emphasized rural Brazilian accordion-led forro music. He's coming East with the tour as well

“In this concert, we mix a little—it’s mostly Forró, [music] but also some standard, some hits from my whole career, some reggae music, and Bob Marley’s songs.”

As a guitar-playing bandleader, Gil happily yields solos to his uniformly excellent sextet: drummer Jorge Gomes, percussionist Gustavo Di Dalva; bassist Arthur Maia; violin player Nicholas Krassik; Sérgio Chiavazzoli, a brilliant slide guitarist and multi-string player who can make a banjo impersonate a sitar; and accordionist Toninho Ferragutti, whose extraordinarily facile keyboard scale-climbing must've left his fingers gasping for oxygen.

― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 31 October 2012 19:50 (6 months ago) Permalink

First blurb is from SF Chronicle and second is from LA Times

― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 31 October 2012 19:52 (6 months ago) Permalink

So no one here's seen him on this "mostly forro" music tour yet?

― curmudgeon, Friday, 2 November 2012 12:30 (6 months ago) Permalink

I guess not

― curmudgeon, Monday, 5 November 2012 15:57 (6 months ago) Permalink

I saw Gil here in Nashville this wk. His first show here ever. House about 2/3 full at best. The forro stuff he does now was well done, and it definitely grooved. Show really took off when Gil got into "Expresso 2222." In fairly good voice--he's lost some of it, but very few cracks. As always, I think Gil is a bit misguided aesthetically in the way he presents some of his music, in the sense that some of it was perhaps counter-productive to just, you know, presenting the songs. But for the most part, it was amazing, and the Nashville crowd was obviously hungry for it. I could've just watched him do his great tunes with a small band, with emphasis on Gil's guitar playing, and when he did "Lamento Sertanejo" from "Refazenda" with guitars and accordion, that was the essence of his art, not so much the forro stuff, which was very well performed and for the most part, not cheesy at all. I interviewed Gil--a big day for me--and he was amazingly gracious and intelligent, it's up at the Nashville Scene's website.

― Edd Hurt, Saturday, 10 November 2012 17:34 (6 months ago) Permalink

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