Friday, April 23, 2004  

Toni Tornado, "Tornado"
Toni Tornado, "Tornienete"
S.O.S. (Som Orlando Silveira), "Kohoutec"
from Funk Black Rio (EMI/Odeon) compilation

Antonio Pinto & Ed Cortes, "Meu Nome e Ze"
from The City of God (Milan) soundtrack

If you haven't seen City of God yet, go and put it in yer NetFlix queue right now (the DVD hits on June 8). It's one of the best movies I've ever seen, and Oscar liked it so much that it was nominated for best foreign flick one year and then, once it got a U.S. release through Miramax, the director was nominated for this year's Academy Awards.

The nonlinear but completely coherent storytelling and the wicked cinematography are what make the film great---but the soundtrack is damn tite too. When I saw the flick I assumed the soundtrack was made up of vintage late 1960s / early 1970s Brazilian funk, but when I bought the soundtrack CD I found out that the music was all fresh stuff by film scorer composer Antonio Pinto and his partner Ed Cortes. These dudes know how to cut the funk, as you can hear on "Meu Nome e Ze."

In honor of City of God, I've posted some vintage Brazilian jams from a Japanese comp called Funk Black Rio (not to be confused with another comp of the same name, though this one looks tite and it's much easier on the pocketbook. And you can't go wrong with Samba Soul '70).

Toni Tornado is a Brazilian television and movie actor who began as a James Brown impersonator. On "Tornado" not only does Toni T name a song after himself, he names a dance after himself. (Not quite "The Curly Shuffle," but close.) Throughout the track Toni Tornado sounds like JB screaming with a Portuguese accent. Sweet. (There's another song on Funk Black Rio, "O Jornaleiro," where ol' Toni sounds like Glenn Danzig doing James Brown.)

For the one-minute-long "Torniente," Mr. Tornado channels Vincent Price at the beginning and then breaks into a coughing solo. Coughing is so tite.

And S.O.S.'s "Kohoutec" is just sooo stooooopid. And yep, the singer yells, "Good gawd! Heeeey!" Everyone loves Brother James.

One of the best places in the U.S. to get anything funky (and/or Brazilian) is Dusty Groove out of Chicago. It's a really great store, and their extra-informative Web site is like reading a 'zine about rare-groove music. Dusty Groove is where I tracked down Funk Black Rio.

Had a huge day with the hits yesterday because someone from Webjay linked the site---but he/she linked to an MP3 directly so that people could spin it from the site, which nearly crushed my bandwidth for the month. PLEASE do not link directly to MP3s or play them from this site; download them to your hard drive first---and then go out and buy the CDs if you dig the tunes.

Please welcome a tall but coordinated lad named Moist to the MP3 blog posse. Some days he's go-go funky, some days he's weepy & white. My kinda blogger.

Posted by CP | Link |

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