Time: 56:28
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2018
Styles: Jazz Vocals
Art: Front
01. I Feel Pretty (Live) (3:05)
02. Gimme A Pigfoot (Live) (4:44)
03. Blues In The Night (Live) (5:38)
04. There'll Be Some Changes Made (Live) (4:23)
05. Whatever Lola Wants (Live) (5:28)
06. Kiss (Live) (3:26)
07. Cheek To Cheek (Live) (4:59)
08. Come Together (Live) (4:54)
09. Exactly Like You (Live) (4:35)
10. Dream A Little Dream Of Me (Live) (4:38)
11. Ain't Misbehavin (Live) (5:28)
12. Creep (Live) (5:04)
Based in NYC, Mimi & the Podd Brothers are a fresh take on early jazz with classical trimmings and soulful underpinnings. They pride themselves on re-inventing the classics and retrograding the contemporary. Feisty, fun, soulful and honkey-tonk all at once, Mimi and the Podd brothers will take you from Harlem to New Orleans, to France and the tin-pan alley.
Live In Brooklyn
"I Feel Pretty" is one of the songs I have spent my life loathing. But, as with any number of other songs a person spends his life loathing, every once in a while you come on an interpretation that goes at the song from a new angle -- and then, magically, the curse is off. For me, this is it for "I Feel Pretty." The huskiness of voice, the shouting (or semi-shouting) the peculiar emphases, the black self-confidence by contrast with whatever it is in the goopy West Side Story (and I can't say that the enthusiasm of the live audience hurt any, either) -- in summary, there's real wit here. (Can't say it exactly made me laugh, but it sure did make me smile broadly.) A similar transformation is not, for obvious reasons, performed on "Blues in the Night." "Blues in the Night" has already had more than its share of classic readings. But our Ms. Mimi here, whoever she is, has great fun -- and provides great entertainment -- with her interpretation of the otherwise fairly banal "Whatever Lola Wants" (from the old Broadway musical "Damn Yankees") and she even brings something new to the great classic "Cheek to Cheek." Very nice posting. Came up on me from behind. The cover art looked promising somehow. The "Live in Brooklyn" the same. But I really had no idea what I was walking in to here, and it was great. (While I'm at this, let me mention another song I spent most of my life loathing: Charlie Chaplin's "Smile." And why did I loathe it? Because I knew principally in Judy Garland's in my opinion ridiculously diva-ish reading. And then one time, in a beachside bar here in Búzios, RJ, Brazil, I heard "Smile" sung in Portuguese and, wow, what a song! The Brazilian version was introduced, I believe, by Djavan. Anyone else out there had "Smile" ruined for him/her by JG? Get hold of the Djavan and let yourself be turned around.)
ReplyDeleteI really liked this CD -- excepting, needless to say, the inevitable Side B filler and junk. But I want to improve on something I said in my comment of yesterday. Yesterday I said that there are songs you spend your life loathing, and then one day you hear one of them in an unfamiliar reading and all of a sudden it's not just a different song, it's a great song. Yesterday I mentioned that I had had that experience with Charlie Chaplin's "Smile," which I had mostly registered over the years in Judy Garland's full-throated diva-ish rendering. Then I heard it sung as "Sorri," in Portuguese, in a bar in Brazil, and all of a sudden it was revealed to me as the great song it really is. Comparable in a way to what happens when you're doing a building renovation, you strip away years of badly applied paint and wallpaper and you discover something amazing and gemlike underneath. This is not exactly what Mimi does with "I Feel Pretty" and "Whatever Lola Wants." She does not reveal a gem under an overlay of gunk, because in these two instances there is no gem underneath. What she does do is travesty those two songs. She goofs on them. She removes any doubt there may ever have been as to the fatuousness of those songs. Those songs ARE fatuous. As it happens, she also provides a very pleasant listening experience -- a lot better than what Carol Lawrence and Julie Andrews ever did with "Pretty" in particular. But that's only part of it. Mimi, come sing for us here in Brazil! And bring those great Podd Bros. with you! I can't guarantee the enthusiasm of your Brooklyn audience, but we'll do our best.
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