If you only ever buy one album of Cuban music, this should be it. It's worth owning simply for the 7-drum intro to "Prepara los Cueros"...and then Ruben Gonzales' Monk-cum-Latino piano kicks in and, well, basically you are in Heaven. Everybody who was anybody in Cuban music in the 2nd half of the 20th century plays on this astonishing record. Masively fluid, totally open grooves mix with letter-perfect musicianship and endless space for all comers to solo. Enovuh said...this is the Buena Vista Social Club, after hours, unbuttoned, rum flowing freely and pipes packed with mota.
Armstrong's book is a fascinating trip through the history of monotheistic (one-God) religions. As usual, the most interesting stuff in here are the historical details and a look at the political and social contexts where these religions-- all of them now very different than they were even 500 years ago-- began.
Who knew, from looking at Wahhabist Islam in its horrid Saudi and Afghani incarnations, that the prophet Muhammed explicitly took on the task of creating equality for women and slaves? Who knew that Judaism had millenialist movements as far back as the 1600s?
What comes very clear from Armstrong's book is that theology, as smarty-pants Marx knew, has its… Read more
Guy Vanderhaeghe has crafted a masterful novel about the Canadian WIld West and 1920s Hollywood which starts as a riveting thriller and turns into a meditation on quetions of identity (personal and national), the role of memory in historical reconstruction, and the value (or is it futility?) of remembering and retelling the past.
The book tells two stories. In one, the Swan Hills Massacre looms as Caandian settlers head out into the West, following "horse thieves." Among them is the Englishman, from the point of view of whose servant-- the Boy, Shorty McAdoo-- the action unfolds. The other story tells of Damon Ira LaChance, Hollywood mogul, who wants to make an epic D.W… Read more
