Rare Groove ·

Flipped on MNN, our local cable telly access show, and spent some time with Rare Groove Revolution. I was initially caught by the sight and sound of reggae classic Double Barrel which is as rough and rugged a record as they come, but the deeper impression as the show went on spinning perhaps not classic (hugely popular?) but certainly classy soul from the seventies was one of subtlety. Most of these recordings have been pillaged and plundered by the sample and break crazy Hip Hop generation, and in the main for their hard edged slamming groove thang, but upon revisiting the originals it's the quavering almost not there soft seduction of the singers that fade into across the barlines lilting horn charts to lift the listener into the release of the chorus that impresses.


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Nicole Paradiso ·

Traveling south, and part of my typically European quest to unearth an 'authentic' America of truck stop diners and endlessly lonely highways is utilising the DelMarVa peninsula, and Highway 13 instead of Interstate 95 with its attached rest areas and services.

Last year, I stopped at ParadisoPizza, a decent alternative to the chain store eateries that proliferate even on this obscure road. As well as the thin slices and dark coffee that they were surprised to serve me (only foreigners drink hot drinks on hot days I surmise) I spotted some copies of a CD that on closer scrutiny looked to have been recorded at the behest of Sony records. I didn't buy one, figuring that as it was on Sony the disc's author would either blow-up huge, and I'd consequentally know all about her, or be summarily dropped over the next few months at which point she would either disppear forever, or (re) embark on the usual, 'normal' 'indie' career.

So this year I was intrigued to find, and buy, the second release, entitled 'Stones and Bones'. I don't have the first to compare it with, but this one contains good, exceedingly well recorded and produced, impassioned, if sometimes a bit 'rote' rock, or standard singer-songwriter work, my favourite song (the most evocative) being 'Soul Go'. Nicole is a committed singer, with a reasonably flexible instrument, affecting some eighties mannerisms at times (think Souixie or Lene Lovich perhaps), but generally coming off as herself, which is more than one can say for most. In other words, if you like girl fronted rock band music (not really my thing), you'll like this. Recorded at (the now defunct) Sony Studio, and definitely not released 'on' Sony.

Driving through this landscape of poultry farms, corn fields, gun cigarette and firework shops, lobster and clam restaurants, road signs for fishing villages, broken down houses, shacks, mobile homes, prisons and prison like high-schools, so unlike South London, let alone (equivalently rural?) Devon, and not much like New York either, I always wonder about the people who live here, who they are, what they think, aspire to, or are resigned to. As someone who wrote thousands of words related to issues of music and (geographical) place I'm intrigued by Nicole. Did she grow up in this Pizza restaurant and one day say 'enough' and escape north? Or is this 'New York styled' eatery something established by a New Yorker family who'd had enough, fallen in love with the sandy soil of Eastern Virginia and transplanted an aspect of home south, perhaps leaving Nicole behind, or bringing her along, even as she vowed 'I'm going back as soon as I can'. Just what memories and ambitions resonate in that voice and through the poetry of her songs?


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