Tom Zé ‎– Tom Zé (1972)

Style: MPB, Psychedelic
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Polysom, Continental, Alvorada

Tracklist
A1.   Happy End
A2.   Frêvo
A3.   A Babá
A4.   Menina, Amanhã
A5.   Dor E Dor
A6.   Senhor Cidadão
B1.   A Briga Do Edifício Italia Com O Hilton Hotel
B2.   O Anfitrião
B3.   O Abacaxi De Irará
B4.   O Sândalo
B5.   Se O Caso É Chorar
B6.   Sonho Colorido De Um Pintor

Credits:
Bass – Gabriel
Guitar – Osn
Organ – Casali
Percussion – Oswaldo
Engineer – José Cordeiro
Performer – Tom Zé

A surrealistic 1972 album from one of the greatest overlooked geniuses of Brazilian music. Tom Zé is one of the most shining examples of avant-garde invention in Latin music, next to Caetano Veloso and Jorge Ben. This album is more on the downbeat folk singer/songwriter tip than the rigorous avant-garde experimentation of his late-'70s period or his '90s revival. This self-titled album remains, in its own right, an exquisite collection of lyrical twists and delicate bossa nova tunes that should be tracked down by collectors of Tropicalia. Numerous tracks from this album were anthologized on David Byrne's excellent Brazil Classics series, but the album in particular didn't get reissued officially until 2002. The album displays a different side to his quirky genius, with more attention given to the text than to the idiosyncratic rhythm structures which are the signature of his work.

Dean McFarlane / AllMusic

Tom Zé ‎– Tom Zé (1970)

Style: Bossanova, MPB, Acoustic, Funk, Psychedelic
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Mr Bongo, RGE Discos

Tracklist:
A1 .   La Vem A Onda
A2 .   Guindaste A Rigor
A3.   Distancia
A4.   Dulcineia Popular Brasileira
A5 .  Qualquer Bobagem
A6 .  O Riso E A Faca
B1.   Jimmy, Renda-Se
B2.   Me Da, Me Dê, Me Diz
B3.   Passageiro
B4.   Escolinhas De Robô
B5.   Jeitinho Dela
B6.   A Gravata

Credits:
Producer – João Araujo

Tom Zé’s second album — and the second of three self-titled albums in a row — isn’t always as highly regarded as his first, but it shows him more versatile as a vocalist.  There are some funky rock riffs with more bass and guitar, without the heavy organ of his debut.  There are more ornate arrangements, with lush strings and horns.  The songwriting is, perhaps, less dripping with irony, but the irony and starkly earnest shock humor is still present.  There are plenty of excellent compositions here.   

In an interview, Zé described this time and album as fraught with personal crisis: 

“I was in a kind of crisis because I knew at that time that I didn’t want to do the popular music from my first album again. At the same time I didn’t know what to do and at the same time, João, the guy who freed me from my contract . . . was putting pressure on me to work and do more music. To me, it’s a crisis album and I don’t like to listen to it very often.” 

The sorts of crises that he’s referring to weren’t just personal.  This was still a turbulent time in Brazil.  In his memoir Tropical Truth: A Story of Music & Revolution in Brazil (2002), fellow tropicalista Caetano Veloso described the era this way: 

“In 1964, the military took power, motivated by the need to perpetuate those disparities [making Brazil the country with the greatest social and economic disparity in the world] that have proven to be the only way to make the Brazilian economy work (badly, needless to say) and, in the international arena, to defend the free market from the threat of the communist bloc (another American front of the Cold War).  Students were either leftist or they would keep their mouths shut.  Within the family or among one’s circle of friends, there was no possibility of disagreeing with a socialist ideology.  The Right existed only to serve vested or unspeakable interests.  Thus, the rallies ‘With God and for Freedom’ organized by the ‘Catholic ladies’ in support of the military coup appeared to us as the cynical, hypocritical gestures of evil people. *** we saw the coup simply as a decision to halt the redress of the horrible social inequities in Brazil and, simultaneously, to sustain North American supremacy in the hemisphere.” 

When Veloso and Gilberto Gil were jailed in 1969, Tom Zé took over hosting the TV Tupi show Divino, Maravilhoso for a few episodes. 

This album is still about the manifesto of tropicalismo.  There is the famous line Dustin Hoffman delivers in the film The Graduate (1967); when asked what he’s doing, he responds, “Drifting.”  Zé is drifting a bit here, but in the best possible way.  He wonderfully evokes a kind of unsatisfied boredom and uncertainty, matched with curiosity and open-mindedness.  There are very poppy tunes, verging on the commercial (“Passageiro,” “Jeitinho dela”).  And there are ballads (“O riso e a faco,” “Me dá, me dê, me diz”).  But there is more than that too.  “Jymmy Rende-se” has a tight groove.  The lyrics are playful nonsense,  but that kind of sums up the best of what the album as a whole has to offer.  Some of the other upbeat numbers (“Guindaste a rigor,” “Escolinha de robô”) are quite good too. And this isn’t all just variations on conventional pop/rock forms — some of this stuff is dissonant and weird too (“Qualquer bobagem”). 

This might not be Zé’s most highly regarded album, but it’s still up there with his best.  Though it isn’t like he’s ever really made a bad album in a decades-long career.

Syd Fablo / Rock Salted 

Tom Zé ‎– Tom Zé (1968)

Style: MPB
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Mr Bongo, Rozenblit

Tracklist:
A1.   São São Paulo
A2.   Curso Intensivo De Boas Maneiras
A3.   Glória
A4.   Namorinho De Portão
A5.   Catecismo, Creme Dental E Eu
A6.   Camelô
B1.   Não Buzine Que Eu Estou Paquerando
B2.   Profissão De Ladrão
B3.   Sem Entrada E Mais Nada
B4.   Parque Industrial
B5.   Quero Sambar Meu Bem
B6.   Sabor De Burrice

Credits:
Producer – João Araújo
Written-By – Tom Zé

His first, and arguably best album from the great Rozenblit catalogue lovingly restored in its original format on limited LP and CD, re-mastered from the original Rozenblit master tapes. 

In 1968 Tom Zé; moved from Salvador Bahia to Sao Paulo where he hung out and wrote with his friends Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. Although initially part of theTropicalia movement, Zé was so independent he was determined to forge his own musical path. He started by recording Grande Liquidacao, a hyperactive pop album backed up by two incredible psychedelic rockbands: Os Brazoes and Os Versateis. 

Tom Zé's material on this album includes traditional Brazilian Tropicalia laced with crazy vocal melodies and samples a multitude of genres from funk to psychedelic rock and bossa nova creating in the process a sort of unheard pop exotica. This is especially apparent on the track “Gloria” with its changing tempos, bubbling instrumentation and off-the-wall harmonies. The pace of the album, considering it was the 60’s, is brutal so Zé takes a break between songs to address the listener before resuming his zigzag trajectory. The album also includes the fantastic “Parque Industrial” which was later recorded by Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso on the Tropicalia: Panis et Circenses album. 

Tom Zé was also arguably the creator of the first sampler. In the mid 1980's David Byrne pulled one of his albums out of the samba section of a Rio de Janeiro record store which led him to bringing Zé to worldwide attention by releasing numerous albums on the Luaka Bop label.

Mr. Bongo

Arthur Verocai ‎ – Arthur Verocai (1972)

Style: Jazz-Funk, MPB, Psychedelic
Format: CD, Vinyl, Cass.
Label: Continental

Tracklist:
01.   Caboclo
02.   Pelas Sombras
03.   Sylvia
04.   Presente Grego
05.   Dedicada A Ela
06.   Seriado
07.   Na Boca Do Sol
08.   Velho Parente
09.   O Mapa
10.   Karina (Domingo No Grajaú)

Credits:
Bass – Luis Alves
Drums – Pascoal Meirelles
Drums, Percussion – Robertinho Silva
Guitar – Arthur Verocai
Percussion – Pedro Sorongo
Piano, Electric Piano – Aloisio Milanez Aguilar
Saxophone, Flute – Oberdan Magalhaes
Tenor Saxophone – Nivaldo Ornelas
Trombone – Serginho Trombone
Trumpet – Paulinho Trompete

Mr. Bongo has released its definitive reissue of Arthur Verocai’s self-titled debut album. Mastered in 2012 from the original Continental master tapes and supervised by Arthur himself, the reissue arrives in the original replica gatefold artwork. 

Released in 1972 in the context of repressive Brazilian military dictatorship, the 29-minute masterpiece joins the dots between Bossa nova, samba, jazz, MPB, psychedelics and funk. The LP has been sampled by the likes of MF Doom, Ludacris & Common, Little Brother, Jneiro Jarel aka Dr Who Dat?, Dibiase and Action Bronson, amongst others. 

Original pressings are a thing of lore on the secondary market (selling for upwards of £2,000). “For a very long time, we have been trying to re-issue this record; a true and complete album masterpiece in every sense of the word, considered by many people to be one of the greatest ever made, regardless of genre,” says the label. 

Last month, Mr. Bongo celebrated the Brazilian legend with a “global record collection” pop-up in association with Rappcats. The Vinyl Factory also hosted Mr Bongo on the Klipschorn sound system at Brilliant Corners in London as part of our on-going VF Sessions series.

 Amar Ediriwira / The Vinyl Factory

The Durutti Column ‎– Without Mercy (1984) (Reissue 1998)

Style: Abstract, Ambiet
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Factory once, London Records

Tracklist:
01.   Without Mercy 1
02.   Without Mercy 2
Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say
03.   Goodbye
04.   The Room
05.   A Little Mercy
06.   Silence
07.   E.E. 4:37
08.   Hello(w)
Related Works
09.   All That Love And Maths Can Do
10.   The Sea Wall

Credits:
Guitar, Written-By – Vini Reilly
Percussion – Bruce Mitchell
Saxophone – Mervyn Fletcher
Trombone – Richard Henry
Trumpet – Tim Kellett
Violin – Blaine Reininger
Producer – Vini Reilly

Marking a further progression in the overall Durutti sound, Without Mercy both an expanded lineup and sense of what could be done with Reilly's compositions. Consisting of a two-part full-album instrumental piece, Without Mercy integrates the slight hints of classical orchestration and accompaniment from Another Setting more fully via a slew of additional players. Besides the indefatigable Mitchell on percussion and Reilly on guitar, bass, and keyboards, performers on everything from viola to cor anglais and trumpet flesh out Without Mercy's sound to newly striking heights. Reilly's work on piano sets the initial mood for the song, a sound by now as intrinsic to Durutti's approach as his guitar work, capturing both tender beauty and deep melancholy just so. Manaugh Fleming's oboe and Tim Kellet's trumpet start to step in as well as Reilly's guitar, adding in here and there as needed while the track unfolds further to another typically brilliant Reilly guitar solo. From such a striking start, the song continues to unfold over the album's full length. It's very self-consciously romantic (track and album are in fact named for Keats' noted poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci), but the combination of new and old instruments, plus the continuation of the unique Durutti sheen and shine in the recording quality, results in quietly touching heights. Blaine Reininger's viola and violin and Caroline Lavelle's cello add even more classical atmosphere, while the restraint they exercise as well as all the other performers prevent things from becoming a bloated prog-rock monstrosity. Then again, the funky horns and beats about eight minutes into the second part don't hurt either. Even at its busiest, reflection and subdued but not inactive performing are the key, with clear echoes of Erik Satie's work at many points, while Reilly is almost always, either via keyboards or his guitar, front and center. The 1998 reissue matches a slightly earlier CD version with the inclusion of the Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say EP. Also appearing are two separate, very stripped-down pieces recorded around the same time, one of which, the wonderful "All That Love and Maths Can Do," features violist John Metcalfe in his first recorded effort with Durutti.

Ned Raggett / AllMusic

The Durutti Column ‎– Another Setting (1983) (Reissue 1998)

Style: Abstract, Indie Rock

Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Factory

Tracklist:
01.   Prayer
02.   Response
03.   Bordeaux
04.   For A Western
05.   The Beggar
06.   Francesca
07.   Smile In The Crowd
08.   You've Heard It Before
09.   Dream Of A Child
10.   Second Family
11.   Spent Time
Amigos Em Portugal
12.   Amigos Em Portugal
13.   Menina Ao Pe Duma Piscina
14.   Lisboa
15.   Sara E Tristana
16.   Estoril A Noite
Dedications For Jaqueline
17.   Favourite Descending Intervals
18.   To End With

Credits:
Cor Anglais – Maunagh Fleming
Percussion – Bruce Mitchell
Trumpet – Simon Topping
Producer – Chris Nagle
Producer, Performer, Written-By – Vini Reilly

Public Image Ltd. ‎– Album (1985)

Style: Post-Punk, Avantgarde
Format: CD, Vinyl, Cass.
Label: Elektra/Asylum Records ‎

Tracklist:
1.   FFF
2.   Rise
3.   Fishing
4.   Round
5.   Bags
6.   Home
7.   Ease

Credits:
Mastered By – HW
Producer – Bill Laswell, John Lydon

Monumental exercício de hard-rock tal como veio ao mundo, por quem o trouxe ao mundo (Ginger Baker) e por aqueles que agora lhe abrem uma janela (Laswell e Sakamoto). Ao mesmo tempo, todos juntos fornecem o cimento de que a arte de Lydon há muito carecia. O seu melhor disco desde «Flowers & Romance». 

Ricardo Saló / Blitz (1986)

Public Image Ltd. ‎– The Flowers Of Romance (1981)

Style: Post-Punk, Avantgarde
Format: CD, Vinyl, Cass.
Label: Warner Bros. Records, Virgin, Columbia

Tracklist:
1.   Four Enclosed Walls
2.   Track 8
3.   Phenagen
4.   Flowers Of Romance
5.   Under The House
6.   Hymie's Him
7.   Banging The Door
8.   Go Back
9.   Francis Massacre

Credits:
Drums – Martin Atkins
Guitar, Bass, Synthesizer, Percussion – Keith Levene
Vocals, Violin, Saxophone, Percussion – John Lydon
Written-By – Wobble, Walker, Lydon, Levene, Atkins, P.I.L.

The saga that led up to the recording of Public Image Ltd’s third studio album, 1981’s The Flowers of Romance, was as lurid as a telenovela. It was hailed as a defiant tour de force, a pivotal forerunner of techno and industrial music, one that set the bar for post-punk, and all of “uneasy listening” to come. Making the record was an exercise in alienation, more painful than getting and removing the same tattoo in one afternoon. 

The sickly-sweet irony of The Flowers of Romance hid a time bomb. In its thunderous, distorted drums, hear PiL tick towards their own explosion. If you feel at odds with the world, know there’s a better way, but no one will listen to you—put The Flowers of Romance on repeat. It may not soothe your soul, but it will make you feel you’re not alone in your angst or your need to keep going. 

Incidentally, Public Image Ltd were actually an incorporated company. This professionalism was a big fuck-off to punk’s chaos that had camouflaged how lead singer John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten, the former lead singer of the Sex Pistols) was being ripped off by the Pistols’ manager, Malcolm McLaren, financially and emotionally. PiL was to be a fresh concept, one based on trust, non-hierarchical, primed to supply the 360-degree needs of a music industry adjusting to videos and CDs. 

Along with Lydon, PiL’s Directors included Dave Crowe, one of his old North London mates; the anguished, gaunt guitarist Keith Levene, who had helped start the Clash; and, in a brilliant stroke of Lydon’s, sparky Jeannette Lee as a non-specific band member. Witty and level-headed, Lee was the glue, the friendly face, responsible for just about everything except actually writing and playing, and even then, her savvy imprint was palpable. The petite heartthrob had previously run Acme Attractions, a progressive style and culture stall/salon in King’s Road, Chelsea’s Antiquarius market with her then-boyfriend, filmmaker Don Letts. She thought of re-purposing the name, The Flowers of Romance; Lydon had suggested it for a short-lived band of Sid Vicious, future Slits members Palmolive and Viviane Albertine. Lee would quit the band in 1982, while PiL goes on, still compelling today; but her tenure is immortalized on the LP cover. A red flower between her teeth à la Carmen, she appears to be about to bash the photographer with a blunt object—actually the pestle from then Vivienne Westwood stylist, Yvonne Gold’s kitchen. The hectic glamour that the über-stylish Lee projected stopped PiL from being perceived as all grumpy white boys—and never forget that even a pestle can hurt. Today, Lee is one of the music industry’s most powerful women, as co-owner of Rough Trade Records. 

For two weeks in the fall of 1980, these hardcore Londoners were off to the exotic Oxfordshire countryside. The stately neo-Elizabethan 17th-century home that Virgin’s Richard Branson had converted into an unusually grand studio was a readymade stage for breakdown/breakthroughs both artistic and mystic; it came complete with a ghost, whose visitations were yet another good reason to put off recording. The cast of this musical mystery experience included myself for some days; drummer Martin Atkins, younger, less tormented than Lydon and Levene, his bouncing presence let some air in; and a slight charmer nicknamed Shooz, aka the late guitarist Steve New. Years later, Shooz said he had been hiding from his transvestism; but then he shared Levene’s career-stunting fondness for smack, contributing to the general tension. 

The waking hours, which mostly happened at night, were a tug-of-war between everyone’s chosen stimulants or deadeners. In those times, cocaine was non-existent and weed had not yet been genetically modified into its current monster testosterone THC; so we can blame the paranoia on the speed. Among other things. Lydon was well known for being paranoid; but then, sometimes they are out to get you, as life had shown him. That uncomfortable knowledge crawls through every bar of The Flowers of Romance. Has any other LP been dragged from its makers so slowly? The album is a breech delivery that needed forceps to scream its way into the world, those indentations on the skull, that bruising—you can hear it all. 

Lydon’s Pistols experience was always tainted by the contempt of coulda-been father figure McLaren. Naturally, Lydon had been impressed at first with the worldly older man’s naughty charisma. Convinced that he had not only assembled the group, (which, in fairness, he had), McLaren also thought he had invented Lydon’s creativity. Wrong answer! Actually, McLaren had lucked out but did not appreciate Lydon, who was a true untapped performer and poet with his own concept of sound. This dismissiveness had caused Lydon to retrench and seek to surround himself with those he knew and trusted, in the new, equitable PiL model. 

The old Pistols construct had become its own sort of prison, one which Sid Vicious had not escaped alive. The loss of Sid, known as Beverley when he befriended Lydon at college, could never really heal. And now, another key figure was also missing— banished, in fact: amiable bass player Jah Wobble, another longtime friend, whom Lydon had talked into learning to play because he wanted him around. Who knows what was in Wobble’s mind, but he felt entitled to use some PiL tapes for his own recordings, without discussion. Off with his head! 

There was a garrison mentality. You were pro-PiL or not. If punk meant a tabula rasa, a clean slate, Lydon now found it necessary to re-make the slate. Without Wobble, a solution had to be found, and the fewer people that were let into the besieged inner decision-making core, the better. 

Frankly, I benefited from their creative scramble. As a rock scribe, I had often covered Lydon, but having been an original Flying Lizard, the early ’80s experimental new-wavers, I was now invited to use PiL “down time.” (In the hours when the studio was not in use, I recorded my own indie 45, “Launderette/Private Armies,” which Lydon and Levene co-produced with me.) Did Lydon already suspect that the studio would often lie idle? 

Lydon and I had first bonded over a shared passion for reggae bass. Bob Marley called the rickety liaison between the music of two oppressed tribes, black youth and white punks, the Punky Reggae Party. With the Rastas’ numbering of corrupt, controlling capitalist systems as Babylon, and Jamaican dub remixes shattering predictable reality, reggae was our religion. 

Back then, I was a music journalist, often covering reggae. My interviews with artists like Big Youth and Dennis Brown sometimes happened at Lydon’s terrace house in Fulham’s Gunter Grove, where dub pumped through giant speakers and the session never stopped, a playground run on vampire hours. Apart from work, and even then, people mostly stirred when day bled into night. I doubt any of us had ever had that much space to cavort in before. For a while, we took over the asylum. 

Hence my presence at The Manor. We lived in a topsy-turvy twilight zone. Rather than milking every precious moment of studio time, there was a lot of sulking and/or deep thinking going on with everyone alone in their bedrooms. Result being, for me anyway, that the glorious moment when I laid down my vocals for “Private Armies,” (on which both Levene and Shooz play,) was somewhat marred by the engineers’ annoyance. Having waited for hours—days?—for PiL, they were underwhelmed at Lydon thrusting me upon them. (It all worked out OK in the end!) 

But bit by bit, The Flowers of Romance’s confrontational, epic tracks assembled, despite it all. A musician would wander in, play a riff, amble off, and another would show up, add another dimension to the fragment and so on. Lydon had reams of notes and could scribble down and deliver a new song fast, if the track moved him. Thus, the nine songs were assembled, a bit like a big communal jigsaw left out in the living-room. But two weeks at The Manor only produced one finished track: the ambient instrumental, “Hymie’s Him.” The rest of the rhythms were taken back to the city and molded at Virgin’s Townhouse Studios, in a somewhat more disciplined fashion. 

Yet even while PiL members were brooding alone in their rooms at The Manor, subconscious work had been done, wrestling with a metaphysical question: when your entire aesthetic has been rooted in bass culture, how to even make sound without it? Those still newfangled synthesizers were part of the answer when the album was completed. Levene almost invented the jagged, jangly post-punk guitar sound. Now he was testing digitized music, with his cumbersome Prophet synthesizer. When it came to music, Levene was fervent, obsessive. The key to The Flowers of Romance lies in his anguished cry, so loud I could hear it in the early hours in my bedroom next door, “I only want to make music like no-one has ever heard before! Or I can’t be fucked.” 

Of course, that epic ambition has always meant tempting the gods, and Greek-wise, Levene—who left the band in 1983—was Sisyphus, doomed to keep pushing, not a boulder up a mountain, but a guitar or synthesizer’s sound, till the new is no longer novel and the cycle starts again. 

Doom and how to deal with it is the message of The Flowers of Romance, which unsettles from the start: an itchy insect sound is swatted down with a harsh swipe of one drum, making the listener the mosquito, followed by Lydon’s startling muezzin-like wail. Disillusion and rejection infuse the title track, caught in this exquisite banality: “I sent you flowers/You wanted chocolates instead.” Attraction keeps tussling with repulsion, especially at women’s bodies in the primal scream of “Track 8.” Repulsion wins on “Go Back,” when PiL tackles the Babylon system that tries to make us all trot down one narrow track forever, led by debt and doubt :”Left/Right/Left/Right/Don’t look back/Take second best/Number one, protect self-interest/Here every day is a Monday…” 

But the overall effect is not rage or despair. The music is on the attack. This was PiL fighting for existence, collective back against the wall. No wonder they felt almost paralyzed. How to top yourself, if your first band had become a global, culture-busting sensation; your own band’s first two studio albums—1978’s Public Image: First Issue and 1979’s Metal Box—were hailed as game-changers, crashing through the primitivism of punk to deepen the template for post-punk’s angular experimentation. Then the live official bootleg album from 1980, Paris Au Printemps, album got a severe backlashing from the press. PiL had to get its groove back. 

The Flowers of Romance spat at their critics with intensity and twisted clarity. In “Phenagen,” Lydon stubbornly intones, “Empty promises help to forget/No more, no more/Repair the damages you made/Amen, amen, amen, amen.” He massacres the Mass as only a Catholic can, and the record’s pain might be a form of expiation, cathartic confession of damage done. 

It’s an album that itches in its skin, restless for oblivion. Rather like punk’s perverse mode of communication—insult your best mates the most—Lydon’s lyrics at first appear misanthropic, certainly suspicious of other humanoids. But a doubly perverse flash of humanism nonetheless illuminates the work. To mess with our heads, Lydon offers us just enough light. 

The remorseless “Banging the Door” shows this duality. It starts out curmudgeonly: “What do you want? You’re irritating, go away/It’s not my fault that you’re lonely.” Then Lydon bracingly concludes, “Why worry now? You’re not dead yet/You’ve got a whole lifetime to correct it/You’re wasting, admiring hating…” 

The track reads more autobiographical than the rest. Against the world, PiL and cohorts would often ignore people pounding. With no security cameras or minders, they were wary. Lydon had often been beaten up in the street. More than once, he came home to find his apartment ransacked by the police Special Branch. He was a subversive rabble-rouser with Irish roots; IRA bombs were a regular menace; perhaps inevitably, some people and authorities projected their racism and/or security fears onto Lydon’s anti-leadership. 

But for those that were there, “Banging the Door” will always be associated with the tempestuous early courtship between Lydon and his wife, the striking blonde German scene-maker, Nora Forster, mother of the late Ari Up, singer of the Slits. In retrospect, Lydon, who was quite a shy guy, might not have wanted to be seen as slushy in front of our fiercely cynical, free-thinking coterie. After all, “This Is Not a Love Song,” would be one of the band’s biggest hits two years later, in 1983. Yet the barbed bouquet of their stormy young relationship has lasted for almost half a century. 

Which is a metaphor for the continued meaning of The Flowers of Romance today, for the mood of survival despite betrayal that it has bequeathed us. Come to that, it captures where we find ourselves now: all lurching through dark Babylon towards an uncertain future. But there is some light ahead, if we keep banging away.

Vivien Goldman / Pitchfork

Julie London ‎– Julie London Sings Latin In A Satin Mood (1963)

Style: Style: Easy Listening, Vocal
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Liberty, Analogue Productions, WaxTime

Tracklist:
A1.   Frenesi
A2.   Be Mine Tonight
A3.   Yours
A4.   Besame Mucho
A5.   Adios
A6.   Sway
B1.   Perfidia
B2.   Come Closer To Me
B3.   Amor
B4.   Magic Is The Moonlight
B5.   You Belong To My Heart
B6.   Vaya Con Dios

Exotic and Latin albums were big deals in the 1950s and early '60s, and singers as diverse as Dean Martin, Lena Horne, and Peggy Lee were recording with castanets and bongo drums. Peggy Lee was so successful at the style that she cut two albums of light pseudo-Latin jazz in 1960. Like Peggy Lee, Julie London combined a restrained vocal approach with jazz phrasing and a cool attitude with icy sex appeal. But while London had Lee's stripped-down musical approach, she just didn't share her unrelenting rhythmic vocal drive or her innate feeling for exotic rhythms. It doesn't help that London is paired with arranger Ernie Freeman, who was usually better at crafting Nashville and soft rock style charts than Latin jazz arrangements. This isn't a bad album -- London sounds casual and confident throughout -- but it is a rather bland one, and isn't blandness what these types of exotica albums are supposed to be fighting against? Latin in a Satin Mood ends up sounding exactly like what it was intended to be -- an aid to put a little vanilla Latin sparkle in suburban American bedrooms. If you want your London in the Latin style, then try her excellent Getz/Gilberto-style tribute to Cole Porter, All Through the Night. Julie London's affinity for West Coast jazz and her melancholy emotional pull were much better suited to bossa nova than to Caribbean Latin music.

Nick Dedina / AllMusic

Julie London ‎– Time For Love - The Best Of Julie London (1991)

Style: Easy Listening
Format: CD
Label:  Rhino Entertainment Company ‎Tracklist

Tracklist:
01.   Cry Me A River
02.   In The Middle Of A Kiss
03.   You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To
04.   No Moon At All
05.   June In January
06.   Round Midnight
07.   In The Still Of The Night
08.   My Heart Belongs To Daddy
09.   Invitation To The Blues
10.   Easy Street
11.   Go Slow
12.   The Thrill Is Gone
13.   I Surrender, Dear
14.   Two Sleepy People
15.   A Cottage For Sale
16.   Daddy
17.   Gone With The Wind
18.   I'm In The Mood For Love

A collection of dusky, atmospheric mood music released as a CD in 1990, Time for Love serves as a superb overview of the jazz-pop songstress in her prime. Seductive and personal interpretations of "No Moon at All," "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," "Cry Me a River" (a major hit for her), and other classics beautifully demonstrate that, like June Christy and Helen Merrill, London realizes just how effective subtlety can be. While the big band accompaniment on some sides (including a soul-baring version of Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight") is nothing to complain about, London is best served by intimate, minimalist small groups -- some boasting only Barney Kessel's guitar and Ray Leatherwood's bass.

Alex Henderson / AllMusic