Have some madeira, my dear…
December 23, 2008 Category :music| new media 0
Its a voice that startles you at first. Its not good, I thought. The songs were strange, sardonic, almost silly, and simultaneously deeply meaningful. And the voice. Was Jim Bianco serious? But we found ourselves listening again.
A modern Madeira (m'dear)
When the Portuguese started shipping their wine to the world in casks on sailing ships they didn’t know it was being stepped on by the heat of the passage in warm holds through tropical waters. Until one day one of the ships returned with its cargo of Madeira unsold.
When the Portuguese tasted their superheated wine, they were shocked; it hadn’t been helped by the long travel in the heat. Or had it? It had a taste that was shocking at first, but strangely captivating.
So we listened to Jim Bianco again, and again. We started dissecting it like the Portuguese picking through the tastes and flavors of their mutated wine. Though we had only three Bianco cuts, and two of them were alternate versions of the same song, we had taste after taste.
Is it meter that makes I have a thing for you so interesting, or is it phrasing or is it some combiantion of both? And it wasn’t long before we, like the Portugese sampling their tortured wine, were drunk on Jim Bianco, and couldn’t remember what we found objectionable about it at our first taste,