L'Arena to La Bas

"L'Arena"  Ennio Morricone  Kill Bill Soundtrack Vol. 2
"L'Estat"  Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti  Before Today
"L'Hotel Particulier [Extrait de BOF Melody Nelson]"  Serge Gainsbourg  Histoire de Melody Nelson
"L'Oranguta"  Pepe & The Bottle Blondes  Late Night Betty
"L'Via L'Viaquez"  The Mars Volta  Frances The Mute
"L-O-V-E (Love)"  Al Green  Greatest Hits
"L.E.S. Artistes"  Santigold  Santogold
"La-La (Means I Love You)"  The Delfonics  Beg, Scream, and Shout: The Big Ol' Box of '60s Soul
"La Bamba"  Los Lobos  Just Another Band From East L.A.: A Collection
"La Bas"  Sternklang  Jazz Lounge [Water Music]

  Sometimes these sets have a theme that extends beyond the alphabet.  Others, as here, the songs are disparate and the shifts between them can be jarring.  Of course, the shift between most other songs and The Mars Volta is going to be jarring.

  This is more what I think of when I think of as a Morricone song.  The slow rise from low drums and strings to these huge horn breaks, and sweeping vocals at the crescendo.  The whistle at the start, the individual guitar notes . . . there is an anticipation generated at the start of this song that builds and ultimately is rewarded by the sounds of victory at the end.  The song tells a story on its own, that is mirrored in the movie scene it plays behind.  Originally from a 1968 film with Jack Palance as the villain (as an aside, Palance's character is named "Curly," which is the same name his character had in the 1991 comedy City Slickers - I assume that was intentional.  The other fun tidbit I learned was that Palance's real name was "Volodymyr Palahniuk"), Quentin Tarantino co-opts it for Kill Bill when the Bride is escaping from an early grave.

  Despite most of the French is lost on me, Serge Gainsbourg's decadence is almost palpable in the music of this album.  I mean that in a good way. 

  Between the time I first purchased "L.E.S. Artistes" as a single, and the time I got the album, the artist's name had changed.  Apparently Santi White was being threatened with suit by an infomercial jeweler named Santo Gold, so she changed the "o" to an "i" and drove on.  I found this song through, of all places, Perez Hilton - he had a link to video.

  It seems wrong that I had two copies of Los Lobos' version of "La Bamba" but did not own Ritchie Valens'.  That has now been corrected. (as a rule I am not going through the same song twice just because it is on two different albums - "La Bamba" is also on Rhino's Like Omigod! box.  Different versions by the same artist I will listen through - although when we get to Elvis' complete comeback special we might have to make some exceptions - 6 different versions of "Blue Christmas" might be a bit much).   In the vein of "Cabbage Head" and "Gallow's Pole" this is a folk song that was brought into rock & roll by Valens.  Los Lobos' version is a cover of Valens', but it was done for the Valens' biopic of the same name.

  Sternklang is a Norwegian group that, like Outsized, has very little web presence.  I did find their myspace page, which offers up some other songs and a video.  I also found their record label's homepage, but it doesn't appear to have been updated in two years.