Has Carl Found His Voice Yet?

Unarguably, Carl Thomas remains my best soul singer. This is can be wholly attributed to the artistic success of the Emotional Album, especially his track Summer Rain. But beyond that, Carl has a penchant for making good music. Good music being the kind of music that appeals to several experiences. Thus, his albums are eclectic in their outreach and, even though his genre of music is loosely based on emotion, Carl distinguishes himself as consummate professional.
Born in Aurora, Illinois, Carl left home, hiking to New York in his quest for fame and fortune, with his impressive vocal skills as the only item on his résumé. Lines fell in pleasant places for him when he met with P.Diddy, a renowned talent scout who could seek a pearl in a sprawling landscape of garbage.
Under the Bad Boy Label, Carl released his debut album, Emotional, in 1999 which met with widespread approval and impressive record sales—it even went platinum. I still listen to Emotional even though ten years has passed since its release. What draws me into this album is its originality. The blend of Carl’s fusion is so complete that it’s hard to decipher who he sounds like, hence his authencity. Great tracks abound in that album, in fact every song as the temperament and occasion it suits. And on a whole, it’s a smooth, long ride down the alleys of acoustic perfection.

Let’s Talk About It, his sophomore effort released in 2004, heralds a completely different experience. It’s definitely a more urban album designed to appeal to a larger fan base. This, of course, is an ingenious attempt of Carl’s Record Label at making more money under the auspices of catapulting Carl into renowned fame. Carl produced another eclectic fusion, but of Urban R and B and soul music, a mixture that had only been attained by few, even then grossly by serendipitous experimentation.
The initial swing with which the record begins is wild and rather than sustain the thumping beats courtesy successful American hit makers, Carl ingeniously sways into his usual slow tempo to deliver tracks reminiscent of the good, old, balladic Emotional days. However as fate would have it, Carl had to back out of the promotional tour of his second album when he heard the news of his brother’s death from an accidental drive-by shooting.
In an interview, he said, he sort of “lost his voice”. The loss of a close relative is no joke. And I sincerely empathesize with his grief. It was a good reason to remove himself from further musical endeavours and creep into the warmth of family to dissolve the hurt. That move also sort of thwarted his producer’s attempt at making a global hit out of Let’s Talk About it. And it turned the hype of the album to the barest minimum.
Perhaps it is the admixtures of all these scenarios that led to Carl’s exit from the Bad Boy Label. Carl left on the premise that he was not afforded the creative liberty he was awarded for his debut album on his second, and so launched into another record label, where, hopefully, he would become the captain of his musical career sail.
The result of this detachment from his custodian of fame produced another album in 2007 titled So Much Better. Like the name suggests, So Much Better, was a sincere declaration of liberty being more acceptable in comparison to his stilted stint at Bad Boy. Hence So Much Better, fashioned out primarily as a Mix Tape, became an experimental project that showcased Carl in his most sublime state.
Sincerely, So Much Better is a good album, with the usual spectrum of emotional range, with less executive intrusion, and is perhaps a sincere tribute to Carl’s temperament. I Thought Should Know, is a noteworthy love song, Oh No is a successful experimentation of soul with reggae, replete with the “marleian” feel. Home is an unbridled emotional avalanche on the importance of family, and signature interludes, usually unfinished songs, abound in this effort. But missing is Spoken Word poetry blended with rhythms, a feature on his previous albums, and the interludes are disappointedly shabby, lacking the usual lustre and feel brimming in his previous efforts.
On the whole, I was not convinced that Carl had gotten his voice back since the unfortunate incident of his brother’s death. I was also confused with whether to ascribe the failure of So Much Better entirely to the experimental basis of the effort or the poor publicity services proffered by his new Record Label. However, I would rest my case till Carl hits the stores again with another album.

Thoughts on Geisha.

War is a terrible thing. At least that is how I felt after I watched Memoirs of a Geisha. The movie produced by Speilberg( that is responsible for its length, some 2 hrs), and adapted from a book by Arthur Golden is indeed an expose on Japanese culture. And that is exactly what movies should be: a mirror through which a people, nay a culture, can reflect upon themself.
So what is a Geisha, you should ask? And what is so noteworthy in a Geisha to deserve a memoir? There is more to it than the eyes meet or the ears hear. The western culture is responsible for most of our wrong notion on Geishas and other figments of the Japanese culture.
Contrary to our opinions, traditionally a geisha is not a prostitute. Rather a geisha is a Japanese hostess trained in the acts of entertaining men by dancing, singing and serving. Even if I didn’t take any other thing away from this movie, at least that initial notion has been corrected. And I feel if that is all a movie does, rather than engage the viewer’s few hours, it is successful.
But this movie goes beyond that. It is structured. Even though a lot of scenes were thrown into building a story and educating the viewers’ about the Japanese culture, the plot is set in motion, albeit slow motion. All aspects of human emotions and endeavour are taken care of; talk about aspirations, desire, poverty, adventure, test of filial relationships, and most important of all love, is brushed into the mix. The story is essentially the coming of age of a young girl who becomes a geisha. The story is also essentially a Japanese tale of their status quo before the war, presumably WWII. When the war came, the structures of their culture were strictured. Names were preserved but duties were misplaced. Thence a geisha became a cheap prostitute, rather than an effigy of Japanese hospitality. But one is tempted to ask if this is the product of the war or time or both.
If there is anything a movie should leave one with, it’s a topic for future discourse. No doubt, Memoirs of a Geisha does.

Coping with Grief (Again!)

Coping with Grief: Another Perspective.
A while ago I read John Irving’s A Widow for One Year and I was in awe of the themes espoused; that of grief and how humans cope with it. I saw a movie recently that drew parallels to these themes. And I was again in awe of the similarities of themes in different scenarios.
Based on a book by Kim Edwards, A memory keeper’s daughter is a movie about an orthopaedic surgeon husband and his pregnant wife. His wife delivered a set of twins, one was male, the other was a mongoloid female, striking a cord of memory with husband whose sister also had down syndrome and died early in life causing her mother so much pain.
In a whim of moment, and cascades of memory, he thought what was best was to spare his wife such unnecessary emotion so he planned register the child into an institution for people with Down syndrome, and then lie to his wife about her death. As fate or providence would have it, the nurse, who was to deliver the child into the Institute, kept the baby and became her foster mother. With her man she met in serendipitous circumstances, the baby also had a father.
The doctor who later received the gift of a camera from his wife processed his grief via photography. By photography, the tales of the lives are told. Their marriage was left with scars of distrust which later transformed into the wife’s infidelity, whilst the fostered daughter flourished and became a source of joy for those who kept her.
What is striking about this movie, like I said earlier, is it’s similarities with Irving’s story. The conflict although is much different—the death of two sons. What the husband resorts to is also different: philandering; the wife became a detective novelist. But what is noteworthy about this film is the effects of grief on the lives of individuals. How humans, amongst many other things, share their grief, how they process it, how they overcome it, how they surmount it, or how it surmounts them.
But one moral lesson I took away from this movie is that little (in)actions can reap the darnest of consequences. Thence we should always be sure of our actions before we perpetrate them.

The taking of pelham 123

The Taking of Pelham 123.
Denzel Washington and John Travolta

I am in awe of John Travolta as a bad guy, especially the gangster type, replete with tattoos, bohemian hair-cut and cuss words. From Quetin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction to his tag team with Nicholas Cage, who happens to be losing his grip in his film selections lately, in Face Off, to this latest unlikely team with Denzel, Travolta seems to cut the physique of a bad guy better for me than he does of the imperial hero who literarily saves the day.
A film adapted from a novel by John Godey of a selfsame title. From the title, one can infer that it inclines towards a terrorist hijack of some sort. It turns out to be a mercenary enterprise carefully wrought with stock exchange manipulations and ransom demands.
Denzel seemed to be shoveled between ends. He is a train operator with a previous history of alleged bribery currently being investigated and ill-luck of being the operator of the train being held hostage. But trust Denzel, you would get always get a stellar, even near perfect, performance.
Like in all sensational films, there is the part “Providence” plays. Providence being the rough edges of the story smoothened by authorial intrusions towards preservation of the protagonist’s glory. For instance, providence puts a teenager with a laptop with webcam who transmits the ongoing events to national television. Providence makes things go awry with the ransom car, etc.
One can’t but question the predictability of the plot but I really felt Denzel’s wife response when he informed her via telephone that he would personally deliver the ransom money to the hoodlums. Now she didn’t say be careful or anything that implied that, she said he should pick up milk on his way back home. Now that, for me, is a courageous thing to say. And is perhaps my most thrilling scene in the movie.
The taking of Pelham 123 is not a great movie, it’s a good one and it does what most movies should: thrill you and engage you for a few hours.