Dinner Music 116: The weekly lineup
bossa nova, latin blues, psych groove from california
This week we’re listening to a music from California, mostly southern. Bossa nova, surf-rock with a psychedelic edge, groove-laced indie funk, golden soul, latin lounge. A reminder, an homage, to the excellent music that has, and will continue to, come out of that region. Below, I have some resources linked if you’re looking for places to donate or ways to help out with the LA fires.
If you’re in Austin I’ll be at the W Hotel as 1/2 of Horse Opera on Saturday, Jan 18, playing from 8 til midnight. We’ll be taking donations to send to folks and organizations in LA, as well.
We begin with Brijean, who was first featured here in 2023 and frequently ends up in the playlists. Macro, their most recent album, “elicits an exploratory vibe with high-tempo peaks and breezy valleys in the psyche.”1 Excellence of their kind takes time and space and equipment. They lost their home and music studio in the fires and are nearly to their goal on GoFundMe — consider donating. It’s artists like Brijean that keep music alive and interesting and make projects like mine so rewarding. We move into Gabriel da Rosa’s É o que a casa oferece, a smooth, and at times experimental (particularly the interlude), tribute to bossa nova with a lightness that threads through each track, pulling disparate elements together into golden production. The optimistic melancholy of da Rosa’s voice bleeds directly into the soul in that particular bossa nova way. Down the road from bossa nova, we have Viva Tirado from pioneering Los Angeles group El Chicano, whose latin soul-funk of the seventies defined a particular sonic sensibility for the eastern part of the city. A cool, laid-back vibe with hypnotic melodies and saturated rhythms, fused with latin, jazz, funk, rock and salsa influence, puts this album on the shelf as a classic. We stay classic with the Supreme Jubilees, a soul-gospel group from Fresno, who released their only album It’ll All Be Over in 1980. The album, and group, was largely unheard of until a copy of the LP showed up in a San Antonio record story and was discovered by a enterprising collector, who introduced the group to Light in the Attic Records who restored, remastered and re-issued it in 2015. “If God had a disco, the DJ would be playing California gospel-soul group The Supreme Jubilees.”2 We end with another Dinner Music favorite, La Luz, whose we’ve featured many times across the years.
The Spotify playlist
Or listen on Apple Music.
Monday
Macro - Brijean (2024)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Tuesday
É o que a casa oferece - Gabriel da Rosa (2023)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Wednesday
Viva Tirado - El Chicano (1970)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Thursday
It’ll All Be Over - Supreme Jubilees (1980)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Friday
News of the Universe - La Luz (2024)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Pair with
Molly Baz’s chicken parm recipe. Molly also lost her home in the LA fires. Consider subscribing to her (very excellent) recipe club.
Wonderwerk Juicy Fruit field blend. A wonderful natural wine from great a group of winemakers in LA.
Your Love is Not Good by Johanna Hedva. A great novel from a Los Angeles writer and artist.
LA FIRES | Where to donate, how to help, what to do:
In less dire terms than life and health, what we lose is more subtle: a continued “beiging” of American cities, less art, more chain establishments. We’ve seen what it has done to parts of New York City and San Francisco, with the loss of characteristically local establishments and a scattering of creative people. It’s already begun, with friends leaving LA and the state for good, forced to relocate with their families. It’s the death of many individual stories.
There is no shortage of links to support; pick one, pick time or money, whatever you have more of, and apply it to a cause you hold dear, even if you don’t know the people personally. Someone will do the same for you when your turn on the wheel comes up.
From
’s Why I Came to California
Thank you, thank you. Have a great week.
lovely post, thank you!