Well, hello there, my good buddy, my good ‘ol pal, THE Michael Warren with your recently scored Walter Wanderley Rain Forest in such a lovely green, that was featured by our mutual friend and Top 5 Records co-host DJ bemsha in our last installment of the live talk-show series on the theme “Summertime.” As we shared at Tohto Records, that record also caught my attention, bemsha’s as well, as we were sifting through the Brazil section together right before you arrived. I was slightly on the fence about taking it home myself. While I know it to be a killer record (that I happen to be listening to now as I type this), and while I do love some good 60’s Bossa, I admittedly think I may have wanted to have it more for its connection to bemsha and the memory of its Top 5 Records cameo than for the actual music is on it, which is a little embarrassing to admit for a number of reasons. But then again, records are sometimes like that; sometimes they connect you to a person (to bemsha in this case, and now to YOU, Michael too), or to a place or thing, not just the music (but that too) but the talisman-ness of the object itself. A record itself, just the existence of it as an object, without necessarily a complete sense of the music on it, might define not only an era of your life but a snapshot of a particular moment of time, like a photograph.
Michael and I were having a conversation today (now yesterday) about how a record is quite a unique thing. How it’s both finite and infinite at the same time. It can be like a Willy Wonka ever-lasting gobstopper, an inexhaustible source of delight, a gift that never ever stops giving, even if not just to you. And yet it can also freeze a moment in time, like I was trying to describe above. I guess you could say this about all art, literature, cinema, maybe it’s the nature of recorded things. But still, the record I feel is slightly different.
I don’t know… maybe it can’t really be explained, or maybe a more erudite thinker and writer could articulate it better than me.
Anyway…
So yeah, now I gotta get this record, NOT ONLY for its amazing Bossa (really, you owe it to yourself to go listen to this record if you don’t already know it) but also because it connects me to two of my record-loving buds, Michael and our mutual pal. I keep saying this, but it’s true: The world gets smaller through music.
More Tokyo Record Style on the way!
Walter Wanderley – Rain Forest
Label: Verve Records – V6-8658
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo
Country: US
Released: 1966
Genre: Jazz, Latin
Style: Bossa Nova, Latin Jazz
https://www.discogs.com/release/399534-Walter-Wanderley-Rain-Forest
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