2008-07-23 - 10:10 p.m. As I've mentioned before, I will watch any musician bio-pic, even if it stars and is produced by Jennifer Lopez. I think I would have loved El Cantante when I was 12: the music, the drugs, the lovers shouting at each other constantly because they couldn't use their indoor voices to articulate even the most basic emotions. Hot stuff. However, as an adult I have to say that the Hector Lavoe story deserves a better film. Too much time is spent here on the dull and not very elucidating soap opera stuff, and not enough on whatever gift or higher qualities Lavoe had that made audiences love him so much--how and why did he inspire such identification and pride among "Nuyoricans"? I think a good music film would shed more light on that. The other night I had a dream that I was listening to Hugo Largo, and though the song in my dream was not a real song, the emotional cocktail it engendered was an exact replica of the keening sadness and joy I used to feel every time I put Mettle on my Walkman and sulked in the backyard. ("Jungle Jim," one of the selections posted on that MySpace page, is a masterpiece of melancholy and troubled beauty.) Upon waking, I almost immediately downloaded the whole album from iTunes, relieved to see that someone had the good sense to re-release this record and Drum (and the clever marketing idea to infiltrate my dreams and make me buy things). You know who else is sort of cool? This Eli Reed guy, doing his retro-R&B schtick. thoughts? (4 comments so far) previous - next blog archive contact