The best thing I've collected from the world of Napster recently has been two tracks from Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Orchestra. Anyone who's seen Kusturica's film "Underground" (a deleriously wonderful attack on the perpetual martial conditions in the Balkans, or at least how it seemed in 1995) remembers the band that followed our two protagonists in the beginning of the movie as they lurched drunkenly from pillar to post one night. That's pretty much what the music is like on these tracks. Some sort of weird combination of klezmer, gypsy, big band, and Les Negresses Vertes music that I like to call "Hey, Hey!" music, the kind of thing that Krusty the Klown might listen to in his spare time when he's not betting on the Generals to lose to the Globetrotters. (If you'd prefer to call it "Hey! Hey! Hey!" music, you're welcome to your opinion, however wrongheaded.) Frankly, I have been too caught up in general enjoyment to take a closer peek at the components of the tracks, but they're a real hoot.
-- Trip Kirkpatrick
[NB, I think their music was also in Black Cat, White Cat, a fine example of the gypsy screwball comedy and worth a rent.]
| P2P | Gypsies |
