The Fania All Stars as
the name suggests were laden with a surfeit of heavy hitters. I’ve already taken some time to discuss heavyweights,
Willie Colon and Hector Lavoe a while back.
Perhaps we’ll have time to get to each estrella in due course. Today,
we’re taking on Joe Bataan who always stood out as achingly unique among this
mighty group of bandleaders.
An early number of Joe Bataan’s was, “Fuego.” It came on during calisthenics in the morning and
seas of inertia parted before the flame.
I’d peg it around 1965 or 66. (I
am wrong by one year, upon checking. It
was released in 1967. If this were the
90’s or the naughts, who’d care? What’s
a year? But those years . . . I’d pride myself on being able to tell quite
clearly the difference between any popular music released in 1965 and
1967. So much was about to change. But Joe had one foot in another era for those
first releases.)
Joe is wearing tux on the cove of the “Gypsy Woman” album,
just like Curtis Mayfield would have done a few years earlier. He was a sharp dressing “ordinary guy.” All the change around him would catch up with
him and his sound very soon. But for that year, he knew who he was. But looking
back, the cover for “Gypsy Woman” in 1967 is a complete anachronism distinct
from all the psychedelia going on around him in popular culture and in the City.
The song, meanwhile, is just mighty, mighty, mighty. It was introduced to me by one of the guards
at a High School I worked at in Manhattan years ago. We connected on New Yorican Salsa, which I
was in a peak of fascination with at the time and he put a mix together for
me. I knew some other things of Joe
Bataan’s but these cuts from the beginning of his career, carried this rough
New York punk esthetic that is forever authentic. You can’t fake it, you can’t embrace it, it’s
gonna stand there and yell at you till you move. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Bataan http://www.descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/archives/Profile69
I got to see him once in New York for a reunion type of show
he had in what must have been 1995 or so.
He looked great. People in the
audience, mostly older, were so excited to see him. I was excited to see him. He talked a bunch about salsoul and latin soul and how his personal origin had nothing to
do the mighty Puerto Rican, Borinquen esthetic
he sprang from. He was, after all of Afro
Filipino heritage and he claimed it unapologetically that night. He also claimed to have invented hip hop and
confessed that he was disappointed that his son didn’t recognize this. Pathos as one considers this lad and his dad.
Joe Bataan, more than any of the other extraordinary Fania
All Stars, navigated the space between soul and salsa, English and Spanish,
effortlessly. The albums were gracefully
balanced between the two genres. The movement back and forth between “Ordinary
Guy” soul and the “Mambo De Bataan” salsa were remarkable and poignant in a way
that most other contemporaries, including Willie Colon and Hector Lavoe,
labored at. (To be clear WC’s salsa was
celestial, just the soul tunes could be goofy sometimes.)
And where New Yorican salsa is already more punchy and
aggressive to my ears than, say Cuban or Colombian salsa from the same period,
Joe Bataan’s sound is yet again that much more pugilistic. When I was collecting every Fania album from
the late sixties early seventies I could get my hands on, I got a Larry Harllow
(Judeo Marvilloso) and Ishmael Miranda disc that had an odd break on one of the
few English numbers. Ishmael Miranda
says suddenly “Hey Joe Bataan, what are you doing on this record?” To which Joe
replies with sullen aggressiveness “Just hangin’ out.” It is so forceful and convincing, that there
is really nothing else to say, and that’s where it stands. Ishmael backs off as I or any other sane
person would have done as well. All of
this music is best listened to in New York.
Or at least the NYC that haunts my mind.
Joe Bataan was functional on piano. His chops weren't flashy like Richie Ray, or
Larry Harlow, he was never invited to solo piano on the group albums, like
Eddie Palmierri. But he was always pulled
out to sing soulfully in English, and Subway Joe, always rose to the
occasion. Joe Bataan’s singing was a
mixture of long Sinatra-like crooning, Curtis Mayfield soulful yearning and Benny
More’s emphatic son . The band demands attention with timbales and
bass and at least three trombones to provide that power punch of Willie Colon’s
band. Three trombones in your face, is
some strong stuff. Even better live. I
never imagined I’d confess to doing so, but “air-tromboning” is almost as
satisfying as accompanying Pete Townshend on air guitar.
And you finish your work out and your shower and you have
the residue of that whoyoulookinat? 103rd St vibe that makes you
walk cool, and drink orange juice cool.
And the air trombone in your mind is still there when you sit down to do
some: (cut to terror music) on line
banking. . . from China.
I called my friends at Bank-of-Toremainnameless today. I didn’t want to call them as the process is
akin to asking the dentist to turn up his muzak and slow down his drilling and
kick back with his process. I gave in
though after behaving like a lab rat, entering and reentering and then
reentering again the same information in the same fashion only to receive the
same error message: “We can’t process
your order. Please remove all %,
< and > marks. Hit the back key and try again.” I cursed the second time. I cursed really loudly the third time,
causing my wife to comment that I was ruining the environment. I tried really hard not to curse the fourth
time. Then, (yes, I did) the fifth time,
after noting with excruciating care not
to enter anything even remotely akin to a “%” mark or a “<” mark or a “>”
mark and timing the nine minute process, I got the same message: “We
can’t process . . . “
Jello Biafra’s line in the great Dead Kennedy’s song “Nazi
Punks Fuck Off” was “stab our backs when you trash our halls. Trash a bank if you’ve got real balls.” This is the right ferocity. Considering whether to begin a sixth data
entry journey, I imagine myself at the controls of a wrecking ball, the bank
before me. I however took the more
testicularly compromised route and dialed support.
I reached Nathan. Nathan
wanted to be sure I was me. I provided
disparate data and multiple numbers to prove that I was me. Nathan confirmed that I was me. He mentioned to me that it was late and I
said that it was 10:30AM in Beijing where I was calling from. Oh dear.
Too much information.
Nathan found in the manual or on some other online troubleshooting
screen that the problem must have stemmed from a “foreign IP address.” “Sir your calling from China and . . . “ That’s it.
It hit my ears like a megaphone order to board a cattle car. “What precisely does it have to do with
anything that I am calling from China?
Nathan, you need to be very precise, are you suggesting that the system
segregates against people operating from this geography or from anyone who
accesses their account from an overseas IP?
This is very important. Please
clarify. They are different and you need
to be precise. Furthermore I am using a
VPN and so my IP address should be registered as a U.S. one.” “A VPN sir?”
“Nathan, you are in IT support and you don’t know what a VPN is? It is a ‘virtual private network.’ What it means is that whatever you have found
in the manual, be it the racist drivel about Chinese IPs or foreign IPs in
general, it is all irrelevant as your system should detect me as being in
America.”
This was way too much for Nathan. “Thank you sir. I need to check the manual.” He checked the manual and suggested he’d go
get a manager who knew the manual better.
I tried to explain to Nathan that the geographic profiling and
rinky-dink IT support was not his issue, per se, but that I NEEDED A SOLUTION
not a fascinating trot through various diagnostic possibilities and matrix
management that the Bank of Toremainnameless operates by.” “Yes sir.
I will get my manager. She knows
the manual well sir.”
I got handed to Natalie.
She was pleasant and promptly stooped over, yanked off her sock and pulled
her foot toward her face and inserted her foot into her mouth just like Nathan,
as if on queue. “So you are calling from
China and are having problems.” 跌脚捶胸[1] “NOOOOOO. That should have nothing to do with
my problem Natalie. Let’s back up and go
over it all again. That I am in China should be immaterial, unless you are
telling me it is your practice to do geographic profiling of people who even
utter the word “Cathay.” Natalie plopped
her foot back out and caught her breath.
“No. No. We don’t do geographic profiling. “
Natilie was patient and well-intentioned. She walked me through the reentry of all the
data, which led to the same error message once again. We then went through the data in detail. Are we sure there are no “%.” None.
Are we sure there are no marks that might be understood as “<.” I see none that could be understood so. How about “>?” Do you see any Natalie? I see none.
“Right. Just a minute.” Hit enter.
Pause. Same error message. “So
you got the same error message? Just a minute.”
“No worries” said Natalie.
“I can see that we were not able.”
Uh oh. This is the “I give up”
speech. “We were not able to provide you
with a solution today.” “Well Natalie,
the night is young. Why are you giving
up? This is a fairly straightforward
data entry issue. “ “I have raised a
ticket.” I see, what is the expected resolution
time on such a ticket?” “Well normally
that is three working days, but with Thanksgiving.” THREE working days? Is that a turn around time you are proud to
benchmark against?” I asked, breaking
out my “I’m in the business” voice my mom used to use when we got bad service
in a restaurant. Three days turn around
on a matter such as this, is atrocious.
Well Natalie understood, and she agreed with me, but there
was nothing she could do. “They will
reach out as soon as possible and certainly within the prescribed response
time.” Natalie proceeded to write down
my contact info and then when she asked my number, I paused with a laugh. “Natalie, I am about to give you an international
number. I said the word “international”
as if it were a new adjective in nursery school. Can you colleagues handle that? “An
international number. Oh, wow. Let’s see the manual . . . well there isn’t a place to enter that. Let me put it in the notes. “
This is America’s largest bank. They must have hundreds of thousands of
overseas customers. But they can’t
handle the notion of dialing someone who resides outside of the United
States. I know, I know, they are looking
out for my security and all these sensitivities are based on real experience
with hackers and all manner of nefarious bad people, a disproportionate number
of whom operate from this geography. But
pennies-per-hour, corporate VOIP calls to international numbers should be as
easy as providing toilet paper in the lavatory in this day and age. They simply don’t think, and don’t care.
What I object to is firstly the easy, bovine assumption of
guilt associated with a particular geography and second the lazy reluctance to
provide for services for non-money, to people who don’t reside within the 50
United States. Anyone else in the world
can deal with it. Every other country
can handle it. Why are YOU still so damn provincial, as if the
world might still be just a domestic one. This is going to crash on your head, America.
I put on my polite, ‘we’re all in this together’ voice with
Natalie and explained that while she personally didn’t suck, her company, their
IT service turn around and general systemic approach to customer service,
online banking and life in an international world, was gargling on a rather large
zucchini in my opinion.
I’m way too sensitive.
I know. I recently had a
considerably worse time trying to set up a web page from Beijing with GoDaddy
who made me send my passport page because “China could not be trusted.” I am sensitive that every exchange will be a
repeat. I worry that this is the shape
of things to come. Increasingly me and
my family are guilty by association for being in, let alone of, China. And it will be an excuse for poor service in
the name of protection. And I remind
myself that all this may one day seem cute and innocent when real difficulties,
real inconveniences descend upon us.
Too bad the Fania guys didn't know much about rhythm.
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