January 29 - Negativo

This next song fits in with the oddities this week because it is a track on the only album I have heard from this singer, and I came across it more or less by coincidence. In January 1998, I went on my first and only "sydentur," which is Norwegian for a trip on a chartered plane to various tourist resorts in the southern parts of Europe, usually in the Mediterranean, but also to some of the Canary Islands, which are Spanish islands off the northwestern coast of Africa in the Atlantic. I was convinced to go with a female friend, who unfortunately since has passed away. We were not boyfriend/girlfriend, but that was not for my lack of trying - but we were still very good friends, and she convinced me to go on this trip with her to Grand Canaria - and Playa Del Ingles.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun on this trip - although my back got one of the most severe sunburns I've ever had, much due to my insistence on reading on the beach - and sometimes when I read, my eyelids get very heavy. Playa Del Ingles is one of the most touristy spots you can ever imagine to the point that there is no local flair left, everything is made to be like it would be back home in Scandinavia or England, so the place itself really wasn't much for me (and I am not much of a beach person, which is the main attraction there). While I did appreciate the warm waves of the Atlantic Ocean on one of the many sandy beaches in walking distance from our hotel, we eventually caught a break. We won a rental car for a few days while there on a scratch off lottery - the only catch was that we had to sit through a presentation on a time-share opportunity (as if that lottery wasn't rigged...) - and that allowed us to explore the island a little bit more. Thanks to a well-hidden local restaurant, I discovered the joy of tapas - and the delicious taste of Ron Miel, a honey rum local to the Canary Islands. Small local markets had good food - cheeses and sausages - and they were all of a sudden accessible to us, which really made the trip great.

And, of course, I had to check out the music in the stores. In the music departments of the bigger department stores, there were big, purpleish posters of a man in metallic paint - or at least it looked like it. The name on them was Bunbury - and that was all I knew. I was intrigued (who says marketing doesn't work?). I ended up deciding on purchasing the CD, which was called Radical Sonora, and once I listened to it, there was one track that stood out, and that song was Negativo. In preparing for writing this, I discovered a couple of other things about the album. For instance, the producer is Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music fame. Also, Nigel Butler was very helpful with the programming - he is a producer/arranger/programmer/multi-instrumentalist who has worked with a variety of artists, including Bananarama, Nina Hagen, and Cher. To me, this is heavily inspired by what U2 was doing around this very same time, and I greatly enjoy the power of this song.