There is something romantic about a rainy day in the desert. It's related to the moon. The theory goes that the larger an object is, the more public it feels, and the less intimate. This would be why large buildings or highways don't feel personal, but a pack of cigarettes or a nice rock do. However, the biggest exception that proves the rule, the moon! It's so big and so very far, yet who has not looked at the moon and felt a sort of intimacy?
This brings me to the genre of bossa nova. One of the best records that captures the intimate spirit of bossa is Getz / Gilberto, featuring one of my favorite musicians ever, Antônio Carlos Jobim. It's a nice record. It's a sort of lunar-acid record, for it captures some of the romance of the moon and shares the non-specific-amplifying capabilities of the very finest LSD synthesized in the past quarter decade.
You are sad, so you hear the restraint in Stan Getz' saxophone on O Grande Amor. You are happy, so you feel the euphoric swing of Só Danço Samba. Even within just the seminal Jobim composition The Girl from Ipanema, the story is entirely up for interpretation depending upon your mood. It can be a tale of new love or of cupid fading into the crowd.
On this fine day in the high desert, it captures some of the romance of the moon and the raindrops, but it'll never really come close.
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