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Groova Tizmo! Lost Cornelia Street Recordings | 1979-2012

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Album Review

Marc Johson

Groova Tizmo! Lost Cornelia Street Recordings | 1979-2012 › Munster, 2024

By Isabel Guerrero

One day you are young and you record your debut album with Vanguard, a label that released references by people like Joan Baez, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Country Joe And The Fish. That first LP, “Years” (1972), a collector's item that Munster Records reissued on vinyl in 2018, places you a little beyond the folk scene in which you survive thanks to an extremely elaborate, baroque pop that is left for trackers. of cult music. The next day, half a century has passed: that is, so many years that another young man has had time to be born who, like you, lives for luminous melodies, which is why he has decided to team up with you to recover songs composed over the years. that time.

The first young man is called Marc Jonson (1960); the second, Víctor Ramírez (1991). After delivering, together, two volumes titled “Turning On The Century” in 2022 and 2023, Ramírez – better known as Ramírez Exposure – has embarked as executive producer on an ambitious, beautiful project, with its crazy point: gathering, ordering and select the extensive material recorded by the American in his home studio on Cornelia Street, in Greenwich Village. “Groova Tizmo! Lost Cornelia Street Recordings | 1979-2012” once again has Munster Records as the team, the most appropriate, of course.

Covered by The Smithereens, Robert Gordon and Paul Butterfield, among others, Jonson has illustrated series such as “Eastbound & Down” (Ben Best, Jody Hill and Danny McBride, 2009-2013) or “Physical” (Annie Weissman, 2021) with his songs. -2023). Now this selection of more than a hundred unpublished songs comes to light, giving an account of the work of an artist defined by himself as a “lonely coyote.” It is not surprising, given how far from the punk and post-punk zeitgeist the singer-songwriter was, surrendered to the pop beauty of Brian Wilson, to the conception of the studio as an instrument (a four-track Phil Spector, the TEAC 3340 to which The artist attributes that special sound, which “poses” next to him on the cover, designed by Paula Costas and with a photo by Anita Walsh) or to a folk that could only be interesting if it showed intimate personality.

And this is what happens from the first cut, “Honey Boy” –from 1979–, a true declaration of his status as a sweet boy; “The Little Things” delves into that folk aesthetic line, as complex as it is precise. But another fact that places this songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist is, precisely, his journey through the delicate, but not honeyed, fifties (the delicious ballad “Show Me Your Mercy”, where he evokes another sweet boy, Roy Orbison who is in the heavens; or the charm of “I'd Cry” and “I Don't Have You”, country touch included). This is an album of infinite details, hidden discoveries of melodies and pertinent decorations that give magic to the entire set. The vocal overlays, far from saturating listening, produce intense pleasure: there are “Anyone Can Call Me” or “Ages Of Wonder”. There are lyrics that sound like a farewell to the city, New York, his own. It was 2001 when he left that apartment on Cornelia St., composing songs like “Ended” (“I'm on my own in this town that's no good / Something tells me that it's ended”), full of anticipated nostalgia, to the how solemn

Although the collection's strength lies in the aforementioned sunshine pop tradition, with captivating melodies and dreamy voices ("The Man Who Walks On Air", "The Moon"), designed to make life lighter, happier . That songs like these were conceived in a home studio invites us to imagine the artist recording those sounds that passed through his head, trying things with effective, vibrant results ("November Paintbrush"), in the New York winter that, as is known, can be hard... or especially inspiring for someone susceptible to living many youths in the same life. Thanks to the songs. “I hated the cold weather, but it was great to create songs in that weather like no other time of the year,” he said. Despite the paradox, the warmth that runs through a good part of these compositions – including the jazzy, almost ghostly epilogue, which he titles the compilation – is what justifies a delivery that will surely create new followers of Marc Jonson. Forever Young. ∎

Groova Tizmo

Marc Jonson

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The Co-Writes (1986-2007)

Marc Jonson with David Grahame

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The Co-Writes (1986-2007)

Marc Jonson with David Grahame

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