Thought that I would never make another post on Vietnamese DVDs, but Asia latest show, Bon Mua, featured some worth-mentioning performances. So let’s get to it.

The show kicks off with a four-season medley. All the youngsters did an excellent job with Trinh Cong Son’s ballads, but when Nguyen Khang and Y Phuong came together, a luscious duet was born. Y Phuong who is now officially my new girl brought down the joint with her powerful lines in “Bon Mua Thay La” and could match up with Nguyen Khang’s thuggish voice. On the Doan Chuan & Tu Linh’s medley, I was hoping for an encore of Nguyen Khang and Y Phuong, not Diem Lien. Nothing against the sweet Diem Lien, but Y Phuong’s voice is stronger and darker, something to die for. Of course, Y Phuong’s technical skill isn’t as solid as Diem Lien. She still has that breath control issue. And we could witness that in her performance of “Chiec La Cuoi Cung” along side with Bao Yen. Both voices are exceptional, yet the technical skills set Bao Yen above Y Phuong. But don’t worry baby, you still have plenty of time to work on that.

The return of Thuy Duong alone is worth penning. It’s about time, Asia. She is gorgeous, and her laid-back style, which is a perfect complement to that calm and elegant look, is irresistible. Her slow-burning rendition of Van Cao’s “Ben Xuan” is an ideal example of interpreting an old work. Her dreary phrasing made it sounded as if she was living in her own world. As listeners, we either have to get with the program or we out. Even when the arrangement got dramatic, she never seemed to be excited and still maintained her serenity. Love that attitude.

More highlights of the show are from Ngoc Ha, Dalena, and Henry Chuc. Ngoc Ha’s version of Pham Dinh Chuong’s “Tieng Song Huong” is along the line of Duc Tuan’s, but hers was not long enough to create an epic piece like his. The bosa nova-inflected “Hoang Vang” isn’t so bad. It doesn’t hurt to jazz up old tune once in awhile. The drawback is that both Dalena and Henry Chuc have no chops for scat singing.

As for negativity, enough of ink has been spilled on sex before, so I am not going to repeat myself. Besides, none of these broads, including Da Nhat Yen, Thuy Huong, Anh Minh and Vina Uyen Mi, could get me hard anymore. Ho Le Thu has topped them all. One thing I do like to point out, however, is that little Trish was freaking me out for a minute.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s album is the jazz joint I could jam to all night when I need a Time Out. Every track is a classic, and “Take Five” is a novelty. As the title of the song suggested, “Take Five” is based on a 5/4 meter, which is five beats per measure, instead of the traditional three or four. In the introduction, Jone Morello’s drums set up the meter, and joined by an invariant vamp from Brubeck’s piano. Then Paul Desmond’s unctuously sweet alto saxophone flow over a rhythmic and harmonic ostinato of the piano like gas gushes through glass. Since Desmond improvises on one-measure vamp instead of on the structure, the pitches are drawn mainly from the modal scales, something Miles Davis was famous for. The tune gets even better with the dope drum drops backing up by Brubeck’s insistent ostinato. All I can say is “S’wonderful.”

Truth be told, the only reason I would cop Ho Le Thu’s latest album, Buon Oi, Chao Mi, is for the CD booklet. So I could get my jerk on. She’s not a bad of a singer, more like a bitch of a singer. I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way. She’s just the type that would make your dream gone wild, especially with the new breast enhancement. She’s sexy and she knows it. Even her voice has that sultriness in it, but she still has many learning to do to transport it into her music. Her covers of old tunes aren’t awful. She just doesn’t quite understand the art of interpretation. Maybe she just needs a good producer like Duc Tri who could craft some catchy beats for her. Thuy Nga gives her nothing but a set of mechanical arrangements to go with her uninventive deliveries.

Didn’t expect it, but Dinh Tien Dat aka Mr. Dee makes some improvements with his sophomore solo, Giao Thong. The witty title track shows that Dee could craft a song based on a subject as mundane as traffic annoyances. While American rappers rhyme about anything cool but school, Dee makes it cool to be in school. On “Di Hoc,” he raps, “Nay cac ban nho phai that chiu kho / Dung thay qua kho ma cac ban lai bo / Vi trong cai kho moi lo cai khon.” Although his lyrical skill is still elementary, the positive message makes it justifiable. But that doesn’t mean Dee has not been making any progress with his writing. The autobiographical of “Chi Pheo” and the struggling of a homeless kid in “Khong Nha” proved that he has stepped up his storytelling artistry as well as his spontaneous deliveries and his ear-candy productions. Even if practice doesn’t make him perfect, it sure has paid off. Keep honing your skill, Dee!

Norah Jones, the girl who sold you sex without revealing her skin, is back with her third studio album Not Too Late. If Come Away With Me, which sold eight million copies, was to get you to runaway with her and Feels Like Home, which reached two million copies within the first month, had you settled down in a trailer home, Not Too Late, which will release at the end of January 2007, is a break-up-to-make-up deal.

On the album opener accompanied by an acoustic guitar ostinato, Jones wishes she could walk into a place you and her used to go, but she couldn’t without you. The memories are too strong, as she recounts in “Be My Somebody”: “I held your head up, do you remember? / When you wanted to make a blanket out of me / Oh I can’t lie… I been keeping score / And it’s your turn to wring me out / And lay me down to dry.” Yes, she’s mindfucking you again, and she’s damn good at it. She even invites you back to her jazzy “Little Room” that is big enough for you to do the things you like to do, and sings you a bluesy “Rosie’s Lullaby” if you are not in the mood to do anything. Can’t beat that, and it is still “Not Too Late,” to come home to mama, baby. She still wants you back because without each other, you both are going to be “Sinkin’ Soon” (a marvelous jazz arrangement with a kick-ass trombone break). So help her breathes and help her believes that you are “Not Her Friend” because she can’t pretend that you are. She can’t seem to stop “Thinking About You,” your cold hand, your broken voice, your twisted smile, and she knows exactly what you need to wash away your pain and to mend your “Broken” heart.

Talking about the art of album crafting. Jones and her musicians have mastered it by aiming straight at our soul from song to song, but in an easygoing route. Sex is presence (“Last night was a record to be broken / It broke all over the kitchen floor / Oh no don’t you go / I’m coming back with a rag / to wipe away the haze from the days / We’ve forgotten all about”) but never in your face. Affection is there but not over dramatic, thanks to that gruff voice, which sounds like a concoction of wild honey and cognac. Not Too Late will continue to dominate the pop chart and sellout like cocaine hits the street similar to its predecessors.

For a retrospective, Thanh Lam recovers eighteen selected tunes that are closed to her heart as well as her listeners’. The double-disc Giot… Lam shows that her singing has became more and more dramatic over the years. With the excessive use of vibrato, she delivers each song as if she’s about to burst into flame, but the musical productions appear to have ran out of propane. Nevertheless, the collection has its share of scintillating moments.

My patience is running out on Tung Duong. After his luminous Chay Tron debuted, he’s on the hideout for real. With the title track and “Trang Khat,” he got me so excited about the Vietnamese jazz scene. His thick, soulful voice combined with his potential to scat like a trumpet gave me so much hope, but he has nothing to follow up with for more than two years. Don’t sleep on me, man.

Since I already gave this album my 2 cents, let’s look at it in a different perspective—the art of crafting an album. As much as I adore the little iPod Shuffle, I gave it to my sister who could use it for exercise routine because I am not the type that listen to all the hits or only my favorites. I like to spend time with an entire CD, especially with hip-hop joints, to get a complete experience of what the artist is trying to communicate. Most of the time, Vietnamese singers just throw in a bunch of songs together to make an album. Rarely do they think about how an album should start or end, but Chay Tron is not the case. I am not sure if Le Minh Son did it consciously or unconsciously, but the songs fall together so perfect that the sequence created an epic. In the course of endless listening, I have noted some fluff on how the album is like a little fancy tale. It could be just my own imagination, but what the heck. Imagination is all I have, and it has been running pretty wild lately. So read on at my own peril.

Yeu

He’s wandering by himself searching for her in his dream. She is untouchable.

Chay Tron

He’s reminiscing the good old days when they still played hide and seek. She was his first sweet love.

Trang Khuyet

But the painful part comes when he reflects on their quarrels. Mad at him, she threw the moon back to the sky.

Lua Mat Em

When she was mad, he could see the fire in her eyes. She was burning like hell.

Trang Khat

Although he could see the flame in her complexions, she was still as beautiful as the moon and river.

Den Ben Anh Diu Dang

And when she came to him, she brought him joy and happiness.

Oi Que Toi

Who is she? It turns out that he’s referring to her as his homeland all these time.

After she did such a wonderful job with Ngoc Ha’s Nuoc Mat Mua Thu, I challenged her to take on Y Lan’s Hoi Tinh. As a chemical engineer who writes instructions on how to operate pharmaceutical equipments, could she move beyond her dried, mechanical style into something creative and erotic? To my surprise, she did not only nailed the translation, but also makes it more sensual than my original intention with her good use of Vietnamese.

Ý Lan là một trong những người đàn bà không muốn trưởng thành. Cũng chẳng tội tình gì, tuy cũng có lúc cô cũng đáng bị đét cho vài cái bởi cái tính ỏng ẹo như đứa con gái mới lớn, khi mà cô đã bước qua cái tuổi 50. Làm sao thay đổi bây giờ, bởi chính cô cũng thừa nhận đó là cái tính bẩm sinh của mình. Cô là một người đàn bà sở hửu một trái tim non dại, một tâm hồn trẻ trung và tràn đầy dục cảm.

Khi mới nghe qua đĩa nhạc Hỏi Tình mới nhất của Ý Lan, tôi lấy làm khó hiểu không biết cái dụng ý của cô là gì. Nhạc truyền thống, nhạc jazz, tình ca, và cả liên khúc hổn độn. Nhưng sau khi nghe lại một vài lần, tôi chợt hiểu thì ra đây là một động tình chứa đầy sự cám dỗ. Cô mời gọi tình yêu với “Hỏi Tình” để rồi van xin tình yêu đến với mình trong khi cô “Còn chất chứa tình yêu một thời để rồi nghe tàn phai / Bóng anh xa dần mãi còn lại tôi giữa cơn đau này” (“Còn Nghe Tiếng Gọi”). Trong “Anh Là Tất Cả,” cô thao thức trông chờ ban mai đến để được đến với tình vì chỉ có tình mới xoa tan mọi lo lắng phiền muộn trong cô. “Thôi thì… thôi thì… như thế cũng xong / Bao năm… bao năm chăn gối trông hòng gì đâu? / Đắng cay hờn tủi đã nhiều / Lệ tuôn như đổ trăm chiều khô đâu.” Cũng dể hiểu thôi, ở cùng lứa tuổi với cô có bao nhiêu người đàn ông có thể chìu chuộng cô như thời còn trai trẻ. Cô cần một gã thanh niên cường tráng để có thể song hành với cô trong cơn thác loạn (“Đêm Thấy Ta Là Thác Đổ”). Tiếng rên rỉ trong “Áo Lụa Hà Đông” như để khoấy động lòng người. Và như thể là chưa đủ, cô buông lời trêu gẹo lúc “Khỏa Thân Đêm,” để làm cho ta thêm thèm khát.

Có thể không ưa cái ỏng ẻo của Ý Lan, nhưng phải nói cái tính này đôi lúc cũng làm cho con người ta thèm ước. Không nên nghe dĩa nhạc này nêu như ta là kẻ ngoan đạo bởi nó sẽ đẩy ta vào con đường tội lỗi. Đó là trái với lời dạy của Chúa.

After posting Pham Duy’s juicy “Thien Duyen Tinh Mong,” a reader sent me something even better—an album of Pham Duy dedicated to provocative sex entitled Nhuc Tinh Ca. Before each song begins, Pham Duy gives us a brief introduction of the erotic content. The track that grabbed my attention is a Japanese-translated “Nguoi Tinh Ben Goi.” Through her small, dark and slightly scratchy vocals, Luu Hong makes luscious love to Pham Duy’s lustful lyrics. In the song, Pham Duy describes his lover as an angel with a broken wing who came and begged him for some love. Just imagine fucking an angel and making, “Nang me mang, nang dam dui, nang choi voi, thoat len loi an can.” If screwing an angel is a sin, send me straight to hell for it.

Many have castigated Pham Duy for being too filthy for his age, but I am right behind him. I don’t see any Vietnamese songwriter pushes the boundary the way he does. In “Nguoi Tinh Trong Canh Tay,” he uses his own “vulgar” voice to express all the passionate details of holding a lover in his arms. All I can say is that Pham Duy is like Hugh Hefner in Vietnamese music. Keep the spirit alive, pops!

Founded Visualgui.com while searching for Thanh Lam, Tri Minh—the son of Thuan Yen and the imaginative arranger behind Thanh Lam’s Tu Su—introduces me to some of his experimental work.

After listening to his arrangements, I must say that this guy has an ear for electronic music, and he knows how to weave the western sound into Vietnamese traditional styles. His remixes of “Chuon Chuon Ot,” “Tan Co Dao Duyen Fucked Up,” and “Ai Oi” are so damn fresh and exotic. From the vocal distortion to the organic-sounding effects to the space-trance vibe, Tri Minh’s artistic vision is ahead of the Vietnamese music scene.

Stood out most for me, however, is the hypnotic electronic bass line in his “Free Jazz” fusion. I asked him, “Why don’t you play improvising jazz?” He replied, “I used to play jazz but I think to some extend, Jazz is quite limited so I shift to electronic music where I found it is quite interesting and give me endless possibilities, and also, making a band in Vietnam is quite difficult.” Too bad that he passed on jazz. With his talent, he could pick up where Miles Davis left off and give Vietnamese music something to look into. Still, I am having my eyes set for his album coming this March.

You could experience the tunes I listed in my Dope Jam station.