I would write a review on Tuyet Loan if I could understand half of the shit she sings on Jazz Lady. Actually, her English singing isn’t so bad for someone living in Viet Nam. Her enunciation issue turns up in some songs (particularly “Stardust”) more than other. Still, she could have turned it into her advantage if she could do it right. Pay more attention to the melody than the lyrics, in a way that the words become completely undistinguishable. The result could be some idiosyncratic scatting, who knows.

I have always been a huge fan of Don Ho. In addition to his music, I respect his down-to-earth attitude and generous personality; therefore, I give him my unconditional support. I purchase most of his CDs without even checking the track list, and his new release, Mai Di Tim: Love 2, is no exception. I must confess, however, it is the worst album he has ever made.

Don Ho murders his own classics. “Trai Tim Mua Dong” (Truc Ho) and “Tinh Nhat Phai” (a Chinese ballad translated by Nhat Ngan) are two of his most recognizable hits; therefore, he doesn’t need to remind us with the remixed versions. Much as I like what Dong Son had done in the past with his new upbeat productions, he brings nothing exciting to “Trai Tim Mua Dong.” I like the tune slow and intimate just like the way Truc Ho has intended it. If “Tinh Nhat Phai” has yet to fade, the clubbing remake, which featured Giana Nguyen’s sweet-n-sour voice and Justin Timberfake’s wimpy rap, makes it vanish immediately.

But I have to give Don Ho the kudos for trying to do the impossible. Who else would think of giving Trinh Lam Ngan’s “Qua Con Me” a dance-up treatment? The only accomplishment he might have achieved is dismantling its “sen” quality by replacing the robotic bolero with the mid-tempo beat. Yet, the most impossible thing he pulls off is throwing a bonus to one of Vietnamese proudest occupations in America. Dino Pham Hoang Dung’s “Nail” has to be the goofiest shit I have heard in a long time. I just love the chorus:

Nail, nail, nail, ban tay ta phai kheo
Nail, nail, nail, nghe Nail dau co beo
Nail, nail, nail, tien vo day ngan keo
Nail, nail, nail, chac chan se khong ngheo!
Bac si, ky su cung khong bang Nail
Hoc phi ton kem ra truong lai lau
Chi vai tram gio bang Nail ta co
Mai mai, dua dua cu the tien vo!

With the happy-go-lucky beat, elementary rhymes and Don Ho’s childlike hiss and shout, I am having a hard time distinguishing if this is a dissed or dedicated song. I am not even sure why the author has to clarify that “nghe Nail dau co beo.” A job is a job, and if doing nail pays the bills, get your papers on, baby. I am just hoping that kids won’t use this song to make a statement to their parents why they rather file hands and polish feet than write prescriptions or draw blueprints.

Like I said from the beginning, Don Ho is my man, but that doesn’t mean I would shy away from criticizing his work. It could be that I am losing interests in his musical direction with this album. Or it could be that he’s not interested in reaching out to me. I am getting old and he’s still young at heart.

Like other Sinatra impersonators, Tony DeSare has a very charming voice, a bit too charming to jazz. Unlike Franky, Tony lacks that playboy style. His gentleness doesn’t quite sit well with Nat King Cole’s “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You?” He doesn’t have that player charisma in his delivery. If you listen to Louis Armstrong rendition, you know Pops got that pimp juice in him. (Fur coat, diamond ring, and a Cadillac, I got you that shit, ain’t I good to ya?) As a result, DeSare’s latest album, Last First Kiss, feels like a romantic but unenergetic and unenthusiastic experience. After the short-lived swing (thanks to the instrumentation) on “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home to,” the album drifted into that cocktail vibe, so go ahead and break out your wine and cheese again on this one.

“Ne Me Quitte Pas (If You Go Away)” ain’t going nowhere. Heard Karrin Allyson’s French version yesterday, a recommendation from TTBlue and heard Patricia Kaas’s English version Nguyen Khang pointed out a couple months ago. Allyson is not so bad, but Kaas seems to sing that song in her sleep. In fact, her whole album, Piano Bar, is perfect for lounging. Her breathy voice combined with her cottony delivery (“Ba… ba… ra… ba… ra…” is what she begins on Pierre Barouh and Francis Lai’s “Un Homme et Une Femme”) makes you want to do nothing but dozing off, like any bad romantic French music would do to you. She sounds as if you go away, she would get some sleep. I am hoping this is not the direction Nguyen Khang is going for.

Charlie Hunter began to play rock guitar at age 12 until he discovered jazz at 18 (good for him), and the rest is history. He doesn’t just play a regular guitar, but an eight-string that allows him to pick both bass (3 strings with his thumb) and acoustic (5 strings with the rest of his fingers) at the same time. His solo rendition of Charles Mingus’s “Fables of Faubus” showcases his exemplary jazz chops. Hunter’s live performances could be downloaded at his site for free. Good stuff, folks!

A new Thien Kim album, Tinh Doi, touches on different angles of love: moral love, unconditional love, desolated love, melancholy love, distant love and ingrained love. She’s also bridging the gap of love by including both pre-war and over-sentimental music in her repertoire.

With her gruff, smoky voice, she handles the pre-war tunes (Ngo Thuy Mien’s “Dau Tinh Sau,” Trinh Cong Son’s “Tinh Xa” and “Tinh Nho”) just about right, even though her approach is as accurate as a singing parrot. The duet with Nguyen Khang on Anh Bang’s “Khuc Thuy Du” doesn’t make me jump off my chair, but their bad-boy/bad-girl voices do sound bad (meaning good) together. What sounding bad (meaning bad) are the princes of “sen” she has invited to crash the album. I wouldn’t mind listening to her version of “Phan To Tam” if Tuong Nguyen and Tuong Khue weren’t on it. Goosebumps spread over my body when the Tuong’s brothers duet. Dang The Luan sounds like a “wet jackfruit” on Lam Phuong’s “Tinh Bo Vo.” His superficial weeping makes the song sounds more pathetic than it already is. Dang Minh Thong on Anh Bang’s “Dem Vu Truong” is no exception. These two guys must have been mistaken shaky for vibrato.

The album would have been alright if she didn’t include those emotional-saturated tunes and singers. Even though she offers nothing original, her singing has become more matured over the years.

On her debut Tra No Tinh Xa, Y Phuong whose potential in reinvigorating ballads is promising has bestowed her soul into the wrong tracks. Her big, dense, and seductive voice is a huge waste on the sugary pop tunes. By the time you hit third spin, the album struggles to retain your attention. All the songs are familiar, yet both the vocals and productions did not succeed in reviving them. Y Phuong stays too faithful to the originals instead of treating them like boyfriends. Screaming at them or cheating on them whenever she wants to.

Even though her song choices don’t impress me, especially with the remaking of Khuc Lan’s translated “Ngan Nam Van Doi” and “Hoi Nguoi Tinh,” her soulful voice doesn’t fail me either. The album is listenable, but nowhere near the groundbreaking level. Her decision to re-record the title track by herself is a wise one; however, she should have kept the bluesy flavor and stripped away the rock instead.

Out of all the three male guests, Don Ho complements her voice best on Chuong Duc’s “Con Toi Voi Toi,” even though his delivery is over-refined, which sounds so damn unnatural. Worst is club-friendly “Mai Ben Nhau” from Pham Khai Tuan with Chosen contributing the rap verse. La Bouche is long gone, baby. Unlike what we have heard on the opening of Asia’s Bon Mua, Nguyen Khang’s gruff voice, strangely, isn’t an appealing match or Quoc Vuong’s “Nguoi Da Voi Xa” isn’t the right song for their duet.

Not sure what was on her mind, but if she wanted to cover old songs, might as well go for pre-war ballads instead of these post- popular hits. At least the pre-war songs would last longer than these bubblegum pops. Y Phuong needs to up her game, throw in some jazz and blues, and take bold steps in hitting different angles of a tune so that what she has been working so hard on won’t be shattered.

Nina Simone is probably feeling anything but good right now from above that her signature song, “Feeling Good,” is being molested by the damn M[o]use, the Pussycat Dolls, Michael Bublé, and a handful of American Idol contestants. Even Randy Crawford and Joe Sample want a piece of that soul too with their latest album (guess the name of it). With Crawford’s sultry voice backing up by Sample’s delicious keyboard licks, their rendition comes closest to Simone’s classic, but with a glass of Martini and a bubble bath supplementary. In fact, “Feeling Good,” which starts off the album, is a warm up for a host of romantic ballads (including “Mr. Ugly,” “But Beautiful,” “Lovetown,” and “All Night Long”) to come. Even though the whole joint is way too smooth for me, “When I Need Love” sure brings back the melancholy and damn done lulls me back into submission.

A colleague of mine handed me an album entitled Beethoven’s Wig: Sing Along Symphonies. After listening to the opening title track, I can’t get Beethoven’s big, curly, white wig off my head (even though I never put it on). One of the questions that comes with the liner note is, “Where is the most far out place you could find a recording of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony?” My answer is the album itself, but when I look in the back of the booklet, the answer is “Outter Space.” I just get a kick out of that as well as Richard Perlmutter’s lyrics to the world’s most recognizable classical pieces including Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody #2,” Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” and Beethoven’s “Fur Elise.” I asked my colleague how the hell did he find out about this CD, and his reply was, “All you need are kids.” Damn, I can’t wait to get musical inspiration from my own kids.

I am going to put my head on the chopping block once again on this piece. For a bowl of bun mam, however, it is definitely worth it. Right, Mr. Ducster?

One of Tran Thu Ha’s approaches to renew a ballad is to sing at a faster pace. She did not succeed with Le Minh Son’s “Chay Tron,” but her rendition of Trinh Cong Son’s “Mua Hong” is incomparable. The playfulness is in every bar she pushed. “Con Mua Ha” (Tram Tu Thieng’s lyrics, Truc Ho’s music), however, is a wrong tune to sing in even just a slight up-tempo.

The first mistake is the producer for replacing the slow style with the rumba arrangement. “Con Mua Ha” is one of those tunes that paint a certain image; therefore, slow is a better way to convey the musical landscape. In Don Ho’s rendition, the guitar picks off the first bar alone to emulate the gentle drops of rain in a calm summer night. The violins join in to heat up the setting. Don Ho’s charming voice begins, “Tung hat mua nhe nhu tieng dan,” in a relaxed sentiment and the guitar responses to his vocals as if they could understand each other’s emotion. In Tran Thu Ha’s version, the guitar is swapped out for a cheap electronic keyboard and she kicks off with, “Tung hat mua nhe nhu nhung tieng dan.” The addition of “nhung” is like wordiness in writing. It doesn’t add anything to the context except making the flow more awkward.

The second mistake is that Tran Thu Ha simply rides along with the beat whereas Don Ho melts his flow inside the orchestration. Although she’s a woman, she sounds much stiffer than him, and the best part is that his fluid delivery never comes off as a pussy. One of the basic techniques that throw me off about Tran Thu Ha is her lacking of breath control. Coming from someone as experienced as her is very disappointing. Meanwhile Don Ho lets just enough air into the spared space to give the tune a human quality (something he seems to have lost lately with too much concentration on words’ enunciation), and he could have done it unconsciously based on his instinct.

To be fair, the biggest disadvantage in Tran Thu Ha’s version is in the musical arrangement. Truc Ho wrote the song; therefore, who could produce it better than the composer himself. On top of that, “Con Mua Ha” was written for the film with the same title; therefore, Truc Ho already has a clear vision of how he wanted to deliver from the tone of colors to the tempo of the score. Don Ho was just lucky to pick up the arrangement that previous made for Lam Thuy Van but with the rhythm section added, which make a huge different in term of liveliness. With the bass complementing his low register, all he had to do was pouring his heart out on it, and he did a hell of a soulful job. As for Tran Thu Ha, she is the “diva” who could do no wrong—in other people’s opinion, that is. However, if she could take this tune and reinterprete it similar to what Tierney Sutton has done to “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” I’ll fucking worship the ground she spits on.