Goodbye Vassar. Thanks for a great five years.

Ben Ratliff:

First, let’s just get this over with: Where were you in 1965, Recording Academy, when Mr. Hancock made his venerated album “Maiden Voyage”?

Let’s just say that the Grammy is about forty years behind.

A gorgeous site from the Profission Partnership.

Dan Love’s Deconstructing Illmatic, Nas’s classic album, beat by beat.

Haven’t have fried banh tet with pickled daikon for a while. It’s actually pretty good for breakfast.

Being in the old and cozy apartment brings back the good old days. After accepting the new job and in the period of transitioning, my mother moved back to the apartment where mom, sister and I used to live in when we first arrived in the States, which was in 1992. Sixteen years have gone by and coming back to this place is like coming home.

Mom is living by herself and she has done a great job of clean up the place. She seems to like place. Below the apartment is my aunt’s Chinese restaurant and next to that is my cousin’s grocery store. Mom can just come down and interact with the customers. When I lived here, I would come down and help my cousin bagged. With all the activities mom can do, I still feel guilty for not being there to take care of her, although my sister is only fifteen minutes away.

Every time I think of my mom, I ask the man above to bless her with prosperous health. Either the man above has done his job or she is taking good care of herself, my mother is in a very good condition. Calling her everyday just to hear that she’s doing fine makes me happy.

I overheard Monk’s “Straight No Chaser” as I was walking back from lunch. I followed the sound and landed into GW’s Music Department. The jam session is free to the public from noon to 2pm. I sat in and enjoyed the familiar standards played by the faculty. Then they encouraged the students to come up and join them. They were impressive and passionate. I didn’t get to stay long for the obvious reason, but I’ll try to work it into my lunch break every Friday.

New issue of GWSB News is up and emailed out. Forbes ranked George Washington University number one on “The World’s Most Expensive Universities” with the figure of $39,240 (room, board and books were not included) in 2007-2008. The article, however, explains the more tuition results in more financial aids:

Those costs reflect a trend among private American universities–charge a stratospheric tuition fee, then offer a generous financial aid package. A GW official says the university provides the most need-based aid in the country, according to national rankings. For this year’s freshman class, that package was an average of $23,466. Next month, the school’s new president is expected to announce a plan for improving affordability at GW.

Now that the roaring thunder of “Bonjour Vietnam” has subsided, Pham Quynh Anh releases the official version in English accompanied by a video. Although the studio track is much more polished, the emotional impact comes nowhere near the raw demo. From the beat to the vocals to the lyrics, the newer version doesn’t strike a chord the way that the previous version did.

If I were to hear the English version first, I wouldn’t have been as motivated to create the slideshow. Gone are the simple, melancholic strumming guitar, yearning vocal delivery and exquisite French lyrics that made “Bonjour Vietnam” such mesmerizing nostalgia. While the new production adds more sugar to the song, Quynh Anh’s phrasing sounds more restraint and less passionate in English than French. The quality of her voice remains unchanged, but the soul-searching desire to connect to her root has diminished. Furthermore, the English words don’t sound as lyrical. For instance, “One day, I’ll touch your soul / One day, I’ll finally know your soul,” can’t do the justice for: “Un jour, j’irai là bas / Un jour dire bonjour à ton âme.”

The differences between “Hello” and “Bonjour” proved that sometimes an unfinished, unpolished and unedited work should remain untouched. Miles Davis paid his musicians not to practice and he wanted every recording to make it on the first cut for one reason: the feeling.

Cau Chuyen Tinh Toi can’t be a Thu Phuong record. Not the Thu Phuong whose jazz-inflected concert in Toronto last October still mesmerizes me. How could someone who was so passionate in her performance even with just a small group of audience put out such a tedious album? What a waste of talent.

The album-closer, “Comme Toi,” is the only real Thu Phuong cut. The Bollywood-remixed beat is invigorating and this is the only time that she seems a bit exciting. With the rest, even on the belt-out “Co Nho Dem Nay,” she sounds tired, worn out and passionless as if she was obliged to record them. Worse are the medleys. When she sings, “Yeu anh vi ta chan doi” in Le Huu Ha’s “Yeu Em,” you can actually hear the lifelessness in her delivery. In Nguyen Vu’s “Loi Cuoi Cho Em,” she just screams on the hook as if she is bored out her fucking mind.

If these tracks do represent the love stories of her life, she must have had some extremely dull relationships. With the weightless arrangement accompanied by a murmuring electric guitar on Pham Huu Tam’s “Mong Phu Du,” she comes close to what the song is about: drifting off to sleep. She needs some excitements to spice up her tales.