Customer Reviews

Havana Midnight

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What a welcome piece of music is Havana Midnight. Bob Neuwirth's lyrics are clear and without excess. His vocals are intimate and evocative, some a little wistful. We can feel his arm around our shoulder as he tells his story. That Neuwrith's songs recline on Jose Maria Vitier's music is an unexected delight blending exoctic Latin melodies with some of this classic American artist's best work.
Never has there been a more welcome contrast to the uninvited, assualt that has become today's music. I want more.

previous reviewer maureen o'connell mentions that once one acquires a taste for bob neuwirth's voice, one is hooked, but she doesn't add that it's not so hard a taste to acquire--his voice has a comfortable, lived-in quality that's not only appealing but conveys a breadth of experience which adds to your own experience of the CD. the superb backing instrumentals do carry you off to the tropics, but that voice and the sometimes poignant, sometimes funny lyrics bring you back to reality with a bracing, though perhaps slightly melancholy feeling. tops!

This CD takes you to a warm, sultry night in the tropics. You can practically hear the soft waves lap the beach. You are able to feel warm, wet tradewinds against your damp skin. You breathe deeper, an enveloping calm seeps into your blood, and you think of all the love (both past and present) in your life.

Here's Bob again, with his clever internal rhymes, his longings expressed in poetry, and all the artful lyrics any romantic needs to remember exactly what it felt like to love willfully and have things sometimes end sadly beautiful. "Havana Midnight" and "Havana Farewell" took me back to the Malecon, and are perfect bookend cuts to an effort that is Cuban in it's soul, if not in all it's imagery. From the accessible cultural references in Don Quixoye to the songs from the spiritual heart (and experience) of a well-traveled vagabond, Bob Neuwirth once again shows why he's cognescenti-adored while remaining fairly obscure. Acquire a taste for his voice and you're hooked.

I must admit that my first motivation for purchasing this title was to learn more about the thriving musical community of pre-Castro Cuba. The facilitators of that musical scene, the Mob, owned casinos that featured entertainers of the highest caliber (no pun intended). During that time, the island rocked.

That being said, the "other side to the story" needs telling and this book begins that process.

While Bob Neuwirth's "Havana Midnight" doesn't exactly get you on your feet dancing like the title would suggest, it does evoke a melancholy that fits a man caught in time and place, perhaps even Havana. I could actually envision him lamenting events and opportunities not taken while surrounded by muscians that have "been there". The superb production and collaboration with Jose Maria Vitier keep this one in my "play often" stack. It works for me.