Customer Reviews

Jin Jin / Firefly

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a great record! My whole family digs it. We play it in our kitchen all the time. The feel is a relaxed cheerful exuberance. That is just what we need every day at breakfast time. Bob Brozman is a master of the international language of music.

I've had this cd since the end of last year but I kept holding off on reviewing it. I just wasn't ready yet. There were things I didn't like about it so I took a break from it for a few months, revisiting it within the last few weeks. I still disagree with ... assertion that this is one of the Top 10 cd's of 2000. Honestly, it's not even the best Bob Brozman-related cd of 2000. Having said that, it's a very good cd once you get past the first tracks. Tracks 1 through 5 would get about 2 stars from me. Tracks 6 through the end of the cd would get 4 or 4 1/4. Overall, my true score for this cd would be 3.8 stars. That may sound bad but I don't mean it to be. Some people give 5 stars to every cd they buy that they don't hate... I try to be a little calmer when I hand out the stars.

My problem with the opening songs is that they are too sing-songy or something. They sound like a mixture of Okinawan Sesame Street and Okinawan MTV Unplugged. Simply put, they sound too normal for me. I was expecting (and hoping for) this entire cd to be quite alien to me. Instead, the opening songs sound like "acoustic pop tunes in a 'foreign' language". Not my thing. Tracks 6 through the end of the cd though are an entirely different story.

Track 6 itself, the title track, is fantastic. It strikes me as a OkinaHawaiian version of 1960's spy-film music. Both men are absolutely brilliant on this track in every aspect, from the singing and on to every note they play. Honestly, this tune is still not as Indigenous or "traditional" as I thought this cd would be, but it is fantastic nonetheless. At other times throughout the cd the music strikes me as Okinawan Roy Rogers. During it's best moments this cd really is a brand new music. Borrowing from many cultures but doing so in such a fluid, creative, and expressive way that it isn't forced. There is alot of "world music" out there that is purposefully "eclectic".. it ends up just being a mish-mash of diverse things that do not work together. This cd avoids that.

There is certainly more Western influence on this cd than I usually enjoy, but it still isn't that generic funk, rock, or hip-hop influenced fluff that permeates commercial Asian radio stations. Thank God! These 2 men have enough emotional power and incredible playing skills that they still end up with a musically successful cd. Something which most people could not do under these circmstances.

I can only think that the negative reviewers are not used to any singing that doesn't come out of american FM radio. This is a great CD. Brozman and Hirayasu have incredible chemistry that leaps right over language and culture barriers. Listening to this CD, I can hear all different kinds of music floating to the surface, then disappearing again: blues, jazz, okinawan folk music. Sometimes it sounds like american cowboy music. I could listen to this one a hundred times and still find something new each time.

Great guitar work and some enthusiastic singing by Hirayasu make this a very listenable and certainly unique album. Brozman's steel/slide guitars combined with Hirayasu's plucking works and the two flat out jam at times. Don't worry about the supposed "poor" production quality. These are two talented musicans who don't need a high-tech studio to make up for any lack of skills.

This is a wonderful album... I've been listening to it for 5 years and never get tired of the thing. It's almost a field recording... there's the occasional chicken, and other stray background sounds. The musicians seem to be having a great time. It's the best hang out and drink with friends album. Sadly their second collaboration is not nearly as good -- too much studio meddling.
A *great* album!

I can only think that the negative reviewers are not used to any singing that doesn't come out of american FM radio. This is a great CD. Brozman and Hirayasu have incredible chemistry that leaps right over language and culture barriers. Listening to this CD, I can hear all different kinds of music floating to the surface, then disappearing again: blues, jazz, okinawan folk music. Sometimes it sounds like american cowboy music. I could listen to this one a hundred times and still find something new each time.

sucked into buying another CD because the blurb made it sound so good. If they had kept it instrumental it would have been good. The singing is flat and colorless and wavery. No variety in rhythms and tone. Save your money. Lee

Sucked into buying another CD because it is "the best international release of 2000" If it was soley instrumental it would be pretty good. The singing is flat and wavery, no depth, no variety. Pretty much the same rhythm all through. Wish I had my money back