Rio

As soon as I quit playing punk music in disgust after the Obvious broke up I started writing bossa nova songs. I'm pretty sure I wrote this song in 1983, and I remember playing it for Earwacks and hearing Benet Shaeffer, their ace drummer, proclaim it the only true bossa nova beat I'd come up with yet.

I moved to Italy, still playing this song. I played it in The Zantini Brothers back in the 80s a few times. I never felt the need to get any deeper into the lyrics, for some reason. I wanted this song to just exist, as it is, a tiny wistful bossa nova breeze blowing through my brain.

When I got back to St. Louis and started jamming with Fojammathon I felt like I just had to record this song with some nice strings and some approximation, however lame, of the kind of off-kilter yet stunningly precise drums like the guy who played on Jobim's The Composer Plays LP. I sang the strings to Fo Jammi and he played them for me, and recorded this rough sketch, complete with me whacking the drum machine at random intervals, trying and failing to capture the unexpected magnificence of that drummer.

The song just fades out in our sketch, so I faded this cut early so you don't hear all the parts die away, until there's just guitar. It's a pleasant little number. I used to imagine I could sell it as a commercial jingle. How ambitious I am!

Download Rio.