San Diego's salon singer

Reviewed April 2006

Southern California salon music?

We've no real tradition of dark, smoke-filled cafes with melancholy vocals over an accordion or guitar spilling out of a dimly lit doorway on a tree-lined side street in the heart of town. That treat is reserved for towns like Paris, Lisbon or Buenos Aires, not San Diego.

Perhaps local Gregory Page can change that. His new CD, "Love Made Me Drunk," brings up ghosts of Edith Piaf, Astor Piazzolla or Fred Buscaglione. Listening to his world-weary vocals over muted trumpet, squeezebox and gently strummed acoustic guitar is enough to conjure the smells of strong black coffee and freshly baked baguettes. It's enough to place you in an old black and white film full of mysterious characters in raincoats and fedoras – with a hint of danger and love lost.

It is a Bogie film set to music is what this is. Beautiful and aching, the sound of remorse tempered by dark humor, it is a gorgeous example of the seemingly lost art of finding beauty in disappointment and sorrow.

Review by Jim Trageser. Jim is a writer and editor living in Escondido, Calif., and was a contributor to the "Grove Press Guide to Blues on CD" (1993) and "The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Blues" (2005).