October 2010
Fools in Love
Joe Jackson
Joe Jackson, “Fools In Love”
Came up on Shuffle and was exactly what I needed to hear.
Is That All There Is
Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee
Is That All There Is?
Great tune.
I once called this the most existential pop song this side of “Killing An Arab.” Kurt Weill and his various collaborators might have something to say about that, but from someone whose records were being filed as Easy Listening when it was released, it’s still pretty bracing.
Mi Buen Amor
Gloria Estefan
GLORIA ESTEFAN, “MI BUEN AMOR”
It’s the difference between shared nostalgia, Ana inviting a stadium to get caught up in her voluptuous passion, and personal nostalgia, Gloria dreaming aloud in a café, or rather in a highly polished and superbly set-dressed simulacra of one.
Mexican cinema, the rockcrit establishment, and the uses of glamour at today’s Bilbo’s Laptop.
Cr4Bdbgs: The Girl in the Dress and the Nasty Guitarist Perv →
cureforbedbugs.tumblr.com
(Wish someone with more music-theoretical or music-historical smarts than I have would analyze the melody to “Speak Now.” Casting about for comparisons, I said “musical comedy,” but I don’t know. Calling J. Bogart to thread. EDIT: Oops, I actually said “operetta,” not “musical comedy,” the latter designation being more accurate but less evocative. The phrase “musical comedy” is in my notes, however.)
I’m only jumping in to this long and fascinating thread to speak to this specific point, because it’s the only one I’m qualified to; I haven’t listened to the album, and being more interested, critically, in singles, I don’t know that I will.
But yes, the verses particularly to “Speak Now” sound not like musical theater itself (the musical theme doesn’t develop at all, just stays in a tight little loop until it flattens into the quick-step march of the chorus), but like the songs of modern pop musicians who have backgrounds in musical theater. Regina Spektor was the first name that popped into my head, but Nellie McKay or even Amanda Palmer would do as well: self-consciously “quirky” singers and musicians who tend to be too unassuming for chart pop but too girly and theater-departmenty for indie dudes to get behind. They still do well (movie and TV soundtrackers eat them up), and I’m not at all surprised that Taylor might be borrowing some musical ideas from them: if she’s not interested in pursuing the straight-down-the-road country route, they provide a model of relatively successful female singer/songwriter autonomy without forgoing the bubbliness which seems to be a central part of Taylor’s (public) self-image.
But I’m getting into areas I’m not qualified to speak to.
Oh, and since I haven’t seen it mentioned elsewhere on Tumblr (at least for a while), congratulations to Erika, Maura, and Nitsuh for having pieces in this year’s Da Capo Best Music Writing. (Anyone else who may also be in there and follows me under some other name, my apologies and identify yourself!) (And SFJ is of course in there, but he doesn’t follow me; anyone else on Tumblr that I don’t know about?)
One thing I will say is that I’m a Halloween Scrooge, and the yearly October hoopla, especially from people my age insisting on a sort of shared horror-themed joviality, irritates me much as the forced jollity of Christmas does many of my peers. (I do like Christmas, but I’m not big on jollity either; luckily I come from understated stock.)
Arizona's immigration law was help drafted and passed by private prison companies →
npr.org
This story made me sick to my stomach. The fact that nothing about this is illegal made me even more sick.
10.27.10
Warewolves of London
Warren Zevon
The Spooky Fern: Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London”
Spelling corrected and NYTumblr giggles snipped: 70s reblog.
I know! It makes me a very bad indie comix snob, but I’m slightly more inclined to pick it up now.
Luna
Ana Gabriel
And so she dives into memory and tradition, as so many of her peers did in the 90s, recovering old forms; the largest untapped market being, as always, the past.
Verdi, Rolling Stone, and An American Tail at today’s Bilbo’s Laptop.
I am under water. It may be some time before I surface.
