The car saga seems to be over. A week later, I finally got my vehicle returned to me. Seems to be running just fine. It feels really weird driving it again – where the brake and gas pedals are and the angle of the steering wheel. I was in such a small car I could barely fit in it.
The crummy thing about it is that the folks who fixed it used up all my gas. I had a little more than half a tank when I dropped it off and it was almost empty when I got it back. Anyhow, that should wrap up my car problems for a while.
I was looking for an MP3 version of the classic Billie Holiday song “Strange Fruit”… but the version I was looking for had Sting crooning this deeply moving warbler. Okay, I didn’t find the Sting version but I found several others by notable artists such as ‘Siouxsie & The Banshees’, ‘Tori Amos’ and ‘Nina Simone’.
I was looking for this song because of its haunting melody but S&TB version sounded like an awful 80’s remake of the song. Lots of strings and terrible elongated notes by Siouxsie. Sorry, not impressed.
Tori Amos did her (usual) breathless best to compare with Billie Holiday. As usual, her piano playing was uncompromising and lucid as ever. Again, she sang it too slow – slower than molasses in winter. Why do they do that? I was looking for the mechanical brilliance of Sting doing his best to modernize the song. Clearly didn’t find that here.
Finally, Nina Simone takes her crack at it. Nina is the Maya Angelou of jazz singers. She has the street cred and the chops to pull off just about anything. Notice I said ‘just about’. While hers is the best of the three that I’ve listened to this evening, it still is not up to the level of what I expect. I’m looking for someone to hit a home run (or at least a stand-up triple) and what I ended up liking the most is a singer standing at 2nd base because of an overthrow at 1st.
Am I expecting too much of people who are doing cover material? I certainly think they’re going to do something new with it and not completely trash it. I thought they were trying to pay homage to the original artist not ‘thumb their nose’ at them.
If you can’t do a respectable cover of a song – don’t bother doing it at all. Let’s face it, singers are a dime a dozen… American Idol proves that year after year. Anybody can politely sing a Billy Joel cover in front of three judges but what does that mean? Nothing. Anybody 18 to 24 can live their dreams just by singing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” well enough to impress America. I think it’s been proven time and time again that America has no taste for music. They just want something cute, clean, sugary and enough bite to leave them a few minutes after the song ends.
What happened to the ‘super groups’? Let me define that for you younger folks:
A Super group was a band of musicians that had multiple albums AND AND AND each album had multiple chart-topping songs.
It just seems to me the super group has gone the way of the pet rock and spirograph. I saw some list that had “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana the best pop song to come out in the past 20 years. I think that says a lot more than I can say. Where was I when the ‘grunge’ phase was happening? Apparently I was listening to Steely Dan, The Eagles, Styx, The Police, AC/DC, The Commodores, The Beatles, The Who, U2, The Alan Parsons Project, Crosby Stills Nash (and/or Young), Santana, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Fleetwood Mac, Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer, The Doors, and (to some extent) The Beach Boys and The Carpenters.
Wow, am I shaping up to be a grouchy old man or what?
The crummy thing about it is that the folks who fixed it used up all my gas. I had a little more than half a tank when I dropped it off and it was almost empty when I got it back. Anyhow, that should wrap up my car problems for a while.
I was looking for an MP3 version of the classic Billie Holiday song “Strange Fruit”… but the version I was looking for had Sting crooning this deeply moving warbler. Okay, I didn’t find the Sting version but I found several others by notable artists such as ‘Siouxsie & The Banshees’, ‘Tori Amos’ and ‘Nina Simone’.
I was looking for this song because of its haunting melody but S&TB version sounded like an awful 80’s remake of the song. Lots of strings and terrible elongated notes by Siouxsie. Sorry, not impressed.
Tori Amos did her (usual) breathless best to compare with Billie Holiday. As usual, her piano playing was uncompromising and lucid as ever. Again, she sang it too slow – slower than molasses in winter. Why do they do that? I was looking for the mechanical brilliance of Sting doing his best to modernize the song. Clearly didn’t find that here.
Finally, Nina Simone takes her crack at it. Nina is the Maya Angelou of jazz singers. She has the street cred and the chops to pull off just about anything. Notice I said ‘just about’. While hers is the best of the three that I’ve listened to this evening, it still is not up to the level of what I expect. I’m looking for someone to hit a home run (or at least a stand-up triple) and what I ended up liking the most is a singer standing at 2nd base because of an overthrow at 1st.
Am I expecting too much of people who are doing cover material? I certainly think they’re going to do something new with it and not completely trash it. I thought they were trying to pay homage to the original artist not ‘thumb their nose’ at them.
If you can’t do a respectable cover of a song – don’t bother doing it at all. Let’s face it, singers are a dime a dozen… American Idol proves that year after year. Anybody can politely sing a Billy Joel cover in front of three judges but what does that mean? Nothing. Anybody 18 to 24 can live their dreams just by singing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” well enough to impress America. I think it’s been proven time and time again that America has no taste for music. They just want something cute, clean, sugary and enough bite to leave them a few minutes after the song ends.
What happened to the ‘super groups’? Let me define that for you younger folks:
A Super group was a band of musicians that had multiple albums AND AND AND each album had multiple chart-topping songs.
It just seems to me the super group has gone the way of the pet rock and spirograph. I saw some list that had “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana the best pop song to come out in the past 20 years. I think that says a lot more than I can say. Where was I when the ‘grunge’ phase was happening? Apparently I was listening to Steely Dan, The Eagles, Styx, The Police, AC/DC, The Commodores, The Beatles, The Who, U2, The Alan Parsons Project, Crosby Stills Nash (and/or Young), Santana, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Fleetwood Mac, Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer, The Doors, and (to some extent) The Beach Boys and The Carpenters.
Wow, am I shaping up to be a grouchy old man or what?