Word: singers
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...When that Napster guy came up across, it was like, 'Everybody's gettin' music for free.' I was like, 'Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway.'" --BOB DYLAN, singer-songwriter, in a Rolling Stone interview in which he praises records and says CDs' sound quality is "atrocious." Dylan's new album, Modern Times, comes out this week...
...their enormously hyped end-of-summer albums, Christina Aguilera, Paris Hilton, Beyoncé Knowles and Jessica Simpson all at least pretend to provide their listeners with the universality of great pop. But each singer--or, in Hilton's case, the person whose voice rises and falls rhythmically on the album--is known as much for her multiplatform celebrity as for her songs. All four women feel the need to tend to constituencies that may have wandered over from TV, the multiplex or the gossip-mag rack, and inevitably they usher their notoriety into their music. For those of us who like...
Groucho Marx, as Otis B. Driftwood in A Night at the Opera, and his brother Chico, as Fiorello, are haggling over a contract for an opera singer's services, when Groucho brings up one more clause: "It says 'If any of the parties participating in this contract is shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified.'" When Chico demurs, Groucho soothingly replies, "It's all right, that's in every contract. That's what they call a 'sanity clause'." Chico laughs derisively. "You can't fool me!" he snorts. "There ain't no Sanity...
...another Frank Sinatra tribute? Yes, but on this one, singer-guitarist Pizzarelli makes no attempt to evoke the master's sound or mannerisms. A good thing too, since his light, cool voice carries little of Sinatra's sensuality and swagger. Resourcefully backed by the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra (at times cut down to nifty combos), Pizzarelli is at his best in hip readings of the insouciant Yes Sir, That's My Baby, the wistful If I Had You and even the trademark Ring a Ding Ding...
Jazz musicians have taken inspiration from the classics before, but surely songwriter-singer-pianist Barber is the first to base a song cycle on Ovid's Metamorphoses. Her Pygmalion is sweetly yearning, her Persephone sexy over a Latin beat. In the hard-edged Whiteworld/Oedipus, the Greek King is an arrogant white imperialist in the Third World. These intricate, ruminative works are a long way from the blues in B flat--and they're worth the stretch...