Etta James
Great Voices Get Even More Precious When You Know They're Gone
Etta James: The Dreamer (Verve Forecast)
A hard liver, she's sounded old for a while. This is different--weary, diminished. Yet the physical and even mental diminution enriches the music. It was cool for her long-passed youngblood homeboy Johnny Watson to claim he was "Too Tired," but it's cooler for James to remember that song half a century later and sing it against tempo as if she may not get all the way to 2:34. The "Surely someone will understand me" of Bobby Bland's failed crossover title tune resonates differently from a dying woman. It's also different for a ghetto woman born and raised to seize "Welcome to the Jungle" and tell Axl, "If you got the money we got your disease." And having eased right into Otis Redding's blissful "Champagne and Wine," she then transforms his bone-tired, just-off-the-road marriage proposal "Cigarettes and Coffee" into an evocation of old love so calm you believe she achieved some bliss of her own, and domestic bliss at that. A MINUS
Etta James: Matriarch of the Blues (Private Music '00)
Produced by the well-bred rhythm section of drummer Donto James and bassist Sametto James, this is half riskily irreverent rock and roll and half perilously imperious blues. Beyond an inconclusive Creedence cover, she co-owns every non-blues‑-"Miss You"! "Gotta Serve Somebody"! "Try a Little Tenderness"! Otis's chortling "Hawg for Ya"! Al's unremembered "Rhymes"! "Hound Dog," which counts aab or not! But neither the horns nor the B.B. homages will inspire the dutiful bluesboy to return to his long-abandoned O.V. Wright and Little Milton studies. From Big Mama Thornton to Shemekia Copeland, no woman has sung such material with more power. So maybe power isn't what it needs. Maybe it needs more irreverence. B PLUS
And I get the point and if that can make you feel better we Europeans put all Latinos, white Americans, New Yorkers, Texans, African Americans, Californians, Canadians (minus Quebec for us French) under the same umbrella. It's not necessarily racism or ignorance, just that at some point we don't really care...
I couldn't have said it better myself.And I get the point and if that can make you feel better we Europeans put all Latinos, white Americans, New Yorkers, Texans, African Americans, Californians, Canadians (minus Quebec for us French) under the same umbrella. It's not necessarily racism or ignorance, just that at some point we don't really care...
Mainland China might disagree with your geographical distinction, and it kinda has a point (unlike in Tibet).
Of course, you're 100% right. But I'm not splitting Aslace-Lorraine style hairs just to be smart. This is more to do with the manner in which Westerners put all Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc. under the same umbrella, which has always bugged me.Of course, Lin is actually of Taiwanese descent. So actually, for that "joke" to work, he would have to be Chinese. At the very least, the ESPN commentator should be fired for incorrect geography. Then he should be fired for being a racist schmuck.
If I was to walk into my bookstore and call someone a "chink," I would probably be fired, and rightfully so: that would not be displaying the kind of behavior that the company wants to project. And the ESPN commentator's situation is different because why?
Edit: and by the way, yes I know he wasn't "directly" called a chink. But that's totally irrelevant.
EDIT: Oh, and I looked up Mallu Magalhaes after you name-checked her a few weeks ago. Consider me a fan. For some reason, Spotify and Amazon only have her second album, and I think I prefer what I've heard from her debut (off of YouTube, mostly).
Nuance doesn't work with some people.
Rarely, but you deal with them.
"Nuance doesn't work in prose."
Yes, but it can be worked out over time, esp. if you have prose chops.
"Nuance doesn't work on the internet."
No sh!t it doesn't. Every red flag has to be waved. All the time, so far. Rightly so.
Finally some real feedback rather than ANONYMOUS thumbs. That's all I wanted
to begin with. Nuance doesn't work with some people. I stated that the ESPN reporter
was "brilliant". So" brilliant" that he got fired. What's not clear about that? Personally, losing a job
is serious siht. If the reporter has a record of being a jerk -fire his ****. Otherwise sit him down
and explain the deal. Period.
about the blogger
Starting in 1967, Robert Christgau has covered popular music for The Village Voice, Esquire, Blender, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He teaches in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, maintains a comprehensive website at robertchristgau.com, and has published five books based on his journalism. He has written for MSN Music since 2006.
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