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
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.
So I received many thumbs down because
1)you agree with me that the ESPN reporter should be fired
2)you disagree with me because the ESPN reporter shouldn't have been fired
3)you agree with me that the ESPN reporter should have been reprimanded but not fired
4)you agree with me that the ESPN reporter should have not been reprimanded or fired
5)you agree with the ESPN reporter that Jeremy Lin has "a chink in his armor"
6) you disagree with the ESPN reporter that Jeremy LIn has "a chink in his armor"
7)you disagree because political correctness is very annoying
8)you care alot because it's just wrong what the ESPN reporter said
I'm a number 3 guy myself-but how could the reporter be so "brilliant"-as in stupid.
1. Village Green is my favorite album of 1968, and putting it on a '69 ballot is something I can't terribly imagine. I understand that it's just a decision made for the purposes of being consistent, but it's not something that I can personally do, to make a list of 1969 albums that isn't terribly reflective of, well, 1969. It's not a call to boycott. It is not a call for everyone to do the same. This is why I wasn't going to make public that I wasn't voting for it.
Even more wildly off topic than normal, it's another 2002 show, now on mixcloud at http://bit.ly/wcvxEb. Music tonight from Wire, Jinx Lennon, Warren Zevon, Steve Earle, Transplants, the Streets, Cornershop, and Corey Harris (none of whom, as far as I know, released records in 1969, either in the US or elsewhere...). The GMort inspired "summer in winter" show is next week.
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.
Jeff, there was a protracted almost-kerfuffle over this in which I revealed Joey's principled decision not to include VGPS on his ballot despite loving it (because he considers it an 1968 release). For the purposes of the poll, '69 it is.
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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