Girl Talk/Nicki Minaj

Walter:  There are almost certainly professional reviews that can give you better advice on The Promise than I can do, but since you asked, I'll first ID myself in the Bruuuuuuce world as a true believer but not an obsessive.  The obsessives didn't like The Promise because they already had bootlegs of the original versions of these songs and the fact that he re-did them to his current standard (or sound, take your pick), put them off.  I'm not that picky, took them as I heard them, really liked the female chorus on "Someday (We'll Be Together)", as an example, which never would have happened in 1978 since his current wife sings on it, and had never heard the bootlegs in the first place anyway.

The songs themselves fall kind of in two camps, simple romantic pop songs (mostly up-tempo but not exclusively), and the melodramatic semi-epics that depict the difficulties of blue collar life as he sees it.  Out of the 22 songs there are half a dozen or so of this latter style.  Generally longer and slower tunes.  It depends on how you feel about this style in general since there is a sameness to the sound of the songs that could put a person off.  I really didn't like this version of "Racing In the Street" at first.  It's tuneless and includes lame lyrics that he would eventually re-write.  About the 4th time I listened though I realized how deeply he inhabited the story, especially after the instrumental break, and now I hear it like a Literature major might hear an early audio tape of F. Scott Fitzgerald working out his "boats against the current" idea (and yes, I just compared Darkness on the Edge of Town to The Great Gatsby).  When he sings "For all the blown off strangers and hot rod angels stumbling through this promised land" I think he really means it.  I think it's not just some clever RnR lyric.  I think he has real people in mind, real people he's known in a real country he worries about.  It's very moving.

The romantic pop songs spend time on the generalities of boy/girl stuff, without any of the details of the blue collar semi-epics.  I wrote them off at first as too simple and cliched, which they are individually but collectively they really cover the relationship waterfront.  Alternately he is tumescent, regretful, lucky, sad, funny, stoopid, determined, classically romantic, lost, found, disappointed, buoyed, and ultimately grateful ergo happy.  I had to cut and paste the song order to my taste to make this happen, but hey, what's technology for if not to improve life.  I'm sure this is cheating, and even doing that didn't remove the cliches of "Spanish Eyes" or "One Way Street", much less keep me from wanting to give him a Lesley Gore-inspired "You Don't Own Me" slap upside the head for the "You belong to me" chorus of the otherwise pretty "The Way".

And finally, the finish to "Someday", from the 4:05 to 4:50 mark, is my favorite music of the year.  He always wanted to sound like Roy Orbison and damn it, right there he did it.  I end my re-sequenced version with that song.

But then like I said, I'm a fan.  Although not enough of one to re-buy the original Darkness itself for the third or fourth time.  This is just The Promise.

In sum, if it had been released at the time, it would have changed how we think of him, less semi-epic and more pop-oriented (which his notes in the enclosed booklet make clear that that is why he didn't release them then).  How they make you see him now depends somewhat on you feel about old-school big band rock and roll.  I love it.  Is it relevant?  That's a very good question.  I think so since excellent musicians playing committed music will never go out of style, but am somewhat more doubtful every day (see above).

Hope this helps in some way.  GM

Tom , thank you for referring me to the Gary Giddens book 'Jazz". I will check it out.

Also, Xgau singled out some excellent old jazz and blues records in his Barnes & Noble review of Tom Moon's 1000 records to hear before you die