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
That reminds me, I know Bob wrote some liner notes for that reissue of Icky Mettle...but are these remasters and or the extra tracks worth the extra bucks?
Hit and miss, I fear. But the ones you mention are worth it, IMO. So is the Murmur reissue, which includes the entire Chronic Town EP as well as an excellent live set.
I loathe that vocals in one channel and the instruments in the other thing.
I heard "Rain" in the dentist's office the other day, and one of the speakers must have been much closer to me than the other. I could barely hear the lead vocal, but the harmony vocals (on "Raaaiiiiin" and "Shiiiiiine") were loud and clear. Trippy, and it would have been even trippier had I opted for nitrous oxide.Dumb personal anecdote about the first track on Matriarch of Blues: For many years "Gotta Serve Somebody" was the only Dylan song in my collection. My mom had asked me to procure it for her to use in a training she was doing at the Department of Human Services. Feel like an idiot for not listening to more of him before recently.
When it comes to Beatles, how do you folks listen? Mono? Stereo remasters? Do you mix it up depending on the record? What's your preference and why?
I used an Amazon gift certificate I got on my 17th birthday to buy a bunch of used CD versions of the older Beatles albums because at that time they weren't available on iTunes, and I have been listening to the 192 kbps rips I made of those ever since. So uh, yeah. I guess that means I listen to them on stereo.
Early Beatles in mono for sure. I loathe that vocals in one channel and the instruments in the other thing. Help! forward I don't have a preference although Revolver and Sgt Pepper in mono are very different to their stereo counterparts. Tomorrow Never Knows is a revelation in its mono mix.
When it comes to Beatles, how do you folks listen? Mono? Stereo remasters? Do you mix it up depending on the record? What's your preference and why?
So Matriarch of the Blues gets a *** in 1990 and is now a B+. This is sure to drive Alex(japad) crazy. Looks like he's in Paris btw. I already own Matriarch, just not sure what box it's in because I'm moving out at the end of the month.
Tonight is my Buck 65/Busdriver concert. It's my first show of the year and I've set a goal of 30. So far I got the Magnetic Fields in March and Wussy in June. would love it if LCC came to Seattle,
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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