[Dixielandjazz] Music is Unfair.

Stephen Barbone barbonestreet at earthlink.net
Thu Jun 26 10:28:42 PDT 2003


List mates:

Couldn't resist posting this from the NY Times. The review, NOT OKOM, is
about a performer who won 5 grammys this year. She and the band are
taken to task for playing almost all the songs in the same key and and
at the same tempo.

Also note the quote  "If ever a singer and a band could benefit from the
guidance of elders, it is this one."

But then, how the hell did this gal sell 14 million copies of her first
CD already?

Note also the last two paragraphs about the warm up band. Better music,
had a groove, better conceived etc. Yet it will probably never be as
popular as the main act. Does that sound familiar? Like OKOM?  Hmmmm.

Yep, the music business is unfair. So I guess we'll just have to deal
with it.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone



June 26, 2003 - New York Times - Ben Ratliff

For Norah Jones, Nights Are Made for Sentiment and Slow Dancing

      Halfway through Norah Jones's concert on Tuesday night at the
Beacon Theater, her five-member band left her alone onstage. She sat at
the grand piano and played Duke Ellington's "Melancholia," singing her
own lyrics about not missing a lover who had checked out. "Melancholia"
is one of Ellington's slow, exotic songs with chord changes that make it
too weird for standard repertory. And Ms. Jones's voice — bright,
precise and drawling — did very well by it.

Then the band reappeared, and the concert — her first major theater
concert in New York since winning five Grammys in February — became a
crashing bore again, just as the first half had been. There was a sense
in Ms. Jones's show — expressed in the songwriting, in the arrangements
(such as they were) and in the basic elements of stagecraft — that the
kids had taken over and weren't sure what to do with their power. If
ever a singer and a band could benefit from the guidance of elders, it
is this one.

For sure, one quality that makes the 24-year-old Ms. Jones so likable is
her unpretentiousness. I don't think I've seen a headlining pop star who
has sold
14 million copies worldwide of a first record seem less sure about what
to say to her audience. But would she be betraying that likable
personality by using more effective arrangements, some changes in key
and tempo?

Perhaps we'll find out on her second album, but for now —during a
three-night sold-out stand at the Beacon and the rest of a national tour
— her job is to play the songs and the style of the first one, her
Grammy-winning "Come Away With Me." They connect with a sentimental,
slow-dancing-in-a-deserted-bar, distinctly American poise. Records by
Cassandra Wilson and Bill Frisell have gotten at this, but it's not an
easy
sensibility to pull off, and Tuesday's performance presented the callow
version of it.

For a music that seems to want a gliding, simple feeling, this was
crowded and unsure of itself. The tangle of notes coming from the two
guitarists, Kevin Breit and Adam Levy, amounted to complete overkill.
And given the prominence of Ms. Jones's piano, it ought to yield more
than two or three
repeated bluesy licks.

Ms. Jones does have a freshness: her voice and keyboard touch are clear
and direct. But she seems to be using her gifts for the purposes of
comfort alone, to remind listeners of AM radio hits from the 70's,
folk-rock songs by Phoebe Snow or Maria Muldaur. There's just not enough
definition yet in her music, not enough ideas.

By contrast, the countryish singer Gillian Welch — who performed a
warm-up set accompanied only by her husband, David Rawlings, on guitar
and close-harmony vocals — immediately established a sense of
clearheaded certainty and confidence. The nearest thing to their sound
is the sibling
harmony of bluegrass groups like the Louvin Brothers. But the
sensibilities of these musicians are both more self-consciously ascetic,
leaning toward white Southern gospel music, and more unpredictably
modern, with Mr. Rawlings adding a few dissonant harmonies and turning
one song into a slow,
improvisational jam. Their plainspoken music never lacked a groove,
however: you could see it suggested by Ms. Welch's right foot, moving in
a slow
side-to-side grinding motion.

One doubts that Ms. Welch's music will ever find popularity at Ms.
Jones's level: finally, it's too grim. But it's also better
proportioned, better conceived
and quite possibly more lasting.




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