Restingmotion

I can’t believe that it has been a week since I was in Knoxville.

One of my last evenings there, I listened to Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz on the radio with Rich while Miriam was feeding little Owen.  I have long loved that show but we don’t get it on our local public radio station any longer — I am not sure they don’t broadcast it, but if they do it is at a time that my local repeater station switches over to the local university and we get a different kind of music altogether.

That particular night the guest was Linda Ronstadt who was singing a wonderful selection of old standards.  Since I was reaching the point where I realized I needed to leave the kids on their own, and I was homesick for my own place and my own beloved, it was a very poignant hour, and I sat silently knitting and singing along to myself.  I did think to myself that Linda has really made great strides over the course of her career and has obviously tried to work on her interpretative ability.  She was quite good.

Now I have long loved Linda Ronstadt.  I have some of her early albums and I always thought she was a great technical singer with a wonderful voice.  But interpretive ability — bah.  In the early years it was just not there.  Let’s just say that I was suitably impressed, impressed enough to seek out an album when I came home.  Oh, I’ll admit she’s not Frank Sinatra or Billie Holiday, but I think I could enjoy Linda singing some of these songs as well. 

So I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a few things — in fact I went  a little overboard.  I used to buy a lot of records in a lot of genres, but lately, as G is mostly interested in classical music to the exclusion of all else, our purchases have revolved around the classical department.  I hadn’t realized I was positively itching for a little more variety. 

The first three of my purchases have been played frequently this week and I think they are winners. Two of them feature Linda Ronstadt.  (And by the way,  I know you can listen to the music at the store, and I do, but I find that those little snippets just give me a hint.  It is not until I play an album or a song over and over that I know whether it is a keeper or just bores me to tears.)

And so back to Linda.  The first album I bought is an old one, What’s New:

I purchased it specifically because it contained some of the songs Linda sang on the show, especially "Someone to Watch Over Me". 

I actually do remember considering this album when it originally came out (23 years ago?) but at the time was too much of a snob to take it seriously.  I was still convinced that Linda was great with country-rock but couldn’t handle the standards.  I was 25, still  plagued with the confidence and arrogance of youth and had just come out of a college experience where swing dancing to big band music was in and I had been introduced to Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.  (that mixed with standard disco and late 70’s early 80’s rock).  Besides I was having enough trouble at that stage of my life with young men thinking I was too old-fashioned and serious for my own good, that I didn’t think I needed to add another album of standards to my collection.  Ahh, the insecurity and ignorance of youth.

But back to the here-and-now.  When I first listened to What’s New, I will admit I was a little disappointed.  It was lovely, but not as lovely as the greats.  Of course I also listened to it under full stereo power in the family room.  Although an albums of songs is not the same as a symphony or Chamber work, the full-scale treatment provided by good speakers does draw more attention to any absence of nuance.  It is not that the performances were bad.  They weren’t.  Linda Ronstadt, as I recall, partially took on this project as an attempt to grow as an artist and it is obvious she learned a lot.  It is also obvious to me that she has learned more in the intervening 20 some years.  On the Ipod however, the songs shine.  At first I would say that Linda’s performance of "Someone to Watch Over Me" on the radio was better than that on the album.  After listening on the Ipod I am not as sure.  Radio broadcasts have their own problems with reproduction of sound, and Rich and Miriam’s stereo, although nice, does not have the sound quality of ours.  The Ipod with speakers is pretty good, but it is much closer to what I originally heard on the radio broadcast than what I heard at home in the family room.  So I have been singing along with Linda all week, and enjoying every minute.

The second Linda Ronstadt album I purchased is a new one: Adieu False Heart  with Ann Savoy.

I will admit that I know precious little about Ann Savoy; I have heard of her, I know she sings traditional Cajun songs, but otherwise I am completely in the dark.  I am not aware that I have ever heard her sing.

But the album sounded tempting in the little "play the CD" thingy at the store so I bought it.  I am very happy that I did.  This is a wonderful album if you like albums of slow songs lovingly and beautifully rendered and sung.  The performances run more toward the art song than traditional Cajun fiddle music, but the songs are all beautifully performed and mastered.  The album as a whole works well, there are really no disappointments here, and although there is a wide variety of song there is a consistency to the performance that helps tie them all together into a unified whole.   The vocals themselves are just exquisitely beautiful.  Ann’s voice is much more expressive than Linda’s but there are still few who can match the absolute beauty of Linda Ronstadt’s tone.  The two blend together and compliment each other fabulously well, and there are songs where they are so well matched that it seems impossible to determine where one ends and the other begins.  I think this is an album that I will listen to frequently and for a long time.

My third musical selection this week was in a totally different vein, one that had me dancing around more than listening.  I bought A Bigger Bang by the Rolling Stones.  Who knows what came over me,
this is not completely in character, although I have long loved good rock, but I am not complaining, as this album really rocks.  As I said, this album had me dancing around the house.

The songs are good, the music rocks, the album is consistent.  I don’t think there is a lemon here, but I will admit that I don’t really have a feel for the songs yet — I’m too busy dancing to slow down and pay attention to the words, but occasionally something catches my attention and I pause for a minute before the beat gets back into my blood and I boogie off again.  Jagger’s voice is amazing. Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, when they just get into the music, can drive a beat like no one else.   I might be middle aged, the stones might be middle aged, but its nice to know we still rock.

I think the album will continue to grow on me, even as I grow more familiar with the lyrics:  Heartbreak and breaking hearts, the terrible things that women (and men) do. It seems like this is a return to, or an acceptance of, what The Stones do best.

But I must admit that although I love the pure rock and roll sound of The Stones, I have never been the biggest fan.  During their youth, I was just too young, or too naive.  I learned to like the music; it grew on me with time.  I was in college before I really paid attention to The Stones, and they were just one of so many new references that were being thrust upon me. 

I arrived on the East Coast, at Vassar, a naive girl from West Texas who was really culturally out of her depth.  I learned fast.  I reveled in the experience.  It was a tremendous change.  Here I was, a simple girl who listened to Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, and John Denver, but not the real country singers that my Texas peers adored.   I was immersed in "The Three B’s" (Back, Beethoven, and Brahms) and loved Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys, Delbert McCLinton, and Disco.   The Stones did not really figure in my life before college.  Then there were too many new things to absorb:  Swing Bands, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, King Crimson, The Stones, Joan Baez, Stravinsky, Hovanness, John Cage; the list could go on and on.

The Stones were too much angry young men for me to really appreciate when I was young.  But I always loved the beat, loved to hear the sound.  It always made me want to dance.  Gradually they grew on me, but I didn’t buy their albums until Tattoo You, the only other Stones album I ever purchased (although we did make tapes of Beggars Banquet and Let it Bleed while George and I were dating and he was taken with both albums at a friend’s house.  I still can’t explain that, and even he admits it is completely out of character — must have just been that post-divorce state of mind.) Some of my friends, the ones who were hard-core Stones fans, were appalled at my choice, since they pretty much agreed that the Stones’ momentum had run dry and felt I should buy one of the older, classic, Stones albums.  And I can’t really explain it, although I still smile whenever hear "You Make a Grown Man Cry".  I think it was the presence of Sonny Rollins, even though he appears only on three tracks.  Those tracks seem to affect the entire album, as if he was raising a bar that the Stones then had to challenge themselves to meet.  And successfully they did.  The R&B overtones on this album really roar, and threaten to go out of control, but they are always reigned in, just barely.  Maybe it’s because this album doesn’t seem as contemptuous as previous albums and I was just more comfortable with the songs.  Anyway Tattoo You has long been my favorite Stones album.  Maybe we’ve all just matured, but A Bigger Bang  will probably run a close second.