First, a mysterious package arrives from Canada and rather than placing it carefully in a bucket of water and calling the bomb squad which was probably the safest thing to do, I decided to open it and lo and behold, it contained a CD entitled ‘Spiral’, the latest release from Allison Crowe kindly sent by Allison’s personable manager Adrian! So, thank you Adrian – I shall be listening to this over the next few weeks and you can expect some comments in a future post.
Second, I have been rather bowled over by another artist previously mentioned in this blog, Doris Brendel, ex-singer with The Violet Hour and now a solo artist. Well, not her personally, but a song of hers called ‘Sorry’. I haven’t been emotionally connected to a song like this for…ooh…at least a few weeks, but this is magical. Taken from her album, ‘Driving’, it is a classic torch song just crying out for waving lighters and last song of the night status. The melody is beautifully structured with a stunning chorus, the lyrics are intelligent, the singing is gut-wrenchingly soulful (see ‘third’ below) and the whole thing is packaged up by a classically simple arrangement for guitar, drums and bass with just a soupcon of keyboards in a way that you rarely hear these days when computers fill every microsecond of available space.
Why don’t people make music like this anymore? Perhaps they do, but it’s a bugger to find it amongst the sheer dross splurging out of every record company after a quick buck. There is nothing quite like listening to an arrangement where you can hear exactly what the bass player, drummer and guitarist are doing at any point and it adds so much to the listening pleasure.
Third, is one of those odd connections that occur to me every now and then which make me feel that perhaps there is a divine purpose in rock. Listening to Doris’s vocal on ‘Sorry’ makes me think, and this is the oddest of links, about the young Rod Stewart, around the time of Python Lee Jackson and his early solo career, a time when I feel his singing was at its emotional best. There is an eerie similarity between their abrasive vocal quality and in the way they phrase their vocals which binds them together across the years. I can’t help thinking that Rod, around 1969, could’ve made a fabulous cover of this song.
There is a cute video to go with the song which I present below. If you love music give yourself a treat and invest 4 minutes of your life in listening to ‘Sorry’. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
6 comments:
Thanks for this! I've not heard Doris Brendel/The Violet Hour and very much enjoy the introduction ( :
And, your linkage is not so odd, I can hear Python Lee Jackson era Rod as well. I'd not heard of PLJ before this moment, either. Now, thanks to the wonder of YouTube, I've caught up with "In a Broken Dream".
My first Rod Stewart single was "Handbags and Gladrags" - still a sentimental favourite. I may have mentioned this before, my first ever concert was Rod Stewart and Faces. (btw, I see Faces will be performing some length of tour with Mick Hucknall as lead singer.)
Happy to hear the album from Allison arrived safely and in one piece. You've reminded me of the recent Olympic Games in nearby Vancouver. Perhaps to placate the public and justify the $1 billion security price tag, we were treated to regular news reports of suspicious happenings that may have been thwarted by ever-vigilant forces. Particularly memorable was the day when sailings of the Seabus (inter-city ferry) were cancelled due to the discovery of a suspicious object at the terminal. The bomb squad was called in - and duly detonated the package. What was it? A fishing rod and reel.
Adrian - LOL! What a great story! I love 'security' anecdotes and may one day compile them into a best seller - well I can dream.
Glad to hear that you found Python Lee Jackson, one of my favourite singles from the late sixties.
I had not heard of this lady before but this is a good track. I didn't think people made music this good nowadays but perhaps I am just getting old.
Thanks for the recommendation.
Hi Alan. I think 'getting old' may actually be the key here. This is not a song performed by a newcomer teenager with a head full of technology, but by someone who has been around a bit. Without wishing to speculate about the lady's age, er too much, I'd guess she is not much younger than us which puts her in a generation that remembers how honest music once was and how it could still move without the need for undue complexity. Perhaps age has its merits after all!
Thank you, this is a good song. But I must say I'm still a bit distracted musically, chasing after that Nerina Pallot you turned me onto! Love, LOVE, the first record, and you're right, I'm warming to the second -Idaho, Sophia, and of course Geek Love. I think it's among other things incredibly sexy. Does that make me a geek?
Hi LM - you an me both then! I told you it was a grower. Time for 'The Graduate' yet?
And I'm glad you like 'Sorry', it is a fabulous song.
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