Monday, November 16, 2009
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Thursday, April 2, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Suzanne Vega
a click on the photo takes you to my Suzanne Vega play list on YouTube.
Suzanne Vega was the first major figure in the bumper crop of female singer/songwriters who rose to prominence during the late '80s and '90s. Her hushed, restrained folk-pop and highly literate lyrics (inspired chiefly by Leonard Cohen, as well as Lou Reed and Bob Dylan) laid the initial musical groundwork for what later became the trademark sound of Lilith Fair (a tour on which she was a regular). Moreover, her left-field hit single "Luka" helped convince record companies that folk-styled singer/songwriters were not a thing of the past after all, paving the way for breakthroughs by Tracy Chapman, Michelle Shocked, Shawn Colvin, Edie Brickell, the Indigo Girls, Sinéad O'Connor, and a host of others on through the '90s. Vega's early commercial success helped open doors for a wealth of talent, and even if she couldn't sustain the level of popularity she reached in 1987 with "Luka" and the platinum Solitude Standing, she maintained a strong and dedicated cult following. Her association with — and marriage to — experimental producer Mitchell Froom during the '90s resulted in two intriguing but uneven albums; however, following their painful divorce, Vega returned in 2001 with her first album in five years, Songs in Red and Gray, which was greeted with her strongest reviews in a decade. Suzanne Vega was born July 11, 1959, in Santa Monica, CA; her parents divorced shortly thereafter, and after her mother (a jazz guitarist) remarried to Puerto Rican novelist Ed Vega, the family moved to Manhattan. A shy and quiet child, Suzanne nonetheless learned to take care of herself growing up in the tough neighborhoods of Spanish Harlem. Her parents often sang folk songs around the house, and when she began playing the guitar at age 11, she found herself attracted to the poetry of singer/songwriter music (Dylan, Cohen), and found a refuge from New York's chaos in traditional folk (Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Joan Baez). At age 14, she made her first attempts at writing songs; however, when she attended the High School for the Performing Arts as a teenager, it was to study dance, not music. She subsequently enrolled at Barnard College as a literature major, and during this time, she began playing at coffeehouses and folk festivals on the West Side and near Columbia University; she soon moved up to the Lower East Side/Greenwich Village folk clubs, including the famed Folk City club where Bob Dylan started out. In 1979, Vega attended a Lou Reed concert, and the effect was a revelation: here was an artist chronicling the harsh urban world Vega knew, with the detail and literacy of a folk artist. Vega discovered a new voice and sense of possibility for her original material, and her writing grew rapidly.Vega graduated from college in 1982 and held down several low-level day jobs while quickly becoming the Greenwich Village folk scene's brightest hope. Record companies were reluctant to take a chance on a singer/songwriter steeped in folk music, however, since they saw little chance of any commercial returns. After three years of rejections, Vega and her managers Ron Fierstein and Steve Addabbo finally convinced A&M (which had turned her down twice) to give her a shot, and she signed a contract in 1983. Former Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye was brought in to co-produce the debut with Addabbo and lend it a smoother, more contemporary flavor.Titled simply Suzanne Vega, it was released in 1985 to much critical applause. Thanks in part to the single "Marlene on the Wall," the album was a genuine hit in Britain, where it eventually went platinum; while it didn't duplicate that success in America, the album's sales of 200,000 strong still came as a shock to A&M (and Vega). For the 1987 follow-up, Vega overcame writer's block to craft an eclectic batch of new material, as well as drawing upon a backlog of songs that hadn't fit the debut. Again produced by Kaye and Addabbo, Solitude Standing was Vega's finest achievement; the richness and variety of its compositions were complemented by the lusher full-band arrangements and more accessible (albeit less folky) production. The album's lead single, "Luka," was a haunting first-person account of child abuse, whose terse (and fictional) lyrics struck a chord with American radio listeners. As a result, the album was an instant hit on both sides of the Atlantic; it debuted at number two in the U.K., and went gold within three months in the U.S., peaking at number 11 and eventually going platinum. "Luka" hit number three on the American pop charts — unheard of for a singer/songwriter in the '80s prior to Vega — and was nominated for three Grammys. As record companies rushed to fill a market niche they hadn't known existed (and uncovering some major talents in the process), Vega spent almost a year on the road touring in support of the record; exhausted, she returned to New York to take some time off, and also tracked down her biological father for the first time. When the time came to record her third album in 1989, Vega decided to co-produce it herself with her keyboardist/boyfriend Anton Sanko (longtime bassist Michael Visceglia also had input). Vega began to experiment with her lyrics, pushing beyond the narrative story-songs that dominated her first two records, and had minimalist composer Philip Glass contribute a string arrangement. The result, Days of Open Hand, was released in 1990, yet didn't produce another hit single and was somewhat lost in the shuffle of new female singer/songwriters; though it did sell respectably, reviews were somewhat mixed. Even though the album didn't recapture Vega's 1987 popularity, she was still — indirectly — involved in one of 1990's most bizarre hit singles. Two British dance producers working under the alias DNA took the a cappella Solitude Standing track "Tom's Diner" and set it to an electronic dance beat, releasing the result as a bootleg single called "Oh Suzanne." When A&M discovered the piracy, Vega decided to allow the single's official release under its original title, and it became a substantial hit in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere. The following year, Vega gathered a number of other unsolicited versions of the song and compiled them as Tom's Album.Intrigued by the success of "Tom's Diner," Vega began looking for ways to open up her musical approach. She hooked up with producer Mitchell Froom, best known for his work on latter-day albums by Elvis Costello, Richard Thompson, and Crowded House. Froom applied his trademark approach — dissonant arrangements, clanging percussion — to Vega's new 1992 album, and while 99.9 F° didn't reinvent her as a dance artist (as some expected), the synth-centered sound of the record was unlike any of her previous work. Froom and Vega began dating several months after the record's completion, and they wound up marrying; their daughter, Ruby, was born in 1994, and Vega naturally took some time off from music. She returned in 1996 with Nine Objects of Desire, again with Froom in the producer's chair, though his approach was somewhat less radical this time out; in terms of Vega's subject matter, there was a newfound physical sensuality borne of her marriage and childbirth experiences. All was not well for long, however; Froom began seeing Ally McBeal singer Vonda Shepard, and he and Vega split up in August 1998. In 1999, Vega released the best-of retrospective Tried and True, taking stock of her past career (she had also split with longtime manager Ron Fierstein); she also published her first book, The Passionate Eye, a collection of poems, lyrics, essays, journalistic pieces, and the like. Vega began playing shows with bassist Michael Visceglia again, and worked on material addressing the breakup of her marriage. Songs in Red and Gray was released in the fall of 2001 and marked a return to the more direct sound of Suzanne Vega and Solitude Standing; it also garnered her best reviews since those records. Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega arrived in 2003, followed by the Live at Montreux 2004 DVD/CD in 2006 and the all-new Beauty & Crime in 2007.
Imawano Kiyoshiro
[編集] 概要・人物
1970年、RCサクセション（THE RC SUCCESSION：以下特別の理由がない限り「RC」と略す。）のソングライター、ボーカリストとしてオムニバス盤に収録された「泥だらけの海」でデビュー。RC名義の単独作品としては、「宝くじは買わない」がデビュー盤。40年近くにわたり、ロックし続ける、「キング・オブ・ロック」。「ベイベ～ッ」、「愛しあってるかい？」などのステージでの発言、一度聴いたら忘れられない独特な歌声で有名。メンフィス名誉市民。日本アカデミー賞音楽賞受賞。代表曲は「雨上がりの夜空に」、「トランジスタ・ラジオ」、「スローバラード」、「ドカドカうるさいR&Rバンド」、「パパの歌」、「デイドリーム・ビリーバー（モンキーズのカバー。日本語詞は忌野の完全な創作で元の歌詞とは内容が全く違う）」、「JUMP」など多数。仲井戸麗市との名コンビで、日本のロックショーの形を作り上げた。
東京都内の仕事先には自転車で通うほどの自転車愛好家としても知られており、チームLSD (Long Slow Distance) を結成。「奥の細道」自転車ツアーやホノルル・センチュリーライドなど長距離サイクリングに挑戦している。「2005自転車名人」に選ばれた。総製作費160万円のロードレーサー「オレンジ号」を愛用。盗難に遭い後日発見されたことが報道され、話題になった。自作曲と同名の著書で自転車旅行の記録などからなる『サイクリング・ブルース』もある。
SOUL、R&Bに造詣が深く、往年の名ソウルシンガーオーティス・レディングを、最も影響を受けたアーティストの一人であると公言している。その影響は、ステージ上で発する「愛し合ってるかい？」というセリフや、曲中での「ガッタ、ガッタ」という独特の発声・シャウトなどからも伺うことができる。また、サム・ムーア（サム＆デイブ）やチャック・ベリーらとジョイント・ライブを行ったこともある（アルバム『THE DAY OF R＆B』に収録）。
ラブソングを歌い続ける一方、過激な曲を多く作っている事でも知られている。「雨上がりの夜空に」、「あこがれの北朝鮮」、「FM東京」、「目覚し時計は歌う（選挙ソング）」などが有名。
1982年には、イエロー・マジック・オーケストラ（YMO）の坂本龍一と組んでシングル「い・け・な・いルージュマジック」をリリース。資生堂82春のキャンペーンソングとしてヒット。TVでは、どぎつい化粧をした男同士でキスをするなど、過激なパフォーマンスを展開、時代を席巻した。
その後も数々のグループ、ユニットを結成。多彩な活動で知られている。 現在は忌野清志郎&ザ・ナイスミドルを結成し、活動。
2006年7月13日、自身のホームページにて喉頭癌であることを発表。2週間後に出演する予定だったフジロックフェスティバルを含め、以降の公演はすべてキャンセルとなった。
2007年2月21日、TBSラジオ「竹中直人ハードボイルド・ソーセージ」に療養後放送媒体のトーク番組に初出演し、告知を受けたときの心境や現在の闘病生活についてを語る。それによれば現在は玄米を中心の菜食となり、放射線治療は今現在は体調がいいので、本当にダメになるまでは拒否するという。
2007年4月、ブルーノート東京でのザ・ブルースブラザーズ・バンドの来日公演において、サプライズゲストとして参加した。
2007年12月8日、日本武道館でのジョン・レノン・スーパーライブ Dream Powerに、仲井戸麗市・新井田耕造・厚見玲衣をバックに出演、他出演者を圧倒するパフォーマンスで完全復活を印象づけた。
2008年2月10日、元RCのメンバーである仲井戸麗市・新井田耕造らと共に忌野清志郎 完全復活祭を日本武道館にて行う。発病前と変らぬパワフルなボーカルを聴かせた忌野は24曲を歌いきり、武道館を埋め尽くした13,000人のファンを酔わせた。 また、同年2月24日には大阪フェスティバルホールにおいて、同じく3月2日には京都会館第一ホールにおいてそれぞれ追加公演を行った。チケットは各会場ともSOLD OUTであった。 各公演の入場者に対しては「快気祝い」として、各会場名ごとに異なる手ぬぐいが渡された。
1970年、RCサクセション（THE RC SUCCESSION：以下特別の理由がない限り「RC」と略す。）のソングライター、ボーカリストとしてオムニバス盤に収録された「泥だらけの海」でデビュー。RC名義の単独作品としては、「宝くじは買わない」がデビュー盤。40年近くにわたり、ロックし続ける、「キング・オブ・ロック」。「ベイベ～ッ」、「愛しあってるかい？」などのステージでの発言、一度聴いたら忘れられない独特な歌声で有名。メンフィス名誉市民。日本アカデミー賞音楽賞受賞。代表曲は「雨上がりの夜空に」、「トランジスタ・ラジオ」、「スローバラード」、「ドカドカうるさいR&Rバンド」、「パパの歌」、「デイドリーム・ビリーバー（モンキーズのカバー。日本語詞は忌野の完全な創作で元の歌詞とは内容が全く違う）」、「JUMP」など多数。仲井戸麗市との名コンビで、日本のロックショーの形を作り上げた。
東京都内の仕事先には自転車で通うほどの自転車愛好家としても知られており、チームLSD (Long Slow Distance) を結成。「奥の細道」自転車ツアーやホノルル・センチュリーライドなど長距離サイクリングに挑戦している。「2005自転車名人」に選ばれた。総製作費160万円のロードレーサー「オレンジ号」を愛用。盗難に遭い後日発見されたことが報道され、話題になった。自作曲と同名の著書で自転車旅行の記録などからなる『サイクリング・ブルース』もある。
SOUL、R&Bに造詣が深く、往年の名ソウルシンガーオーティス・レディングを、最も影響を受けたアーティストの一人であると公言している。その影響は、ステージ上で発する「愛し合ってるかい？」というセリフや、曲中での「ガッタ、ガッタ」という独特の発声・シャウトなどからも伺うことができる。また、サム・ムーア（サム＆デイブ）やチャック・ベリーらとジョイント・ライブを行ったこともある（アルバム『THE DAY OF R＆B』に収録）。
ラブソングを歌い続ける一方、過激な曲を多く作っている事でも知られている。「雨上がりの夜空に」、「あこがれの北朝鮮」、「FM東京」、「目覚し時計は歌う（選挙ソング）」などが有名。
1982年には、イエロー・マジック・オーケストラ（YMO）の坂本龍一と組んでシングル「い・け・な・いルージュマジック」をリリース。資生堂82春のキャンペーンソングとしてヒット。TVでは、どぎつい化粧をした男同士でキスをするなど、過激なパフォーマンスを展開、時代を席巻した。
その後も数々のグループ、ユニットを結成。多彩な活動で知られている。 現在は忌野清志郎&ザ・ナイスミドルを結成し、活動。
2006年7月13日、自身のホームページにて喉頭癌であることを発表。2週間後に出演する予定だったフジロックフェスティバルを含め、以降の公演はすべてキャンセルとなった。
2007年2月21日、TBSラジオ「竹中直人ハードボイルド・ソーセージ」に療養後放送媒体のトーク番組に初出演し、告知を受けたときの心境や現在の闘病生活についてを語る。それによれば現在は玄米を中心の菜食となり、放射線治療は今現在は体調がいいので、本当にダメになるまでは拒否するという。
2007年4月、ブルーノート東京でのザ・ブルースブラザーズ・バンドの来日公演において、サプライズゲストとして参加した。
2007年12月8日、日本武道館でのジョン・レノン・スーパーライブ Dream Powerに、仲井戸麗市・新井田耕造・厚見玲衣をバックに出演、他出演者を圧倒するパフォーマンスで完全復活を印象づけた。
2008年2月10日、元RCのメンバーである仲井戸麗市・新井田耕造らと共に忌野清志郎 完全復活祭を日本武道館にて行う。発病前と変らぬパワフルなボーカルを聴かせた忌野は24曲を歌いきり、武道館を埋め尽くした13,000人のファンを酔わせた。 また、同年2月24日には大阪フェスティバルホールにおいて、同じく3月2日には京都会館第一ホールにおいてそれぞれ追加公演を行った。チケットは各会場ともSOLD OUTであった。 各公演の入場者に対しては「快気祝い」として、各会場名ごとに異なる手ぬぐいが渡された。
Lucinda Williams
a click on the photo will take you to my Lucinda Williams play list on YouTube.
The object of cultish adoration for years, singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams was universally hailed as a major talent by both critics and fellow musicians, but it took quite some time for her to parlay that respect into a measure of attention from the general public. Part of the reason was her legendary perfectionism: Williams released records only infrequently, often taking years to hone both the material and the recordings thereof. Plus, her early catalog was issued on smaller labels that agreed to her insistence on creative control but didn't have the resources or staying power to fully promote her music. Yet her meticulous attention to detail and staunch adherence to her own vision were exactly what helped build her reputation. When Williams was at her best (and she often was), even her simplest songs were rich in literary detail, from her poetic imagery to her flawed, conflicted characters. Her singing voice, whose limitations she readily acknowledged, nonetheless developed into an evocative instrument that seemed entirely appropriate to her material. So if some critics described Williams as "the female Bob Dylan," they may have been oversimplifying things (Townes Van Zandt might be more apt), but the parallels were certainly too strong to ignore.Williams was born in Lake Charles, LA, on January 26, 1953. Her father was Miller Williams, a literature professor and published poet who passed on not only his love of language, but also of Delta blues and Hank Williams. The family moved frequently, as Miller took teaching posts at colleges around Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas, and even Mexico City and Santiago, Chile. Meanwhile, Lucinda discovered folk music (especially Joan Baez) through her mother and was galvanized into trying her own hand at singing and writing songs after hearing Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. Immersed in a college environment, she was also exposed to '60s rock and more challenging singer/songwriters like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. She started performing folk songs publicly in New Orleans and during the family's sojourn in Mexico City. In 1969, she was ejected from high school for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and she spent a year working her way through a reading list supplied by her father before leaving home.Williams performed around New Orleans as a folk artist who mixed covers with traditional-styled originals. In 1974, she relocated to Austin, TX, and became part of that city's burgeoning roots music scene; she later split time between Austin and Houston, and then moved to New York. A demo tape got her the chance to record for the Smithsonian's Folkways label, and she went to Jackson, MS, to lay down her first album at the Malaco studios. Ramblin' on My Mind (later retitled simply Ramblin') was released in 1979 and featured a selection of traditional blues, country, folk, and Cajun songs. Williams returned to Houston to record the follow-up, 1980's Happy Woman Blues. As her first album of original compositions, it was an important step forward, and although it was much more bound by the dictates of tradition than her genre-hopping later work, her talent was already in evidence.However, it would be some time before that talent was fully realized. Williams flitted between Austin and Houston during the early '80s, then moved to Los Angeles in 1984, where she started to attract some major-label interest. CBS signed her to a development deal in the mid-'80s but wound up passing since neither its rock nor its country divisions knew how to market her; around the same time, a short-lived marriage to drummer Greg Sowders dissolved. Williams eventually caught on with an unlikely partner — the British indie label Rough Trade, which was historically better known for its punk output. The simply titled Lucinda Williams was released in 1988, and although it didn't make any waves in the mainstream, it received glowing reviews from those who did hear it. With help from guitarist/co-producer Gurf Morlix, Williams' sound had evolved into a seamless blend of country, blues, folk, and rock; while it made perfect sense to roots music enthusiasts, it didn't fit into the rigid tastes of radio programmers. But it was clear that she had found her songwriting voice — the album brimmed with confidence, and so did its assertive female characters, who seemed to answer only to their own passions.Many critics hailed Lucinda Williams as a major statement by a major new talent. Rough Trade issued a couple of EPs that featured live performances and material from Lucinda Williams, and Patty Loveless covered "The Night's Too Long" for a Top 20 country hit. However, it would be four years before Williams completed her official follow-up. She signed with RCA for a time but left when she felt that the label was pressuring her to release material she didn't deem ready for public consumption. Instead, she went to the small Elektra-distributed label Chameleon, which finally released Sweet Old World in 1992. A folkier outing than Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World was an unflinching meditation on death, loss, and regret. Even its upbeat moments were colored by songs like the title track and "Pineola," two stunning, heartbreaking accounts of a family friend's suicide (poet Frank Stanford, not, as many listeners assumed, Williams' own brother). Needless to say, the record won rave reviews once again, and Williams toured Australia with Rosanne Cash and Mary Chapin Carpenter.On that tour, Carpenter decided to record "Passionate Kisses," the key track and statement of purpose from Lucinda Williams. It shot into the country Top Five in 1993 and won its writer a Grammy for Country Song of the Year. Other artists soon started mining Williams' back catalog for material: avowed fan Emmylou Harris recorded "Crescent City" on 1993's Cowgirl's Prayer and cut "Sweet Old World" for her 1995 alternative country landmark Wrecking Ball; plus, Tom Petty covered "Changed the Locks" for 1996's movie-related She's the One. As the buzz around Williams grew, so did anticipation for her next album. With Chameleon having gone under, she signed with Rick Rubin's American Recordings label and began sessions with Morlix again co-producing. Dissatisfied with the results, Williams' rigorous retouchings led to Morlix's departure from the project and her backing band. In 1995, she moved into Harris' neighborhood in Nashville and through Harris hired Steve Earle and his production partner Ray Kennedy. At first, she was so enamored with their work that she re-recorded the entire album from scratch. When it was finished, she decided that the results sounded too produced, and took the record to Los Angeles, where she enlisted Roy Bittan (onetime E Street Band keyboardist) to co-produce a series of overdub sessions that bordered on obsessive. During the long wait for the album, the media began to pay more attention to Williams; some of the coverage was fairly unflattering, painting her as a neurotic control freak, but she always countered that it was unfair to criticize the process if the results were worthwhile.Rubin mixed the final tracks, but the album was further delayed when he entered into negotiations to sell the American label. Mercury stepped in to purchase the rights to the album, which was finally released in 1998 under the title Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Boasting a bright, contemporary roots rock sound with strong country and blues flavors, not to mention major-label promotional power, the album won universal acclaim, making many critics' year-end Top Ten lists and winning The Village Voice's prestigious Pazz & Jop survey. It also won Williams a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album (despite being the least folk-oriented record in her catalog) and became her first to go gold, proving to doubters that she was not just a songwriter, but a full-fledged recording artist in her own right. After a merger shakeup at Mercury, Williams wound up on the Universal-distributed roots imprint Lost Highway. She was the subject of an extensive, widely acclaimed profile in The New Yorker in 2000, written by Bill Buford, who was nominated for a National Magazine Award for his work; however, Williams and some of her supporters took issue with some of his more objective-minded analysis.Williams delivered her next album, Essence, in 2001, after a relatively scant wait of just three years. An introspective collection, it often found Williams taking a simpler, more minimalistic lyrical approach and was greeted with rapturous reviews in most quarters. The track "Get Right with God" won Williams her third Grammy, this time for Best Female Rock Vocal, which further consolidated her credibility as a singer, not just a songwriter. Paring down the time between album releases even further, Williams returned in 2003 with World Without Tears, which became her highest-charting effort to date when it debuted in the Top 20. 2005 saw the release of two live recordings, one (Live @ the Fillmore) for Lost Highway and the other (Live from Austin, TX) for New West. West arrived in 2007.
The object of cultish adoration for years, singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams was universally hailed as a major talent by both critics and fellow musicians, but it took quite some time for her to parlay that respect into a measure of attention from the general public. Part of the reason was her legendary perfectionism: Williams released records only infrequently, often taking years to hone both the material and the recordings thereof. Plus, her early catalog was issued on smaller labels that agreed to her insistence on creative control but didn't have the resources or staying power to fully promote her music. Yet her meticulous attention to detail and staunch adherence to her own vision were exactly what helped build her reputation. When Williams was at her best (and she often was), even her simplest songs were rich in literary detail, from her poetic imagery to her flawed, conflicted characters. Her singing voice, whose limitations she readily acknowledged, nonetheless developed into an evocative instrument that seemed entirely appropriate to her material. So if some critics described Williams as "the female Bob Dylan," they may have been oversimplifying things (Townes Van Zandt might be more apt), but the parallels were certainly too strong to ignore.Williams was born in Lake Charles, LA, on January 26, 1953. Her father was Miller Williams, a literature professor and published poet who passed on not only his love of language, but also of Delta blues and Hank Williams. The family moved frequently, as Miller took teaching posts at colleges around Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas, and even Mexico City and Santiago, Chile. Meanwhile, Lucinda discovered folk music (especially Joan Baez) through her mother and was galvanized into trying her own hand at singing and writing songs after hearing Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. Immersed in a college environment, she was also exposed to '60s rock and more challenging singer/songwriters like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. She started performing folk songs publicly in New Orleans and during the family's sojourn in Mexico City. In 1969, she was ejected from high school for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and she spent a year working her way through a reading list supplied by her father before leaving home.Williams performed around New Orleans as a folk artist who mixed covers with traditional-styled originals. In 1974, she relocated to Austin, TX, and became part of that city's burgeoning roots music scene; she later split time between Austin and Houston, and then moved to New York. A demo tape got her the chance to record for the Smithsonian's Folkways label, and she went to Jackson, MS, to lay down her first album at the Malaco studios. Ramblin' on My Mind (later retitled simply Ramblin') was released in 1979 and featured a selection of traditional blues, country, folk, and Cajun songs. Williams returned to Houston to record the follow-up, 1980's Happy Woman Blues. As her first album of original compositions, it was an important step forward, and although it was much more bound by the dictates of tradition than her genre-hopping later work, her talent was already in evidence.However, it would be some time before that talent was fully realized. Williams flitted between Austin and Houston during the early '80s, then moved to Los Angeles in 1984, where she started to attract some major-label interest. CBS signed her to a development deal in the mid-'80s but wound up passing since neither its rock nor its country divisions knew how to market her; around the same time, a short-lived marriage to drummer Greg Sowders dissolved. Williams eventually caught on with an unlikely partner — the British indie label Rough Trade, which was historically better known for its punk output. The simply titled Lucinda Williams was released in 1988, and although it didn't make any waves in the mainstream, it received glowing reviews from those who did hear it. With help from guitarist/co-producer Gurf Morlix, Williams' sound had evolved into a seamless blend of country, blues, folk, and rock; while it made perfect sense to roots music enthusiasts, it didn't fit into the rigid tastes of radio programmers. But it was clear that she had found her songwriting voice — the album brimmed with confidence, and so did its assertive female characters, who seemed to answer only to their own passions.Many critics hailed Lucinda Williams as a major statement by a major new talent. Rough Trade issued a couple of EPs that featured live performances and material from Lucinda Williams, and Patty Loveless covered "The Night's Too Long" for a Top 20 country hit. However, it would be four years before Williams completed her official follow-up. She signed with RCA for a time but left when she felt that the label was pressuring her to release material she didn't deem ready for public consumption. Instead, she went to the small Elektra-distributed label Chameleon, which finally released Sweet Old World in 1992. A folkier outing than Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World was an unflinching meditation on death, loss, and regret. Even its upbeat moments were colored by songs like the title track and "Pineola," two stunning, heartbreaking accounts of a family friend's suicide (poet Frank Stanford, not, as many listeners assumed, Williams' own brother). Needless to say, the record won rave reviews once again, and Williams toured Australia with Rosanne Cash and Mary Chapin Carpenter.On that tour, Carpenter decided to record "Passionate Kisses," the key track and statement of purpose from Lucinda Williams. It shot into the country Top Five in 1993 and won its writer a Grammy for Country Song of the Year. Other artists soon started mining Williams' back catalog for material: avowed fan Emmylou Harris recorded "Crescent City" on 1993's Cowgirl's Prayer and cut "Sweet Old World" for her 1995 alternative country landmark Wrecking Ball; plus, Tom Petty covered "Changed the Locks" for 1996's movie-related She's the One. As the buzz around Williams grew, so did anticipation for her next album. With Chameleon having gone under, she signed with Rick Rubin's American Recordings label and began sessions with Morlix again co-producing. Dissatisfied with the results, Williams' rigorous retouchings led to Morlix's departure from the project and her backing band. In 1995, she moved into Harris' neighborhood in Nashville and through Harris hired Steve Earle and his production partner Ray Kennedy. At first, she was so enamored with their work that she re-recorded the entire album from scratch. When it was finished, she decided that the results sounded too produced, and took the record to Los Angeles, where she enlisted Roy Bittan (onetime E Street Band keyboardist) to co-produce a series of overdub sessions that bordered on obsessive. During the long wait for the album, the media began to pay more attention to Williams; some of the coverage was fairly unflattering, painting her as a neurotic control freak, but she always countered that it was unfair to criticize the process if the results were worthwhile.Rubin mixed the final tracks, but the album was further delayed when he entered into negotiations to sell the American label. Mercury stepped in to purchase the rights to the album, which was finally released in 1998 under the title Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Boasting a bright, contemporary roots rock sound with strong country and blues flavors, not to mention major-label promotional power, the album won universal acclaim, making many critics' year-end Top Ten lists and winning The Village Voice's prestigious Pazz & Jop survey. It also won Williams a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album (despite being the least folk-oriented record in her catalog) and became her first to go gold, proving to doubters that she was not just a songwriter, but a full-fledged recording artist in her own right. After a merger shakeup at Mercury, Williams wound up on the Universal-distributed roots imprint Lost Highway. She was the subject of an extensive, widely acclaimed profile in The New Yorker in 2000, written by Bill Buford, who was nominated for a National Magazine Award for his work; however, Williams and some of her supporters took issue with some of his more objective-minded analysis.Williams delivered her next album, Essence, in 2001, after a relatively scant wait of just three years. An introspective collection, it often found Williams taking a simpler, more minimalistic lyrical approach and was greeted with rapturous reviews in most quarters. The track "Get Right with God" won Williams her third Grammy, this time for Best Female Rock Vocal, which further consolidated her credibility as a singer, not just a songwriter. Paring down the time between album releases even further, Williams returned in 2003 with World Without Tears, which became her highest-charting effort to date when it debuted in the Top 20. 2005 saw the release of two live recordings, one (Live @ the Fillmore) for Lost Highway and the other (Live from Austin, TX) for New West. West arrived in 2007.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Judy Collins
a click on the photo will take you to my Judy Collins play list on YouTube.
Judy Collins was one of the major interpretive folksingers of the '60s. A child prodigy at classical piano, she turned to folk music at the age of 15 and released her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, in 1961 when she was 22. That album and its follow-up, The Golden Apples of the Sun, consisted of traditional folk material, with Collins's pure, sweet soprano accompanied by her acoustic guitar playing. By the time of Judy Collins #3, she had begun to turn to contemporary material and to add other musicians. (Jim, later Roger, McGuinn tried out his first arrangements of "The Bells of Rhymney" and "Turn, Turn, Turn" on this album, before using them with The Byrds.)Collins's musical horizons were expanded further by 1966 and the release of In My Life, which added theater music to her repertoire and introduced her audience to the writing of Leonard Cohen; it was one of her six albums to go gold. Her first gold-seller, however, was 1967's Wildflowers, which contained her hit version of "Both Sides Now" by the then-little-known songwriter Joni Mitchell.By the '70s, Collins had come to be identified as much as an art song singer as a folksinger and had also begun to make a mark with her original compositions. Her best-known performances cover a wide stylistic range: the traditional gospel song "Amazing Grace," the Stephen Sondheim Broadway ballad "Send in the Clowns," and such songs of her own as "My Father" and "Born to the Breed." Collins recorded less frequently after the end of her 23-year association with Elektra Records in 1984, though she made two albums for Gold Castle. In 1990, she signed to Columbia Records and released Fires of Eden, her 23rd album. A move to Geffen preceded the 1993 release of Judy Sings Dylan...Just Like a Woman; Shameless followed on Atlantic in 1994. Six years later, Collins released the Christmas album All on a Wintry Night.
Judy Collins was one of the major interpretive folksingers of the '60s. A child prodigy at classical piano, she turned to folk music at the age of 15 and released her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, in 1961 when she was 22. That album and its follow-up, The Golden Apples of the Sun, consisted of traditional folk material, with Collins's pure, sweet soprano accompanied by her acoustic guitar playing. By the time of Judy Collins #3, she had begun to turn to contemporary material and to add other musicians. (Jim, later Roger, McGuinn tried out his first arrangements of "The Bells of Rhymney" and "Turn, Turn, Turn" on this album, before using them with The Byrds.)Collins's musical horizons were expanded further by 1966 and the release of In My Life, which added theater music to her repertoire and introduced her audience to the writing of Leonard Cohen; it was one of her six albums to go gold. Her first gold-seller, however, was 1967's Wildflowers, which contained her hit version of "Both Sides Now" by the then-little-known songwriter Joni Mitchell.By the '70s, Collins had come to be identified as much as an art song singer as a folksinger and had also begun to make a mark with her original compositions. Her best-known performances cover a wide stylistic range: the traditional gospel song "Amazing Grace," the Stephen Sondheim Broadway ballad "Send in the Clowns," and such songs of her own as "My Father" and "Born to the Breed." Collins recorded less frequently after the end of her 23-year association with Elektra Records in 1984, though she made two albums for Gold Castle. In 1990, she signed to Columbia Records and released Fires of Eden, her 23rd album. A move to Geffen preceded the 1993 release of Judy Sings Dylan...Just Like a Woman; Shameless followed on Atlantic in 1994. Six years later, Collins released the Christmas album All on a Wintry Night.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
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