Musicians who suck

If I hear Donovan's "Catch the Wind" in one more friggin' commercial, I'm taking a sledgehammer to my television. I am not kidding.

Here's the thing: Donovan sucked. Hard. "Catch the Wind" is basically a re-write bald-faced rip-off of Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom" but with all the lyrical artistry and originality gone. He sang it with the closest approximation of Dylan's voice he could muster, and played his guitar in the closest approximation of Dylan's guitar playing he could muster.

And his later stuff? "Mellow Yellow" and "Epistle to Dipsy" were Sergeant Pepper...after he been busted down to private. He. Friggin'. Sucked. Why does anyone love this guy??

And Another Thing

Below is a performance of "All I Could Do Was Cry" by the great Etta James. Her performance of this song is just harrowingly intimate and raw.

I wish the ballad-belters of today (Whitney, Mariah...) would use melisma and other vocal techniques with the restraint Etta used in this performance. Etta's performance was not about, "Watch me use my voice to demonstrate what a spectacular singer I am." No, it was all about singing her pain in a way that makes you feel it with her. Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and the rest of the pop "divas" are about narcissism and empty virtuosity. Good singing is an act of communication. Great singing makes you one with the song, NOT the singer. It is an act of service.

Etta said she wept as soon as the recording ended. *That's* how it's done.

Speaking of Music

The below video is of Gayle Garnett singing her 1964 hit, "We'll Sing in the Sunshine".

The song has an infectious, lilting swing that is as timeless as it is irresistible; the lyrics, however, are a monument of emotional desolation and despair:

I can never love you;
The cost of love's too dear;
But though I'll never love you,
I'll stay with you one year.

My Daddy he once told me,
"Hey, don't you love you any man.
Just take what they may give you,
And give but what you can."

I think about someone actually saying those words to someone, and I think about a person that would find the described arrangement attractive, and then I imagine that I am staring right into the heart of Hell itself.

P.S. Worth pondering: Why would "Daddy" tell her "don't you love you any man"?

Sing it