<B>RANDY NEWMAN <I>Harps and Angels</I></B><BR>
Nonesuch 075597998931 (CD). 2008. Mitchell Froom, Lenny Waronker, prods.; David Boucher, eng. ADD. TT: 34:54<BR>
Performance <B>*****</B><BR>
Sonics <B>****</B>
It’s appropriate that I’d be listening to Irma Thomas’ new R&B record, <I>Simply Grand</I> when I heard that Jerry Wexler had died.
Calling anything “IMPORTANT,” particularly a record, often sucks the life out of it and dooms it to a kind of overly academic hell to be debated by talking heads and those that “were there.”
<I>The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia</I>? Now in its second revised and updated printing? Does any one person, even a momentous artist who now seems determined to die on the stage (to steal a quote from the great <I>Midnight Cowboy</I>) really need or deserve their own encyclopedia?
These days I often have to stop myself and remember again that I need to write about music and not just the incredibly weird situation in which today's music business is both dying and rising from the ashes simultaneously.
<B>JENNY SCHEINMAN: <I>Jenny Scheinman</I></B><BR>
Koch KOC-AD-4483 (CD). 2008. Jenny Scheinman, Tony Scherr, prods.; Scherr, eng. AAD? TT: 53:26<BR>
Performance ****<BR>
Sonics ****
Stephen Mejias, our excellent assistant editor, is fully in the grip of vinyl fever. He and I are now having daily conversations about the once and future allure of the long player.
<B>BON IVER: <I>For Emma, Forever Ago</I></B><BR>
Jagjaguwar Jag 115 (CD). 2008. Justin Vernon, prod., eng. AAD? TT: 37:15<BR>
Performance ****1/2<BR>
Sonics ****
Ten years ago today Frank Sinatra died. May 14, 1998.
It drives me nuts when people, some of them intelligent and not prone to idiotic statements, say things to me like a colleague did the other day: "Do you ever hear a good record anymore?"