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* ND #68 Revisited

Trying something new here that perhaps will turn into a regular thing. Though we finished working on it a few weeks ago, our new issue is now on the stands, and so this afternoon I'm perusing its pages in retrospect, with an eye toward making a few comments on things that stood out personally to me, for one reason or another....

* We were fortunate to have Barry Mazor in our ranks when it came time to run an obituary on Ahmet Ertegun. Likely very few writers who penned obits on the legendary Atlantic Records co-founder had actually had a recent encounter with the man, as Barry did when he was researching Little Miss Cornshucks (for a long piece that eventually became the cover story of ND #45). Barry's personalized recollections made his piece more intimate than a typical career summation would have been.

* New to our pages in the "Miked" live section were correspondent Sterry Butcher and photographer Fred Covarrubias, who did a terrific job setting the somewhat surreal scene of a Jeff Tweedy concert in the tiny West Texas town of Marfa. Thanks go to Robert Halpern of the Big Bend Sentinel for hooking us up with them, and to our esteemed contributing editor Joe Nick Patoski for referring us to Halpern in the first place. Joe Nick has spent a fair bit of time in deepest West Texas over the years, as the following link will attest:
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0702/feature2/

* Mark Guarino's piece on Irish band the Frames was a personal favorite of mine in this issue, largely because they've been one of my favorite bands since I first saw them play five years ago in North Carolina (opening for the New Pornographers). It's still unfathomable to me that their 1999 album Dance The Devil -- to my mind, still their best collection of songs -- never got released in the States....though, thankfully, eMusic has gotten the rights to it for digital downloads:
http://www.emusic.com/album/10940/10940872.html

* We've already had a few raves from readers about Silas House's extensive feature on Carlene Carter -- the most meaningful for me personally being a very kind voice-mail message left by Flo Wolfe of the Carter Fold in Virginia. Flo is one of A.P & Sara Carter's granddaughters, and has been an integral cog at the Carter Fold homestead for many years. It had been awhile since we had been in touch; it was nice to know she was still reading us, and that the Carlene piece had meant something to the family.

* Bob Doerschuk's review of the new Norah Jones record was a bit more, well, lukewarm, I suppose, than her record sales, which were once again through the roof to the point that she debuted at #1 on the charts -- which I'm sure even Bob, despite his reservations, would consider a good thing compared to much of what reaches the top of the pops these days. I did think his criticisms were legitimate, even if I probably enjoyed the album a little bit more than he did; there is that danger of style overshadowing substance when an artist becomes so specifically identified with a particular sound, which I expect is why Jones has (justifiably) gotten a real kick out of her country sidetracks with the Little Willies. After watching her recent 60 Minutes interview in which she responded to a critical review in some other publication by saying it was "mean," I wondered if she'd feel the same way about Bob's review. If so, I'd have to disagree; in both Bob's review and the one cited on 60 Minutes, my sense is that the writers were simply striving to explain why the music did not move them, as opposed to making any sort of personal comments about the artist. I hope Jones, as she grows older, becomes increasingly comfortable with the notion that some folks may not dig what she does, without thinking anyone's being mean to her. The more at peace an artist can be with such differences of opinion about their work, I believe, the freer they become to fully express themselves through their music.

* Finally, Rick Cornell's "Screen Door" piece on the closing of the small Record Cellar label and the relocation of the much larger Sugar Hill label struck a similar kind of personal chord with me as it did with Rick. As a former resident of the NC Triangle, I find it difficult to imagine that music scene's identity without Sugar Hill's looming presence in Durham as a major Americana torchbearer. Philly's Record Cellar I was less personally attached to -- while I knew several Sugar Hill staffers, I'd never met RC boss Neil Drucker -- but I'd come to really admire them as an example of a small label that was in it for all the right reasons. If this is the end of their run, we can all hope to have as much goodness to show for our work when it comes time to close a life chapter.

adios,
peter

Posted by peter on March 5, 2007 10:25 PM | Permalink