Saturday's sun stayed out all day. Around 10:30AM I went for a drive that took me to North Vancouver, where I picked up some CDs at the Lonsdale Sally Anne; older recordings of Rachmaninoff's 2nd and 3rd Piano Concertos, Beethoven's 7th Symphony, a compilation of Portuguese Fado and Mary Margaret O'Hara's Miss America (1988), which I have been looking for since I misplaced my copy in the mid-'10s.
For years I held that Miss America is one of the greatest pop albums, ever, but upon listening to it on the drive home it occurred to me that the song sequence is out of phase with the emotional narrative suggested by those songs. Also, the band backing O'Hara's swooping, shivering and at-times extended vocals seems a poor fit. Yes, the band is tight, but that tightness is no longer a complement to O'Hara's footloose vocal; rather, it feels more like its paid friend, a mercenary accompanying her voice not for love but for food, rent and clothing. There is no emotional connection between voice and instrument. It's as if they they were recorded in different countries.
Normally I am pleased with my insights, the union of thought and feeling that allows me the world I am living in. But in this instance my insights feel more like a devastation, a consequence of -- life in wartime? Having been a touring and recording musician all those years has allowed me to know how music is written, performed and recorded. There is record magic, just as there is movie magic. Right now the best part of Miss America is that it was recorded before Auto-Tune.
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