Today...

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 30 April 2007 11:59:56

...I can relax safely in the knowledge that there are people out there in this crazy, beautiful world who are weirder than me. For I, I can assure you in full faithfulness, have never, ever, ever, not once googled the search terms:

"tree of life knowledge sexuality homosexuality mushroom".

So my heartiest congratulations to whoever found this blog via that circuitous route.

****************60 SECOND CD REVIEW******************

Diana Krall - The Girl in the Other Room

Ok, the girl can sing. Ok, Elvis Costello is co-writing. Ok, Peter Erskine is tickiling the skins (playing drums). But can I remember any of the tunes? Well, yes, one actually (Temptation), but bear with me. So why do I still find this underwhelming? Because it's music by numbers. There's a vast array of talent here in terms of musicianship, production values, songwriting, etc, but to what end is all this talent being used? At the end of the day, having a highly produced and polished sounding cd is a false artistic value unless it's in the service of a wider conceptual basis which understands the cultural value of music and its ability to change the way we see ourselves, the world and our place in it. For this to happen requires that music not reside in familiar patterns but offers surprises, unexpected twists, courageous explorations of places we thought we knew. None of which appear here. Safe. Way too safe.

[Edit: Of course, the above didn't stop me sampling the nice double-bass slide 2/3rds of the way through track 4.] ;-)