Shoot the Moon

Norah Jones has had her debut album out for a couple years now. It won a bunch of Grammys for a debut solo artist and in the jazz composition, but I'd never listened to the whole album. The lyrical expression is enveloping and personally identifiable, but the sparse accompaniment leave a feel of distance. In this expression, jazz possesses more personality than any other musical styling. It is whole-ly American and the music of my childhood. Jack claims I'm smarter because we stopped listening to jazz when he was two or three. On Ocracoke, the warm tones of French or Brazillian jazz flow over the wooden structure to the open porch, an emblem of lazy summer.

I don't know how I ever appreciated Led Zeppelin's rockin' second self-titled album before last Christmas Eve. In a strange camaraderie of role reversal, my mom and I talked about the expansion of sound and the musical experience while in an altered state. The cacophony of percussion instruments, howling vocals, and brilliant work with stereo dynamics combined with the vivid imagery of Zeppelin lyrics is dumbfounding. Okay, so I actually do know how I appreciated it before, they're still one of the few bands with talent and an electric chemistry. The Doors were similarly a band that "fit."

One of the reasons I took up guitar, besides the Romantic attraction, was so that I could be the "queen without a king" (they say she plays guitar and cries and sings), from Zeppelin's "Going to California," on what I consider their masterwork, LZ IV.

The nostalgia for vinyl is something I am accutely aware of. Physical changes are visibly apparent and have a noticeable effect on the sound quality of the music. The physical world can't touch modern music. Even in the creation stage, computers are more important to popular music than chemistry or talent. While there has been a resurgance in music issued on vinyl, the primary appeal is the artists who originally had no choice in the matter. Springsteen, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, The Doors. I have their albums on pressed plastic, encased in an artful sheath of protective paper. Plus, it's a very appealing "unique" thing, to be able to say that I am a girl who collects vinyl.

It's an intimate relationship between gospel, soul, and blues. "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," a family favorite, released an award winning soundtrack as noted by NPR in Matt's posting of the Decade in Music. My uncle Mike, possibly the most tech savvy of my relatives, got the original soundtrack on CD. On it is the song "Lonesome Valley" by The Fairfield Four. It joined my other recording by Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, my favorite folk singers. Both focus on the musicality and interplay of vocals, rather than instrumentation. The Fairfield Four are an a capella group that I assume is comprised of older black men. There is power and emotion in their voices, a near lamenting cry over rumbling bass. The second is a duet of warbling soprano Baez and the musical speaking of Seeger. It's a religious, old-timey song that reminds me of my easy and innocent past.