Saturday, November 30, 2002

#19 Christopher Peacock, "Send in the Clowns"

He is a pianist and, boy, does he play a lot of notes. He turns "Send in the Clowns" into a raging rapids of the purest tinkle.

To be fair (and hopelessly obscure) it's like Charlemagne Palestine without the ritualistic self-overcoming.

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#18 Carmen McRae, "Send in the Clowns (live)"

I want to get to the middling reason why this track is mysterious first. Three times during this live track, there is very loud THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP, like someone going up and down stairs (in big clumsy boots) right above the recording equipment. At first I thought this must've been some kind of bootleg, but no, it was released on a label of some repute. Why, i don't know. It's a good performance, no, a really great one, but I'm sure they could've recorded another one without the THUMP THUMP. Or the hacking coughs coming from the audience.

If it weren't for these distractions, it'd be a really great one. Like Vaughn's version, it's slow but comparatively lacking in overkill. First verse is her solo, second verse adds piano going through the chords like plastic snowflakes suspended in a glass orb. Eventually the drummer comes in with brushes on the hi-hat (is that right?), everything culminating in a rainbow arc of drama in time for "the losing my timing" line, and drawing off to a tiny end. Sometimes she lays on the technique a bit thick by cornily overemphasizing a word or phrase -- like "queer," which you hafta admit is fairly sticky thing to sing, or getting gravelly for "don't you love farce." But I guess it wouldn't be jazz without some overemphasis.

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Thursday, November 28, 2002

#17 Sarah Vaughn, "Send in the Clowns (live)"

Would a cry of agony mean anything if it was sustained for an hour? Would it mean anything if it was slowed down to fill an hour's time? No, probably not -- in both instances the cry would lose all of its cry-like qualities and we wouldn't respond quite the same way.

This cover isn't quite that extreme (are you surprised?) but the effect is much the same. It's the polar opposite the version she did in 1974: if that one was too 'lite,' this one is cough syrup. Damn, it's slow. Apart from the one by Grace Jones, I don't know of any longer version. Sarah repeats nothing, filling the whole six-minutes-nineteen-seconds with song, drawing out nearly every line as far as it can go before it can become a joke or an exercise in breath control. As far as I care, though, she does trivialize SITC thru melodramatic singing-for-the-sake-of-singing. I've heard this a dozen-two dozen times and not once was I tempted to think of what she was singing about, or the relationship between what she was singing about and how she sang it. Technique parks its ass on meaning's neck and has a beer or three. Why is she such a great singer, again? Can't be these songs.

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Sunday, November 24, 2002

#16 The Håkon Kornstad Trio, "Send in the Clowns"

They take the song and explode it into a few hundred romantic flickers and thumps -- except for the horn player, who takes the long way home.

Actually, no, I give up on this one. Should I feel guilty that I really have nothing to say about this other than it's pretty much what I would expect jazz from Norway to sound like? Quite expert, not reactionary, and nothing tasteless or "tasteful" about it, just good, but not GRATE and I can't pay attention to jazz without sequins. My fault, I fear.

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