Love Isn't the Answer - It's a Vocal Coach

So I listened to the new Barbra Streisand album Love is the Answer this afternoon while at work. Pretty closely because I was doing mindless data entry. A new Streisand album is always something I've anticipated since I was a teenager. When I was in high school and a new album would come out I would purposely take one track on the album and not listen to it for a week, just to prolong the joy of hearing Babs sing another song I didn't know... Even her last album Guilty Pleasures, for all it's over produced Barry Gibb-ness had a couple solidly good songs on it.

I've been looking forward to her first album of standards and was really hoping that Diana Krall would be the guiding hand that would force Barbra out of the things that made her Movie Album almost unbearable... except for Moon River every song was so frickin' slow...

So, I listened to Love Is the Answer and I'm just shocked... shocked at how terrible it sounds. Now there are two CDs one with strings and one sans strings. I listened to both; the one with strings has a nice sound, Johnny Mandel is no slouch when it comes to arranging. He did my favorite Peggy Lee album Mirrors. But Barbra, Barbra, Barbra... her voice is gone... As part of the publicity there was a New York Times interview where she professed never to warming up before recording or doing scales, or taking a lesson. Uh, at 67 I'm sure you can't do a lot of things you used to be able to do.

The deterioration in her voice is even more pronounced on the CD without any strings. During You Must Believe In Spring it sounds as if she has asthma, barely making it through the smallest of phrases. My favorite version of this song is by Sylvia Syms, who sounds as if she gargled with rocks and whiskey before singing it. So it's not a song that requires a great singer, but it should sound as if you mean it. Barbra sounds as if she just picked up the sheet music and they kept the first take. Was Krall so fearful to ask for another try?

The sad thing is that nearly all of the songs are all time favorites... the selection couldn't have been better. A Time for Love, Here's That Rainy Day, Here's to Life, If You Go Away... timeless classics; all I'm afraid done better by other people. Barbra brings nothing. She again slows them down to the entertainment value of watching a piece of ice melt. The band is pedestrian at best; crap, how much money did they spend on this album and the band is no better than anything I've seen at any high brow fundraiser.

This is really an album that maybe she could have pulled off 20 years ago; but there seems to be nothing left. Take away her high notes and she isn't that good of an actress to do a jazz reading of a song.

I'm a great fan of watching performers get older and adapt their voices to their age. Peggy Lee comes to mind; she made much out of nothing. When she sang slowly it was because there was a meaning to the slowness; When Sinatra got older his gravel voice and shakey higher register was used to dramatic effect to show a whisper of pain. Rosemary Clooney did most of her best work after 65... Jeez, Delores Hope (Bob's wife) recorded an album after 80 and it was a solid piece of singing. Barbra just comes off under rehearsed, out of shape and not very interested in the material.

Song overview:

1. Here's To Life (Listen to Shirley Horn's masterful version, or Eartha Kitt's amazing version that is actually full of life)

2. In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning (Sinatra's version is the definitive. Although Streisand included a recording of her singing this in 1969 on her For the Record, pared with Tony Newley's song When You Got to Go. That was a great version... why re-record a bad version)

3. Gentle Rain (Probably the best song on the album and the only one with any beat to it; albeit a slow bossa nova.

4. If You Go Away (Ne Me Quitte Pas) (Painfully slow; and I know I recorded a painfully slow version myself. Youtube Dusty Springfield singing it; or Rod McKuen's own version)

5. Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most (Again Streisand included a lovely version of this song on her For The Record. Why sully the memory...?)

6. Make Someone Happy (Argh I've always hated that song... the best version I've heard is Dean Martin singing a swinging style.... Slowed down it's like nails on a blackboard.

7. Where Do You Start? (Really a disappointment; this song should be perfect for her... but it's too late... the best version I ever heard of this song during Bea Arthur's show... Barbra sings it like the pizza delivery man is late, not like she lost a long time lover.)

8. A Time For Love (again a great song... Matt Monro has the best version... It's just too slow...)

9. Here's That Rainy Day (Sinatra has the best version; Her version is o.k. but her voice really sounds creaky in this one)

10. Love Dance (Argh, I hate this song... no one should ever record this awful song again... Did Paul Williams guilt her into doing one of his songs.)

11. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (A hard song to do regardless... she just barely pulls it off... but with lots of oddly flat notes scattered about... She just sounds really tired...)

12. Some Other Time (This ends the album, and it sounds wistful, just because I don't think there is going to be another time... I can't imagine another album after this one... )

13. You Must Believe In Spring is a bonus cut. (As I mentioned before she sounds wheezy and lost... sung with just a piano it could have/should have been a great closer to the album. The last song on Guilty Pleasures was done with just a piano and her voice sounded vulnerable but strong. Here it sounds like she record this after she got over a flu.)

Poor Barbra. I was telling my friend Dan as we were going back and forth in e-mails about this album ; Forget about her doing Sunset Blvd... she should jump on that Fokkers sequel.

But I'm sure there is many a disappointment waiting to happen in the career of our Barbra.

RIP Kenny Rankin...

One of the all time best jazz/folk singers...

Dad's Buddies

In going through video tapes I found this collection of photos of my father's buddies from his years in the army. He just missed WWII and was drafted in 1946 soon after the war ended. He spent a lot of time in Korea.

The photos are charming and very sexy. My father isn't in any of them, so I'm assuming he was the photo taker or he got these from one of his friends.

On Rainy Afternoons

This performance was from 2002 when I hosted a night of video clips of Barbra Streisand.   It was good evening.  Dan Wingate put together a fantastic collection of rare clips, I had a few people get up and do some Barbra songs; However, in the back of my mind I thought that it might be a good place to meet someone. but to my surprise there were very few gay guys there, mostly uber fan women.  Some of whom drive in from the suburbs. 

This song is a little clunky but I like it... Larry Blustain is on the Hideout upright piano which always sounds like it belongs in a 3rd grade classroom and Seamus Harmey is playing the violin.   We had only gone over these songs once the night before and poor Seamus didn't really have anyplace to noodle over in this turgid tune.    So, for most of the song it looks like he is frozen in space and time.  

(Note:  I'm almost done with this walk down my musical memory lane...  Soon back to regular programing.)

Viva Las Vegas

From Milly's Orchid Show 1990. The Elvis Show. I'm playing with Peter Allen who at the time was going by the name Peter Mitchell because he didn't want to be confused with the flamboyantly gay singer/songwriter of the same name. During my tenure with the Orchid Show we must have played this song dozens of times. I always thought Peter's arrangement of it was really fun and inventive.

Peter was my next door neighbor at this time. He and his twin brother Paul were two strikingly handsome guys.   Peter was a fantastic musician and I should credit him with teaching me to sing on the beat. Before him I just sort of wandered around the notes (and issue I guess I still deal with.) 

 These clips make me cringe a little; doing this fake nightclub act, acting like I'm some smooth son-of-a-bitch, when I couldn't have been more naive and un-smooth.   However, it was a fun time back then; if only because we didn't know what we were doing and all that counted was we were getting reactions from the audience.  

This was soon after I was in Interview Magazine.  Cartoonist Linda Barry was a fan of mine from seeing me at these shows and talked about me when she was being interviewed. Before I knew it I was in a national magazine when I had maybe sung before people a half a dozen times. I thought I was pretty hot shit because everyone was asking Peter and I to play at parties, and opening for bands.   At the height of this whirlwind I was asked to open for Dread Zeppelin, a Led Zeppelin cover band where the lead singer was an Elvis Impersonator sang songs with a  reggie beat.  So, who better to open for them but me and faux lounge Sinatra singer.   Opening up for them was a pretty big deal at the time (Robert Plant was touting them as his favorite cover band);  it was going to be the place to be on St. Patrick's Day.  

So Peter and I were all set to do the show and then Peter called me up because he wanted billing in the advertisements. He wanted it to say John Sinatra Connors & Peter Mitchell. I had no idea how I was going to do that considering it wasn't my show and I wasn't in charge of the advertising. But Peter said either I did something about it or he wasn't going to play.  I remember telling him that in future shows we could do it, but not this one.    It was a strange power play and I was stuck.  

Blurb in the Suntimes about the show

I paniked because I thought I was going to have cancel this gig and asked another guitar player I was working with at the time if he wanted to do the show.  Peter was hurt and that was the end of our musical relationship together.  In retrospect I should have more sensitive to Peter and tried to make him change his mind,  but I was being pigheaded too thinking the act was really about me.  Me. Me. Me...  I was 24 you know... As it turned out my performance was a complete failure. The show was sold out. Alice Cooper was even there.  I was completely out of my element trying to do these rock songs like slow ballads and I was booed off the stage while people threw beer bottles at me.   I think I lasted ten minutes.      

I wish Peter and I could worked longer... we were starting to come up with our own style just as it fell apart.    We made up later on and played some shows together again.   The last being about four years ago doing this song.  But you can't go home again.   

The Theme to the Patty Duke Show

or

Two Weeks in Heaven

I can't believe this was 20 years ago! Going through these tapes has been a very emotionally trying experience for me. I've been revisiting moments that I think would have been better left to a fuzzy memory. I really didn't have any business performing in these shows; This was the third time I ever got up in front of an audience and sang.    Granted it's a pretty amusing bit, but it almost hurts to watch me look so awkward; and it stings even more to see myself at 25 looking all cute and remembering how things were then. 

This clip brings back a very clear memory for me... I had only sung once before at the Orchid Show.  I was asked to come back for the next show however I didn't think I could make it because I had a date with Gamal.  Gamal was this six foot four, out of work Venezuelan runway model and kick boxer.  I adored him and we had this two week affair that I think I'll remember until I die. 

We met at Club Berlin one night when I was standing around with friends. From behind me I heard some one say, "I dare you, do it, do it..." Suddenly, this strikingly handsome, tall man with a shock of black hair said to me in this deep Fabio-ish voice, "I'm going to take you in my arms and kiss you now..." And he swooped me in his arms, leaned me back and kissed me... All of his friends applauded. I think I almost fainted...

After that we started to date. Going out with him was like being with a movie star... heads turned wherever we went. He called me his "Little Crystal" and told me how wonderful I was every other minute.  Sigh... Of course, it couldn't last. The night of the show, which I really wanted to do, he wanted to go to see "A Handmaid's Tale" which was playing across the street at the Biograph Theater.  However,  I won battle and we went to the Orchid Show and I sang this silly song.

Things then were never the same again between us;  Afterwards we went to Berlin  and he got drunk and cried and said he wanted to go back home to South America, thinking he was having a psychic vision that his grandmother was dying.  Then he would go off and dance like a whirling top on the dance floor.   He wore a black turtle neck sweater whose every pill and speck of dust glowed bright in the black lights that lit the club, "Look John, look at my chest, I have the whole universe on my chest..."

He stopped answering my calls, I think I even wrote a sensitive poem and mailed it to him... he called me and said, "I can not see you anymore, you are too wonderful, and we should always remember these last two weeks as something special.  I will treasure the time we had together forever..." He even made breaking up seem like a Charles Boyer movie.  In the following months I'd see him sometimes waking down the street with some new guy; Gamel in his short toreador coat his arms up like a Tyrannosaurus. 

I know now why actors don't like to watch their old movies, it's always about something else... not the performance... 



During this time, I was doing the Sinatra-thing. It was the only way I could think of to get on stage and sing. I would never have thought just to sing as myself. I think in my head I was going for a type of Gordon Jenkins lush arrangement. I can't believe I was bold enough to get up and do this stuff then... and oh, I purposely mixed up the lyrics at the end. Sinatra at the time was always getting his lines turned around.

There's a lot more where this came from... for better or for worse...

RIP Bea Arthur.

A lovely tribute to a one of a kind performer from my pal Dan.