Wife’s on a plane to Europe, kid is watching Fortnite videos on YouTube, I’m on my fourth glass of wine, and so sit down and listen to ….
I know I’ve been listening all week to Scott Walker (the recently deceased genius if morose musician,* not the other one), but this seems troubling. Yet I like it.
And it reminds me that one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard came from the lips of Dave L, who, when we were tooling around uptown (Chicago) one night 35 years ago, spied the sign of an anonymous booze depot and simply pronounced, “Mandy’s ‘You Came and You Gave without Taking’ Liquors.”
* I don’t yet have words for how profound and beautiful I find SW’s music right now. Teenybopper becomes art music maven; it’s as if David Cassidy suddenly started singing Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. If you’re in the no-man’s-land of the Venn diagram that appreciates both of those poles of music, as I apparently am, it’s profound stuff. Walker’s singing on Scott 4 especially is so beautiful.
Ok. Barry is on to “I Write the Songs” and the spell is wearing off.
Also remembering that Manilow’s producer during his peak years, Ron Dante—the man and voice behind “Sugar Sugar”—was a neighbor of George Plimpton and ended up publisher of the Paris Review for the better part of a decade.
Circles within circles, my friends.
Also Barry covered “Ships” by Ian Hunter.
Should also plug the documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, streaming on Prime.
(Also a nifty cover of “The World’s Strongest Man” by Damon and Naomi on Bandcamp.)
