If Music Be the Food of Love...

...then play on. 

"Then Play On" is my favorite Fleetwood Mac album, and yes, that includes the Buckingham/Nicks years.

First, thank you, Cheryl. I saw you carrying this album down the hallway one day in high school, and I knew I MUST  hear it --what better arbiter of taste than the girl you had a not-so-secret crush on? 

So I've been listening to that album for quite a few years, even got the poorly mastered CD when it came out. 

BUT -- I recently picked up the remastered edition, and it is radically different from the original American LP version I was used to. Sure, the first CD added a few extra tracks, but the remastered version is practically a different album altogether. "Then Play On" was FMac's last gasp as a blues band, so the American version focused on the blues/rock tracks. The remastered version has 18 tracks, adds Parts 1 & 2 of their biggest hit (at the time) "Oh Well", the single "The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)" (later covered by Judas Priest!), the b-side "World in Harmony", and a couple more ballads (plus the 2 that were on the first CD version.). The ballads aren't bad, and they certainly give a rounder view of the band's music at the time. But what really threw me off was how the remastered version re-ordered the track listing. You have an album memorized, and then they do this to you! 

Actually, it's nice to hear it in a different version. Still my favorite Mac album, and it sounds even better all spiffed up.

Value Village Find: Jennifer Warnes

This is a terrible collection, but I was desperate. My wife and I love both of Jennifer Warnes' Arista albums ("Jennifer Warnes" and "Shot Through the Heart"), and this collection cherry-picks from them, and adds a few soundtrack cuts. As with most 'best-of' collections, it's usually not. Sometimes it's just sloppy programming, and as someone in the music biz once explained to me, they still want you to buy the original albums, so a 'best-of' is missing some tracks on purpose.

Oh well. On to Jennifer Warnes. As I mentioned, she's done soundtrack work, and that's how most people know her, and that's how she wins Grammys. But Jennifer Warnes is one of probably 3 singers who can make me cry, just with the sound of her voice. (The other 2 are Paul Buchanan and June Tabor, but they have the added heft of tragic lyrics.) I hear something in Jennifer's voice that really wants to communicate something to me, and even some B material chokes me up because she sounds so sincere. "I have something I need to tell you, and I really want you to hear me."  The other day, I said to my wife "Let's listen to this song ("I'm Restless") and you walk me through the vocal tricks she uses." I'm sure there's actual terms for these techniques, but I'll just do my best to describe them. She employs the 'break' in her voice for sincerity, she'll swoop up an octave, she gets breathy on some words, or sings some bolder ala Laura Nyro -- but I want to be clear, these aren't tricks, but Jennifer's been quoted saying how much she tries to convey the meaning in the lyrics, and she's a superbly gifted singer who has an embarrassing array of tools she can use.

The 2 albums I mentioned are mired in the production sound popular at the time, and a later album like "The Hunter" is mired in different production tricks of its era. But I think I noticed something different about her later vocal style (and I have nothing to base this on except my own theory). She's done great work with Leonard Cohen over the years, and I wonder if she took a cue from Leonard's vocal approach. I don't think you could ever accuse Leonard of over-emoting, so maybe Jennifer tried stripping back her own approach. It's a Zen thing, I think. Her latest album (from 2007) was produced by her without the usual record company meddling, so I plan to track it down, and see if my theory proves correct. Whatever she does, I just hope she keeps on singing.