Separating the sweet, juicy flesh from the stone and skin of upcoming major label releases.
This week, your Mango has something for everybody.
Are your life goals summed up by the phrase “All I wanna do is have some fun“? We’ve got Sheryl Crow.
Are you disturbed by rock music, but find it kind of enticing when performed on a violin? Check out the new release by David Garrett. You weirdo.
Are you, or do you wish to be, a black man? Well, there’s Rick Ross for you, sunshine.
Are you a 7-year old, or the state-assigned carer thereof? Why, we have just what you need, from the Kidz Bop Kids.
See? That covers everybody. You hear us? EVERYBODY.
Firstly, 100 Miles From Memphis, Sheryl Crow. It seems that albums about the sweaty, smelly city of Memphis are just like hiccups: when you hear one, you know that more are one their way pretty soon.
So, a couple of weeks ago we had Memphis Blues by Cyndi Lauper. And now we have Sheryl Crow’s latest album, a collection of songs allegedly inspired by her upbringing in proximity to that city (actually, 100 miles away: remember, this is America, where in some of the flyover states folk think that a drive 250 miles to get to their neighbour’s and back is a kind of luxury).
‘How about the music?‘ we can hear you cry. Well, we can only suggest you go and check it out. See, we are not fans of Sheryl Crow’s distinctive voice. To be more specific, we are not fans of Sheryl Crow’s whiny, nasal, I’m-trying-to-pass-a-briefcase-out-through-my-sphincter-and-it’s-kind-of-painful, voice.
The songs are good. Great melodies, lyrics with some meaning, and well-arranged with nice, tastefully used horns and whatnot. But over it all is the voice of Sheryl Crow. Think of it this way: Carl Orff‘s Carmina Burana is a wonderful, stirring piece of choral music. Now imagine it being sung by a choir consisting of Janet Street-Porter, Yoko Ono, and Gilbert Gottfried. Yes? You with us?
Here’s the album’s thought:
Okay, Sheryl Crow has an album out themed around Memphis. That means blues and such, right? Let’s stick it on and…Hey, hang on a moment. Have I bought one of her old albums just repackaged as a new one?
I dislike change. What worked once will always work again. Where is 100 Miles From Memphis, please.
Secondly, Rock Symphonies, David Garrett. Oh, it would be so easy to mock David Garrett and his latest album of rock-with-some-violins nonsense.
Which is a bit like if we were writing for a new-Jewish-music website and wrote “Oh, it would be so easy to mock Adolf Hitler and his slightly out-there views on certain ethnic groups“.
And that is our – perhaps religiously offensive – way of saying that David Garrett’s music is a very bad thing which requires a coalition of the willing to man-up and destroy it. Wipe it out. Make sure that our children, and our children’s children, will not grow up in a world where they can hear Walk This Way performed pretty much as the original but with a violin squawking the vocal parts.
In a world where they believe that Smells Like Teen Spirit is an attempt at writing a piece of music for the bit in an action movie where the muscular hero is jogging to a mailbox to post an almost-late tax return form.
In a world where Master Of Puppets has mutated from an emotional, metal-driven diatribe about the effects of drugs into the soundtrack to that part of an episode of The Bill where they’re chasing a shoplifter through a shopping mall.
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