Hey Hey Baby It's - Well ... past the 4th of July now
I was aiming for early July, honest!
Anyway...
Kim Logan is a young artist from FL by way of Nashville and now, I guess, Glasgow - or perhaps France - her online presence is slightly out of date and a little erratic - who's been kicking around for a decade-plus now and deserves to be a lot more famous. Like a lot more.
A petite, feisty redhead with a voice that can range from angelic to apocalytpic and a bad rock and roll girl attitude, she parlayed childhood indoctrination into classical music, country and blues (first concert, she says - Bonnie Raitt) into a career as an opera singer in Sarasota before selling her soul to rock-and-roll. She also was apparently part of the estimable Low Cut Connie for awhile, and that's a badge of honor in my book.
Her recording has been prolific but scattered as well; a debut album, Kim Logan in 2012, singles "Neighborhood" (2014), "Peaches and Cream (Live at Third Man Records)" (2015), "Better Way" (2016), "Cadillac" (2016), Live on Audiotree (2106), "Western Medication" (2106), "Couleur Cafe" (2017), Fresh Juice (2017), "Dirty Business" (2020), Shadow Work (2020). Psuedoscience Ch. 1,2,3 double up some of the uncollected singles. All of these are good-to-great, though the versions on Live on Audiotree are definitive.
Her sound has been described as "straight Southern swamp rock, drenched in whiskey and cigarette smoke", as quoted on the Silvertone website. Close enough. Swamp rock, soul, r&b, some almost-straight country and a dash of post-Nirvana rock in there as well. She's not one to pigeonhole. Frequent live covers include Donovan's "Season of the Witch" and King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" - hardly standard Americana/No Depression fare. A few months ago she debuted a new song in a YouTube performance, "Evil", that I hear a strong dose of 70's hard-rock ala Aerosmith in. (she has cited "60s/70s psychedelic music and heavy blues rock, and stuff like Black Sabbath or Coven that was about the occult" as influences as well). "Evil" is a more than decent song though not her best by a long shot, but so far there doesn't seem to be much info on it re: a single release or anything else, so not sure what the plan is.
Whatever the case and whatever the plan, she needs to be a lot more widely heard. Based on her web presence, it seems she performs pretty much in Paris with occasional UK forays and even rarer US ones. Here's hoping she gets the breaks she deserves.
A few links:
An unofficial playlist on YouTube - check it out!
Porgy and Bess on the 4th
That latter fact alone interested me enough, but the fact that (a) I'd never actually seen the show in an form or even heard the full soundtrack (b) the movie has been basically buried since the 70's - I actually remember it airing on our local Kaiser Broadcasting outlet a couple times (must have been around 1973) and it was made quite a big deal of. But I never watched it. Since that time the movie's been in the can, except for a couple of theatrical screenings. The whys and wherefores of that are a Gordian knot of legal issues, opinions, taste, and racial issues that are too tangled for me to get into at the moment. Still any movie that's nearly disowned by its producer, kept suppressed by not one but two of its estate-holders, that the leading performers were ambivalent about appearing in, and that no one can quite decided if its offensive racist crap or profound American art - or both! - is something that gets the cat in me going. I need to smell it and figure out what it is.
So what is it? Well, since you can view the film - in a very poor quality print which may, in fact, be about as good as is available now - on YouTube, I was able to give it a good look. But it was no revelation. What we have here is a rather stagey, big budget 50's musical (the film added actual dialog, while the original show is entirely sung) with a host of prime black American talent (even though leads Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge were both dubbed by other singers - Poitier apparently couldn't carry a tune, and Dandridge couldn't hit the notes needed for her role) giving their all (mostly - Poitier didn't want to do the film and it kinda shows).
The songs are mostly great, especially the famous ones ("Summertime", "Ain't Necessarily So"), the performances (again excepting Poitier's), are fine or better than fine, and the film looks like it would probably be pretty handsome, restored and in full Technicolor. Given the legendarium growing up around both show and movie, I would have expected it to be either very good or horribly bad, but really it was neither. It was interesting and informative, especially to a music fan. But it wasn't anything truly special.
Yee Loi news
The Yee Loi girls have struck again, this time with a magnificent cover of "Don't Come Close", an obscure Ramones fave. I hope this one makes it onto one of their upcoming releases. BTW they apparently read my last post and dropped a complimentary comment on a previous entry! I'm hoping maybe I can get an interview out of them at some point.
Meanwhile, in the bowels of Hell...
Now look ... as open-minded as I try to be, there is at least one style of music I pretty much can't bear, and that's 80's arena rock. The production style, the singing, the overblown guitars - everything. It's like having a dental drill taken to my ears. And a prime example of that would be Ms. Pat Benatar. Who has a strong voice but, well, I won't put the lady down. I'm sure she's a nice person and so is her husband. It ain't my thing. Boy is it ain't my thing. Even avoiding not singling out Ms. B, being forced to listen to that whole style of 80s AOR rock is indeed my idea of eternal hellfire and suffering.
However, as much as I may not be a fan of Pat B, as I said I'm sure she's a nice person. I am far less of a fan of Texas Republican goon Ted Cruz, either politically or in any other way (I'm fairly convinced he's NOT a nice person), who has now apparently decided that Pat is conducting Satanic rituals at her gigs, which frankly I almost wish were true, as if it were I would definitely go see her every time she came to town! Alas, there is no truth in this, and Teddy Boy is only showing how hopelessly out of touch he is by citing someone who's last hit was back when Reagan was prez, rather than picking some hipper, more contemporary artist. Then again it must be tough, since the most obvious choices for the former Zodiac killer-turned senator (Springsteen, Tim McGraw, Merle Haggard) have all betrayed him by being damned liberals! I guess he'll have to make do with phoney baloney Buddy Brown or whoever that new "country" guy is with the pro-lynching song (I neither know nor care). Whatever - anyone Ted Cruz hates I have to like, at least a little bit. So go Pat, go!
PS - did you know Senator and former Hilary Clinton running mate Tim Kaine is a huge Replacements fan? Gawd ... the Mats playing at the inaugural ... what an image...
Comments
Post a Comment