frantz

Yes, Hal Aretha is terrified of flying and at her age she has decided that she will no longer tour the world, but only do a few sporadic concerts in America, so my dream of seeing her in concert will never come true, sigh! I have several of her records, including one that I keep like a relic from one of her original concerts in Paris from the '60s, out of which comes a fantastic voice. That was the Aretha of the great times. I also have other records of hers, but especially in the last ones, she has lost a lot in vocal quality, not to mention the choice of music, which today is pathetic. If you put the music given to Joss Stone next to Franklin's voice, you would get modern soul masterpieces, but that's not how the market works! Her last very beautiful record is the double "One Lord, One Church & One Baptist," which is an entire album of gospel songs recorded in church, but even that is nearly twenty years old now.

Here's another review of Radio Testa and it's even the fifth for this album; I really missed it! Who knows what will happen when the next one comes out? Ah yes, I know, Nick will give it a scathing review about 3 months before the release, saying that a friend of his who works in some little shop where everything passes but no one knows about it gave him the cassette... debaser power! :-)

A CD that everyone likes a bit? ...well, not me!
Devon is back!

you said: you either love it or hate it... I would really like to love it! She's over 40 and she's magnificent, exuding sensuality from her voice to the pores of her skin, nothing compared to Madonna or even worse Britney! Musically, it's not among the albums I would buy.

I’ve had this album since the first day it came out, but I’ve never been able to listen to it all the way through. I can’t figure it out, yet it’s beautiful!

Well, let’s take a moment to give a nod to good old Herbie H; even the greats sometimes have to eat, even if Davis has never pulled a stunt like that! But these are different times when record labels are squeezed by budgetary demands and show no mercy even to the giants. Without making a comparison, just look at how EMI lost millions on the stock market just because of the delay in releasing the Coldplay CD. Nowadays, some things are done solely for revenue, and I imagine HH, if he doesn’t do this, can’t have the full freedom to pursue other projects for which we all hold him in high regard. (I got a bit tangled up, but I believe the point is clear.)

When a friend of mine played me the track with Annie Lennox, I was almost ready to dive into the album without a second listen, given my trust and appreciation for HH. However, a little voice whispered to me, "listen to it, listen to it first!"... damn, this work is really senseless; Ray Charles's version is 10-100 times better if you want to make a comparison, there are some truly awful episodes here! In the end, I shifted my choice to Devil & Dust by Springsteen at €8.90, definitely a better choice (also in terms of price).

Between you and Hal, but how many musicians, spinners in their quiet little rooms, will you still break with these damn 5 questions 5?
Obviously, good job! :-)

I stopped at the first track, and it was better that I didn't even listen to it; the second one I totally shift!

Objectively, my dear friend Hal is right; the record belongs to both of us, and I’ll go further – in my opinion, it’s perhaps closer to Haden’s mood than to Metheny’s, at least in terms of feeling. But if it gave you the opposite sensation, so be it; music, besides being an academic study, is also largely about sensations, perhaps even more so for those who listen.