Irving was raving to me about Jennifer Hudson.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d hooked up with Vijay Singh at the golf tournament and then gone to the Super Bowl.\u00c2\u00a0 But Irving, she was ON TAPE!\u00c2\u00a0 But he told me she sang live in the stadium, that Jennifer was in the league of Christina.<\/p>\n
Yeah, right.<\/p>\n
Last night I went to the MusiCares dinner.\u00c2\u00a0 This is one thing NARAS gets right.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve got to give Neil Portnow credit for not only raising so much money, but giving it away.\u00c2\u00a0 This is their biggest event of the year.\u00c2\u00a0 It brings out a lot of looky-loos, NARAS members from the hinterlands, but just about every hitter in the business too, in town for the Grammys.<\/p>\n
I talked at length to Rob Stringer.\u00c2\u00a0 He told me his goal was to have TWENTY acts like MGMT, who sold 300-500,000 albums every time out.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, Amanda Ghost may not know much about the business, but his problem isn’t infrastructure, but records, he needs something the Epic team can work, he’s hoping she delivers.<\/p>\n
Phil Ramone told me about this barely pubescent act he was working with who was blowing up north of the border, who was generating a bidding war down here.<\/p>\n
I got Larry Vallon’s take on the Live Nation\/Ticketmaster deal.\u00c2\u00a0 Even Rapino’s too.\u00c2\u00a0 As for Ethan Smith, who broke the story, I couldn’t get a peep out of him, other than he was frustrated they’d laid off the "Wall Street Journal" mailroom employee after twenty years on the job.\u00c2\u00a0 Why do the little people have to bear the brunt of the masters of the universe’s mistakes?<\/p>\n
And I’m sitting way down front, at Jay Marciano’s table, with my back to the stage, discussing the status of the festival marketplace with Coran Capshaw, when I realize we’re the only two people still talking.<\/p>\n
That’s what you do at these clusterfucks.\u00c2\u00a0 Business.\u00c2\u00a0 The greatest talent in the world can be on stage, and the assembled multitude is ignoring the proceedings.\u00c2\u00a0 They work with household names every day.<\/p>\n
People had even put down their BlackBerries, everybody was focused on the stage.\u00c2\u00a0 Jimmy Kimmel had not commanded this level of attention.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to discuss Phish with Coran, but he too was beginning to be distracted, by this failed "American Idol" contestant gracing the stage.<\/p>\n
The band was a collection of killers.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone from Cretone Mark Goldenberg to Heartbreaker Benmont Tench to eternal Detroit hippie Don Was.\u00c2\u00a0 But they were mere background to the woman singing.<\/p>\n
"Sweet Caroline" was the unexpected follow-up to "Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show".\u00c2\u00a0 "Cherry, Cherry"" and "Kentucky Woman" were enough, Neil Diamond had nothing left to prove, we were expecting more serviceable tracks that were not classics to fill out his career.\u00c2\u00a0 But then came the song inspired by the President’s daughter.\u00c2\u00a0 Funny how the truly great music endures.\u00c2\u00a0 In an era where underground FM radio was burgeoning, I smiled every time I heard "Sweet Caroline" on the radio during the summer of ’69.<\/p>\n
Then came "Holly Holy".\u00c2\u00a0 Slow and burning.\u00c2\u00a0 It brings me back to riding the bus to school.<\/p>\n
Yes, "Holly Holy" is part of the time capsule.\u00c2\u00a0 It hasn’t survived.\u00c2\u00a0 You hear it at Neil’s show, occasionally on oldies radio, still if you lived through the era, you remember it.\u00c2\u00a0 A soulful number that sounded just a bit ersatz in the days of Jimi Hendrix and Cream.<\/p>\n
But what Jennifer Hudson was singing was something completely different.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the same song, but rearranged.\u00c2\u00a0 Slowed down, with emphasis.\u00c2\u00a0 This suddenly sleek survivor of traumatic stress stood on stage like Babe Ruth, like Barbra Streisand, like no singer we’ve had in this century.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t about her, there was no diva element.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like watching Joe Cocker sing "With A Little Help From My Friends", an ultra-famous song he made his own.<\/p>\n
Mariah Carey has ruined vocals for nearly two decades now.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about melisma, it’s all about the performer, it’s not about the song.\u00c2\u00a0 I respect singer-songwriters.\u00c2\u00a0 The hard part is coming up with the material, anybody can sing.\u00c2\u00a0 But that was not what was going on last night.\u00c2\u00a0 Jennifer Hudson was not just singing, she was inhabiting the song.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like you were in a rowboat and the QE2 suddenly came cruising by.\u00c2\u00a0 She demanded your complete attention.\u00c2\u00a0 You were mesmerized.\u00c2\u00a0 And wowed.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s not supposed to be this good.\u00c2\u00a0 And she’s not imploring us to love her, she’s not manipulating us, she’s not grimacing, she’s just SINGING THE SONG!<\/p>\n
If we were truly living in the twenty first century, if the rights holders didn’t have their heads up their asses and radio wasn’t beholden to research, Jennifer Hudson’s rendition of "Holly Holy" would have been mixed by Elliott Scheiner last night and been available on iTunes this morning.\u00c2\u00a0 She would perform her rendition at the Grammys tomorrow.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to seize the moment.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t overplan and overmarket, you just serve up what’s absolutely right, what’s absolutely necessary, when the whole world is watching.<\/p>\n
The whole world was not watching last night.\u00c2\u00a0 Just a bunch of jaded industry insiders and wannabes.<\/p>\n
But when Jennifer Hudson was finally finished, way too soon, you never want great performances to end, I shot to my feet, like so many others, and gave her a standing ovation.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though she was the first performer of the night.<\/p>\n
No one else came close except for Neil himself.\u00c2\u00a0 Who hit "Cherry, Cherry" so far out of the park Felice and I couldn’t believe it was really him.\u00c2\u00a0 He sounded SO great he HAD to be singing to tape, there had to be some electronic trickery, because he sounded exactly like NEIL DIAMOND!<\/p>\n
Music is just like love.\u00c2\u00a0 When you’re least expecting it, you come across a gem, that changes your whole day, your entire life.\u00c2\u00a0 We focus on the winners, but it’s the losers who boil our blood, who make our lives worth living. Kelly Clarkson is good.\u00c2\u00a0 Carrie Underwood is the beneficiary of the best material in Nash Vegas.\u00c2\u00a0 But suddenly, I believe the hype.\u00c2\u00a0 Jennifer Hudson is something else.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s not just a figurehead, a front for the creations of studio rats.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s got TALENT!<\/p>\n
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Irving was raving to me about Jennifer Hudson.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d hooked up with Vijay Singh at the golf tournament and then gone to the Super Bowl.\u00c2\u00a0 But Irving, she was ON TAPE!\u00c2\u00a0 But he told me she sang live in the stadium, that Jennifer was in the league of Christina. Yeah, right. Last night I went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-qQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1665,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664\/revisions\/1665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}