Well we're a little bit behind schedule this week (about 24 hours) so today is going to be a frenzied blogging day. Hopefully I can throw together a decent preview of Nighthawks at the Diner before I have to start listening to it. Whatever. On with the wrap up!
Wrap Up:
I had a feeling that when I started wrapping up this record I was going to regret some of my negativity throughout the week. I don't know why, I guess I've some of my less favorite songs from THoSN stuck in my head over the last couple of days and I assumed that the album was growing on me.
Well it isn't. "San Diego Serenade" still sucks. 'Never saw the sunshine til you turned out your love-light, babe.' ugh. I maintain that there are a couple of very decent songs on here, and a little bit of decent instrumentation, but by and large it's just a very by the books "gritty" jazz record, with very little grit and a questionable interpretation of the word jazz. It certainly doesn't have what I would call "timeless grit."
"Timeless grit" would be Blind Willie Johnson: shit that was weird and scary and different when it came out, and 80 years later is still weird and scary and different. Maybe this record seemed gritty in the coke-fueled glitz that was 70s L.A. Maybe the only seedy underbelly TW was aware of at this point was the glamorized seedy underbelly of Raymond Chandler's L.A., so that when he made this record it felt like he was telling the interesting stories of the downtrodden. Well, that's possible, but as far as I can tell it hasn't aged well. And I have to mark this as a step backwards from Closing Time, which had its share of schmaltz, but, mercifully, much less than Saturday Night.
Two weeks in and I'm already a bitter, snarky blogger. It happens. Nighthawks at the Diner preview is upcoming.
-K
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