Damn I love her voice. Thanks for posting all the videos. This new YouTube feature is pretty cool. I might have Indie add Yahoo and Google vidoes to the forums too.

Yes, she looks better with hair as do all females - to me.

WOW! How could I forget Billie Holiday!? I LOVE her voice. It is seductive and a bit creepy at the same time. Strange Fruit is a very deep song and totally blew my mind when I heard it and realized what it was about. What a great choice for symbolism there..."Southern trees bear strange fruit. Blood on the leaves and blood at the root...Strange Fruit hangin...from the Poplar trees" Powerful.

Thanks for that video Rose.

Mr. P.

I have a thing for shaved heads. Probably because it's such an uncompromising thing for a woman to do. Even brave, depending on your usual temperment. Seeing Sinead O'Conner with hair suddenly makes me realize how much she and Natalie Portman favor one another, save for the eyes.

The forum ate the first version of my last post, and when I remade it, I think I left out one of the most important crushes, Justine Frischmann of Elastica:

My first college girlfriend bore a passing resemblence. Sheer coincidence. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge you can buy.

I chose the video for the Spinanes' "Lines and Lines" rather than the one for "Kid in Candy" mostly because the video crew obviously did everything they could to prettify Gates in the latter video. Actually, I've never seen her look as attractive in any photo or video as she did the time I saw them play live. But what hooked me was the music. Her lyrics and phrasing come at subjects from such an odd, yet perfectly apt angle, and pretty much no one was playing guitar lines like that in the 90s.

"Kid in Candy" was an odd choice for a single; it's got studio exec decision written all over it. It's about as upbeat a song as they've ever produced, and someone at the label probably thought they could push a couple thousand extra copies across the counter if they could get people hooked on that samba beat. The rest of the album, "Arches and Ailses" is more akin to the signature Spinanes sound, only with a fuller band in some places. Both albums are great, but I'd recommend their second full-length, "Strand". I never really got into their debut, "Manos" -- it has a rawer sound, and less atmosphere.

And as for P.J. Harvey, I intentionally sought out an earlier song. Those first couple of albums were about as raw nerved as you could get. I like the more orchaestral work that she started producing with "Send His Love To Me", but it never really fascinated me the way that "Rid of Me" or "Four Track Demos" did. I was kind of surprised by that live clip I posted. She looked much prettier there than she often did during that period. I've heard horror stories about how awful the mixed audiences at festival shows sometimes were to her. I'm not sure what I think of her more recent self-presentation. If it's an example of someone conceding to the demands of the beauty culture, then I may think it a little sad.

She and Liz Phair make an interesting comparison, actually. Both received initial attention on the strength of very direct, unflinching songs that revolved around the issues of women both in love and in conflict. At times, it seemed that both of them were striving for a rock and roll idiom that could make being a sexually mature feminist appealing dangerous. But PJ Harvey seemed very conscious in presenting her femininity as a kind of ironic mask, while Liz Phair seems often to have glammed it up as a means of selling albums. And it's Harvey who has remained the most vital as a musician.

As for jazz vocalists, I've always preferred Ella's voice to Billie's.


I also like Gloria Lynne's voice, but, unfortunately, she seems to have done most of her work in a marginally less interesting jazz period. The best I could do for a video featuring my favorite Gloria Lynne song is this stupid Ford commercial, which has, at least, the virtue of letting the song do all of its talking for it.


Oh, and Mr. P mentioned Natalie Merchant. Man, has she got a set of pipes. "Tigerlily", her first solo album after she left "10,000 Maniacs", was pretty crush-worthy, but her albums since them have mined less of a blues vibe, and are less interesting because of it.

Mad wrote:

Oh, and Mr. P mentioned Natalie Merchant. Man, has she got a set of pipes. "Tigerlily", her first solo album after she left "10,000 Maniacs", was pretty crush-worthy,

Yup...that was the one that piqued my interest. "Wonder" and "Carnival" were two I constantly played to satisfy the 'crush'.

Mr. P.

She's a pretty girl, but Kate Bush is a beautiful woman.[youtube][/youtube]

camsquirrel wrote:She's a pretty girl, but Kate Bush is a beautiful woman.[youtube][/youtube]

Okay, ow do I put a YouTube vid on here?

camsquirrel wrote:
Okay, ow do I put a YouTube vid on here?

Just put the "YOUTUBE" open tag, insert the URL only...not the and then close tag.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?video_ ... 1&border=0[/youtube]


But it seems to not work with the link to that video!


Mr. P.

Test

Alizee is a pretty girl (complete with puppy fat even), but Kate Bush is a beautiful woman. And also only in her late teens/early twenties when she did this.


AND, as a bonus, the music doesn't make ditchwater seem fascinating.