Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

So much to quote about the great “Swoonatra” piece by Ian Penman in the July 2, 2015, edition of the London Review of Books, about the incomparable Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), in parts an elegy for a time when listening to music meant a long-playing album, what Sinatra was first to see as “an opportunity for sustained mood music, a pocket – (my aside between em dashes) what a deft phrase, dated and intimate, oooh so pre-Internet – of time focused entirely on one defining concept or tone.”

And,

“It’s no coincidence that so much music from the next decade sounded so good, and still does, half a century on. At this make or break point (the 1950s), many jazz-schooled musicians saw which way was up and swapped the marriage-destroying purgatory of touring for well-remunerated union-protected session work.”

And, most pointedly, when it comes to our theme, If the Greats Were With Us:

“When today’s stars try to pull off an imitation of old-style song craft they may get the surface details right, but they completely miss the center of gravity, or sense of connective purpose.”

Finally,

“It’s doubtful any singer will ever again possess that kind of sway. Who could reign as monarch of so much territory, and certainty, ever again? Maybe he is our last voice, at that.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Plain Train Game