2008: BSTC, Beyonce, Dido
Three more astonishments from late 2008
Following these three albums, I’m down to just six remaining albums from 2008; after next week, I’ll move on to albums from 2018. One thing about this first collection of writings about music in 2008 is that I originally wrote it, a year ago, as a book to give to my kids as a gift, with no thought of making a newsletter of it as well. I have about 20 copies of the book that I planned to give away to friends, and I want to offer one to anyone who would like one, as a gift. Just email me right quick and send me an address and I’ll mail or deliver a copy to you before long. It’s got a very bright yellow cover.
BSTC. Music For a Saturday Evening.
United States, November 4
It is a warm spring evening and in the community courtyard we are having a party. To celebrate what? To celebrate the neighborhood and its residents, to celebrate having a courtyard. In the center of the courtyard is a bar, square so people may approach from any direction, and lining the brick fence around the courtyard, also square so people may approach from any direction, are shady trees. There is a bandstand in the southern quadrant of the courtyard, and there are six food trucks in the northern quadrant. The DJ has his decks out, and the live instrumentalists wear white suits and white hats. You sit at a table to rest for awhile and neighbors come over one at a time to sit and talk. You get up to dance and there are plenty of people to dance alongside, some of them people you know. Little children, knowing they’ll be let to stay up late, grow delirious early. The DJ has his eye on things – he’s watching so things don’t settle. The party can never be let to settle. If it settles it will die out, as the embers of a fire eventually do.
Beyonce. I Am…Sasha Fierce.
United States, November 12
Eventually, in spite of your predilection for oddities and well-kept secrets and your disdain for what is well known, you give in and visit the Eiffel Tower. And dagnabbit, it’s really great.
Dido. Safe Trip Home.
England, November 17
What interests me about this album is how completely, utterly safe and conventional it is. I mean, who out there makes art about a safe trip home? Spiritual peace, sure – we have New Age for that. Gentle and peaceful moments, okay – Smooth Jazz, Smooth R&B, what have you. But “a safe trip home”? Quiet Times? Never Want to Say It’s Love? Let’s Do the Things We Normally Do? Maybe, in snarky parodies of conventionality, we do get titles and themes of this sort. But Dido really seems sincere about it all. “I’ll look no further for happiness” might as well be the album’s subtitle or promotional slogan. And that’s ultimately strange and interesting: an album that tackles, with complete sincerity, the safe trip home of an ordinary life’s ordinary evening. I swear, it’s quite rare.