From: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org (navy-soup-digest) To: navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Subject: navy-soup-digest V2 #8 Reply-To: navy-soup@smoe.org Sender: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk navy-soup-digest Saturday, January 23 1999 Volume 02 : Number 008 In This Digest: ----------------- Re: a rave from a brand-new SS fan [James McGarry ] "best moment" in a Sarah song ["Julian C. Dunn" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 10:52:14 -0500 (EST) From: James McGarry Subject: Re: a rave from a brand-new SS fan On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Steve I wrote: > What can I say, posts like this make me go all mushy again for Sarah's > music... Aaaahhhh! ;-) And well you should! I had the ultimate pleasure of catching the kick off to this latest tour....yummmmm-y! Our dear Sarah started it all off, (though _I_ thought she was headlining since (a) her name was at the top of the bill and (b) she was the only one with a picture on the bill, oh well, shows what I know! :-) ) The set list: (1) Me & Jerome (2) Closer (for a certain cellist, who is NOT!Yo-Yo Ma) ;-) (3) High (4) Narcolepsy Weed (5) Elliott (6) Weight (7) Universe (8) Ogoni Star Sarah was _very_ well received, the Black Mustard, a venue normally devoted to dining, was packed solid. Guelph loves Sarah. Really. I'm not kidding. You don't know how many people talk about her, really. I digress. Guelph loves Sarah, and they proved it with rousing applause. Oh yeah, some of them might have been there to see Oh Susanna! or Sarah Harmer, but I don't beleive it ;-) It was a very lovely Ogoni Star, a special request from yours truly. Pretty in its blazing sadness. At least two people came up to me and asked about it and if it would be on the new CD and told me how very much they loved it. For me, there are few political songs that ascend to much more than name calling and only two that I would describe with any term approaching beauty, and the other is Peter Gabriel's Biko. So, a very heartfelt thank you to Sarah for asceeding to my request for Ogoni Star. It might just have been the candlelight last night but I found myself thinking that sometimes its daunting how fast that first moment I heard Sarah's music is falling away in time. Its amazing how much she's grown as an artist in this short time and how far I can see her going. I kid her about waiting outside for really bad seats at Skydome. Its funny, but there's a kernel of truth there. Its a marvel to see genius develop at so close a focus. When you look at what Sarah's accomplished in twenty-one years, its easy to feel small and worthless, but if you choose to, you're missing the point (of Universe at least). As small and ignoble as people are, we're all worth something and we all can make a difference. And in a nutshell it the fragility and resilience in us that we see in Sarah's music. Despite the sorrow and longing and even pain in her music, there's always hope. Her parents named her well, and I'm going to be terribly gauche and quote myself, but, "...Hope really is her middle name. Karma or what?" It was nice to see Oh Susanna! (Susie Ungerleider) again. I first saw her at Hilside '97. And due to a nearly constant exposure to country music by my parents, I didn't have much sympathy for the genre. Oh Susanna! was a very big exception. Her country-folk songs, simple plaintive melodies are sterling examples of what country music was and why its so important an influence on folk and related genres. Particularly memorable was All Eyes on Baby off her first CD, much prettier than I've heard it before; Old Kate a ballad inspired by Kate Bush (I think with this song, Susie has made an old genre particularly relevant, it really worked, new stuff in an old context); and Johnstown from the upcoming CD (which you can advance order at the shows) "a tale of crime and punishment", I didn't particularly like the subject matter of the song, but its strength and the raspy passion in her voice were terribly moving at times and that made it memorable. Yeah, Guelph loves Oh Susanna too. I've learned to be very trusting of Steve Ito's opinion of music, he's usually right or maybe its just that we have similar tastes, but Steve has raved about Sarah Harmer and Weeping Tile. He was very right when he mentioned how different her solo work was from the Weeping Tile project. There's not really a good slot to put her work, its quirky in a way, not your typical acoustic, grrl-with-guitar soi-distant pop. We were lucky enough to hear a very old Sarah Harmer song, one she hadn't done in ten years called "Don't Get Your Back Up". Written when she was eighteen and it had a very 80's folk feel comparible both in feel and in how well it was written, to Jane Sibbery's very early work. What impressed me most was a velvety feel to her voice, something I've really only ever heard from the Velvet Fog himself. Maybe it was the bluegrass vibe emitted bu the presence of Guelph's steel geetar master, Louis Melville, but I was really getting into "I'm a Mountain". Which as Sarah H said, was "as close to bluegrass as I've sever gotten." And with a Trevor Henderson (Hellbillies) tune earlier ("Mercy Bin") it gave her set a very country feel. So, in short, as I said to Heather P, "This is gonna be a _very_ good tour." Take Care and Drive Safe! James. ========================================================================== James McGarry | jmcgarry@UoGuelph.CA - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Some men are so selfish that they read a book or go to a concert for their own sinister pleasure, instead of doing it to improve social conditions , as the good citizen does when drinking cocktails or playing bridge." - Jacques Barzun French-born U.S. Educator ========================================================================== ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 12:01:53 -0500 From: "Julian C. Dunn" Subject: "best moment" in a Sarah song Okay, I admit, I'm shamelessly stealing this topic from nields-nook, but I thought it was interesting enough for propagation. What is everyone's "favourite moment" in a Sarah song? Mine would have to be the intro to John the 23rd, before she actually starts singing. It's gorgeous. :) Oh yeah, I haven't said anything about Twin Moon yet. It's great! I'll just defer to Brian now and say, "what Brian said" :-) - - Julian [ Julian C. Dunn - jdunn@aquezada.com WWW: http://www.aquezada.com/ ] [ programmer, web designer, unix user, fumbler, writer, and future engineer] [ FuE exfe94 a+++ Ifte/slc lonca r- ps++ bs+ t++/*t C+++$/C! w+++ p7 LF+++ ] [N++/N! cd260 pr++ g+++ S-/S *x++ Fa+++/Fa$/Fa! m1 b+ fc+++/ E>+ rl-- *d s!] [ "... for one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most ] [ difficult of all our tasks" - rainer maria rilke ] ------------------------------ End of navy-soup-digest V2 #8 *****************************