A while back I got an Amazon gift card. I’ve received many of these over the years – they’re so unimaginative that they’re perfect for people in the PR biz – but for some reason I had never used one until this month.
The book group my sisters and I do is resuming shortly after a summer hiatus. We were going to read yet another Russian novel, this one by Bulgakov. For some reason, it was in very short supply at Powell’s and cost considerably more than War and Peace, which I thought was ridiculous. Also, it was labeled “new” even though it clearly was not. I think that’s what got me clicking around on Amazon. I loathe the concept, but man was it fun, sitting here looking at all sorts of shit. It’s my Tulsa sister’s turn to pick the book, and she changed her mind about the Russians and chose instead One Hundred Years of Solitude. So I selected that book and added it to my cart.
Then I started looking at the music.
I really do strive to buy locally. While I think the management of Powell’s is deplorable, I do think that with an institution like that in town, it’s almost unforgiveable to buy books online. But when it comes to music, it was a guilt-free experience for me. In spite of how cool “the scene” is here in Portland, I’ve never had much luck at the record store. I think Music Millennium is painfully precious, and for some reason I usually walk out of Everyday Music with something that I’m not really wild about, which is, in all fairness, not the store’s fault. Basically I don’t buy much in the way of music.
Every time I hear something new – new to me – by Gladys Knight, I am pretty much floored. I have no idea how musical careers are managed or mismanaged or anything, really, about her personal story except that she’s from Georgia, but she – alone or with her Pips – embodies for me the term underrated. I’ve shared this observation with many people, and many of them have agreed, and many more have confessed that, in spite of their quiet admiration, they don’t own a single thing by Gladys Knight. I don’t either, and even though I ordered a CD of hers from Amazon, I still don’t. I ordered it for the upcoming birthday of a friend who says that he needed a week to recover after seeing her perform in Las Vegas.
I ordered some music for myself as well, of course. I keep a list of groups and individuals in the back of one of my notebooks, and I put two of them in my Amazon shopping cart before I clicked my way into the credit card part of it. When I listen to a new CD I’m always a little nervous. What if it turns out to be crap? What if the one song on it that I know turns out to be the exception? The only exception on either of the CDs I bought for myself are the last tracks on each, which are live recordings of some Motown gala.
Other than that, I hit the jackpot with both David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks. I cannot say which I prefer, nor do I feel obliged to. Eddie Kendricks does seem to have an edge in the voice department, but it must be said that David Ruffin – or his handlers, or managers, or perhaps just him – regarded the backup singers in the same way that I would if I had been the producer, and that is as anything but backup. Eddie Kendricks recalls, at moments, Marvin Gaye, while David Ruffin does not. I’m not a music critic, so I’ll spare you a song-by-song, but I did read the liner notes and learned that Eddie Kendricks is from Alabama and David Ruffin is from Mississippi. Like many others who emanate from my music collection, both took their unbearable sadness to Detroit, where they committed it to perpetuity for people like me to enjoy – if I may use that word – half a century later.
