The history of popular music is filled with stories of triumph and tragedy. Among the latter, no story is more tragic than that of Judee Sill. After a difficult childhood which found her turning to drugs and crime, Sill found solace in songwriting. Her light folk-rock style became known as the “Laurel Canyon” sound. She became the first artist ever signed to the brand new Asylum Records in the early ’70s, and toured as an opening act for David Crosby and Graham Nash.
Sill’s self-titled first album was released in 1971, and less than two years later, in the spring of 1973, she followed it with the album Heart Food. Both were critically acclaimed. Neither met with any commercial success. Following the failure of her second album to find an audience, Judee Sill disappeared from the music scene.
Sill has remained largely forgotten, a footnote in the history of southern California music, but there have been those who have tried to keep her name alive for many years. Among them is noted producer Jim O’Rourke, who mixed a collection of Sill’s unreleased songs. Warren Zevon recorded a cover of Sill’s most well known song, “Jesus Was a Crossmaker,” for his 1995 album Mutineer, and current Seattle sensations Fleet Foxes play Sill’s “Crayon Angels” in their live set. Her two Asylum albums were released as a double-CD set with bonus material in 2005, leading to a reassessment of her career.
This week, the indie label American Dust has released Crayon Angel: A Tribute to the Music of Judee Sill. The 15-track album includes covers of some of Sill’s most enduring songs by roster of some of the leading lights, and lesser knowns, of independent music. As is almost always the case with tribute albums, Crayon Angel is a hit-or-miss affair, succeeding when the artists allow the strength of Sill’s songs to emerge, and failing utterly when the artists try to make it all about themselves. These songs don’t need reinterpretation. Mostly they just need to be heard by an audience who are unfamiliar with Sill. (more…)
The word “legend” is sorely abused and overused by music journalists, just as the word “genius” is. I am as guilty as anyone else, but I have an excuse ready to go. The older you get, the more legends your life seems to take on. People who were just great musicians when you were younger take on a sepia-tinged status with the fog of time. Now that I’ve said that, I have to ask a more or less rhetorical question: how does a writer avoid using the word “legend” when he attends an event at which there are performances by Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Guy Clark, Arlo Guthrie, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott? Legends all, no matter what era you came up in.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b3bbf74a-8136-40d4-9e2e-c78150eed6db)
It’s easy enough to say that live performance is the true test of a band. But there’s something that goes beyond that. Will a show that’s great once be great 10 times? In a culture prone to fanaticism, there should be things that interest the audience member who’s seen the band on every tour for the last few years, as well as the one who’s seeing them for the first time.
Having moved away from Seattle to the cement pastures of New York City, I feel woefully out of touch with the consistently good music scene of my hometown. To make up for this, I somewhat frequently badger my friends into telling me about the good Seattle bands. My friends told me — months and months and months ago — about Fleet Foxes, but like the busy, crazy-brained New Yorker that I am, I didn’t remember this recommendation until recently (and not, surprisingly, because of all the press they’ve received lately). While it is, indeed, a disproportionate amount of text to cover the five songs that have been officially released as part of the Sun Giant EP (the album has been leaked for ages, possibly well before they knew they would land on the roster of Seattle champs Sub Pop), the truth is that this is a legitimately interesting band, and one that’s far less gimmicky than most of the bands that have received hype this year (Vampire Weekend, Man Man), which should give them, with any luck, a better chance at not seeing too much backlash, though the Rolling Stone 