leslie, sue, steve, bob, mg, thank you so much for your memories. and great
to know that wally brought you ofra haza, steve; i'm happy for that but not
surprised.
i've shared my couple of memories of wally, but they're probably worth
repeating. i met him once, at the pre-show gather for the first night of
the l.a. stand in may '98. wally had an odd relationship with the
discussion list. didn't post often, mostly informational, and certainly
wasn't one who wanted to be at jmdl-gathers. but he came to this one and
met all sorts of goggle-eyed listers, from mariana to me. a big
hearted-gesture, right there.
we ended up at the same table, wally and simon and i and we talked about
tori amos. wally had been so obsessed with her, especially the cover songs
she would do in concert, that every time she would cover some new
interesting choice, he'd have to track down a tape of the concert. he had
60+ tori amos concert tapes! this just made me realize how strong the
music-fan side of him was. just another one of us. i thought and thought
about this deeper view of wally.
but from that, i realized how skillful jm.com is. considering how he felt
about joni, the site could so easily have been 'gawlly, in't she the best?'
he really put so much effort into the tone of the site, keeping it
respectful but not worshipful, and thereby helping to keep it a real
resource. and yet his true, loving fan voice came in again and again.
talking about joni, finally meeting her. his deep tribute to dusty, when
she died. (another great memory for me is an exchange we had around dusty)
his intro to the cliff chase essays.
jim johanson has done a superb job with the site since we lost wally. one
gesture i've loved was allowing for open response pages to the bsn tour,
warts and all. it caused a lot of controversy on this list; some felt it
was wrong to have such negativity about joni mitchell on her site. i beg to
differ. i think jm.com is going to be the best record we'll ever have of
joni's life besides her music and painting, and anyone who would censor
that, whether it was by removing bad reviews or negative comments, would be
damaging an amazing resource. in the future, if people want to know where
joni stood in our culture they're going to need to hear the good and the bad
that was said about her. imagine how bad her 'sour grapes' comments would
sound if we didn't know the context.
i've wandered a bit, but in writing about jm.com, i hope to honor wally.
patrick
npimh - wally singing woodstock
thoughts of Wally,
>
>Leslie and I were willed some of Wally Breese's spectacular
>CD collection, and one of my choices was "Desert Wind"
>by the Israeli pop singer Ofra Haza - an unusual item
>for Wally. Ofra was a songwriter who combined Yemenite
>chant and all sorts of Middle Eastern music with techno-pop.
> And boy did she have pipes - soaring melodies with
>very complex backbeats, reminiscent to me of Kate Bush
>and Peter Gabriel - high praise coming from me.
>
>Thanks, Wally! For so many special times, besides this
>one discovery.
>
