The Death of Whitney Houston

With the tragic news of the death of Whitney Houston we are faced again with the too early loss of an amazingly talented individual. The sad story is made even sadder that while it is always a shock when someone like this dies prematurely in many cases, and this is one of them, we cannot say we are truly shocked. When Stevie Ray Vaughn or members of Lynyrd Skynyrd died in a plane crash that is a surprise and shocking. The amount of famous entertainers that have died in plane crashes seems exponentially large, they do travel more than us, often on small planes, often on schedules that do not allow for weather delays.

Still a loss like Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain and of course the legendary trio of Morrison, Hendrix and Joplin can never truly to those who know them be a surprise. Sadly we wonder why these incredible performers, with all of this incredible talent fall into this drugs and alcohol whirlwind. What is it about success that makes one need to retreat into a chemical shell.

Of course they are not alone. The amount of alcohol consumed in America is an amount that is insane. When I was in college we would drink every weekend, no one ever stopped to wonder why. The fact is like most things in this country that are bad for us but are quasi supported by the government alcohol is a hugely profitable business.

I am not in favor of banning it. I am in fact in support of legalization of marijuana. I do think however that we as a culture support alcohol and glamorize it. I am not an expert but of course having ex athlete endorse a product, having ads showing groups of friends celebrating Super Bowl events....this all leads to a logical conclusion that alcohol is part of any celebration. I am not against alcohol, I am against our hypocritical arguments against drinking and our cultural endorsement of it. Alcohol advertisements should be treated just like cigarettes. This is only sensible.

Inevitably it will come out that Houston died of some sort of drug issue. Artistic people burn brighter and faster and often burn out earlier. Demons drive people to great things but often drive them over a cliff. We have all heard the quite about people living lives of quiet desperation. Often those in the public eye are living lives of very public desperation.

Life is hard no matter who you are. We all need help and we all need friends. What we must wonder is sometimes the more famous we get do we lose touch with people who will tell us what we need to hear, not what we want.

Will You Still Love Me Tomorow by Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse did earlier this year. Her album of a couple of years ago, Back to Black, had been one of the great albums of the first decade of the new century. Soul chanteuse bringing the sound of the early days of the soul rock era Winehouse could sing like few before and even fewer today.

Soon however her singing became the under card to a drawn out fight she had with personal problems an substance addiction. Her song Rehab had too many truths in it for our own comfort. It was a battle she lost this year.

Recently the album Hidden Treasures has been released. It contains many gems recorded by Winehouse over the last few years as she staggered through life. The album is strong if varied but no one song fully captures what we lost with her death as much as her take on The Shirelles classic " Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? "

Her beautiful voice silenced forever. A woman that could sing the phone book and leave you wanting more. This song haunts anyone who loves a voice that can take you places. It did not take her where it should have. What a shame.

Neptune City by Nicole Atkins

We are attending the Avett Brothers concert at Meadowbrook this weekend. Looking forward to that show a great deal. Finding out this week that Nicole Atkins, someone of whom I had never heard was the opening act I decided to Spotify her. For me Spotify is soon becoming a verb to match the noun just as Google is.

Atkins is a good singer. She is not a rocker and moves somewhere between Amy Winehouse, Jessica Lea Mayfield with perhaps a touch of Florence as well.

I chose to listen to her album from 2007 as Spotify's ratings have more of her top rated songs on that album.

The album gets better with each listening with songs such as Maybe Tonight, The Way It Is and Love Surreal being songs you could easily hear on any number of the channels on XM. The most winning songs on the album to me are the title track a dreamy tale of city life and the enchanting Cool Enough.

I have a hard time placing the influences but it is clear that she fits in a niche that has become quite popular. Cool Enough is a great song but like the whole album there is nothing surely something to remember. She is a good performer, a good singer but yet now she is just one of many doing this act.