Emmylou Harris: Songbird

Written by Fantasma el Rey

The sweet voice of Emmylou Harris is a country standard and it is represented well in a new box set titled Songbird: Rare Tracks And Forgotten Gems. With the sample disc I received, I got a good sense of a voice that has always grabbed my attention.

Emmylou Harris was born in 1947 to a military family stationed in Birmingham, AL and grew up in the south. While attending the University of North Carolina, she developed a serious liking for the folk music sounds of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Thus prompting her to form a duo, leave UNC, move to New York and engulf herself in the Greenwich Village scene. While there, she would make the friends that would help her complete her debut album Gliding Bird. After its release the record label went under, leaving Emmylou with nothing and forcing her to move back to her parents who now lived in Washington D.C.

In D.C. she met members of the Flying Burrito Brothers who would hook her up with the young country rock pioneer Gram Parsons. He had been looking for a female voice to accompany him on his solo records and Emmylou was it. She would tour with him and his band and sing harmony on his two albums G.P. and Grievous Angel, the latter would become his most significant solo album. Although he tragically died soon after its recording, it continuing to have an impact.

Not long after Parsons passed Emmylou signed with Warner Bros/Reprise and recorded numerous albums and singles with the label into the ‘90s. After leaving Warners and moving to Asylum Records, she continued to release new music, refusing to become a nostalgic stage act. Throughout her career Emmylou would perform with many other great voices including Roy Orbison, Neil Young, Rodney Crowell, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt, and let’s not forget Willie Nelson and George Jones. But it was with Parton and Ronstadt that Harris would record the extremely popular Trio and Trio II albums, which produced the hits “To Know Him Is To Love Him” (the Phil Spector Classic) and “Telling Me Lies.” It is from Trio that I first heard Emmylou Harris’ angelic voice for the first time.

Songbird breaks away from being a greatest-hits box and focuses on material that might not have been heard before by most folks. This is great because it turns the focus from just a song’s popularity to her amazing vocals. My sample disc opens with “Beyond The Blue” and is a perfect example of the power of her voice. With lines like “This life is but a dream” she sounds as if she is a mother gently whispering comfort to her fallen child or consoling them after a death in the family.

“Clocks” is a tune that has piano and guitar work sounding like ticking clocks and the plucking of time as it moves along, bringing sunlight to a missing loved one’s face. Again with her humming, Emmylou sounds soothing yet sad and brings chills that make me play this somewhat dark tune over and over again.

Two gems of the disc are “Palms Of Victory” and “Softly And Tenderly,” which feature the trio that first set my ears alight. “Softly” begins with the heart-stopping sound of Emmylou’s voice and nothing else. After 35 seconds in another world, the gentle picking of a banjo slips in to lend a hand along with the soft strumming of a guitar and the slow bowing of a big bass fiddle. On many of the disc’s songs the traditional instruments of the bluegrass sound aid the magic of Emmylou’s voice.

There are songs that take on different country styles like the prairie, western campfire leanings of “All I Left Behind” with its acoustic guitars and lament of things left behind on the lost highway. Another number about the lonesome road is “Highway Of Heartache” with Carl Jackson supplying male vocals. This tunes picks up the pace a bit and has a solid rhythm section with a low yet driving beat that shows Emmylou can move along just fine with something that swings a bit faster.

“Waltz Across Texas Tonight,” “Snowin’ On Raton,” and “Gone” are the songs outside of the Trio set I remember and love the most. “Waltz Across Texas” is a honky-tonk classic putting Emmylou in the company of country outlaw greats. “Gone” gives a wink and a nod to her hero Bob Dylan in its structure and lyrics. With piano, banjo, and electric and acoustic guitars these tunes bring it all together and capture the overall Emmylou Harris sound perfectly.

Her sweet and haunting vocals are soft yet contain a power that can move mountains and cause devils to cry. Even with great instruments and musicians behind her, Emmylou’s voice is what draws you in and holds you until she is done with a song. Her vocals take you wherever she goes, moving from a low whisper and quite hum to a soaring high-end note, held with perfection and marking a word with importance and forcing you to look at it and see it through her beautiful eyes. And yes, I do think that the woman is truly beautiful and it is reflected not only in her voice and good looks but in the way she carries herself in the media and throughout her life. Songbird is a wonderful look at that life and career.

THE GRADUATE (40th ANN. ED)

Written by Musgo Del Jefe

The year 1967 was one of those magical years (like 1972 or 1996) that produced so many groundbreaking movies that I rarely pass up a chance to see one with that copyright date. That year saw the likes of Bonnie & Clyde, Cool Hand Luke, and Bedazzled, and closed out with my own my debut in November and then The Graduate came along just before Christmas. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning only for Directing. The film's been reviewed, praised, and shown in so many college film classes over the past forty years that it's hard to find a new angle to view this for the new Anniversary release.

I was twenty, just like Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) when I first saw the film. Having just graduated from college in Michigan, I found myself watching it through Ben's eyes. The film was still fresh and felt comfortable from the very beginning. I found solace in Ben's restless spirit. Much like Ben rebelling against his future in "plastics," I was hearing the message without really listening. I watched the movie three or four times that summer, loved it, echoed the dialog, but I'm not sure I really "got it." In two months, I will turn 40, too. I've got kids in their tweens now. And can I ask the same thing about myself as I do about this movie? Is this still meaningful after forty years?

The movie starts with Ben landing back in Los Angeles after graduating from college "back East." The opening credits roll to the left as Ben rides the moving sidewalk in the airport, the innocence of youth pulled along into adulthood. Everything's moving forward; there's no going back, even if you wanted to.

Ben's parents throw a party for his graduation. But it isn't full of his friends, it's their friends. Adults. Ben hides in the security of his room like a kid. A couple beautiful shots through his fish tank are evocative of the pet of his youth and also his drowning in the world of adults that will be pursued later in the film.

Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft - only 36 when playing the role but acting at least 10 years older with success) corners Ben in his "fortress," and he gets shamed into giving her a ride home in his Graduation present, an Alfa Romeo. Ben is put into an adult situation without the proper tools to judge Mrs. Robinson's actions. He misreads the signals of Mrs. Robinson's seduction. Or rather, he can't read the subtext of her mixed signals. Mrs. Robinson enjoys this part of the game - "You'll never be young again," she tells him when she finally has to spell out her offer to be his lover. It's hard to say if that's a warning or advice.

Ben's 21st birthday party is another party thrown by his parents for other adults. His father emphasizes the transition when introducing him as "boy--I'm sorry, the young man." Ben's gift of a scuba outfit and the ensuing POV shots show us how removed he is from the world of adults. Ben views the world through a small circle, looking only forward, with only the sound of his own breath in his ears. Moving only forward, without considering the next step is what causes Ben to call Mrs. Robinson and arrange their first meeting at the hotel.

At 38 minutes, we enter Act 2 to the same tune that played over the opening credits, Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds Of Silence." "Hello darkness, my old friend" plays in full over the progression of their relationship. The darkness of the room an important thematic issue. The silence of their relationship removes Ben, and us, from the experience. It's like he's watching it happen but not really living it. He's still living his life at home, and this affair in a dark, silent hotel room almost isn't real. We get the brilliant Simon & Garfunkel tune "April Come She Will" to show the restless passing of time. The start of the death of the relationship: "a love once new has now grown old."

When Ben's dad asks him what he's doing when he's in the pool in the middle of a summer day, Ben replies, "Just drifting." The pressure of Ben's parents for him to do something he treats as doing something personally instead of in regards to a job. This leads him to his first date with the Robinsons' daughter, Elaine (the beautiful Katharine Ross a couple years before she'll blow me away in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid). Finally opening up to someone his own age who understands his "compulsion to be rude since Graduation," Ben finds the partner he could never have with Mrs. Robinson. The revelation that his affair was with her mother is one of the best silent moments of cinema in the past forty years.

At 70 minutes, we neatly enter Act 3 with another Simon & Garfunkel tune, "Scarborough Fair/Canticle." Directly after the revelation, this song emphasizes the fact that the journey to adulthood is not a job. It's an emotional journey. The song plays twice consecutively and then directly again an instrumental version and that is followed up directly with another repetition. By the fourth time, the song is like any great break-up song: needling your soul, reminding you of the loss, but it also serves as Ben's final call to action. He views this as his chance to grab happiness and pursue Elaine.

On the way, his Alfa Romeo runs out of gas and is ditched on the side of the road. This is a journey that we all have to make ourselves. It isn't taught in college and it isn't even learned at home. It is experienced by failing and succeeding. Ben and Elaine's journey doesn't end at the back of the "school" bus. They've retreated there at the end of the movie, exhilarated, both uncertain that they've made the best decision but confident that they'll experience it together. The silence of the last scene echoes the drowning feeling of youth. Neither needs words to express that. And we end with "Sounds Of Silence" over end credits as the bus pulls away into the future.

For its entry into middle age, the DVD takes some looks back at itself. The "Students Of The Graduate" and the "The Graduate At 25" featurettes are amazing only in how closely the interpretation of the film was at 25 as it is at 40. Two commentaries, one by Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross and another by Mike Nichols and Steven Soderbergh, are insightful, but this movie isn't about what others think.

Is The Graduate still meaningful? Maybe more than ever. Today's cinema doesn't make movies about 21-year-old college graduates. Movies like Reality Bites, Singles, and St. Elmo's Fire are often too TV-comedy influenced. They don't speak to the journey.

I might say that I work in "plastics." My job isn't what the 20-year-old version of me thought it might be. However, the journey has been more exciting and more continually life-changing than anyone ever said it would be. I work with mainly college-age kids like Ben. There's a creeping population growth of youth that, like Ben, are "just drifting." These restless youth are removed from the experiences of life, just watching them happen on videos, camera phones, and the Internet. They are "people hearing without listening." This is the perfect movie to disturb their sounds of silence.