"Me, mess, floor. Sorry."
"No hassle." He was on the 'phone, hence our first words.
"I'm Nick," I said, having taken in instant to a friendly, intelligent, straight gaze, slight tan and Med accent, "and you're the musician."
"Yes."
"Good. Now we can make a racket again. Welcome aboard."
He smiled. "Ciao."
"Ciao."
Marco timed his arrival very well.
Tonight, I'd just planned to say everyone's entitled to their likes and dislikes, but please stop slagging off poor Tori Amos.
I've read so many comments saying somebody or other reminds them of Tori, but "better" and less "angsty, messed-up, overblown ... whatever" I could almost think somebody's been handing out cash for a coordinated anti-Tori campaign.
I'm running some tests on a repaired iPod that's going to Africa very shortly.
 With it goes everything done by a knock-out VoW up for mention very soon ... and also, off the iTMS, 'Strange Little Girls' (2001), the album where Tori takes 12 songs by men and "covers" them her way (the iTMS omits 'Happiness is a Warm Gun').
Going by some reviews, Tori can't even get that right. Fans said, "Shit, it's not an original album", others said: "Shit, she's gone and changed the music, stripped it bare." Me, I love what she did ... and nobody can blame her for the lyrics.
The most interesting comments I read were by 'Lord Chimp' at Amazon US:
"I'm not sure I'll ever completely grasp Tori Amos' vision for this album. Strange Little Girls is an record of cover songs, and as I understand it, Amos wanted to give a female perspective to how men see women in music. Either the gender politics are beyond me, or she didn't do it quite right (I'll wager it's the former). She definitely hits the bull's-eye a few times though. The song that best accomplishes her goal is her harrowing rendition of ''97 Bonnie & Clyde,' Eminem's vicious song about a man who kills his wife and throws her in the sea to get rid of the body. Amos's naked delivery of the song, hushed, spoken vocals over a spooky strings sample, is downright frightening. I think that fact that it makes me uncomfortable to listen to it is a testament to her success" (and plenty more).
I like having an idea of an artist's own "vision for an album"; I don't know what Tori quite wanted either, but that ''97 Bonnie & Clyde' is so creepy I can listen to it over and over, enjoying the "ooh, that's evil" shivers.
Maybe she's just out sometimes to twist and succeeds admirably. Maybe the album's a kind of "actresses' performance", the way people sometimes say "that's a film-maker's film", a public private thing. It doesn't matter: it's a real professional's work, brilliantly done.
Even 'Lord Chimp' winds up comments I agree with -- though he frets he he might have missed gender politics he can't understand when I'm not sure there are any deep statements to understand -- by saying he's "eager for another release of original material."
It must be hell to be so talented.
If you don't always deliver, people moan, if you do, it's "more, more!" In Britain, Amazon sold the album sending people one of the four possible snapshots. That says it all. The New Yorker article about recording and music I mentioned last time was swiftly introduced at Arts & Letters Daily with the words: "Freedom from complete disaster was the standard for a good concert a century ago. Thanks to sound recording, perfection is now the standard. Is music better off?"
Good question.
Like or loathe an album, it's a snapshot. Maybe much more polished, technically sophisticated than a concert performance. This is obvious -- people have written dozens of books -- but to judge anyone on the strength of one part of their lives is a disaster, the same goes for records and artists.
Our reviews, amateur or "pro", are also snapshots of us at any moment.
Marco, the agency warned me with trepidation, would be a musician neighbour, thus noisy. He doesn't do it for a living, he told me. Maybe I should warn him and his girlfriend the wall really is thin, but that doesn't bother me. I've heard the strangest noises from next door with successive people, they're just people doing people things and no reason to get red-faced.
Neighbours get their share of my various rackets, whether made on my own or not.. All I care about is being free to make them again without thumps and bangs of complaint even during normal hours. I'm just saying that in a world where there's so much interest in objects, fixtures and things, it can be easy to forget that like music, people are a flux, a flow, movement, action, change.
Even Tori Amos.
Any attempt to seize them, fix them, can only be a snapshot, nothing else, however insightful. Snapshots are no basis for making judgements, yet we so often do. When we do, we might as well be dead. Gosh, what a shame!
12:11:46 AM link 
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