It has been cold and damp all day. Mid-fifties and wet socks are no way to live, but that’s how we’ll approach the last week of April. The rest of the weekend’s forecast doesn’t look much better. At least next week the sun returns which, hey, April.
It might have hit 55 degrees this morning, in the pre-dawn hours. So, this year, my seven-year-long hypothesis, the Little-500-marks-the-beginning-of-spring hypothesis, has not held.
The long-range forecast suggests we’ll maybe hit 70 degrees … sometime before the first week of May is over. Maybe.
This is our chance to catch up with the Re-Listening project. Catch up, that is, until the next CD is over. Which means we might be behind again by Tuesday. Such is the pace of things, when you’re listening to old CDs in the car. I’m not sure how I run through whole albums so quickly, I will probably run out of music before I figure that out, but 40-or-so minutes goes fast, considering the small amount of road I cover.
Anyway. We’re cruising down memory lane. It is the summer of 1998, the summer of Natalie Merchant. “Ophelia” was her second studio album, her only one to crack the top 10 on the Billboard 200, where it settled in at number eight. It went platinum in the U.S., largely on the strength of “Kind & Generous” which broke into the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay Chart.
That’s the one you remember. The first track, the title track, is a total mood setter.
For some reason it is easy to remember the talent that Natalie Merchant put into all of her work. She left the regular artist route to do other things, but this record is full of examples of a quality of work that her fans appreciate.
And, in the interests of time, I’m skipping over the great wah wah guitars of “Frozen Charlotte” and the piano ballads like “My Skin.” Mostly just to get to the last song, a cover of “When They Ring Those Golden Bells.” It’s a popular and important gospel and bluegrass song from 1887, written by a French immigrant, a man who fought in the Civil War, the American-Mexican War and, for something even more intense, was a clown and a circus leader.
Dolly Parton has covered it. Jerry Lee Lewis has covered it. But this duet between Natalie Merchant and Karen Peris is something to behold.
Like so many things that take place when you’re the age I was when this CD came out, I didn’t have the ability or insight or patience to fully appreciate this album. But what I missed out for in 1998 I enjoy more today. Ophelia is always a fine listen.
(Natalie Merchant has released a new album this year, her first in six long years. (Update: I had no idea she’d gone through this terrifying surgery that almost robbed her of her voice.) And she’s touring this summer in support of that album — 37 dates in the U.S. and Europe between now and November.)
Back then, though, I wanted something more like what came out that fall, when Pearl Jam released “Live on Two Legs.” It’s a series of live recordings from their summer tour. It debuted at number 15, and went platinum. It’s a quality of recordings far superior to most any bootleg you might capture. But the band was a bit more restrained by this point — Eddie Vedder was 34, after all, and the rest of the band was right there, too. One review called it a “thank you” to fans. To me, today, it feels more like a valentine to Pearl Jam’s part of grunge. But in 1998, no one thought in that way just yet.
There’s more to the timing in retrospect. This was three years after the band revolted, almost alone, against the Ticketmaster monopoly. That stand effectively clipped their wings in the United States from 1995 to 1998. It’s also two years before the tragedy at the Roskilde Festival. Less important than all of that, the musical landscape changed underfoot.
It is technically proficient for the genre, and a good ride for fans. And, clearly, they don’t want this embedded.
If you play that on YouTube, though, you can hear the full album. It’s worth hearing, even if you’re familiar with the catalog, though there’s not a lot new there. The last time I saw them was a few months after Roskilde. Grown men were crying; it was a bit much. It was in that period of the official bootlegs, and I have a copy of that 2000 show somewhere in this collection.
Pearl Jam, as a band, are still on tour. They have a mini schedule for late this summer. Eddie Vedder is doing a few solo shows, too.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shiver some more.
