Monday, March 09, 2009

Not Lenten, but...

What passion, what a voice and who knows what pain that drives someone like this in the path she took.

2 comments:

James the Thickheaded said...

Didja ever see the flick they made about her? (Maybe this is an exceprt). Got dragged to it by a friend back in the day. I think it starts with her recounting the engraved memory of not being asked to her high school prom. She had perfect pitch.... but apparently not the kind that gits dates.

Recall she started singing in one of those Texas bars where they put chicken wire up in front of the band to keep the beer bottles thrown at the performers from hitting them in the face... so they throw them harder so's the glass will "shatter" on the wire and sprinkle the band with "dust" (or was that just a special effect?). Hard scrabble start.. and I think through the mess of her life... so she remained. She left some great recordings... but I think only "Mercedes Benz" shows something of her lighter side.

I think at the time you'd say she sang a sort of torch song... and like Billie Holiday in more ways than one... it fit her life.

Steve Robinson said...

Hi James, Didn't see the movie...ummm...film, but I've heard she was kind of a social outcast. I remember hearing her for the first time in high school in the 60's, and I was floored when she died. I saw "The Wrestler" last week (I'll probably write a blog post about that later), and I think it summarizes Janis Joplin and so many others' lives and deaths: Bad breath is better than no breath at all. What people give up of themselves to get a shadow of the reality of love defines our fallen lives in a lot of ways.