Danielle Peck/GFS Marketplace 400 @ Michigan International Speedway
Me 'n' Cecil have never heard of Danielle Peck. Probably won't ever again, either. We don't keep up with popular music much. So I don't know if this gal Danielle is big time or plans on being that anytime soon, but she can sing our National Anthem and give it the reverence it requires, so she's okay by me.
The Star Spangled Banner is a booger of a song to sing. Even if you can comfortably manage a couple of octaves, there's a few notes tossed in there that aren't that easy to hit, and they come right after notes that don't provide the best foothold for the leap up to them. Particularly whatever note it is that the word "free" in the second to last line, "O'er the land of the free," falls on. You can pretty much count on anyone singing TSSB to choke a bit on that one, although really good singers often employ little "cheats" to get up there and still sound acceptable. And by "little cheats" I do not mean that mellifluous bullshit that so-called "Soul" and "R & B" singers have been trying to pass off as "great singing" ever since Whitney Houston's first record came out. Twenty+ years after the release of "Savin' All My Love For You", the entire world knows that Houston enjoys everything to the point of detrimental excess, and that does not exclude musical notes.
Some fuckin' clown in the 80's decided that the more notes you could use to sing one single fucking word made you a great singer and if anyone knows who started that ridiculous rumor, I'll personally hunt him down and kill him. After I make him listen to Keith Richard's guitar solo in "Parachute Woman" for 48 hours straight.
It is much harder to hold a single note and make it sound good the entire time you're singing it. Real singers know that. And the term "less is more" is extremely important when taking on The Star Spangled Banner. The song demands respect from both a musical and a societal standpoint.
Cecil and I were quite pleased that Ms. Peck gave our National Anthem the respect it deserves, and so did the crowd and the drivers, from whom I saw nary a wince or a titter, as so often happens when some American Idol Wannabe takes the mike just long enough to butcher the fuck out of it.
To sum it up:
Cecil gave her THREE AND A HALF STARS - with no comments other than he didn't detect any mistakes, but did notice her having to work on that last "free".
I also gave her THREE AND A HALF STARS- because of that pesky "free" - which she hit and held perfectly, but it was the only note she sang that you could visibly and audibly tell she was "working" at; and also because on the word "O'er" (before "the ramparts", she hit a note that worked, but sounded like she thought there was a key change right there. And in spite of the excellent and faithful rendering she gave us, she failed to totally "sell it". To convince us that she was filled to the brim with Rapturous Patriotism. But I'm just nit-picking now.
Nice job, Danielle! More kudos for sounding strong on the low alto part in the beginning, which so many have to almost whisper.
THE FLYOVER: Sounded like a buncha big, really cool jets. Too bad we couldn't see them and they weren't credited..... NB-FUCKING-C!!!!! God you suck. Everybody will be so glad when you're gone next year. ABC will probably screw up the NASCAR coverage too, but nobody could suck as bad as you do, NBC. Nobody. Your money's on the dresser. Get out.
THE COMMAND: Lisa Davan of Gordon Food Services. Dear Stephen Pope, THIS is how it is done. Lisa "Get's it." It's a big ass race with 43 loud as shit cars going 200 miles per hour with a hundred thousand people watching, YOU!! SHOUT!! THE WORDS!!! OKAY?!! Extra credit to Lisa for pausing between words to encourage crowd participation, and for literally throwing herself into it. She was head-banging like she was at a Metallica concert or something. It was great.
Mr. Pope. You got beat by a girl. Again. Now go back home to your wife and cower in the laundry room. You wuss.
The Star Spangled Banner is a booger of a song to sing. Even if you can comfortably manage a couple of octaves, there's a few notes tossed in there that aren't that easy to hit, and they come right after notes that don't provide the best foothold for the leap up to them. Particularly whatever note it is that the word "free" in the second to last line, "O'er the land of the free," falls on. You can pretty much count on anyone singing TSSB to choke a bit on that one, although really good singers often employ little "cheats" to get up there and still sound acceptable. And by "little cheats" I do not mean that mellifluous bullshit that so-called "Soul" and "R & B" singers have been trying to pass off as "great singing" ever since Whitney Houston's first record came out. Twenty+ years after the release of "Savin' All My Love For You", the entire world knows that Houston enjoys everything to the point of detrimental excess, and that does not exclude musical notes.
Some fuckin' clown in the 80's decided that the more notes you could use to sing one single fucking word made you a great singer and if anyone knows who started that ridiculous rumor, I'll personally hunt him down and kill him. After I make him listen to Keith Richard's guitar solo in "Parachute Woman" for 48 hours straight.
It is much harder to hold a single note and make it sound good the entire time you're singing it. Real singers know that. And the term "less is more" is extremely important when taking on The Star Spangled Banner. The song demands respect from both a musical and a societal standpoint.
Cecil and I were quite pleased that Ms. Peck gave our National Anthem the respect it deserves, and so did the crowd and the drivers, from whom I saw nary a wince or a titter, as so often happens when some American Idol Wannabe takes the mike just long enough to butcher the fuck out of it.
To sum it up:
Cecil gave her THREE AND A HALF STARS - with no comments other than he didn't detect any mistakes, but did notice her having to work on that last "free".
I also gave her THREE AND A HALF STARS- because of that pesky "free" - which she hit and held perfectly, but it was the only note she sang that you could visibly and audibly tell she was "working" at; and also because on the word "O'er" (before "the ramparts", she hit a note that worked, but sounded like she thought there was a key change right there. And in spite of the excellent and faithful rendering she gave us, she failed to totally "sell it". To convince us that she was filled to the brim with Rapturous Patriotism. But I'm just nit-picking now.
Nice job, Danielle! More kudos for sounding strong on the low alto part in the beginning, which so many have to almost whisper.
THE FLYOVER: Sounded like a buncha big, really cool jets. Too bad we couldn't see them and they weren't credited..... NB-FUCKING-C!!!!! God you suck. Everybody will be so glad when you're gone next year. ABC will probably screw up the NASCAR coverage too, but nobody could suck as bad as you do, NBC. Nobody. Your money's on the dresser. Get out.
THE COMMAND: Lisa Davan of Gordon Food Services. Dear Stephen Pope, THIS is how it is done. Lisa "Get's it." It's a big ass race with 43 loud as shit cars going 200 miles per hour with a hundred thousand people watching, YOU!! SHOUT!! THE WORDS!!! OKAY?!! Extra credit to Lisa for pausing between words to encourage crowd participation, and for literally throwing herself into it. She was head-banging like she was at a Metallica concert or something. It was great.
Mr. Pope. You got beat by a girl. Again. Now go back home to your wife and cower in the laundry room. You wuss.
posted by The Dixie Butcher at 11:26 PM
3 Comments:
Exactly. What the fuck was up with missing the flyover? Was it a political statement against war machines, incompetence? I was sure they would show a replay, but I finally saw a snippet in Speed Channel's post race coverage. Bill Weber? Dead man! Wally Dallenbach? Dead man!
Agree with the start engines command. That chick rocked.
Thank god there is now a site that addresses my concerns.
rankin' rob
Listen by god. I got a woman mean as she can be... when some other dame or girlyman tries to give me the fast eye. And that singing thing, where it sounds like they are hollerin' like they got a rusty nail in the taint, it's called "melisma".
Sspeaking of girlymen, who are these damn shemales running around pretending to be stock car drivers? I was watching the race yesterday on my new HiDef TV, and hell, some of those young ones they looked like they had makeup on. I bet the next big new track will probably be in San Francisco, and there will be a lot of 'rearending" going on, if you know what I mean. If Jimmy Jjohnson and Kyle Bush ain't fruitbats, i don't know who is. Some of them are trying to look prettyer than Dannyca Patricka. I think she's fine, but don't tell Eethel. She will shoot the new TV.
Whatever happened to ugly men drivers, like Buddy Baker, and the Allisons, and Ironhead?
Damn, Bristol's next - wreckin' time!
Remus Dawson
Melisma. Are you sure you don't mean "miasma"?
1 : a vaporous exhalation formerly believed to cause disease;
Nope. I looked it up, you're right, Mr. Dawson - thanks for schoolin' me! Melisma it is.
And who you callin' Ugly Men? I think Junior Johnson is hot. He wouldn't have to tie a bag of his bacon around his neck to get me to follow him home. Schrader's a honey, too.
Cecil thinks Kasey Kahne looks like a gay, silent movie star. I concur. Rankin' Rob sez Jamie McMurray has "a whiff of the Metrosexual" about him. A whiff? I think he spilt the whole jug of cologne on himself. And having Rusty Wallace making him iron pleats in his blue jeans don't help his case none either.
It's a sad thing, Mr. Dawson, that to a large degree the current drivers these days have to not only be able to win races, but to look pretty in order to get them millions of dollars from the sponsors. A sad, sad, wrong, sad thing.
God Bless Tony Stewart and that big o' gut of his. Makes me wanna blow a big raspberry on it. Thanks for keepin' it real, Smoke.
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