One of my very best friends from college, Jules, taught me much about the guitar. As luck and hard work would have it he wound up being one of the founders and the rhythm guitarist of the band Rev Theory. Along with Dave and Rich they started the band and played the old Townhouse Thursday nights in Lawrence, Mass. I never really dug their music but I appreciated it and it is quite cool to know that the boys I called friends a long time ago topped the charts with their single "Hell Yea". This past summer I caught up with them on tour and was captivated by the entire scene, backstage and just seeing some good old friends. Rev Theory is probably the farthest thing away from Diana Krall but I do have a reason for bringing it all up.
One night in my apartment on campus Jules and I were listening to music, I was constantly trying to show him the way and the light, to ween him off of the hard stuff. To his credit he always listened. It was late, we were quite drunk and I remember listening to Clapton's "Hand Jive" and pointing out a few of my favorite parts both on the guitar and vocally; particularly a line where Clapton drags his voice at the end of a line into the next verse. Afterwards with sober clarity he said: "Dude you really listen to music, all of it man, you really listen to it." He was terribly serious and if I do say so myself enlightened. I didn't have anything enlightening to say except for "Yes I do, everything".
And I really do, there are no throw away notes nor any unimportant syllables, the artist sweated over every second for a reason and it deserves to be cherished and enjoyed. In "Baby Baby All The Time" the first two seconds could be all that one would ever need, and I have hit the back side of the iPod after 0.02 countless times. It is the most seductive, classiest, svelte and sexy two seconds of piano I have ever heard, and it is also the only thing I can play on the ivories.
As captivating as those two seconds are prudence dictates that I engage the remainder of the song, all remaining 3:33 are just as intoxicating. Diana Krall's smoky voice is one that has been the background to countless rendezvous and in retrospect it is unclear whether or not I was focusing on the task at hand or Diana in the back of my mind. Sadly Mr. Costello now has those honors but I can still have my dreams and her to myself as I do now late in the night in an empty New York apartment with a cold bed.
Until the next rendezvous it will have to suffice, it is more than a mere sufficient way to spend an evening alone. I'll continue to wait for Diana to come to her senses, for that smoky voice to roll over and gasp "Baby" in the morning, only to get out of bed to hit other notes on the piano. She hits them all, just like the intro her piano playing is flawlessly simple and perfect, her phrasing holds true and steady until her last gasp of "Time" thereby bookending three and a half minutes of sultry foreplay.
My fantasies notwithstanding this song is what we picture those we want singing in our absence or after it is all finally over. In that way I can at least picture Diana in her apartment blocks away laying in bed with her husband, her mind singing this tune in her head looking out of her window over towards my place with desperate longing. I don't have to picture it because I know it, just like I know each and every note of this and every song I ever write about or own. Details not only contain beauty, they are the beauty and if you are missing them you are missing the point. Which is why in writing this blog on a weekly basis I tend to overuse the words terse, clear, stripped and clean. In the deep layering of modern music I feel much gets lost in the fray. Unlike a painting in which you can stare at the details for hours up end, in music you have to grasp it as it is progressing along its 4/4 tempo; when fluff is added the true notes have a tendency disappear.
Both as a part of my unrequited love fantasy and in its musical purity of the jazz genre this song is one of the best and Diana Krall is in her best form on this album. I can only imagine the offspring her and Elvis will one day produce.
