Skip to main content

Welcome to Careless Notions

For years I've found myself writing little mini-essays dealing with various subjects, either as part of an e-mail chain between friends, or in the occasional comment form on sites scattered about the net. I've finally decided to consolidate all of that writing here at Careless Notions. As the name implies, a lot of these posts are likely to be half-baked and not entirely thought out, but hopefully some kernel of truth will always rest at their center.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Something To Remember / Evita

Don't have much to say about either Madonna project from this era - her ballads collection Something To Remember  or Evita  - other than it was clear Madge was doubling down on the slow, classy, pretty ballads in the wake of the monster success of "Take A Bow".  Commercially I suppose this made sense, up to a point.   But Madonna was never just about ballads, and the disturbing run of them began to make it sound like she'd been taken over by a pod person.  From the planet B'oring. It was nice to get single hits like "This Used To Be My Playground" and "I'll Remember" collected in one place, since they hadn’t appeared on a proper Madonna album before.  When coupled with tasteful , ballady album hits like "Rain", the collection helped to demonstrate that Madonna could, in fact, do justice to ballads (and write 'em, too).   Hello, Mr. Evita Producers! Here's my audition tape! It's sure breezy where love d

I'm Breathless

I'm probably one of the few people who liked this album, some of it quite a lot. I was spinning it off and on recently, and the years (and my subsequent experience with standards) have afforded me a better appreciation of the record. I liked it in 1990, but in 2017 I better understand why I liked it, and how it compares to other singers' (and composers') work. For starters, I think the tracks are all pretty much perfect for the Dick Tracy character of Breathless Mahoney, one of Madonna's few good cinematic performances. Maybe she could have been a star in a different era. The album also sounds phenomenal - it's an analog recording but sounds digital, very cool, crisp and transparent. It does not however suffer from '80s-itis. There's considerable bass, it's rich and not boomy, and it's deep. The low end is satisfying and natural on both the acoustic and electronic-driven numbers. Great EQ, excellent mastering by Stephen Marcussen. This might

Rorschach Test

I'm finding the online - mostly Facebook - reaction to billionaire child rapist Jeffrey Epstein's "suicide" particularly informative. As a global sex trafficker with ties to some of the wealthiest, most powerful business, academic, entertainment and political figures around the globe, Epstein mysteriously died in his jail cell the same night  his case files were unsealed. The timing couldn't be more obvious.  He was apparently taken off suicide watch a few days before (why?), the guards didn't make their usual rounds the night he died (curious), there's a report that Barr himself visited the jail recently (WTF?), and now we've learned the surveillance cameras weren't working (hmmm).  If this wasn't a hit, it's the most amazing string of coincidences in world history. Frankly, I find the whole notion that a raging narcissist like Epstein - a guy who wanted to seed the human race with his DNA  (you can't make this shit up) - would