Big Search – Bouquet
It’s hard to know how much you can expect to depend on artists to help out with serious matters. But anyone who has ever been touched by the work of an artist will feel that holding them to these kinds of standards is unfair. Like a footballer who only knows how to dribble, artists are luxury additions to society. Usually, they can’t change a lightbulb and, despite what they claim, cannot alter the results of the election.
In fact, the best that many of them are able to do is to get themselves lost and report on it. The music didn’t used to be this way. The man holding an acoustic guitar and singing songs usually had to either have some stories about the common man ready or possess a remarkable ability to make the people who heard the music want to dance.
Big Search’s “Bouquet” sounds like music made by someone who was once selected for a high-paying, well-esteemed position that, instead, chose to burn his black book of contacts and run up to the hills. He comes back down once in a while and shares his stories with those who will listen. But picking up where he left off is not an option for him. It may just be that he found something more precious. But either way, it doesn’t matter. Like Van Morrisson said: “it’s too late to stop now.”
Moondusty – Moondusty #1
They say that the happiest gambler is the one who never ever saw a winning hand. If that’s true, then it must also be accurate to say that all the people who desperately look for a club to join or for a cause to support find the closest thing to happiness when they do not locate these things. Nobody is born to follow, really, not even the people trying so hard to do it.
There’s a real shortage of people who are self-assured, mostly satisfied with themselves, and rarely in need of selling what they do to others. The music world, in particular, has very few of these. It’s easy to understand why. The pop world makes stars as quickly as it crushes careers, and the folks who need a taste of that confirmation of their self-worth must follow the trends.
Moondusty seems very comfortable with who he is, and with what his music needs to do. He’s not looking for comfort or searching the world over for a thing that will make him whole. He just is, he just keeps going, he just makes music on his own like it’s the most natural thing to do. There’s plenty to admire about “Moondusty #1” and not just the fact that it’s as pleasant as a piece of pastry and a nice cup of coffee on a Winter morning.
