HIGH NOTES+ |+P A G E+3+O F+3

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Carla DeSantis, editor and publisher, ROCKRGRL:

I think the Lilith Fair was really important -- it proved that there's another way of doing festivals. So many women had been excluded from the major festivals the year before. I traveled with the first four shows on the West Coast, and it was exhilarating for me to be a part of that, to have some continuity. It was interesting to watch people become more comfortable with each other, and to see the acts becoming more comfortable on stage.

Another thing was the speculation as to whether or not there was going to be another Hole record. As Courtney Love becomes more of a mainstream artist instead of an alternative rock artist, what will the future of Hole be? It will be interesting to see next year, if her record does come out, how she's able to balance her mainstream image with expectations of her musically. Then again, this year there seemed to be a backlash against the angst-ridden alternative music of the early '90s -- we saw a lot of happy rock as personified by Hanson and the Spice Girls. There's less suffering in the music. It's just a totally different vibe.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Pete Golkin, Salon contributor:

I covered this year's Kennedy Center Honors in Washington. After a ceremony in the White House, reporters were led out to keep them from participating in the reception that followed. That unlikely honoree Bob Dylan apparently wasn't up for mingling, and he too headed out. With one shot at a question under the North Portico, I asked him whether he had ever been to the White House before. Dylan smiled, pointed at the building and, in his famously elliptical fashion, said simply "That's it, it's right there."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Steve Erickson, author of "American Nomad" (Henry Holt, 1997):

My musical moment of the year is a song called "There You Go," by Katell Keineg. I don't really know who Katell Keineg is -- six months ago I had never heard of her -- but I assume she's one of these Celtic witches in the Kate Bush/Enya/Sinead O'Connor vein. This particular song is the last track on an album called "Jet," and in the song, she's watching the man she loves disappear -- down the boulevard, the avenue, the runway, the white lines. And the first thing that strikes you about the track is its nakedness -- her voice is extraordinary, her desperation verges on the ecstatic, she's completely in the thrall of the moment -- and it's the most emotionally devastating song I've heard all year.

But then the more you hear it, the more mysterious the song gets. You're not really sure how long these two people in the song have known each other -- maybe it's been years, or maybe it was for just a single night, or maybe the singer's never really known him at all -- the performance is so intense in such a hushed way that it's completely possible she's mad. Toward the end of the song, she sings, "I don't why I did it but I did" over and over again -- but you don't know what she's done -- and then, "Now I must return to the underworld." The structural openness of the track, the freeflowing dreaminess of it and the passion of the singing and the stream-of-conscious words, remind me of the song "Madame George" from Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" album, about a young soldier who goes to visit a brothel before leaving Dublin. There's that long, amazing fade-out where the soldier is singing, "Goodbye goodbye ..." to Madame George, to Dublin, but really to his youth. A couple of months ago, playing it back to back with the Van Morrison song, I got it in my head that the Katell Keineg song was Madame George's answer to the soldier, and that in fact she's fallen in love with him in a way he'll never know or deserve. In the end, the more you hear "There You Go," the more you hear someone's whole world in the song. There's a whole story in the song that we'll never know. It's a song full of secrets, and it takes us someplace else.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Joshua Klein, Salon contributor:

Stuck in the car with nothing to listen to but the radio, I settled for the local rock provider. As anonymous bands competed for the award of Most Vapid Performer, I tuned out. But a bleak, RZA-inspired beat and coarse rapper perked my ears. The puzzled DJ came back on the air a minute later and, in a weird "what-was-that?" tone, explained that the preceding rap music was just a Nike commercial -- wouldn't want their demographic to get confused, I figured. After a return to the regularly scheduled program of pap, I tuned out again, then turned off the radio entirely. Programming gaffe or not, I don't think I've ever heard hip-hop sound more revolutionary than it did just then, or rock 'n' roll sound paler than it did in the moments that followed.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Douglas McLennan, Salon contributor

Why'd you have to ask me this year? Last year it might have been finally getting to hear Etta James in person (I'm a huge fan and she'd canceled the last five times I'd arranged to see her). I was almost the only person in the audience for a late Tuesday night show in New York and she was really lingering through her songs. The year before it might have been Dutch sound artist Paul Panhuysen who "tuned" a giant abandoned warehouse with piano wire, using pillars as tuning pegs. Or getting seriously caught in a mosh pit at a Barenaked Ladies concert in Seattle.

But this year's choice seems so utterly conventional and ordinary. Here's to the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, who at a concert at the Metropolitan Museum last May played with such commitment, such astonishing technical and musical skill and understanding of what they were trying to communicate, they renewed my faith that such concerts can be transforming musical experiences. Would that they only happened more often.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Milo Miles, Salon contributor:

Well, even if it sounds more like an advertisement for myself than an epiphany about art, the phone call I got in the depth of Montana this summer informing me that years of freelance writing were over and that I would be full-time Music Features Editor for SoundStone Entertainment was music to my ears unlike any other in 1997.

(This may not be appropriate, but man, it is from the heart.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dawn Eden, Salon contributor:

It's a tie between two events from when I went to London for the Zombies' first-ever reunion and record release party: 1) watching Rod Argent's fingers on the keys as he played note-perfect solos on "She's Not There" and "Time of the Season," and 2) meeting my idol, the multitalented John Carter (co-writer of "Beach Baby," "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat" and many more) at a Soho coffee bar. The most unforgettable moment was when he mentioned, off the cuff, that he was the mystery lead singer on one of my longtime faves, the New Vaudeville Band's "Winchester Cathedral." Now, I tend to get rather excited when confronted with revelations such as this. I won't say how excited, but I wouldn't have been surprised if some of the other patrons demanded some of whatever it was that I was having.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

j. poet, Salon contributor:

At La Peña in Berkeley, Calif., last September, Vocal Sampling, an a cappella sextet from Cuba that replicates the sound of a salsa band using nothing but their mouths and a few well-placed hand claps, rocked the house with their vocal pyrotechnics. My ears told me there was a conjunto backing them up on stage, but everything I heard, including the fat, swooping tones of a fretless bass, came from the six singers. Despite the mouth music "gimmick," Vocal Sampling writes solid original material; if they were singing with a band, they'd still be impressive. The fact that they do it all without one is nothing short of amazing.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Joe Rosenthal, editorial director of THE HUB Music, Salon contributor:

One of my best musical moments of '97 was gazing down through a haze of marijuana smoke from the third balcony of Lincoln Center's stuffy Alice Tully Hall as a wave of teenagers pogoed and slammed their way to the stage at Sonic Youth's mind-altering music marathon this November. Added bonus: opener Tom Verlaine serving up shimmering waves of spaghetti western guitar work accompanied by a stark acoustic guitar. And "Pup Tent" may make my year's top 10 list by a hair off Justin Harwood's bald head, but damn if Luna hasn't become one of rock's most exciting live acts: At their December show at New York's Irving Plaza, Dean Wareham was at his witty best, the rhythm section was as tight as a wet snare and the whole band was downright fearless.

(Musical lowpoint: Forgetting to call ahead for Radiohead tickets at the Hammerstein Ballroom this fall. I battled with scalpers for an hour as market forces drove prices up to more than $100. 1998 Resolution: Call ahead for Radiohead tickets.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Alex Abramovich, Salon contributor:

It was early fall, and my friend and I had spent the entire day driving down old Highway 61 with a broken air conditioner and Johnny Cash on the tape deck. We got to New Orleans, dusty, dirty and dead tired. By the time we caught up to the college students and conventioneers clogging the streets of the French Quarter, we felt like we'd joined the ranks of an invading army. The Quarter was lovely and smelly and so noisy that we didn't notice the singing at first. It took a minute to locate the source: a middle-aged woman singing the opening bars of some old American spiritual. She'd mounted the steps in front of an old music hall and stood there now, in an orange sun dress, singing. There was something sure about her voice, a commanding lilt to her phrasing.

After a few moments, I looked around and noticed a crowd had gathered around the woman in the orange dress. To my left was a tall, gray-haired man with a straw hat and a camera. He was smiling at his wife -- an elderly woman with a mole on her cheek and a beehive hairdo -- and there was such love, such admiration in that look. So much more, I thought, than I'd ever felt for anyone. And as I stood looking at them, she opened her mouth to sing. And someone in front of her started singing, and another, and another, and soon everyone there was singing. The crowd had become a choir -- we had been drawn completely outside of ourselves. It's stayed with me somewhat, that feeling. And now, every time I listen to music, it's an effort to recapture it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Douglas Wolk, Salon contributor:

In November, I drove 100 miles or so to a dorm basement in Connecticut to see the Ex, a brilliant anarchist Dutch art-punk band now in their 20th year of existence, who release their own records. Others in the audience had driven farther. The Ex played a staggering set of new material, and as their drummer, Katrin, yelled the chorus of one of her songs, her voice was the most joyful thing I heard all year. This, I thought, is the point of indie rock and its culture: that you can make your music entirely on your own terms, and the people to whom it matters will do what it takes to find it; that there's a true reward for devoting your life to your art.
SALON | Dec. 24, 1997

What was your best musical moment of 1997? Count it off in Table Talk.