Don McLean, the Doors, Sufjan Stevens, ambient sound

Don McLean came to B_______'s yesterday for an album signing. He's come out with a new retrospective CD that was, I'm sorry, just terrible. The line to have him sign a product seemed long but moved quickly. "American Pie" came over the music system, and by the time it had ended the line had been serviced, and there were no more autograph-seekers, and Don McLean redonned his red silk kerchief and swept on out of there, and the whole scene was pretty sad even if like me you've never liked that song.

"The killer awoke before dawn; he put his boots on" in the Oedipal-dream section of The Doors's "The End" is one of the better spoken lines in songs that I can think of. "The End" also gets one of the better legendary-origin awards, in that the Ds broke into the studio in the wee a.m. to record it, which they did in one take around a candle. Related to this and on a slightly larger scale is the recording of "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" by Brian Wilson for "Smile", which apparently set buildings on fire all over. Clearly untrue, and clearly derivative from the original (and possibly itself-untrue) story that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was started by the unruly cow (there's your title) of Mrs. O'Leary. But legends are not on the list for their unflappable credentials.

Sufjan Stevens makes good on the promise Duncan Sheik never really did. Three of the four albums DS has made are strong, "Phantom Moon" being the sparest and best and "Daylight" being the wretchedly bad album #4. But as strong as his strong work is, as lush and expansive, it doesn't achieve the feeling of bigness that Sufjan Stevens crafts with fewer, more judiciously employed instruments. SS's range dwarfs Duncan's. It's as though SS has taken the spareness of DS's "Phantom Moon" and made an album bigger than "DS" or "Humming". The first two pieces of SS's Great States project are feats because they do this and do this and do this, song after song: they realize a grand ambition through modest means. Which is another way of saying "sum > parts". DS could have gone another way, but he always tended to veer toward introspection and self-analysis. Wasn't into things not DS or DS-related. SS however treats the larger world as into which he can introspect as simply as you or I or DS introspect about ourselves daily. This is the good of SS: his personal (sounding) approach to the large - the state, the nation, the human.