| Sure, Johnny Hartman
thought that as he watched the sparse traffic dart aimlessly through
the dark endless crazy night that embraced New York City like two
long arms draped in murky velvet rising from an endless sea of love
and hope and squalor. Sure he did. Except that he never did, of course,
and we all know it, though Joe Quinn oughtn’t be vilified for
imagining so — you get hired to write liner notes, you just do
the best you can and hope that somebody who might otherwise have passed
the record over gives it a second look. What happens when Joe Quinn
starts making stuff up, though, is that matters get weird. His general
nonsense adds to the cumulative effect, which is a little disorienting.
The feeling that this album gives off from the second you look at
its cover is that it’s a doorway into some nether-region that
isn’t exactly “back in time,” since I wasn’t even
born when it was recorded, but isn’t exactly the present,
either. Perhaps it is a doorway into the micropresent, where close
listening takes place. Or into a past that only started existing once
enough lies had been told about it. |
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