Warren wants to put "Take Me to the River" first thing on the CD. I'd'a put it last, or not on there at all -- partly because I don't think it's Representative, and partly because I don't think I do it well. I guess we're agreed that for the audition CD, being Representative is optional, but I'm still pretty embarrassed by doing the song in the first place. (It remains a mystery why I worked it up at all. I guess I like the song too much, and hoped for the best.) Part of it is that I don't think of myself as a "rocker" (singing *or* playing), part is that it's (supposed to be) so drum and bass intensive, and we have neither (which is why I tried to add that MIDI part once), and part is that I'm singing it an octave down.
I guess every song I play has a little story to go with it. "Let It Be" is a favorite lately because I think I sing it well, and I feel like it's one song that I'm not really "imitating the original" so much. I don't sound like Paul the way I sound like James, and the guitar part is clearly not Paul's piano, so I guess I like to fantasize that it's (at least a little bit) a re-interpretation, rather than an imitation, which makes me feel cool. Unlike, say, "Fire and Rain" where I'm playing as exactly like James as I can, though I've tried to back down on the sounding-like-James vocally, and sing it a bit more like me instead.
The story on "Five O'Clock World" is that I heard it done by Hal Ketchum, and am imitating his version. I like the yodeling in it, mostly because it's so "out there" -- even more scary to do in public than normal singing. I like doing it, early and often -- and because of the "edge", it's what I chose to do at The Gypsy Den. But then it came to my attention that every "young and hip" listener associates it *only* with the Drew Carey show -- and now I'm mostly embarrassed to do it, 'cuz of the lame cultural reference. When older people are in the house, I think it sounds as I intended it, but with a younger audience, my sincere reading juxtaposed with Drew Carey's ironic comedic take = embarrassing. "Who's the geek up there singing that Joke Song like it was Mozart?"
And if you can bear another story, "A Whole New World" is probably just a mistake. There's a great, soft country version on the "Best of Country Sing the Best of Disney" album, by Collin Raye, a reasonably famous country star. (A) I'm not pulling off the country feel he (and his band) does, and (B) despite it being the Big Song from a relatively recent Disney hit, none of the little kids actually seem to recognize it.
