January 2012
21 posts
Depending on how you hear it, this is Bill Murray’s nightclub sleazeball Nick Winters, strolling from table to table, weaving the words of whatever standard or current hit he’s singing into the same, all-purpose drool he’s dripping over newlyweds or vacationers or businessmen-with-hookers or ready-to-divorce-on-the-spot-couples kept only by their own politeness from strangling him on the spot (“Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain”, hey we’ve all been there, right?”) - or its the latest of the countless lounge singers who always kept two copies of Chet Baker Sings, one LP to play, one still shrink-wrapped, pristine, to gaze at, to hold, to walk around the room with while listening to the other one, murmuring ” I Fall in Love Too Easily”, “But Not for Me”, “My Funny Valentine”. Or it’s a walk away from a career already suspended over a void of nothingness, it’s almost any cut on an album that’s meant to pretend it’s just a song, not a worthless, desperate bet against ruin.
Greil Marcus, on The Doors’ “Queen of the Highway”