Johnette Napolitano - Scarred CD

 Hi -Tone, Memphis, 'Scarred' Live Performance, 10-30-07.
Hi -Tone, Memphis, Supporting Tour for 'Scarred', 10-30-07. Like an apparition she breezed onto the stage and dropped the hood of her shawl before being recognized. Her only company was a bottle of red, a rose, an electric-acoustic, a dense fog of loss, and unexpected stabs of humorous banter. Skeletal lyrics whirled with full-bodied sounds, and my ears were reminded of Nico’s ‘Marble Index' coated with a thicker layer of soot, time passage, and regret. The spirit swayed and swooned, while the guitar chords and vocal chords raged and roared against the dimming and dying of the light. Not bad for LA’s Matron Bard. ‘Scarred’. Later… …she took a look at my CBGB shirt, laughed, tossed her raven hair aside, and put her hand on my chest like an old acquaintance. I told her that I often thought of 'Bloodletting' during my early and lonely forays into Clinical Surgery. "You're feeding my fetish…" she mumbled … and then she hugged me. She held my arm and showed me her strumming hand, somewhere between the third and fourth metacarpals and phalanges where ability and desire tapers into possibility and chance, and complained of tendinous pain following a fall. And I thought to myself, “who doesn’t?” My fingers examined. Then I felt. Not the pointed tenderness that screams for attention, but the dull variety: that subtype of pain that can become a constant companion…a memory…a scar. Pain in the hand. Pain in the heart. Pain in the songs. The pain of post-traumatic bursitis. We took a picture together. I walked away. And I felt her heat, and memories of old friends and lovers dim on my back. The Rain from Spain stayed mainly in the Plain of Hindsight, and The Queen of Pain remained bathed in the flickering bar room light. I told her manager to try NSAIDS and heating pads. I suggested he contact and grant William Orbit, the 'Grey Album' auteur, or an unknown with a vision and a computer the rights to mash, cut, and twist her songs. “The bones and flesh remain vital. All we need is a different coat of skin.” "Think Trent Reznor. Think Johnny Cash. Think ’Hurt’." His eyes lit, and he nodded his head. He said he would mention it to her. "Twist it" I said, like a knife in a wound. Twist it the way these and those songs twist through the years and change their meaning. Twist it… Sepehre Naficy, M.D.
Submitted by sn55 (Memphis, TN, USA)
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