Randy Newman: I think it’s going to rain today

First, to write one song as good as that… I have let slip that ambition over the years. Some songs, pieces of music, are truly enough to imagine divine intervention.

Judy Collins voice, so beautiful and pervasive in the late sixties-seventies, introducing us to the Randy Newmans and Joni Mitchells etc. (although it may have been Tom Rush’s performance who first brought Joni to my attention), yet there was always a soupçon of establishment on her. Perhaps the tendency to larger orchestrations? I find her phrasing of this performance a bit lugubrious, but then I imagine having to sing while negotiating that stage, in heels, with inconsistent lighting cues hard enough (is that the microphone hidden behind the flower? I don’t think they had radio yet, one shows up in the top of the frame around 2.26, or maybe they prerecorded and she is syncing? I donno’).

Thanks for the blast.