She’s No Nick Drake – IOTW Report

She’s No Nick Drake

Sunday, 17 January 2016, 2:14 BFH Uncategorized 22

People have a fadination fascination with discovering music that’s been long buried or, in this case, never discovered. It has a different sort of appeal, like opening a time capsule.

The latest discovery is Connie Converse, who disappeared, coincidentally, the same year as Nick Drake, an English singer/songwriter, who took his own life because he never achieved the success he felt he deserved.

His music became popular long after he died, popularized mainly through a television commercial for Volkswagen.

Connie Converse’s brother thinks she took her own life that same year. And in yet another coincidence, she was last seen packing her things in a Volkswagen before she hit the road.

Converse was never signed to a label. Her music exists as a bunch of crude recordings, one of which was recorded in someone’s kitchen back in the mid-fifties. (Don’t get the wrong impression. Her music isn’t from the 70s. That is when she disappeared. The recordings are from much earlier than that.)

It was this recording that was played on NPR in 2004 that fascinated Dan Dzula, a musician and songwriter that works in … advertising. (Look for Connie Converse to be the backing song for some sort of product in the future.)

I don’t find Converse’s music all that appealing. Her singing is tinny and reedy, a bit flat and has the warble of a singer from the 20s and 30s. Her phrasing and diction is off-putting, like an elocution teacher trying to let herself go at karaoke night. The music is story/lyric driven, and I’m not interested in the stories.

This passage from Priceonomics may explain her appeal –

Many of the songs subtly subvert McCarthy’s conservatism, and, for that matter, Converse’s parents’.

Gee whiz, even long dead, marginally talented musicians get a leg up in the industry if they are anti-conservative.

Sure, Converse is, I guess, ahead of her time. She uses unexpectedly sophisticated chords on some tunes, but it doesn’t add up to pleasantry. You can be innovative and still boring. Converse isn’t crap, but her appeal lies more in the story than in the music.

Judge for yourself. 

My guess for which song will make its way onto a commercial is this one.

22 Comments on She’s No Nick Drake

  1. I didn’t like Connie Converse’s flat voice. I agree with your review; plus the fact that I don’t like too many women’s voices.

    I did rather like Nick Drake’s song they played for the Volkswagen ad. I checked out some of his other songs, and though they all seemed to be the same-ish, I could listen to him in spurts.

  3. I recall buying music based on an NPR interview. They played the best snippets, and while driving it sounded good.

    The CD arrives in the mail and I put it on. Then to my utter amazement, I said to myself ‘WTF was I thinking?’

    My wife mocked me for having terrible taste in music.

    Long story short, I discount anything I here on NPR.

  17. https://youtu.be/2_2lGkEU4Xs
    There can be a poverty of perspective between todays yutes and the folks who lived through much of what seems odd today. That was the pete seeger generation and some of those off beat song writers were actually very popular with the hippie movement. They all couldnt be Cohen getting blown by Joplin.

  19. I like the guitar playing – sounds like Groucho in Duck Soup. The singing – she sounds like one of the Shaggs. Interesting – sounds like the hipster doofus stuff you hear at Starbucks.

  21. Had I heard her 8 years ago I’d be more open to it.
    I’ve about had it with the quirky woman playing a 20 dollar untuned guitar, or a ukelele, and singing like she’s singing nursery rhymes.

    Find one singer like that on Spotify and the “similar artists” list goes on forever.

    We don’t need any more of this. And I certainly do not want to hear it anymore on friggin commercials!!!!!

    It’s the infantilizing of America.

    1

Comments are closed.

iOTWreport.com ©2024 ----- iOTWreport is not responsible for the content of comments. All opinions in comments are solely the commenter's.