(The photo above was taken in Vancouver, B.C., in front of the basketball courts at David Lam Park with a view toward False Creek.)
“Let Them Talk”
From the title of this post, you might have thought I was going to write about some juicy gossip or start a rumor. But I don’t do rumors or gossip.
This is about a weekend trip I took to Vancouver, British Columbia, and about a song called, “Let Them Talk”, which I heard for the first time about three weeks ago.
At that time, I was looking on youtube through all the music videos of Lizz Wright, my favorite singer, to see if any new ones had been uploaded. I do that every once in a while because I don’t want to miss anything she does. Her music really moves me.
So as I was looking through her videos, “Let Them Talk” caught my eye and I realized I had never heard of the song before, much less her version of it.
Ahh! The way she sings it, just melts my heart. I may need reconstructive surgery. But how do you mend a melted heart? I guess I’ll just have to live with it.
It’s a song by a guy named Sonny Thompson and it has been covered by at least 36 people, that I know of. I know because I found them through a Google search and I listened to each version. I wanted to compare the original and any other covers with Lizz’s version.
I know I’m biased but I happen to think that her covers are always way better than the originals and other covers. And I’m always curious about her process of listening to an original and then turning it into the uniquely beautiful version that she always does. (I’d like to add that the piano accompaniment is amazing too if you listen closely to it. I think it might be Kenny Banks Sr. playing but I’m not sure. It sounds like him.)
So I was captivated by her version of the song and I have listened to it repeatedly the past few weeks. I’ll never tire of listening to it. The song, itself, is a good one, but it’s her voice and the way she sings it that render it supreme. I think she ad libs a little bit more than usual in this song than she does in others but she does it to my liking. Not that my liking matters to her at all but…..it matters to me!
Excuse Me!….But my opinion wants to butt into this conversation now…….
“I’ve never much cared for swing, for scat or for excessive, or maybe I should say overdone, ad lib. It all seems a bit too showy and extraneous to me. A little ad lib goes a long way. The subtler, the bettler! (Pronounced the subtle-er, the bettle-er.)”
So I like the way she ad libs in “Let Them Talk”. It’s creative but tempered, expressive, clear and bright. In the past, when I attended her shows, I always enjoyed watching and listening to her purposefully change a song up a bit, from the album version, as she honed her craft, in real time, on stage.
She reminds me of when I was a kid, watching Shirley Temple when she was a child acting in various movies. I remember thinking she was so expressive, bright and smart and a delight to watch.
So is Lizz.
I don’t have the song in my iTunes library yet so I play the song from youtube. Then I hit the “refresh” symbol and listen to it again. Then I hit “refresh” again and listen again.
She’s the most “refresh”ing source of musical magic for me.
When she sings the part of the song that says, “We have the kind of love that’s so strong, so strong, we’ll be together from now on”, that gives me the “chivers“. But the whole song really gets to me.
Chivers is a word I invented.
(In other words, you might simply say it’s a neologism comprised by a portmanteau of chills and quivers.)🤓
Weekend Trip To Vancouver
Just recently, I made a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, in Canada. I just wanted to get away for awhile to reenergize. I hadn’t been up there for several years.
While I was there, I noticed a lot of similarities between Vancouver and Seattle. Vancouver is a bustling West Coast urban center surrounded by natural beauty. It has thriving art, music and food scenes. It’s ethnically diverse. The architecture is similar. The area is densely populated. The one thing I didn’t see was a lot of cranes dominating the air space.
I just had Saturday……
……To look around Vancouver.
……To play basketball at two different courts with water views:
the David Lam Park Basketball Courts
(View from the basketball court in the David Lam Park)
the Kitsilano Beach Courts
(These courts are just West of Vancouver, with a view out to the English Bay.)
……To step into the local Starbucks by the Kitsilano Beach, after I finished playing basketball, to just chill for a little bit with my new favorite hot drink there, a tall cinnamon shortbread latte.
…..To shop at an Asian Food Market. It smelled so good in there. The scent of sesame oil wafted through the air, beckoning me to stay there and eat one of everything.
……Oh and I’d like to specially mention the “Kypriaki Mediterranean Grill” , a restaurant I went to Saturday night before I left Vancouver the next day. All the food I ordered was so delicious. I had rack of lamb with a side of portobello mushrooms, tiger claw prawns, and the best pita bread I’ve ever had. I interrogated the waitress to get the recipe for the sauce on the mushrooms but she said the chef would never reveal his secret. So I put a little of it in a to go box and told her I was going to take it back to a lab in Seattle and have it analyzed. She laughed but she agreed with me about how good the sauce was.
That weekend the weather was a little chilly. The temperature was 45 degrees and the skies were cloudy. But it was nice to see so many people out and about, enjoying the day, in spite of the weather.
Most of my day was on the courts outside so the way I’m dressed in the basketball video is how I was dressed all day long until I got back to the Airbnb.
I was in a really good place, not emotionally, I was just in a liquor store. 😃
But seriously, I went in there to buy a little bottle of rum, a coke and a lime. The clerk saw the shirt I was wearing and asked me if LiZ2 was really a new element?
So I explained to him about Lizz and how I regard her as a National Treasure and think she is a rare element on this earth, so I made up the shirt to wear when I play ball in order to promote Lizz.
I think the 2020-2030 decade is going to be all about Lizz. You know every 10 years there seems to be one person who has Universal appeal and stands out among the rest? Well, I think it’s Lizz’s turn in the 2020’s. The 1940’s I think it was Frank Sinatra. The 50’s it was Elvis. The 60’s it was The Beatles. And the 80’s I think it was Michael Jackson. I skipped the 70’s, 90’s, and 2000’s because I don’t have a good read on who it might have been during those decades.
When I play basketball, I like to listen to Lizz’s music. So the following video clip is me playing at the Kitsilano Beach Courts with Lizz singing “Let Them Talk”.
Focus on her singing, not my playing, if you know what’s good for you! 😀
(This is my granddaughter, Evie, and I, “discovering our fists” at different stages in our lives.)
😳😂
You heard the song, right?
Did you get the chivers too?
P. S. The only problem I had all weekend was parking…..
P.P.S. In my previous post, “Sound Bytes (Intro)”, I said the next few posts coming would be called Sound Bytes #1 and Sound Bytes #2, etc., and they will be coming up soon. But as I prepare the Sound Bytes Series, I may insert other posts, such as this one. Just so you know.
