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ROLLING_A_MODEL

                                            February 18, 2003
                                  
Let's compare Britney Spears to     
Ashley Adams for a minute.          (If you have any idea      
                                    how insulting that         
                                    comparison is, forgive me.)
   Odds are, you've never                                      
   heard of Ashley Adams,         
   but she's the reason I     
   ended up looking at   
   Britney Spears books                         
   for a few minutes last                                             
   night.  She was                  Album recommendation:
   performing at Borders            "Flowers for         
   on stand-up bass, in a            Mrs. Dalloway"         
   duo with Diane                     
   DeGrutola on cello.   
                          

These women are real musicians, both
composers and improvisers who can
pretty much just stand up and crank 
out interesting music on demand.  

At one point as an improvisation
game, they had a friend pull some
books and prop them up in front
of them on the music stand, to
use as inspiration for whatever
they were going to play.  He
chose a copy of "Punk 77" and
some Britney book.  
   
   They had a hard time with this piece. 
   Diane DeGrutola threw in some        
   convincing John Cale-type punk cello 
   playing, and Ashely tried to hit 
   a touch of trite melody here and     
   there...  As it turns out neither of 
   *them* have heard any Britney Spears   
   music either, and they literally         DROPOUT
   didn't know what to do with the idea. 
                                     

As far as her image goes, Ashley is
a buxom blond woman, with some kind 
of silly, slightly ditzy California
girl mannerisms -- at least when
she's *not* playing.  When she does
play, all of that goes away, and she
takes on an entirely different
persona: very serious, completely
focused on the music.  She stays in
that mode until the piece is over,
and suddenly stops, grins, hugs her
contrabass to her breasts, and flips
her hair around.

In this contrast I think there's an
angle that any idiot music journalist
would have no trouble playing up.
Here you've got the condition of
American womanhood, nicely symbolized
in an easy-on-the-eyes package,
without the expense or effort of
re-packaging.  What you see is what
she really is.

And she can really play. 

I submit that if the world
*really* needs a female
musician's image to be             And maybe we could all 
obsessed with, they could          just give Britney a    
do a lot worse than Ashely         break and let her slide
Adams.                             into a comfortable     
                                   early-middleaged       
                                   nervous breakdown.     


  http://www.bayimproviser.com/artistdetail.asp?artist_id=78

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