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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
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 "Black Angel's Death Song"
   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            DROPOUT
   literally 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.


  [ref]

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