On a happier note, I wish you all a copy of “Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder” – Barbara Cook’s gem of a new CD. I won’t gush, I’ll let Steve Suskin over at Playbill do that for me. I’ve been listening to this CD on and off for several days and it sparkles and glows and mesmerizes. Shining trinkets of songs with surprisingly melancholy arrangements not meant to depress, but to illuminate. Amazing how a woman in her 80s can sound like a youth-imbued flapper or chorine one minute, and like ancient granite with a lot to tell the next. Lush. No, I don’t mean she’s drunk. I mean the sound is lush. Real goddamned music with real goddamned words sung by the goddamned best. She even manages to slip in that damn letter song from Sondheim’s PASSION without giving me a conniption fit!
