| Wynonna and I couldn't talk to each other, but, lo and behold, we could sing together. | |  |  | | Naomi (left) and Wynonna Judd, circa 1990. | | (Ron Wolfson/The Chronicle Collection/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | "Wynonna and I couldn't talk to each other, but, lo and behold, we could sing together." | | - Naomi Judd, 1946 – 2022 | |
| | rantnrave:// | Wash Away the Pain
"Silence so deep only my soul can hear" is one of the many ways NAOMI JUDD expressed the trauma and heartbreak that had been part of her life for as long as she could remember. The line shows up in the middle of the stunning ballad "RIVER OF TIME," the title cut of the JUDDS' penultimate album, which she wrote with JOHN BARLOW JARVIS. Her daughter/bandmate WYNONNA begins the song alone. Wynonna was the lead singer. Naomi was the more active songwriter, the more voluble stage presence, the harmony glue and the slightly more likely to talk in public about that deep silence, although mother and daughter both had their share of it. The "silence so deep" line shows up halfway through the first verse of "River of Time," and that's where Naomi's voice joins in for the first time, as if to make sure you hear that silence and understand that pain. Pop music hardly gets more immediate and believable than Naomi and Wynonna Judd at that exact moment in 1989, two years before a Hepatitis C diagnosis that Naomi was told was fatal forced the Judds to call it quits.
The matriarch of one of the greatest—and most successful—country groups of the 1980s survived the disease. She lived to tell. She spent the following decades pursuing a variety of TV roles that suited her electric stage personality, writing books, raising money for hepatitis research, occasionally reuniting with her daughter and more than occasionally talking about her crippling mental illness, which she wrote about at length in her 2016 memoir, also called RIVER OF TIME. She wanted people to understand. She was an advocate, and not only for herself. She had always been that. "In their songs and especially in Naomi's life story as a struggling single mother," CLAY RISEN wrote in the New York Times, the Judds "spoke to millions of working-class women in the South and beyond."
Another Judds reunion was at hand in 2022, and it seemed all of country music was rooting for a duo whose heyday was before many current stars were born. KACEY MUSGRAVES introduced their first performance in years, at the CMT MUSIC AWARDS just three weeks ago, where they sang "LOVE CAN BUILD A BRIDGE" (another Naomi co-write) with a gospel choir. A comeback tour was scheduled for the fall and on Sunday they were to be inducted into the COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME. "So much of my life," Naomi had said when the honor was announced last summer, "I felt anonymous. I felt neglected." The call from the Hall of Fame, she told the Tennessean, meant, "Hey, wait a minute. You did something right... and somebody else is validating you." They were, in fact, inducted Sunday, but the day before, Naomi's other daughter, actress ASHLEY JUDD, announced she was gone, tweeting, "We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness." At the Hall of Fame ceremony, which a heartbroken Ashley and Wynonna both attended, Ashley said, "I'm sorry that she couldn't hang on until today."
The timing is devastating. We'll look for answers because that's what we do, and maybe we'll find them embedded deep within the silences of the Judds' six albums, and maybe we won't. Some things aren't meant to be answered. Those silences were surrounded by yearning country love songs (a genre that hardly gets better than "WHY NOT ME," the title track from their first album), upbeat, uptempo rock and roll songs, songs of gospel hope and songs of existential despair—all of which probably can tell us more about a life than about a death, and which are as likely to validate those of us who listen as those who wrote and sang them.
Etc Etc Etc
BANDCAMP's new owner, EPIC GAMES, says GOOGLE is threatening to pull the music app from the Android store unless it switches from its own payment system to Google's. Epic told a federal judge Thursday the change would be devastating to the Bandcamp economy, which gives artists and labels control over pricing, and would force the platform to "switch from paying out artists within 24 to 48 hours of a sale to paying out artists 15 to 45 days after a sale." It's asking the judge to force Google to keep Bandcamp in the store, as is. Google, which is embroiled in a wider lawsuit brought by Epic and other gaming companies, called the Bandcamp claim "meritless" and an attempt "to avoid paying for the value that Google Play provides"... BRANDI CARLILE sings the Judds' "Live Can Build a Bridge" in her backyard. She was supposed to perform at the Judds' Country Hall of Fame induction but she's home recovering from Covid-19... DURAN DURAN wins the fan vote for the ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME, followed by EMINEM, PAT BENATAR, EURYTHMICS and DOLLY PARTON. Those five names will be submitted at a single ballot, one of about 1,200 that will determine this year's Hall of Fame class. The inductees will be announced later this month... If Dolly Parton is voted in, she'll "accept gracefully," she tells NPR's RACHEL MARTIN. In March, the country queen said she didn't believe she'd earned the honor and asked to be removed from the ballot. But the ballots had already been mailed to voters, and the Hall said she belonged among the nominees.
Rest in Peace
French singer, actress and nightlife entrepreneur RÉGINE, who installed two turntables in her Paris club in the late 1950s so there would be no gaps in the music. "When the music stopped," she once said, "you could hear snogging in the corners. It killed the atmosphere." Chez Régine is generally credited as being the world's first discotheque, and she was its first DJ... GABE SERBIAN, drummer for San Diego punk band the Locust. He played drums or guitar in several other bands including Dead Cross and Cattle Decapitation.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
| | | | |  | | The New York Times |
| | Naomi Judd, of Grammy-Winning The Judds, Dies at 76 | | By Clay Risen | | In their songs and especially in Naomi's life story as a struggling single mother, the Judds spoke to millions of working-class women in the South and beyond, with songs about adult heartbreak, the solitude of family life and the breakdown of community in modern society. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | | Texas Monthly |
| | Willie Turns 89--And Drops a Beautiful Album | | By John Spong | | 'A Beautiful Time' picks up where his "mortality trilogy" of albums left off, with an especially off-the-wall cover and new songs reflecting on life and death. | | |  | | 4Columns |
| | Syrian Cassette Archives | | By Geeta Dayal | | A new website shares a dizzying array of Syrian music cassettes from the 1950s through the early 2000s. | | | |  | | The FADER |
| | Action Bronson is done talking | | By Alex Robert Ross and Action Bronson | | Action Bronson talks about hedonism, bodyboarding, and his new album "Cocodrillo Turbo" on the latest episode of The Fader Interview. | | | | | what we're into |  | | Music of the day | | "River of Time" | | The Judds | | "Flow on, river of time / Wash away the pain and heal my mind." | | |
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| | Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" |
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