AsidesSome Came Running by Glenn Kenny

Whitney Houston, 1963-2012

By February 11, 2012January 12th, 202617 Comments

With Material (Bill Laswell, Michael Beinhorn), Yogi Horton on drums, Archie Shepp on sax, Raymond Jones on piano. My friend Martin Bisi engin­eered the record­ing.  Composed by Hugh Hopper and Robert Wyatt, ori­gin­ally recor­ded by Soft Machine. Released 1982. 

17 Comments

  • Jim Gabriel says:

    Sigh. Thanks for post­ing that. Back in the day that cut served as the trump card to lay on any­one who gave me the hairy eye­ball for call­ing her a spec­tac­u­lar, sui gen­er­is talent.
    At the risk of sound­ing like Jeffrey Wells – is there any­one since Elvis Presley, any­one that touched with the geni­us stick, whose gifts were so wasted on the bland­est junk? That to me is, and always has been, an occa­sion for sadness.
    Again, thanks for put­ting that up. Sometimes its nice to know that one’s enthu­si­asms aren’t as fringe as they seem.

  • jbryant says:

    Yeah, this is where I first heard her, too. I remem­ber the buzz built around her pretty quickly after that, but like Jim, I was mostly dis­ap­poin­ted in the dir­ec­tion she ended up tak­ing. She could’ve worked with any­body, but we got Michael Masser, David Foster…bleh…

  • Oliver_C says:

    I’d always thought the sole not­able aspect of ‘The Bodyguard’ (oth­er­wise a movie as gen­er­ic as its dir­ect­or’s name) was the rev­el­a­tion Houston’s char­ac­ter was being tor­men­ted by someone close to her, resent­ful of her suc­cess. Now that plot takes on an uncom­fort­able res­on­ance, alas…

  • ZS says:

    Thanks for the remind­er. I haven’t listened to One Down in years.

  • Angry Samoan says:

    Good rid­dance, Crackhead.

  • jbryant says:

    Gee, for a second there, I thought this might be one place on the web where no one would pull that com­plete lack of com­pas­sion and sym­pathy bullshit.

  • Glenn Kenny says:

    I was hop­ing for the same myself. Oh well.

  • Mr. Milich says:

    Angry Samoan still has­n’t got­ten over what happened to Tony Rocky Horror…

  • ZS says:

    Angry Samoan is glad because it means more crack for him.

  • Asher says:

    I’m not sure I agree that either her tal­ents or Elvis’s were wasted on the bland­est junk. To be sure, both recor­ded some bland junk, but there’s a lot of great 60s and 70s Elvis and a lot of great late 80s and 90s Whitney.

  • Oliver_C says:

    If only Presley had had Bobby Brown to manu­ally help him poop on that fate­ful day in 1977, instead of fatally over­strain­ing himself.

  • A very import­ant point, Oliver_C !
    Michael Jackson may have been the King of Pop, but Whitney was the Queen of Poop.

  • Glenn Kenny says:

    To address the points made by Mssrs. Bryant and Asher…as much as I adore “Memories,” I don’t know that a career bridging the oft-minimal (if only we could see it as so!) gap between the “pro­gress­ive” and the main­stream would have been a prop­er life’s work for Houston; I’ve nev­er seen an inter­view with her where she men­tioned the song or record­ing it. (Although Hugh Hopper was on record as being very pleased with it, albeit a little taken aback at how out of tune the usu­ally impec­cable Laswell’s bass it on the track.) And as much pap as she did lay down, she cer­tainly made it SOUND good. About 13 years ago I dated a woman who was REALLY into “My Love Is Your Love” and I was a little sur­prised at how listen­able an album it was. Still: A shame she was nev­er able to make her own “I Never Loved A Man.” I think she had the tal­ent to do so.
    When my band did some record­ing with Martin B. in December, I made the mord­ant joke that I now had more than one thing in com­mon with Whitney Houston. Oy.

  • Jim Gabriel says:

    Yeah, Asher, I pos­ted that without the par­en­thet­ic­al – Whitney’s music ana­log­ous to Elvis *films*, a bunch of “Clambake” to get to the “King Creole”, a truck­load of “One Moment In Time” to get to the “Shoop”, and cer­tainly no allu­sion to their respect­ive ends was inten­ded. That’s not a par­lor game I’m into at all.
    Which brings me to our friend Angry Samoan – may I call you “Angry”? I feel bad that I used the occa­sion of someone’s death to blurt out an under­baked, if closely held, thought. Now one expects you to be sad or light a candle for any­body, or even to “have a heart” about someone you don’t know. But I roll dif­fer­ently. I feel *ter­rible* that you failed to get Clive Davis to hook up one of his stable to cov­er “They Saved Hitler’s Cock”. I weep for your lost roy­al­ties and reduced status in the industry. But you need to look real­ity square in the eye. Like the devel­op­ment of your com­pas­sion gene, IT JUST DIDN’T HAPPEN. Be a bet­ter man. Try to rise above it.

  • Noam Sane says:

    It did­n’t help that she was of L.A., where over-produced crap is king. I hope she finds the peace of mind that obvi­ously eluded her here.

  • Jim Gabriel says:

    You for­got Frankie Five Angels. You know, while you’re on a roll.