Well I’m half way through a lovely day and I thought that sharing what has factored into making it so might help some of you have a good day too!
I began today by going to the cinema to see Coraline with my boyfriend who, along with me, has wanted to see it since it was first advertised but, also like me, never got round to it until today.
After the film I got home just in time to watch Patch Adams which I’ve never seen before. It was a film that made me and my mum laugh a lot but I also found it quite touching and thought that it made a few good points about the American health system and how inaccessible it is to a lot of people.
After that we watched The Journey of Natty Gann, set during the Depression. The plot is simple – a young girl leaves her home in Chicago to try to find her father who left her behind to take up a job somewhere in Washington state.
After listening to an a capella version of Little Sparrow I am in awe of how much control Dolly Parton has over her voice. I think I still prefer the recorded version of the song because the strong melody and beat are brilliant but oh my there were some fantastic notes in that performance. It was quite exciting to hear where she was going to take lines whose melodies were hard to guess. She’s just done a song called The Grass is Blue and it was quite lovely. Dolly’s three backing singers joined her at the piano as she played, which I didn’t know she could do, and their combined voices soared. An now she’s just finished a true a capella with ten men who play various roles in her band and on her tour closing around her. That was absolutely great and I loved the real barbershop touches thrown in by the basses. Here You Come Again. She’s doing Islands in the Stream with her male backing singer now, which I never knew was her song. Nine to Five is a great song with a very catchy chorus that most people know but I’m always impressed by the verses when I hear this song because the runaway pace is very clever. She chose to get the crowd going for a final chorus and they really went for it. I’m now listening to her sing I Will Always Love You the way it was meant to be sung. I’m disappointed that right from the beginning the audience were singing Whitney Houston’s version back at her though. Dolly’s version is so much more tender than Houston’s which I think attracted such a following because of the belting chorus, but frustrates me endlessly because of her vocal acrobatics and the lack of emotion that she manages to sing Dolly’s sweet words with.
For her encore Dolly chose a song about Jesus. While it does not appeal to me directly because I don’t follow the religion, the description Dolly lends to her love for him is beautiful, and something that I think also fits perfectly with non-religious love, ‘Something to lift me up, something to hold me down, something to give me wings and keep my feet on the ground.’
Well now the concert’s over and I’m watching a documentary on how Dolly rose to fame. It’s proving very interesting so far.
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