Aimee Mann - Ultimate Collection

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Free Music Notes for Ultimate Collection

Free Music Review: I'm an Aimee Mann fan, but I may not be the perfect fan.
Hit: 5 Stars

I haven't gone to see Aimee Mann when she has performed in the Twin Cities, and I can only blame myself for being too cheap and deaf to get that close to her. A week ago I heard Amy Ray playing her songs from "Stag" with the Butchies, and about all I can tell you about it was that the best song might have been "Lucy Stoner," something like an invitation to join the United Stoners of America in a mindless love trip. As deaf as I am, I felt like I could tell what that song felt like to Amy Ray, and I have to put Aimee Mann at the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum. From what I have read of Mann's shows, she is content to sing, and doesn't try to goad the crowd into thinking that they are having a fantastic time, like Sheryl Crow did so shamelessly (but I still liked it) on her "Live from Central Park" album. But I feel myself growing more when I listen to Aimee Mann.

The tough part of my appreciation is my recognition that Aimee Mann represents an intellectual upper-crust, the kind of critique of normal pretences of decency, which I liked more than 20 years ago in Mary McCarthy, when I read her books and reviews on the Vietnam war. Having actually spent a year in Nam with the kind of guys that Mary McCarthy picked on, I still (perhaps perversely) feel a lot of sympathy for young female singers who have learned how to complain about that kind of behavior on a more personal level. I haven't been able to post any reviews on Nietzsche and feminism because the personal basis for my thoughts on this topic is so far under my skin that the universality of what I might say could be too close to the truth to be acknowledged in a normal social setting, or in a typical commercial marketplace, however electronic we may be.

Owning this album, I still wouldn't give up any of my other Aimee Mann or Til Tuesday CDs. I started listening to her with the CD "I'm with Stupid," and that has some great songs that I still don't hear anyplace else. The "Whatever" CD has a song called "I know there's a Word" that describes the process for dealing with the attempt to write whatever doesn't seem obvious to the typical clods who also inhabit this planet, and I'd bet that the world would be a better place if we all listened to that one a bit more intently. I could throw in a few more reasons to get further into this, but as old as I am, they are subject to the "just like Jimmy Hoffa jokes" statute of limitations.

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