Off the blocks

Barb Jungr’s New Album: I’m a Believer

the men i love

Barb Jungr’s new album in not entitled I’m a Believer but both  the men i love and the new american songbook. The men she refers to are for the most part familiar names: David Byrne, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Todd Rundgren, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and Jimmy Webb. Several of the others are well-known as mainly writers, like Doc Pomus and the Motowners, Holland-Dozier-Holland.   

The “new american songbook” is a take on “The Great American Song Book“: Gershwin, Rogers, Hart, Hammerstein, Mercer, Kern, Porter, Dietz, Schwartz, Carmichael, Arlen and many more. Their songs are deathless and Jungr is making the case that today’s men belong up there with them.   

The Songs

It is easy to choose great songs to sing. On my one time on stage, in the midst of a sock hop, myself and a few fellows got up the courage to take over for the band then playing . I sang lead on Dylan’s Memphis Blues Again and,  forgetting most of the words of a song I thought I knew well, I was so  horrible my friends averted their eyes once the travesty was over. I learned that choosing a song and actually doing something with it are very different things.   

Jungr’s new album is truly great and I am going to build and  rest my case on one song: I’m a Believer by Neil Diamond. You likely remember the song as played by The Monkees. It was a hit and I thought horrific when it came out. The Monkees were everything wrong and I had no use for Diamond either and in the intervening years I’ve softened only slightly to his schtick.   

What does she do to the song? What doesn’t she do! Mostly, now that I’m on the road and don’t have the song to play, being a non-ipod man, I think of a sensuous rythm that begins almost haltingly, then gains momentum and then — swings. Her moves are subtle within the song and she removes, as we listen over and over, the memory of its first proponents.   

I do not have a YouTube version of Jungr’s I’m a Believer to offer you; you must go out and buy the CD or download it. I would if I were you, for I am a true believer in Barb Jungr and her unique art.