My Amazon Reviews: Bette Midler "Jackpot! The Best Bette"

Juggling the Divine,
4 out of 5 Stars

To be an artist that can jump from style to style and genre to genre is a rarity in any medium. And in this day and age, it's consider a surefire career snuffer. Which makes Bette Midler a national treasure. She has wrapped her pipes around popular standards, bawdy bathhouse songs, sentimental ballads and - in the process - created a few standards of her own. While "Jackpot! - The Best Bette" nicely replaces Experience the Divine, it isn't a perfect set.

There are 19 songs here, but the emphasis is on the sentimental. It would have been nice to let some of Bette's naughtier moments pop in (even a routine from the out of print Mud Will Be Flung Tonight). I'm also not so sure listing the tracks out of chronological order helps with the listening experience, as hearing the 80's layer-cake reverb production of "Wind Beneath My Wings" next to the spare, breathy 1972 "Do You Want to Dance." The album as a continual platter is disjointed.

That doesn't mean Bette isn't worth listening to. From her first show on the scene, The Divine Miss M, she established herself as a unique entertainer, a singer who could slip into songs and styles with ease. Her version of John Prine's "Hello In There" from that album is probably my favorite version of a Prine song by another artist. She successfully made the leap to acting when The Rose Soundtrack took her to the number one position on the charts, and then Beaches gave her a lock on super-stardom. Only Barbra Streisand comes close to Bette as a contemporary, and Bette can rock harder.

While of late, Bette has been working the American Songbook (Rosemary Clooney and Peggy Lee), she can still knock any song she wants to out of the park. "The Best Bette" is not perfect, but almost every song here is.

Gay Newspapers Dealt Another Blow

From JoeMyGod:

Publisher Of Washington Blade And Other LGBT Print Titles Shuts Down

This weekend I noticed that the websites of the Washington Blade, Southern Voice, and several other titles published by Window Media had not been updated in a few days. Just now, Southern Voice posted this message to their Facebook fan page:

With deepest regret, as editor of SoVo, I have to tell you that we arrived at the office to learn that our parent company, Window Media, has shut down. While the 20 years of SoVo have come to an end, our civil rights movement is only beginning. I am personally grateful to all of the staff, and to all of you who have had the courage to share your stories. It has been the honor of my life to help you tell them.Among the affected titles are the weekly newspapers Washington Blade, Southern Voice, South Florida Blade and the bar guides David Magazine and 411 Magazine. (Earlier this year, Window Media ceased publishing Genre Magazine.) Window Media's primary investor, the Avalon Equity Fund, has been in receivership over a loan from the Small Business Administration.

This is a terrible loss. In particular, the Washington Blade has been an invaluable resource for important coverage of LGBT legislation news out of the nation's capital. This and most LGBT news blogs have relied on the Washington Blade for timely reporting on issues not always covered by the mainstream media. The question now is whether anybody will step forward to rescue any of these publications. Let's cross our fingers.

UPDATE: The Washington Blade has confirmed its demise via Twitter.

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As someone written up in Southern Voice, 411 and David, this is depressing. It is getting harder and harder to find outlets for gay voices and these were some of the most influential. With the demise of The Advocate, it will soon be online only for any sort of news.