Farewell To Mary Travers

Folk music doesn't seem like a very powerful thing anymore. But if you listen to the stripped-down recordings of artists all the way from Jack Johnson to the White Stripes, you can still hear a desire for the organic feel of a guitar and voice all alone. Peter Paul and Mary remain among the all time top practitioners of unadorned acoustic music, but I'm not sure it's accurate to call them folk singers. They occupy a place between historical-flavored folk singers like Pete Seger and the more intellectual mid-60's artists like Dylan, Donovan and Simon and Garfunkel.
They took on a bit more pop music sheen over the years, but never lost the concept of music as a rallying cry - something that's almost totally lost today, unless it's rallying consumers to buy iphones. It's unfortunate that American life today has swung back to the same kind of conformity it had when Peter Paul and Mary arrived. It's a more sophisticated conformity, steeped in tatoos, wireless devices and other unversally accepted badges of "individuality," but in some ways I think it's actually far more rigid than the 1960's. Have you ever met a young person who doesn't agree with all his friends that the internet is cool?
Mary Travers seemed uncomfortable with her fame. She put on alot of weight in later years, which is always tough for someone who lives in the public eye. In her prime, however, she was a real rock star. Her great voice and her glowing, eccentric beauty gave PP&M's music a sexiness without trivializing it's meaning. "Leaving On A Jet Plane" remains one of the best pop vocals ever recorded. Check out some earlier examples of Mary Travers & friends live:
If I Had A Hammer
Blowing In The Wind
Nice mountain blues - Jesus Met The Woman At The Well

Melanie Oudin's Run - No Accident

Everybody keeps asking Melanie Oudin why she did so well in the U.S. Open, as if the whole thing was an accident. The reason is that this girl has a game. She's uses a low backhand slice to draw the big players like Sharapova forward, where they have to bend very low to hit. The result is usually a nice short return she can attack (the big Russian players in particular hate it when the ball doesn't rise up into their strike zone). Oudin is extremely shrewd about building points to where she can use the slice - very few players have the kind of knack she does for gradually gaining control of a point. The icing on the cake is that she can usually hit a winner if she gets the ball just a few feet inside the baseline. Usually, that is - her forehand just wasn't working against Wozniacki so she couldn't close the points out. Also, Wozniacki wasn't bothered as much by her slice as Petrova and the others.
Oudin has footspeed that rivals Venus Williams, is alot stronger than she looks, and has one of the best second serves in the women's game. If she learns to get some free points off her first serve and develops some net game she should win a major within three years. Here's the post-tournament interview with her: