Once in a while you get what you want (and if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need) - almost. The tiny gap between there and nearly-there is a tricky one. It’s a trompe l’oeil chasm. You see it coming and figure you’ll just step over it when it comes - it’s just a hairline crack, right? - and then when you get there and look down you realize a fellow could fall in there, and the bottom looks deep deep down. Whoops!
So it’s about goodness this morning, I admit it, cracks and chasms and all. National Public Radio just did a solid feature on our guy Ethan Lipton, whose debut CD, A New Low, is about to come out. You regular Peppers have read about Ethan Lipton here before, and will read about him here again, no doubt. His tender songs are big-brotherly, in that they are confident and wise and when you’re not looking they smack you on the back on the head. It’s fantastic stuff, and the Live EP we’re putting out really captures the essence of one wonderful early-summer show at Low in DUMBO, Brooklyn.
The Weekend Edition Saturday story spot - you can listen to Ethan Lipton on NPR on the Weekend Edition web site - is a nice one, done by Ethan’s friend Mallory. I love her voice, confidential and clever, frank and full of promise. It’s the voice of, well, of the kind of girl you’d hope to meet at an Ethan Lipton show. And Ethan sounds great in his brief interviews, poised and present and interesting. There are several songs featured, playing in both background and foreground, and they’re good choices (we’ve got better mixes on the record, but we’re supposed to - we’re the label, after all).
But the smack-my-forehead bit is this: the record isn’t done! It’ll be done in about two weeks. So now we have all these curious intrigued folks nosing up to Ethan’s site and winging in on Google searches - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=ethan+lipton is what those look like on our end - and all we can do is shrug and say, “Yep, any day now, just drops off your email address and we’ll gets right back to yer.”
Truly, it’s always something. An NPR feature is an incredible opportunity for a young artist, the kind of love you just can’t buy. And Ethan’s the perfect performer for the program, quirky and endearing, calm and catchy, thoughtful and uncompromising. Essentially and deeply Ethan Lipton, accept no substitutes.
This is where I make a theatrical, cat-got-the-meow shrug, smiling all the while. Ethan’s stuff has been strutted in front of an audience that is going to love him. The record’s not quite ready yet, but soon, soon. And I’m complaining?
Of course I am. I’m a New Yorker. It’s my birthright. But I’m only complaining a little … and the light bulb in the bathroom just blew out, too.
