NEVER SETTLE
The best keep getting better in music and literature. You can give it a shout out at this museum
BETTYE LAVETTE
Bettye LaVette was 16 when she scored her first hit with “My Man.” She’s been waiting 45 years for her second.
The soul chanteuse has had a career full of astonishing setbacks. Her 1972 debut album, “Child of the Seventies,” was shelved by Atlantic for 28 years. But now LaVette, who has spent time singing on Broadway and playing the European nightclub circuit, is closer to that follow up hit than she’s been in decades. Her latest album, “The Scene of the Crime,” scored a Grammy nomination for “Best Contemporary Blues Album.”
“I haven’t been this distracted or excited since 1962 when they told me they were going to record me and it was going to be played on the radio,” says LaVette of the nomination and attention surrounding it.
“The Scene of the Crime,” which was produced by Southern Rock maestro Paterson Hood, is a moody album of classic Deep South soul and funky R&B grooves recorded at the famed Muscle Shoals studios where Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and the Rolling Stones once recorded. The album also marks LaVette’s debut as a songwriter—with Paterson’s help she penned the excellent, autobiographical Before the Money Came (the Battle of Bettye LaVette).Adds LaVette, “As Paterson said, anyone who talks as much as I do can write.”—Jed Gottleib
THE 10 BEST OF EVERYTHING; AN ULTIMATE GUIDE FOR TRAVELERS
Nathanial Lande & Andrew Lande National Geographic, $19.95
Wouldn’t it be nice to know where you ranked? Or at least that you’ve been somewhere and done something that is one of the best-of-the-best experiences you can have in this world when it comes to travel?
The Lande brothers, Nathanial and Andrew, compiled their thoughtful and all-encompassing list of best destinations, vistas, enjoyments, entertainments, menus, beverages and places to snuggle in for the night in their new release THE 10 BEST OF EVERYTHING; An Ultimate Guide for Travelers. Their rankings are not just drawn from their own subjective experience, but the two authors rely on the expertise of critics and judges regarded as global authorities on any number of topics.
For readers who yearn to experience all things premium, the authors also include a section on best New Grand Tours, 20 classic adventures that follow in the footsteps of famous travelers who have gone before, like Gore Vidal and Ernest Hemingway. For those whose aspirations to see and do are less dramatic, this guide provides rankings for the simpler things in life, accessible to all like Ten Best Ice Creams and the places to get them—in Cuba or stateside at Dr. Bob’s Handcrafted Ice Cream in Pomona, Calif.
USE YOUR OUTSIDE VOICE
The Museum of Outdoor Arts
Greenwood Village, Colorado
Until now, any trip to a museum has been fraught with “Sh-h-h-ing” and “Quiet, Please!” But that is then and
The Museum of Outdoor Arts in Greenwood Village, Colorado is now.
“Destination Art” is the theme of the 2008 collection (www.moaonline.org) smattered about Samson Park adjacent to the Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre. Patrick Dougherty’s installation of “Stick Works” underscores timely green-thought with his masterful saplings assembled into large nearly-gesturing trees that resemble the Guanacaste trees of Costa Rica, or from another angle, the density of a cove of California Redwoods.
The 3-D structural and textural art is an unexpected delight on a walk through this park, and it’s open every day of the year. (Whoops of joy are allowed.) On rainy days, take cover in the indoor collection at Palazzo Verdi Building, opening this month with three monumental artworks by Colorado artists Todd Siler, Roger
Leitner and Lonnie Hanzon. And, did I mention that you don’t have to whisper.•
by Jed Gottlieb
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