I have been able to listen to Mary Fahl's version of The Dark Side of the Moon several times now and sadly, it's pretty much a bust. Rather than pointlessly reproducing the original too closely, to make the exercise worthwhile, she understands that she has to find a new and updated sense for the material. Unfortunately, the results are mostly inadequate. Although the performance is broadly competent, rather little imagination or musical originality is on display. Even tracks where she finds a distinctive groove ("Money" is the best example) fall flat for me because of their half-hearted or clichéd execution, while the less said about Mary's vocalese on "The Great Gig in the Sky", the better. In fact, if any one track from the original would have been better reproduced unchanged, it's the latter, except that Mary seems not to have Clare Torry's range or melodic sense, either (according to Torry's Wikipedia entry she's actually being accorded belated credit for co-writing the song with Richard Wright). Despite my best effort as a Mary Fahl fan I can't bring myself to like this disappointing album, much less recommend it to anyone else.

But it pays to keep your eyes and ears open, because this evening the most unexpected thing happened, at a very unpromising venue, namely open mic night at the Kildare House. Once Clinton Hammond opened up the floor, it was the expected spate of good-natured amateurishness (my friend Sean Gorman makes a worthy effort with his own compositions, but I expect even he would admit that the tin whistle is not a very prepossessing instrument). Then, close to midnight, a homegrown Windsor talent named Tara Watts (pronounced like the Latin word for Earth, unlike my sister's name) performed for about half an hour. Her set included a couple of covers (Lisa, you would have loved her version of Kathy's Song), but on the strength of her originals and her warm rich voice, I have no doubt she's headed much bigger places. Please check her out.