It's Phil Spector's legacy: the Wall of Sound.

And it's the bane of my life. I often love the live performances of folk-oriented singers who appear on stage alone and armed only with an acoustic guitar, only to find that I don't like their CD's at all because a barrage of backup musicians drowns out the singing I was interested in.

Drums are fine for dance music (I love to dance to soca bands), but in vocal music, they serve the same function that a headlight shining in my eyes would serve when trying to view a Renaissance painting. And say what you will about the CIA and waterboarding, but at least they didn't subject prisoners to electric guitars with fuzz.

Bunyan and Rusby's appearance on my list of favorite singers has a lot to do with the fact that they're among the few recording artists whose voices I can actually hear on the recording.