A Bellyful Of Empty And a Pocketful Of Dreams (1/7/13)

As I pulled out into the roundabout, the warning flashed up on the dashboard. Service needed NOW. That's 'NOW' not just 'now' which would be much more polite. Luckily I found the button that changes the display and made the rude interruption disappear.

It was then that I realised that my Road Tax ran out yesterday and that I probably should have renewed it before now. Then I started musing in the fact that I seem to be constantly spending stupid amounts on this thing that basically just exists to get me from A to B and occasionally C, D etc. I'm fairly certain that there's a massive conspiracy between car companies and garages and that if we were just left to our own devices the damn things would just happily tootle along forever with no work required, no attention needed. It's simply that they build problems in so that they can keep garages in business.

I haven't figured out how this aids the manufacturers yet (apart from the obvious needing a new one when it dies completely) but I will; the answer must be out there because there are just so many better things to spen money on.

Which brought me nicely to 'The Essential Kris Kristofferson' which I'd just bought.

Kristofferson is a genius. No, really. A Rhodes Scholar (not entirely sure what that is but it's bloody impressive), helicopter pilot, sometime actor and one of the greatest songwriters that has ever walked the planet.

If it was just 'Me & Bobby McGee' he'd be one of the greats but there's 'Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down', 'For The Good Times', 'Help Me Make It Through The Night' - there's a hell of a list and you may know that list from the cover versions, the soul versions, the rock versions but the real versions, the definitive versions are his own country versions.

And that's where people turn off. There's a bizarre aversion to country music; there's a lot of people that don't get country.

But that's okay, I don't get people that don't get country; the best of it is as good as the best of anything else. Ignore your Garth Brooks and Shania Twains, that's not the real stuff. The real stuff is poetry; it's the music of the dispossessed, the drunk, the desperate, the lost and the lonely, it's the truth about the human condition.

Springsteen gets country, The Beatles got country, The Stones got country; the greats get it. 

You can claim that it all sounds the same if you like but then you'd have to apply that argument to the Blues, Classical, Rap, Indie.

Here's your homework then;

Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons, Michael Nesmith (yes, the one from the Monkees), Wilco, Billy Bragg's Woody Guthrie covers, Gene Clark, John Phillips (John, Wolf King of L.A.), Dolly Parton's Bluegrass albums (yes, really) and of course the very great Kris Kristofferson.

Make the effort because those that don't understand country music don't understand life.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

19.1.22 Decide yourself if radio's going to stay

Image
 Note to self: yesterday was about a single, it played at 45rpm, change the speed. Full on John Peel "this one plays at 33" moment there. Which didn't benefit Michael Stipe in any way at all. "We're REM, from Athens Georgia. This one's new." They were all new, we knew nothing about them other than the whispers that were coming out in the music papers. (Aside: J's on a video call in the living room, Daisy's in with me; she's currently hiding either under the banjo on its stand or behind the Rickenbacker in its case. Both are worrying me. i am, quite ironically, having kittens here. See what I did there? Dad jokes all over the place.) REM were one of the groups that made me want to own a Rickenbacker. These and The Church more than The Jam or The Beatles strangely enough.  Back to the point. The radio wasn't playing REM in 83. Not that I recall. (Another aside, I'm writing this while watching/listening to PMQs - we've just had a Tor...
Read more

23.1.22 Argentina has gone to town over the death of an actress

Image
 So I'm leaving 81 Renshaw after yesterday's afternoon gig (those of you on twitter knew about this at tea time yesterday, if you're on Facebook you'll be under the impression I couldn't be arsed as it was a weekend - simple truth is I hadn't checked whether the post had actually posted, so now I know where the readership comes from. Clue - not Twitter) - - and I have a browse. I can't help it, it's nature, it's how I'm built, how I'm wired. I manage once again to not buy the vinyl copy of John Cale's Music For A New Society with a simple, "You don't really need it, not at the moment, how much did you send on that book yesterday?" It's not a matter of finance, or of perceived value, it's an acknowledgement of obsession and an addiction to getting the next thing. Bought something new and shiny and wonderful? Sound, what's the next thing you think you need? Wonder why I don't do drugs? It's that. It's t...
Read more

20.1.22 They're only made of clay

Image
This is the return to Ben Webster that I promised. (Yesterday/ A Couple of days ago?) This is me saying that I'll return to something that I was going to talk about and actually doing it. Treasure this moment, it's quite rare. I am, if you hadn't already noticed, easily distracted. Hence the endless asides. And asides within asides.  This is how writing tends to work. This is how *part of* writing tends to work. For me. Others will have their own rhythms and rituals, I can only talk about mine. It's all about the music. The music has to be right. If the music's not right then nothing's happening.  A couple of days ago I was revisiting the script for The Comeback Special; putting some new lines in, changing and removing some old lines that just don't work as they used to. We live in a different world now. The Trump and Farage gags still work though. Which is an appalling indictment of the world at large and its tendency to tolerate appalling little men as lon...
Read more