Best as I can figure the date, I saw Johnny Cash in 1978. Or was it 1976? I was 10, if I wasn't 8; my parents brought me along with them to see him at the Pacific Coliseum. It is possible that Charley Pride opened? (I saw Pride, too, around that time, but it might have been a separate show). I'm glad to have seen that one, too. I still have some fondness for "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone," Pride's 1970 hit, which is derivative -- I think -- of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," from 1969, in the time-honoured pop tradition of repeating the formula of last year's hits, but is still pretty great.
There is not much I remember from back then; I was a little kid, and these are the first two concerts I went to (a school trip to a Rolf Harris show notwithstanding). I have no memories of Pride at all, other than maybe asking, "Daddy, why is a black man singing white people music?" (Did Pride crack his "permanent suntan" line? Maybe! I have a vague sense of a bit of stage patter addressing matters of race). Cash, as I recall, did a small-band set, then some sort of "Carter-Family-related" set with gospel tunes led by June Carter, which annoyed my father (he just wanted Johnny and, as I recall, disapproved slightly of Cash's relationship with June Carter; I did not care either way, and recall that I thought it was neat that Cash was bringing his wife out to do some songs! Did all musicians do this?). Then Johnny re-joined June Carter onstage, and I believe returned to Johnny Cash tunes with the bigger band to close the night. I remember, as a 10 year old, appreciating "A Boy Named Sue," which I'd never heard before (like everything else in the set; we didn't have any Johnny Cash records or tapes around the house). That song was perfect for kids (and probably my first exposure to Shel Silverstein's songwriting, to boot). I vaguely remember "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" from the Carter set. Not much else, but it's cool to have been in the room, to know that I was first exposed to Johnny Cash by seeing him in concert. There is a photo from the 1978 show here (and a few similar photos from Bev from a 1985 show, here).
I didn't spend much time with Johnny Cash after that, however. Wasn't big into him during my hardcore years, y'know? Though I had plenty of opportunity: if you buy records in thrift stores, you encounter a lot of his 1970s and 1980s material. Cash was a big enough star that things came out in fairly large runs, but being the sorts of things "the average consumer" consumed, they ended up donated in droves, later. They're not quite as common as, say, Rita Coolidge albums from the same time period (or, say, later Elvis ones), and maybe slightly more common than Kris Kristofferson ones -- when was the last time you saw Jesus Was a Capricorn when thrifting? -- but you can tell that thrifters are not falling all over themselves to scoop records from this period up. Which means - as with Kris - you can find some good ones on the cheap now and then. Of things I learned of by thrifting, I am particularly partial to the song "The Walls of a Prison," which I know as part of this Columbia compilation, repackaging songs from his previous few albums; the song seems to have originally appeared two years previously on From Sea to Shining Sea (from 1968), which I otherwise don't know (what is "The Whirl and the Suck?" Sounds like an oral sex technique, maybe to be paired with "The Dirty Ol' Egg Suckin' Dog").
I digress. The point is, I have heard a few of Cash's albums between 1970 and 1994, when the first Rick Rubin recording came out. but I have not investigated every one. I am not even tempted by his "two star" Christmas record (from 1991), for instance, which was the release that immediately preceded the first Rubin and maybe a clear indication that his star was not high at that point. His previous album from 1990, The Mystery of Life, sounds okay, I guess -- "Beans for Breakfast" has a bit of the twang of his vintage style. And before that, Boom Chicka Boom gets a decent review. But I would be unsurprised to find florid instrumentation on any random buys from this period, or conventional, polished, commercial country music. Maybe I'm learning from scrolling through these that the Mercury material might be a bit truer to the original sound of Cash. But then there is also 1984's "The Chicken in Black," which does have his signature twang, but overall is still an embarrassment, Cash opting for self-parody when he apparently had run out of any other ideas. If you haven't seen that video... take a minute!
I have neither the time or the inclination to amend my ways, here. Mostly I am quite happy to satisfy my Johnny Cash needs with the Rick Rubin albums. Rubin understood that the way to make Cash relevant was to sweep away 75% of the instrumentation, ixnay that mainstream country sound, and make Cash minimal and stark and straight-up, in a way not even the prison albums were. American Recordings is a truly great record, and I enjoy The Man Comes Around, A Hundred Highways, and Ain't No Grave, in particular, of his other "American" recordings. Along with his classic prison recordings, The Walls of a Prison, and some early hit compilations, the Rubins make for more than enough Johnny Cash for this semi-fan's collection.
But hmm, what's this on the wall at Red Cat? Newly released recordings of Johnny Cash, showcasing songs he wrote on his own, and recorded as songwriting demos, in 1993, when Cash was between labels and had not begun working with Rick Rubin? Quick examination shows it features versions of "Drive On" and "Like a Soldier" -- both of which would re-appear on American Recordings, here and here -- but I'm less interested when I learn that this wasn't the original music recorded back in 1993. Apparently when these sessions were re-discovered it was decided to strip them down and record new backing tracks (saith Wiki). Why? I'd be very interested to hear what Cash's demos from 1993 for these two songs in particular sounded like, pre-Rubin; the appeal is the "before and after" aspect, the historical value. Hearing them re-packaged now with new musicians gives me pause, since it seems to prioritize "selling a new Johnny Cash record" over any archival considerations (maybe I've been spending too much time with Mr. Archive himself, Neil Young, who is carrying the archival torch almost as far as the Zappa Family Trust).
Must note that I'm grateful to Ford Pier, for letting me know what to expect here, saving me from a blind buy; I investigated the songs on Youtube before committing, and recommend you do the same, because even if you love the Rick Rubin years... this is not what that is, black-and-white cover pic be damned.
That's not to say there isn't interesting material. Prior to investigating this album, I didn't know this Johnny Cash original, and the album's first single, "Well Alright," about connecting with a woman at a laundromat. Actually, it reminds me weirdly of Ford Pier's "Great Western," about a bingo hall romance, though I also cannot but think of Peter Fonda on acid in The Trip, stumbling into a laundromat and interacting with a woman there about the bizarre technology he has discovered.
So that's fun. "Well Alright" and "Soldier Boy" are the kind of songs I might enjoy on a thrift-store album, if I chanced upon it, and with the alternate, pre-Rubin songs, might render the album a keeper. But this is a brand new $30 record, not a random thrift store item, and there are other songs that are less exciting to me: "Spotlight," for example, seems like a lesser song that, by way of compensating for its deficiencies, has been overly-coated in strings, an organ, some sorta bongos, and other instruments, which speaks a bit of desperation. To be slightly unkind, this song reminds me of those mediocre curries that result when you realize something is not working, but keep adding spices, trying to arrive at a good taste, but never getting closer than "good enough," whereupon you shrug and eat it, because you've invested far too much time in it already... I've made plenty of those, and eaten plenty of'em, too, and occasionally even serve them to others, but it doesn't mean it's something I want to be known for. The main point of curiosity, given how over-spiced the music is, is, "What did the original 1993 demo version sound like?" I doubt it could have been worse.
(Thanks also to Mark Prindle for pointing out on FB that this was not the original music -- I'd missed that detail in an early draft of this!).
No comments:
Post a Comment