Highway Patrolman

There are far more songs that make me happy than sad, but there are a few sad ones that I tend to enjoy. Some of these are non-vocal classical pieces by the likes of Éric Satie and Arvo Pärt. Others still are by such legendary purveyors of melancholy as Leonard Cohen, Joy Division and The Smiths. For me, listening to sad songs when I’m unhappy fulfills as important a function as listening to upbeat numbers when I’m feeling good. In fact, I derive no joy from listening to pop songs when I’m down in the dumps and much prefer listening to a singer who sounds even worse than I do. The one I’ve chosen isn’t a sad song as such, but the combination of its melody, lyric and the dejected voice of the singer always conjures up feelings of sadness when I hear it. Highway Patrolman was one of ten sparse acoustic songs that Bruce Springsteen wrote for his 1982 album Nebraska. It was also one of two songs from that album that Johnny Cash performed on his Johnny 99 album the following year (the other was the title track)

Hello, I’m Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash was born 78 years ago today in Arkansas and, like most popular musicians following their deaths, his records are still being released and his music is as popular as ever. The sixth and, presumably, final release in the Rick Rubin-produced American Recordings series came out this week. American VI: Ain’t No Grave was put together from songs left over from the sessions for the previous instalment. Like most of the albums in the series, the songs deal with death and mortality. To aid my research I’ve been reading a graphic novel about Cash that I’ve borrowed from my friend John via our mutual acquaintance Dave. Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness was originally written in German by Reinhard Kleist and it chronicles the major moments in Cash’s life. His story is quite familiar to fans of music following his two autobiographies, a couple of BBC documentaries and the film Walk the Line. Despite this familiarity, Kleist’s graphic novel is a welcome addition to the Cash story. It’s a quick read, which may be explained by the author’s drawing style but also by the areas of Cash’s life that he focuses upon. The story is narrated by an inmate at Folsom Prison and mainly deals with Cash’s life as a young boy up to the concert at that prison in 1968. These narrative elements move along quickly and give the reader little time for more introspective moments. However, the story is broken up at certain points by visual inserts of some of his more popular songs. Like John, I felt that the novel’s weakest aspect was the dialogue although this is often a problem in graphic novels as it needs to fill in some of the story background. Now it’s time for some musical background. I’ve put together some songs written about Mr Cash, a selection of covers by others plus a number of originals and interpretations by the Man in Black

Best Albums of the 00s: Solitary Man

Each week from now until the end of the year I’m going to take a chronological look at my twelve favourite albums of the noughties. These are the albums I liked most from that decade and the ones I played most often throughout the last ten years. First up is Johnny Cash’s American III: Solitary Man from 2000. Cash was primarily known as a country singer and I heard a lot of country music on the radio when I was growing up. Unfortunately, it was an Irish version called country and western that featured Irish lads and lasses wearing cowboy outfits and attempting to mimic American accents and themes as they sang either their own songs or their inferior versions of classic American country music. I could have been put off music for life if it hadn’t been for the occasional Johnny Cash tune that appeared now and then on that radio station named Tipperary Mid West Radio. It wasn’t too hard for the Man in Black to stand out because his songs were superior in quality and seemed more authentic than those of a chancer who claimed that it was he who shot JR Ewing

Happy Birthday, Bruce!

One of my favourite musicians, Bruce Springsteen, celebrates his 60th birthday today. I’ve been a big fan of his music ever since I bought Born in the USA on tape sometime in the late 1980s. I played it quite a lot (it didn’t have much competition back then) and it’s still one of my favourites of his. Soon after, I bought the rest of his albums on cassette, including the Live ’75-’85 box set. I’ve been to see him live in concert on two occasions and he was brilliant both times. You haven’t lived unless you’ve seen Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band in action. They’re on stage a lot longer than most bands and they play with a lot of fun, energy, and skill. Not only is he an amazing performer, but he’s also a wonderful songwriter. However, he’s been criticised for singing lots of songs about cars and girls, but that’s only half the story. I love songs like Born to Run and Thunder Road in which he creates scenes and characters that could come straight out of a movie. I also like his story songs such as The River and Highway Patrolman and other songs on the Nebraska album. Nebraska along with Darkness on the Edge of Town are my favourite Springsteen albums, even though they don’t necessarily contain his best songs. I think that he released his best work in the first half of his career and that his albums from the last twenty years, even though they contain great songs, are not among his best work

Feeling Fortified

The last few months have been quite busy for me and the whole of August was a hectic one indeed. Since my last post, I’ve been to a music festival, a wedding, the French coast and the Edinburgh festival. Over the next while I hope to blog about my splendid time in France and about some of the many wonderful shows that I attended in the Scottish capital. As if all that wasn’t enough, I also reached a significant milestone in terms of years on the planet during the middle of August. See if you can guess what it was from the songs below

Star 69 – REM

1969 – The Stooges

Summer of ’69 – Pelle Carlberg

1969 – Montt Mardie

69 Faces of Love – King Khan & the Shrines

69 Année Érotique – Serge Gainsbourg

Summer Of 69 (Bryan Adams Cover) – PYT

Sixty-Nine – Brooklyn Express

Friday Night, August 14th – Funkadelic

Time Enough for Rocking When We’re Old – Magnetic Fields

Don’t Be Ashamed Of Your Age – John Prine & Mac Wiseman

Forever Young (Bob Dylan cover) – Johnny Cash

Young At Heart (Frank Sinatra cover) – Tom Waits

Running On Empty – Jackson Browne

Reminisce (Part Two) – Dexys Midnight Runners

Who Knows Where the Time Goes – Fairport Convention

A Pirate Looks at Forty (Jimmy Buffet cover) – Jack Johnson

40 (U2 cover) – The Frames