![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Feb. 7th, 2007 08:58 pmBrief thoughts on two American icons giving it some welly:
On the way home, I was listening to Elvis - in particular, some of the later stuff. It still amazes me that a rock 'n' roller, even one as MIA as Elvis, could release An American Trilogy as a single. It's not that I don't like it - I'm rather fond of most things that oerblown - but just that a collection of a collection of three Southern American standards, sung with all the subtlety of a brick to the foot, could have made it's way out as a single. Having said which, it stiffed at number 66 in the US charts, so maybe the market had its revenge. He came back with a bang on Burnin' Love, mind...
Abnd just been listening to Zooropa, probably still U2's most experimental work under theior own name, and it's final track, sung by Johnny Cash. Whatever you think of the track, it's an exceptional anchor to the album as a whole - a (relatively_ simple lyric, sung with utter conviction, by a voice as steeped in the American experience as it is possible to be. It's possible to get tired of the endless eulogising over Cash - he was only one man,after all - but if you ever do, stick on Live at San Quentin, or American Recordings, or even this song, and remember that there is a deep truth behind the avalanche of pork fat. We miss Johnny Cash not because the style police tell us to, or because we are sheep, but because he was fucking awesome, and we really will not see his like again.
On the way home, I was listening to Elvis - in particular, some of the later stuff. It still amazes me that a rock 'n' roller, even one as MIA as Elvis, could release An American Trilogy as a single. It's not that I don't like it - I'm rather fond of most things that oerblown - but just that a collection of a collection of three Southern American standards, sung with all the subtlety of a brick to the foot, could have made it's way out as a single. Having said which, it stiffed at number 66 in the US charts, so maybe the market had its revenge. He came back with a bang on Burnin' Love, mind...
Abnd just been listening to Zooropa, probably still U2's most experimental work under theior own name, and it's final track, sung by Johnny Cash. Whatever you think of the track, it's an exceptional anchor to the album as a whole - a (relatively_ simple lyric, sung with utter conviction, by a voice as steeped in the American experience as it is possible to be. It's possible to get tired of the endless eulogising over Cash - he was only one man,after all - but if you ever do, stick on Live at San Quentin, or American Recordings, or even this song, and remember that there is a deep truth behind the avalanche of pork fat. We miss Johnny Cash not because the style police tell us to, or because we are sheep, but because he was fucking awesome, and we really will not see his like again.
