Desert Island Discs

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Statement of Purpose"><U>Statement of Purpose</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id23.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Commandments"><U>The Commandments</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id24.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sermons"><U>Sermons</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Reviews and Rant"><U>Reviews and Rant</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id25.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Blasts from the Past"><U>Blasts from the Past</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Youth Choir"><U>The Youth Choir</U></A></div> <div> <B>Desert Island Discs</B></div> <div> <A HREF="id26.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Interviews"><U>Interviews</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id27.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Books and Movies"><U>Books and Movies</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Miscellaneous Witnessing"><U>Miscellaneous Witnessing</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Mailbag"><U>Mailbag</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id30.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Holy Documents"><U>Holy Documents</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Favorite Links"><U>Favorite Links</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id22.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Me"><U>Contact Me</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Confessional"><U>The Confessional</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFF33" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><B>THE FIRST CHURCH OF HOLY ROCK  AND ROLL</B></FONT><B>   </B><B>  |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="THE FIRST CHURCH OF HOLY ROCK AND ROLL"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <B>back to</B><B>  </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="THE FIRST CHURCH OF HOLY ROCK AND ROLL"><U><B>THE FIRST CHURCH OF HOLY ROCK  AND ROLL</B></U></A></div> <div> <B>Desert Island Discs</B></div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B><IMG SRC="076aaaa0.jpg" border=0 width="170" height="170" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div> <B>John Prine: </B></div> <div> <I><B>John Prine </B></I><B>(Atlantic)</B> <A NAME="prine_1"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Times New Roman" >    </FONT> John Prine's one of the precious few songwriters to have survived the dreaded "New Dylan" hype, and he's done it in style. At times, as I get more grizzled, I'm not sure if I don't <I>prefer</I> him, and I'm a confirmed Dylanophile. He's a helluva lot more authentic, he's held on to his sense of humor throughout his career, his protest songs are far less strident and way more subtle, his love songs are <I>warm</I>, and his surrealism is seductively playful, which I admit it took getting older to really appreciate. Perhaps the best place to appreciate this bounty of talent is on his self-titled debut from 1971--which, by the way, makes Dylan's own seem like the work of a desperate dilettante.</div> <div>       The typical singer-songwriter's <I>best-of</I> would pale next to the staggering contents of the then-25 Prine's rookie effort. Side one leads off with one of the greatest-ever paeans to dope-smoking, "Illegal Smile," which he puts on as an antidote to boredom and loneliness ("A bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down/And won"), poverty and broken dreams, and the encroachment of the fuzz. Next is "Spanish Pipedream," in which a stripper seduces him with the secret of life and induces him to marry her. "Hello in There," third up, is a song only a kid growing up in way-trad Kentucky could have imagined, written from the perspective of a retired couple who've been forgotten by family and society--no us vs. them, young hipster vs. old squares stuff here, it's all about empathy (not exactly an abundant characteristic in modern singer-songwriting, which is almost exclusively about getting laid). "Sam Stone," probably the most notorious song on the record, has been much maligned, according to no less an expert than Lester Bangs due to its romanticizing of a Vietnam vet's junkie dilemma, but if you ask me, the details are damned realistic, especially when compared to Le Springsteen's "Born in the U. S. A." "Paradise" mourns the erosion of vernal paradises kids like the young Johnny grew up wallowing in, even more relevant in '03 as Bush's termites chew unregulated at the glorious wood of the land. Putting the capper on the first side is the rockin' "Pretty Good," perhaps the greatest-ever (only?) ode ever written to resisting the strain of P. T. Barnum novelty that suckers so many, or, if you demand something less pretentious, to the idea that the more things change, the more they stay the same: "I heard Allah and Buddah/Were singing at the Saviour's feast/And up in the sky/An Arabian rabbi/Fed Quaker Oats to a priest/Pretty good/Not bad/I can't complain/But actually all them Gods are just about the same." Bangs' previously-mentioned opinion to the contrary, one of the great things about listening to Prine is how unsentimental, common-sensical, and skeptical he is; basically, he's a great example of an American type that's going the way of the dodo.</div> <div>      Side two is, if anything, <I>more</I> stunning. It leads with a song no Nashville hat act's ever gonna cover anytime soon, "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore." My favorite line's the one where the protagonist plasters his windshield so completely with flag stickers that he can't see, runs into a tree, and gets turned away by St. Peter up in cloudland. Next is 'Far From Me," one of Prine's painful, hyperdetailed heartbreak songs--if you've heard Dave Alvin's "Wanda and Duane," this is surely where he learned his shit. Understated as hell, too: "'Will you still see me tomorrow?' 'No, I got too much to do.'" And they were gonna get hitched! "Angel from Montgomery" is sung from the viewpoint of an old woman who's still raging against the dying of the light but sending up prayers for something real and alive to keep her going. How many songwriters today, on a single album, would assume the persona of a senior citizen not once, but twice, and make both songs bite? "Quiet Man," maybe the weakest song in the set but by no means a dog, is yet another of Prine's calls for common sense and not taking the raw beauty of life for granted. "Six O'Clock News" is a straight tragedy, in which a kid finds out after digging through his mom's closeted diary that he's the bastard offspring of a one-night stand. He takes the Cobain Exit, which is made harsher and more difficult to take by Prine's flat, indifferent delivery of the chorus kicker, "Come <I>awn</I>, baby, spend the night with me." Prine waves goodbye to a "non-believer" so he can recommune with the "tragic magic prayers of passion" made his rough and tumble past in the slightly cliched "Flasback Blues," but no one could accuse him of a hackneyed hack-out on the album's closer, "Donald and Lydia." If you're a fan of hymns to wanking--and let's face it, rock and rollers do tend to have hairy palms, but, hey, it's 'cause we can't contain the lightning of our transcendent sexual energy--this "sad ballard" ranks right up there with "Pictures of Lily," "Pump It Up," and "She-Bop." Lydia's a chubby cashier at a small-town penny arcade; Donald's a lonely PFC packed like sardines with others like him in a military base ten miles away. Prine sets the listener up to believe they're long-distance lovers separated by cruel fate, but Lydia's addiction to romance magazines and the revelation that "strangers" have forced Donald "to live in his head" are hints that when they "make love in the mountains," "streams," "valleys," and "thier dreams," it's not to each other. Again, one can't help but to be amazed at the performer's empathy. To Prine, this ain't a freakshow, as he makes clear in the eloquent chorus: "Dreaming just comes natural/Like the first breath from a baby/Like sunshine feeding daisies/Like the love hidden deep in your heart." It's not gonna convince a priest to reconsider his views on jerkin' off--it fact, it'd probably piss him off--but, well, he's probably got his <I>own</I> problems.</div> <div>      Unfortunately, the blatherings of multitudes of fools have been immortalized by the recording industry, and it show no signs of shutting down the operation--just look at today's charts. If you're sick of the dumb shit, you could do worse than pick up <I>John Prine</I> if you haven't already made the record's acquaintance. From its release to Prine's last (1999's <I>In Spite of Ourselves</I>, in which he bounced back from cancer to sing a moving and funny album of craggy country duets with a murder's row of hardcore country queens), the man's distinguished himself as not only a wise-ass but a wise man; nope, they're not <I>always </I>the same thing. And because he always sings and writes with heart and--can't make this point too strongly--compassion, listening to his records can restore your faith in the human race.</div> <div>      </div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B><IMG SRC="07764640.jpg" border=0 width="100" height="100" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div> <B>Clint Eastwood and General Saint:</B></div> <div> <I><B>Too Bad D. J. </B></I><B>(Greensleeves)</B> <A NAME="twobad_1"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A><B> </B></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Times New Roman" ><B>     </B></FONT>Originally released in 1981 and reissued in a remastered edition in 2001, <I>Too Bad D. J. </I> stands as a monument to pure aural pleasure and blissful silliness, sort of a JA version of <I>Huey Piano Smith's Rock and Roll Revival</I>, and you don't even have to be spliffed out to dig the party. Eastwood and Saint exchange witticisms, trade story threads, volley calls and responses, and utter screams, chuckles, oinks, grunts, groans and various other eccentric noises while engulfed in the strangest and spaciest studio murk ever created for a dancehall record (courtesy Chris Cracknell and Henry Junjo Lawes). Providing deep rhythmic bedrock are not only the Roots Radics but also Sly and Robbie. The material angles toward the humorous ("Another One Bites the Dust" and the ghost story "You Talk About Run" are the highlights), but the duo chime in on nuclear war, crime and punishment, women in the military, and the mysterious police brutality-related death of fellow d. j. General Echo as well. An absolute feast for the ears--maybe too "pop" for the purists, but purists <I>never </I>have any fun.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B><IMG SRC="078cfab0.jpg" border=0 width="207" height="171" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div> <B>Johnny Winter:</B></div> <div> <I><B>Second Winter </B></I><B>(Columbia)</B> <A NAME="winter_1"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <bR> <div> "tour de force (n): a feat of strength, skill, or ingenuity"</div> <bR> <div>      Columbia signed Winter amidst much hype in '68, and it's a measure of how incompletely he lived up to it that one seldom hears his name bandied about in rockin' converse anymore. But in '69 he delivered this, a true tour de force of rock and roll guitar playing so consistently intense and so multifariously stunning it's a wonder it wasn't an instant classic; in retrospect, it lived up to and surpassed the hype,  if nothing else he ever recorded did.  </div> <div> <I>     Second Winter</I>'s three sides (that's right: a two-record set the second of which has only one side) represent the guitarist's roots and his vision in channeling them, respectively. On Side A, Winter documents his commitment to the blues on Percy Mayfield's "Memory Pain" (aka "It Serves You Right to Suffer"), Dennis Collins' "The Good Love," and his own "I'm Not Sure." Whether playing lacerating slide or juicing his blues riffs with extreme volume and abrasive textures (on "Memory Pain," in particular), the albino flash draws blood. On Side B, Johnny interprets his favorite rock and roll oldies, two Little Richards, a Chuck Berry, and one of the greatest Dylan covers of all-time, "Highway 61 Revisited," the latter of which moved Lester Bangs to compare Winter's performance to "Bill Haley preaching Armageddon." His vocals have often been criticized, but as one might gather from Bangs' comment, he more than passes muster here--his enthusiasm and inspiration carry him past his limits. Side C is the most fascinating of the three, featuring four Winter originals in which, while explicitly acknowledging his Texas roots, he successfully synthesizes the lessons he'd learned from both aforementioned genres. Again, the range of styles and techniques Winter employs--single-string and multiple-string picking, phasing, slide, volume, sheer speed, echo, even psychedelic and metallic effects--is dazzling (so dazzling on this side that the effect is thrillingly climactic), and his choices never clash with the material or spill over into excess. In fact, he lands himself squarely in Hendrix territory, as lonely a land as any in the country of rock and roll. Note: Public Enemy sampled a snippet from Side C for "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"!</div> <div>      Pack <I>Layla </I>and "God" for your own desert island trip if you must. I'm taking this spark-spitting wonder, "God" be damned.</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>