Johnny Cash The Mercury Years

A hurried review tonight, very hurried. Enough to say its great, it features duets with people like the fantastic Tom T Hall, and John Cash Jr.
10 out of 10.

Thats a bit too hurried though, but that's the long and short of it, its an album that draws on the best efforts of his Mercury Records output, an over looked period that covers the eighties and very early nineties. Johnny is starting to feel his age and you hear it in his voice. A little more weary, a little more considered, yes it has an eighties Nashville sheen but under all that is Johnny.

Johnny goes back to Don't Take Your Guns To Town, and covers his own song reasonably faithfully, as well as his interpretation of Sixteen Tons. The highlight is the rather jokey Backstage Pass.

Still 10 out of 10.



A Backstage Pass by Johnny Cash

Everybody In The Club

Joey and David from the Pixies, you know the one at the back and the one on the left of the stage. Joey Santiago and David Lovering have released an album together under the name The Everybody. A track came out free for download earlier this year and it was all very pleasant.
They have followed up that track by releasing their debut album. It doesn’t stop there though, they are encouraging people to buy it, remix it, flog it and if you are especially good you can appear on The Everybody Else album released next year. Sounds like a win win situation, have an album, potentially work with half of the Pixies. Boo yah!
Anyhow you need to get along to their website http://www.theeverybody.com/

Which side Are You On?

The X Factor has finished with professional cherubic Geordie, Joe McEldrey reaping the spoils. His rendition of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing may have been the deciding factor, or the fact that every judge praised him over all others for the past 12 weeks. He was technically very good though, he performed songs like they should be performed on a West End Stage and he did seem a rather pleasant young man, even with his head constantly cocked to one side. It is all done now and at least I no longer have to listen to other professional Geordie, Cheryl Cole saying week in, week out, “You’re a right little popstar”.

There is an internet campaign (they are always internet campaigns aren’t they, never proper marching campaigns trying to save whales or disarm the nuclears) at the moment hoping to rain on X Factor Uber Fuhrer, Simon Cowells parade and install shouty rich kids Rage Against The Machine as number one. Cowell took time off from planning his triumphant move into Poland to issue a statement “Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.” He went on to say that he thought that a group of spotty kids dicking about on Facebook was a bit nasty and it was the Geordie wonderkids god given right to install himself at the number one spot over the festive period with a Hannah Montana cover. Cowell then muttered something about the final solution before fielding calls from people that had performing dogs.

I kind of lie somewhere in the Cowell camp, I don’t feel it is McEldreys god given right, but I do take the charts for what they are, a measure of the popular, the fluffy, the light entertainment. I am not who they are aimed at, even if I do find N-Dubz utterly charming.

The charts are and really have always been about the listening publics liking of the shortlived, the burst of pop that for 3 minutes is the best in their world. If it is Mr Blobby or The Spice Girls, or Chipmunk or even Joe McEldrey, then so be it, its three minutes nothing more. I want my charts to be full of this guff, I like the fact that I don’t know every single single in the charts. I like the fact that it isn’t aimed with me and I can watch harmless inoffensive fluff on Christmas Day, I like it more if it involves females dancers dressed inappropriately for December chilliness. I really do not want Zack De La Rocha disturbing my third Sheridans as I settle down to watch some faceless northerner on Top Of The Pops.



Killing In The Name Of by Rage Against The Machine

Early figures indicate that the internet campaign to get Killing In The Name Of to the Christmas top spot may actually be working. The only problem with this and part of the reason I am on the pro Joe camp, is, well, it’s not a very good song. Maybe I am too close to 40 and too close to being middle class to not be effected by its “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” battle cry, may be if it was “sit down and have a nice cup of tea” it may have me rushing to my local online MP3 seller to upset the musical apple cart. As it is Tom Morello and Sideshow Bob’s revolution is best consigned to the bedrooms of 13 year old boys who believe themselves to be so utterly reactionary, as I was when I first heard Do Not Stand In The Shadows by Billy Idol, he said the F word, TWICE!!!

So I say let Joe have his time in the sun, let that awful song be trotted out between bands at festivals and let Syco’s glorious leader have enough money to fund his search for the next Susan Boyle.



Not Killing In The Name Of by Rage Against The Machine

Ride This Train

Today I was riding the train with Johnny Cash, that is if by train you mean Ford Fiesta, and by Johnny Cash you mean a black rucksack. My journey was through Staffordshire, he was my soundtrack, his 1960 album, Ride This Train. Johnny released 3 albums in 1960, this was the middle of the three.
This is an odd album really, it’s a concept album, considered to be one of the very first concept albums and Johnny opens each track with a little narrative about the destination the train will be taking you to, and somehow linking that to the song that comes after it. All the while you can hear in the background the clickety-clack of the train on the tracks. It was the first time I had listened to this album, and outside of a single song, Going To Memphis, I hadn’t heard any of it before.
Of the 8 songs that appeared on the original disc, Cash only wrote 3, he lets the troubadours, folklore artists and story tellers of the US tell the tales that make up Johnny Cash’s fictional journey. He isn’t about the now, or the modern, but he never was and these songs are more akin to the 1800’s than 1960. Johnny talks, not for the first time, about John Wesley Hardin, the outlaw, and that’s what these songs are about, Cowboys and Outlaws, about journeys and destinations. Cash does what he does best when he is painting you a picture, on this album he wants the picture to be that of one that goes past as you ride this train.
Cash really isn’t about modernity, through his entire career Cash harked back to an era of cottonfields and shacks, you couldn’t imagine talk of ipods and emails coming into his songs could you. This album is thankfully before the time of ipods and emails, and it is all the better for it. 10 out of 10.



Old Doc Brown by Johnny Cash

God

Today I had an exam, but on the way to that exam I had the best soundtrack possible. The God compilation that Johnny Cash released.
If the rules dictated that you could have a compilation as your favourite Johnny Cash record, this would top that list. I don’t set the rules, that’s set by the International Favourite Johnny Cash Album League, they are sticklers.
This album is really as fantastic as it gets, I used to mistakenly think my very favourite Johnny Cash track was on this album, Far Side Banks Of Jordan, it isn’t, that’s on a June Carter Cash album, no harm no foul and as is the quality of this album, its still a great great album even minus that song.
This album revisits songs from almost his entire career that deal with God, religion or some other spiritual nonsense. The subject matter is neither here nor there, the delivery is the important thing and boy does he deliver it.
Cash can talk about spiritual awakening with the same tone that he talks about fixing to shoot someone, there is fire in his belly and sincerity in his voice.
Normal run of things this album would drop around 10 points due to having that fucking idiot Bono write the liner notes, I didn’t read them though so the points stay in tact.
What of the songs then, by golly they are good, some originals, some traditional, some by June, some by others, every single one a great. From Johnny’s rendition of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot to his take on Kristofferson’s Why Me Lord. Each one delivered with more meaning, more passion, more beauty than a million Aled Jones’s.
Even amongst all of the great songs on this album, one song stands head and shoulders above everything else, the ridiculously good Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord, a traditional song that has the most gorgeous vocal of any record you will hear any time or any place. June Carter Cash on this record will not be equalled, sincerely. If I do find it on Youtube, stick with it and listen please, (I have, 31 seconds in, stunning) I would like to know your thoughts as well.
That all said, an easy 10 out of 10. An album everyone should own.



Were You There When They Crucified My Lord by Johnny Cash

Ragged Old Flag

Ragged Old Flag today on the commute, another Johnny Cash album. This was released in 1974 on Columbia Records.
This is a more stripped down album than yesterdays Silver. Outside of the first track, the title track its paired down making use of The Tennessee Three and backing vocal talents of The Oak Ridge Boys. The Statler Brothers had relinquished themselves of the position of Cash’s backing group at this point.
The title track features Earl Scruggs on Banjo, it may be, for English ears at least a bit too much of a schmaltz fest. Its like a musical version of that Simpsons episode, Barts People. Cash telling the story of why the flag was so ragged. I think in the time of Watergate the American public loved the song.
Lonesome to The Bone appears on this album and its better on this than the version that appeared on Silver, a beautiful song, that, as I mentioned yesterday reminds me of Kris Kristofferson.
Never one to shy away from speaking his mind, Johnny Cash takes a shot at what was happening to the environment in Don’t Go Near The water
All in all this is a very good album, all songs on the album are written by Cash, it isn’t over produced, it is really marvellous. One I recommend searching out.
10 out of 10. He doesn’t do anything less than great.



Lonesome To The Bone by Johnny Cash

Silver

Todays CD is yet another Cash CD, this time it is his 1979 album Silver. You may recall the B’s and my frown at the multiple Bragg’s that I was working through. You might expect the same with Johnny after all its been quite a Cash intensive week so far, a week that isn’t coming to an end any time soon.
So this album, Silver, from a period that most listeners aren’t massively familiar with, even though this album contains one of Johnny’s most well known songs in his interpretation of Ghost Riders In The Sky.
Silver is quite notable for being the final album Johnny Cash recorded with bassist Marshall Grant, original member of Cash’s backing band, The Tennessee Two (and later with WS Holland the Tennessee Three). The sound of The Tennessee Three had mellowed over the years and although the boom-chicka sound was still present it was more broader, and none more so on this album.
1979 in country and western music was reaching a bit of a watershed. It was at the end of the peak that the 70’s had ushered in and The Highwaymen had not yet formed, perhaps with this Cash needed to set his own agenda, needed to re-impress himself on his public. Prior to this Cash had released, or at least labels representing Cash had released 2 or 3 compilations, the last album proper, Gone girl had only had 2 Cash compositions on it, Silver needed to make a mark, and if his songwriting juices were not flowing, Johnny had to ensure that what he did work with sounded like his own.
As was the case during this period, Johnny Cash revisited songs from his past, Cocaine Blues had already appeared in a couple of incarnations, on this release it sounds like a rich cousin of White Lightning, Cocaine Blues over the process of this listening exercise is becoming more increasingly a favourite. In the bonus tracks on this CD, Cash is ably assisted on I Got Stripes and I Still Miss Someone by George Jones, Jones’ twang sits at odds with Cash’s growl but oddly they match.
Lonesome to the Bone on this album, initially I thought it was a Kristofferson track, sounding in part like Sunday Morning Coming Down, but the liner notes tell me differently and this is the stand out track for me, its quite a beautiful song. It first appeared on the 74 album (and imminent to me) Ragged Old Flag.
The entire album is a bit of an uncovered classic in its own way, the production is rich but not schmaltzy, its full but still has an intimacy, the Tennessee Three can be heard but are ably assisted.
Cash is serious on this album but still finds time to poke fun at himself on I'll Say It's True.

I've never been in prison
I don't know much about trains
My favorite singer cooks my breakfast
I like her fancy and I like her plain

I love bright and flashing colors
Like hot pink and Dresden blue
But if they ask me if it's true
That I still love you, I'll say it's true

Marvellous. 10 out of 10.



Ghost Riders In The Sky by Johnny Cash

The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show

More Cash, well actually not an entire Cash album today, The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show is a compilation album featuring artists that appeared on Johnny Cash’s TV show. This is a double disc packsge, one disc is a DVD of selected appearances and the other is the audio and its interspersed with Johnny singing a few tracks.
There is enough on the disc to keep me more than entertained, from the none Cash selections we have Kris Krisstoferson, Glen Campbell performing Wichita Lineman, Neil Young performing The Needle and the Damage Done, Tammy Wynette perfroming Stand By Your Man aswell as James Taylor, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. The latter doing a low down dirty version of Blue suede Shoes.
The Disc also contains a rather splendid version of Ring Of Fire performed by Ray Charles, and many fine contributions by June Carter Cash, a voice no better exists I would say.
This all brings me round to Johnny Cash’s contributions, all the tracks are performed live and what we have is a rousing version of Boy Named Sue, a cover of Cash’s hero, Jimmi Rodgers featuring Louis Armstrong. Duets with June include their beautiful If You Were a Carpenter, which is a little muddled up on this recording.
The complete highlight though, and something in this version I had not heard before was Cash and Joni Mitchell duetting on The Girl of The North Country, a truly great and beautiful song made even better with the addition of Mitchell’s voice. A real highlight.
So it’s a compilation, but as strong a compilation as you will find, these are live versions, but controlled live versions and it’s a joy to hear them. The DVD features Neil Diamond singing Cracklin Rosie, I may have to watch that tonight. All in all, purely for Joni Mitchell, but also for Glen and June. 10 out of 10.



Girl of The North Country by Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell

At Folsom Prison

Today we are at Folsom Prison, not literally, literally it’s Coleshill, but as far as my loosely alphabeticised CD collection goes, the next album along is another Johnny Cash album, perhaps his most well known, At Folsom Prison.
At Folsom Prison is a better record of Cash’s prison gigs, the San Quentin album although excellent is a little more polished than the Folsom album and this 1999 reissue although not my favourite album of Johnny’s or my favourite live album of Johnny’s you can certainly see it’s worth and importance and as far as the set list is concerned, it’s a strong one that isn’t just about the hits.
Joe Bean reappears here, as does The Wall, but I don’t think he could do a prison concert without doing those, similarly Long Black Veil and Folsom Prison Blues.
If anything though away from those songs of murder, the mood is very much light, June Carter isn’t he wife at this point, at that was 2 months away, and Johnny is pretty much drug free, and that new found feeling is shown in the lightness of the songs, be it Cocaine Blues, or Dirty Old Egg-Suckin' Dog or Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart. Johnny still gives us I Still Miss Someone and Orange Blossom Special, but he wants to keep the mood light and that is what pervades this album.
All in all its difficult for me to write anything about this album that you wont already know, it’s a classic, a true great, the songs, the performance, the venue and therefore an unsurprising 10 out of 10.



Cocaine Blues by Johnny Cash

Murder

The journey back from Oxfordshire was made all the more enjoyable with another Johnny Cash disc, this time the 2000 compilation, Murder.
Murder was originally part of a three disc box set, although they were also sold seperately, the other discs were God, Love and later one was also released called Life. Effectively they were themed discs that picked out the best Johnny Cash songs that fitted loosely in to those categories, this one Murder, fits the bill on the whole, sometimes its just death though.
So what of it, with Cash, regardless of the album you never get anything less than perfect, this is not the exception.
This collects tracks across a career spanning selection, be it Folsom Prison Blues or Cocaine Blues, the latter was originally recorded by Cash under the name of Transfusion Blues on his 1960 album, Now There Was A Song, as well as being performed at the Folsom prison concert, it appears here as Cocaine Blues.
The eeriest song outside of the gorgeous When it's Springtime in Alaska, is the song Joe Bean. The song closes with Cash and Carter Cash singing Happy Birthday to Joe Bean only for the sound of the gallows floor opening and the rope creaking. Eerie stuff.
Finally amongst the other great songs on this disc are two of Johnny Cash's late career highlights, Delia's Gone, certainly one of my all time top ten Cash tracks and his take on Bruce Springsteen's Highway Patrolman. A great version.
The song closes with The Wall, a song also on At San Quentin, like most on Murder, not only very sad, but it you see the futility of the situation from the off.

All in all Murder is a fantastic compilation, unsure if I have God on CD, but I know God is the better of the three, that doesnt detract from this disc though, a perfect 10 out of 10.



Joe Bean by Johnny Cash

At San Quentin

Next CD, Friday nights drive to Oxfordshire was the Johnny Cash album, At San Quentin. This is the 2000 reissue of the 1969 album. The previous year saw Cash perform at Folsom, but this is a record of his concert to prisoners and wardens at California's San Quentin Prison.
San Quentin has hosted as inmates Merle Haggard and Art Pepper within its walls but this was quite a unique concert really. Cash had always wanted to do a concert for prisoners and this started at Folsom prison at continued here at San Quentin.
This was recorded for Granada TV and he refers to this in his between song dialogue, a later deluxe edition of this disc contains the entire concert and a DVD of that concert.
This album contains more than a few highpoints for me, the stand out track is I Still Miss Someone, not a massively well known song, it should be, hopefully Youtube will have a recording of this but if not please do seek it out for a listen.
Cash is backed, vocally by The Statler Brothers but also by the gorgeous voice of June Carter Cash. And its her contribution to the song (There'll Be) Peace in the Valley, a beautiful song. Utterly gorgeous.
Outside of these you get on the whole Cash staples such as I Walk The Line, Folsom Prison Blues, Daddy Sang Bass as well as A Boy Named Sue.
The other tracks on this disc are the intriguing for me, such as the song San Quentin, it went down so well that he plays it twice in a row.
Unsure if this album is better than his Folsom album, I will know next week I think. Either way, superb. 10 out of 10.



San Quentin by Johnny Cash

Orange Blossom Special

Here is a fact for you, up to 1965 Johnny Cash had released 20, get that, 20!! albums. Its that 20th album that I listened to on my commute in this morning. It may be Johnny’s 20th but it is my favourite Johnny Cash album, Orange Blossom Special. Orange Blossom Special is the first of a week of Cash albums by the look of it.
I love this album more than any other Cash album because of the songs, obviously, but the choice of songs is more perfect than the preceding 19 or the subsequent 76, all great in their own way, but not as fantastic as Orange Blossom Special.
I can even forgive 3 Dylan songs on this album as in the case of It Ain’t Me Babe, it stops becoming Dylans and Cash claims it, the same could be said for Mama, You've Been on My Mind. The third Dylan track is Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright and this further cements the relationship that Dylan and Cash would have throughout Cash’s life. Great versions.
The album, at least on this version, but the albums highlights for me are two of my favourite Cash tracks. On any given day When It's Springtime in Alaska is my favourite Cash song, its so damn sparse, yet so beautiful, possibly only bettered by The Far Side Banks Of Jordan, that doesn’t appear on this album though. Another contender for Cash’s best is (I'm Proud) The Baby is Mine, appearing here as a bonus track. I man re-affirming his love for a woman that takes the pint. It’s a great song, stunning.
Another highlight of the album in a bonus track form is Engine 143, re-recorded later in Cash’s life and another one of the songs that using train imagery to get its point across, along with the title track of course. Engine 143 in its re-recorded version was the very last song that Johnny recorded, at least according to Wikipedia, I thought that honour befell to the beautiful Like the 309, but that actually may have been the last one he wrote. I have digressed a little.
Enough to say this is another perfect Cash album, 10 out of 10.



When It’s Springtime In Alaska by Johnny Cash

Cowcube

Cowcube and his selftitled album today.
My its an upbeat album, taking the best bits (see my review) of The Avalanches and melding them with Lemon Jelly to produce something quite great by itself.
I havent played it in years and maybe time has dated the turntablistic leanings and its cut and paste sampling but it doesnt stop it being good.
Cowcube is a single person, and he was championed by Peel rather mightily around 2000, and I think this is when this album dates from. It melds rather cutely samples from stereo demonstration records and public information films, with at times drum and bass beats, or is that drum n bass. I am too old for this I feel. Either way it is clever in all the right places and those samples bring a familiarity to the CD.
Its more than knowing samples though as oddly for a CD of this genre, its got tunes, and that is where it is aligned with a similar artist that do that so well, Lemon Jelly.
All in all a great album, enjoyable actually, not great so 6 out of 10.



Itchy Cut by Cowcube

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Sorry about the hurried entry for yesterday. I might have to revisit it at a later date.
Today though its more Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and their debut self titled album.
Many years ago, either late 2004 or early 2005 whilst downloading illegal music on Soulseek, actually was the music illegal or the activity, or was it the format that the music came in? Whats illegal about MP3’s? OK, so some years ago I was downloading music illegally. It was The Magic Numbers, and I was after some of their demo’s, hold on if it was demo’s was that illegal? They were probably given out free, after all who charges for demos?
Anyway, I started downloading these demos and the girl I was downloading off suggested that I try some demos by a New York based band, clap Your Hands Say Yeah. As friends will tell you, those demos changed my life musically, well I say changed my life, if I was listening to purely gospel music and then started listening to CYHSY, then yes it would change have changed my life, but it did at least make me love a new band. I pretty much, actually, I did buy everything the band released from then on in, including the self released, self titled album.
Before I comment on the album, CYHSY are as I have said a New York based band, featuring the songwriting talents of Alec Ounsworth, Ounsworth is still based in Philadelphia and of late has been releasing material under his own name and as part of Flashy Python, the latter released some CYHSY demos under their own name a few years back too.
Anyway, I managed to catch the band live a few years back, and although I still adore the bands music, they are absolutely dreadful live, I mean shocking. They do write good songs though.
That all said, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, initially released by the band in 2005, and then re-released by Wichita Recordings in 2006. 12 tracks.
The album is maybe one of my favourite albums. I think its faultless and each and every track is a joy to listen to even now after playing it a million times and badgering people that they are the greatest band since Hefner. They aren’t but as is the case with me, THE greatest thing ever is fleeting and I always do believe at that point whatever it is I am talking about is the best or greatest ever.
So this album is a lot more earthy and shambolic, and more urgent than its successor. Some Loud Thunders polished the rough edges of the self titles, lest you hurt yourself. Some Loud Thunder maybe had one eye on the indie dance crossover second coming that was emanating out of New York at the time with the likes of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Rapture and the mightily awful Gossip. The self titled wants you to dance, but more dervish than Studio 54, more piano rolls than roller disco. If my steering wheel could be annoyed at the over exuberant drumming, it would.
I thought I knew what was my favourite on this album, Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth, but then I hear and remember On This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood with its Dave Byrne vocal leanings and yelps, its hard not to love it.
Byrnes New York is the major influence on this album and that is the voice that critics have compared Ounsworths to the most. It is there but it is an influence and not a karaoke version from Star In Their Eyes.
Details of The War slows the pace a little and gives you time to breath, and gives the steering wheel a chance to recover, the pace though is steady and the right choice of instruments reminds me a little of their compatriots, The National. Not too much though.
All in all this is one of my very favourite albums, excellent in every way, superb. 10 out of 10.

This is a very odd video put together by someone, that isn’t them but others. The music is though.



Upon This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Some Loud Thunder

Perhaps I was a little harsh about my Glen Campbell disc, its value according to comments is there, just not for me as I was expecting a best of, only to be met with a live recording that didn't at least as much as I was concerned, the goods.
Enough of that though, that was yesterday, today it was the second, and suspect the final, studio release by New York based band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Some Loud Thunder.
I will save a lot for tomorrow, but I really like this album. They are so different a band and I think non more so than on this album. Main songwriter Alec Ounsworth's voice is stronger and his lyrics even more odd, in a good way, here.
I am a little pushed for time and really can go on, and on about CYHSY, so I will save it for later. Great album, 8 out of 10, best track the final one.



Five Easy Pieces by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah