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Pronouns: He/Him/His.
"Imagine being a heterosexual white male in Britain at this moment. How bad is that. Everything you say is racist, everything you say is homophobic. The Woke community have really f****d this country."
Following on from the previous post of this song YouTube have kindly suggested a duet between John Prine and Nanci Griffith, nice to know that they and Google pay attention to TWTD (I I have even had a suggestion of an Asha Bosle track, I guess because I watched a Comedy Short off the iPlayer in which Meera Syall mentioned 'Dum Maro Dum', we are so well looked after these days).
[edit] Slightly jealous of the adoring way that Nanci looks at John Prine a minute or so in, but his singing does seem to go from strength to strength after that. Great songwriters do not only have skill with words and observation, they have frailty and vulnerability too. Which helps us empathise with what they write and sing about.
Don't know whether you are familiar with Steve Goodman. He and John Prine were fellow Illinoisans, often played together and exchanged songs.
Goodman developed leukaemia and, for a while, called himself "Cool Hand Leuk". He died of the disease in his mid-thirties.
Here is one they wrote together...
I've been vaguely aware of Steve Goodman but my gadfly musical tastes took in Joni Mitchell, Roy Harper and a few other singer songwriters before I was off again into Celtic rock, desert blues, post punk conceptualists or whatever else distracted me. Wish I had locked onto him now, and wish I had devoted more time to listening to John Prine - not least so that I was more familiar with the material when I saw him at Cambridge Folk Festival a couple of years ago (with one heck of a talented band). That first song that they wrote together sounds like the sort of gripe that is talked at The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville (OK, I've been there once) but delivered far more deftly.
I'm going to tear myself away from the TWTD forum in a bit and devote an hour and a half to the 'Arena' documentary on Loretta Lynn that the BBC iPlayer has released for a month, I will try and think of it as going out to a gig on a Saturday night.
The BBC's obituary programme 'Last Word' belatedly got around to including John Prine this week, but 'Whispering' Bob Harris does know his stuff and gave a good account of this much missed (already) songwriter, it is the final item on the programme:
The BBC's obituary programme 'Last Word' belatedly got around to including John Prine this week, but 'Whispering' Bob Harris does know his stuff and gave a good account of this much missed (already) songwriter, it is the final item on the programme:
It was when Whispering Bob was presenter of Old Grey Whistle Test that I first heard of JP and bought his (then new) album.
Thinking of that brings to mind another artist from those years whom I first heard on OGWT and I still listen to - Judee Sill. Sadly, she died at an even younger age than Steve Goodman...
It was when Whispering Bob was presenter of Old Grey Whistle Test that I first heard of JP and bought his (then new) album.
Thinking of that brings to mind another artist from those years whom I first heard on OGWT and I still listen to - Judee Sill. Sadly, she died at an even younger age than Steve Goodman...
[Post edited 25 Apr 2020 14:31]
I am sure I heard a single Judee Sill track back in the early Seventies and I thought it would have been on one of those two LP CBS samplers but, as she was signed to Asylum, that was not the case. Hearing those two tracks now and with a more mature ear I can hear her talent. The Bob Harris (OGWT presenter, not husband) comments are interesting when you read her Wikipedia page afterwards - I know a woman who has had similar experiences and it makes you want to find the man or men who set her on the course to destruction and throttle them; except that would be continuing the cycle of violence.
Judee Sill's tragic end due to addiction reminds me of someone else I have been meaning to listen again to - Tim Hardin. Here is one of his, understated, original versions and a, predictably not at all understated, surprisingly good cover version.
Not sure if I am being lured into the Google / Facebook way of swamping you with palliatives to distract you from what is happening in the real world but I had this curious item suggested to me this morning:
It is sort of apposite though because my first exposure to John Prine's songs was 'Sam Stone' on a sampler called 'The New Age of Atlantic' which opened with Led Zeppelin's 'Hey, Hey, What Can I Do?'
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