all the news that print will fit.
|
|
| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
|
|
Friday, September 19, 2003 np: nothing left to lose: a tribute to kris kristofferson j. ball told me that he had heard that kris kristofferson died. but i can't locate that anywhere on the web. so i'm assuming he's okay. if he is in fact dead, the sadness is great. considering he was just at johnny cash's funeral earlier this week. it would make the second great loss to country music in less than a week. but for now, i'm operating on the assumption that it's not true. updates about j's indie/rock mayhem are now up. i go to a lot of concerts. that is common, and not so common. it depends on the individual as to how often you frequent things like live concerts. but this is a great expanse of two weeks for shows to be sure. tonight, i will be seeing the roots at wake forest. next thursday, lucinda williams and the jayhawks roll into town. however, last sunday, we saw jay farrar in asheville. if you count the times i witnessed him playing with his former band son volt, i've seen jay perform four times. twice in son volt, twice solo. jay's legacy is somewhat vexed. despite him being equally (if not more so) of a force behind one of america's greatest bands, uncle tupelo, his post-tupelo work (with the exception of son volt's masterful trace) has fallen on increasingly critical ears, especially when the inevitable comparison to former tupelo writing partner jeff tweedy is invoked. while trace easily and handily out shone wilco's (tweedy's band) debut album, a.m., the successive son volt records, while (in my opinion) continuing a subtle shift in sound and continuation of beautiful songwriting, did not live up to the onslaught of tweedy's output. wilco soared with their continuously remarkable creations, beginning with the elegant double album being there and continuing through the beach boys/beatles channeling of summerteeth and most recently culminating in the impossible to overhype yankee hotel foxtrot. so where farrar's evolution has been a more subtle and gradual one, it has left him out in the cold. the breakthrough was his 2001 debut solo release, sebastopol. and while critics began to come back around to the praise so richly deserved, it seems they hadn't been paying attention. a large chunk of the direction that farrar found on sebastopol was greatly hinted at and tested out on the final son volt album. yes, sebastopol really fleshed out the nuances of farrar's intentions. and yes, the drumming of jon wurster (of superchunk) and the string arrangement/programming of stephen drozd (of the flaming lips) adds lightyears to the sound. but as i reviewed in an earlier post, his new album terroir blues is a paula abdul/mc skat kat moment if there ever was one. two steps forward, two steps back. but not in a negative way. it embraces the less instrument-heavy songs of his past but plays with that sparsity to great effect. as jay came out onto stage and began playing solo on sunday (see? eventually i got back to my point), i was immensely enjoying hearing the new material after being familiar with it. he certainly played some of it in march at south by southwest, but the album didn't come out until june. so after laying a few songs on, canyon, the opening band, came out and proceeded to play back up for the rest of the night. canyon was fairly good on their own, but as jay's backup band they were stellar. and the moment they kicked into their first song together, a smile spread across my face that didn't leave the entire night. it was so uplifting to see jay with a band again. the last year i had seem him with a band was the last time i saw son volt: 1999, from lawn seats at what was then blockbuster pavillion, opening for john cougar mellancamp. as i said earlier, i go to a lot of concerts. so understandably, not every one i go to is an emotional event. there are a few where i get really whiskey away inside. i can remember the few: paul westerberg, the two times i saw toad the wet sprocket and the three times i've seen glen phillips, sleater-kinney, seeing the jayhawks for the first time at an acoustic show, jurassic 5, wilco and so forth. this was one of those times as well. i realized what i had been fighting about internally for the past few years. in the face of a constant beratement of jeff tweedy vs. jay farrar critical onslaught, i had fallen for the line. i actually felt, in the back of my mind, that as a fan of good music i ought to admit that tweedy was making better music than farrar. despite the fact that my gut and my heart said differently. and last sunday, i overcame that. i sat down and realized that forever and a day...i'm squarely on the side of jay farrar as one of my poet laureates. as much as i love wilco, son volt and jay farrar will always be my favourite. it's a shame that it's set up where i feel i should or need to choose between them. and really i don't. but the fact that my first introduction to the tupelo-related bands was son volt's trace and not anything by wilco probably makes a difference. jay stepped out for the first encore by himself and gave the crowd what they might not have asked for out of fear of offending him. "tear-stained eye" and "windfall." two examples of the downright perfect songwriting of which farrar was and is still very capable. they both hail from trace and have a haunting beauty about them. someday, personally, i'd really love to hear him play "too early," my favourite song from trace. but i'll settle for any of his perfect compositions. there's something inescapable about the power of music in my life. and i thank god daily for that. i really do. posted by J. Neas | 9/19/2003 09:43:00 AM
Comments:
Post a Comment
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
