Music and Opera

Bryan Curtis has an excellent piece at the Daily Beast on the current state of country music. Well, the state of commercially successful, Grammy-nominated country music anyway. As you might expect, it’s depressing stuff. Basically, you have a choice between Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift and perhaps the best that may be said of this is that it might be marginally less gruesome than the era of Shania Twain and Garth Brooks. Marginally. As Bryan explains: To reduce Taylor vs. Carrie to style points would be a mistake. Their music has deep thematic differences, too. If you favor Swift, you are embracing a Weltanschauung that says that all of life

Earl Scruggs and his boys pay a visit to Doc Watson’s home in North Carolina for some good times and some even better music. It’s old school and it’s great.

Been a whole lotta time since Waylon was seen around here. Time to rectify that so here’s the great man singing A Good Hearted Woman which is what every outlaw needs though since all mommas also know they really shouldn’t let their babies grow up to be cowboys you’d think that means they’d be doubly hesitant to let their daughters hitch themselves to the outlaw bandwagon…

Well, Sunday afternoon high-class, great-pickin’ gospel really. Alison Krauss has always cited Tony Rice as one of the biggest influences upon her career and here he is, accompanied by the great Ricky Skaggs, performing what is, in my view, a beautiful version of the classic The Soul of Man Never Dies:

Apologies for the light blogging these past couple of days. Still, it’s Saturday and so it’s time for some more country. Since I’m seeing him perform in Perth on Monday night it’s appropriate that Steve Earle makes another appearance in this series. And since his latest album is a set of Townes van Zandt covers it’s also fitting that we highlight his lovely, moving tribute to TVZ, Fort Worth Blues:

Sadly Youtube doesn’t seem amply stocked with footage of Gram Parsons. But here’s one of the next best things: Emmylou Harris performing her great tribute to Gram, Boulder to Birmingham:

Yay! Another young, still-to-reach-their-prime performer! I like Laura Cantrell heaps. She has something. Here she is performing When the Roses Bloom Again. A nice, properly mournful song that is, in its title anyway, a spin-off of an old Carter Family tune that itself is reminiscent of some of the old Border ballads and, thus, a reminder of how much good country music is still linked to songs from these parts…

Because, frankly, from Afghanistan to Texas to the corridors of Whitehall and the Bank of England, it’s been a pretty bleak week it’s appropriate to bring Saturday Morning Country forward by a few hours. This Lyle Lovett song – If I Had a Boat – always cheers me up. Added bonus: with its dreams of boats and ponies and ifs and ans and all the rest of it you may also read it as an arch critique of the promises politicians feel compelled to make and that we, because we want to believe, choose to take at more than face value. Not merely boats for all, but ponies on each

Elvis Presley once said that the Louvin Brothers were his favourite country musicians. But he nver recorded one of their songs. Perhaps because, like almost everyone else who ever had any dealings with the Alabama-born and raised brothers, he’d been cussed out by Ira Louvin.  Charlie said that his elder brother was all kinds of messed up by religion. Perhaps. But whether they were singing gospel, traditional murder ballads or their own compositions there were few better examples of harmony singing than Ira and Charlie Louvin. Here they are performing I Can’t Keep You in Love With Me. Which was, for Ira anyway, kinda true: after he tried to strangle

Yes, that would be Steve Earle’s boy and yes he’s named after the great Townes van Zandt. One of the things I like about country music is it that, in the end, it’s all one big family. Granted, a family that sings about heartbreak and loss and the endless miseries of life quite a lot, but a family nonetheless. So it’s good to see Steve’s son following the family tradition. And the kid can play and sing and write. He’s good, in a reflective, acoustic fashion that differentiates him from some of his old man’s more rock-influenced stuff. There’s a certain mischief too. Consider this song, Mama’s Eyes, from his

How is it possible that this series has, until this point, failed to include Willie Nelson? A mystery, folks, a mystery. Now Willie has some odd views and is perilously close to being a 9/11 Truther but, frankly, we don’t hold that against him. The music’s the thing and he’s written enough and done enough to earn our forebearance. Plus, you know, there’s something of a Texas shaman about old Willie. Which explains quite a lot, really. In truth I’d be lying if I said that Willie was or is one of my super-favourite country stars but there’s no gainsaying his contribution to the Church of Country. The man has

Somehow or other I missed the 60th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s birth this week. The Boss turned 60 on Wednesday and if that seems oddly perturbing then, I suppose, at least it’s not as cor-blimey a thought as realising that Martin Amis celebrated his 60th birthday last month. Aye, the times are racing on right enough. So, by way of belated thanks, here’s the great man performing Mansion on the Hill, from his wondrous trip along the darker roads of Americana, Nebraska.

The New York Times actually paid someone to write this about a new video game: Luckily Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with the widows of George Harrison and John Lennon, seem to understand that the Beatles are not a museum piece, that the band and its message ought never be encased in amber. The Beatles: Rock Band is nothing less than a cultural watershed, one that may prove only slightly less influential than the band’s famous appearance on “The Ed Sullivan  Show” in 1964. By reinterpreting an essential symbol of one generation in the medium and technology of another, The Beatles: Rock Band provides a transformative entertainment experience. In

The Church of Country is a broad brotherhood (and sisterhood) and it’s fair to say that Lyle Lovett, like many others, has sometimes left it to worship elsewhere. But, again, like others that sometimes stray, he’s always welcome back for the Church of Country is a forgiving house that espouses tolerance, an open mind and equally generous hearts. Anyway, Lovett is always interesting. And often charming too. Consider his Hymn to Having It All If I Had A Boat  with its splendid refrain: If I had a boat, I’d go out on the ocean/ And if I had a pony, I’d ride him on my boat/And we could all together

From the Department of Criticism: the Irish Times handed my old Dublin University Players contemporary Peter Crawley the unenviable task of reviewing Chris de Burgh in concert. It’s fair to say that his notice was less than generous… Certain toes will never uncurl after this experience, but it is almost admirable how unaltered de Burgh has remained by the flow of time. You may have grown out of seeking epic significance in the portentous verses of Spanish Train, you may greet Patricia the Stripper with the same mortification as a faded photo of yourself. This is because you’ve changed. Chris de Burgh has not. Not one to take this sort

Iris DeMent has only made four albums. And since the latest, 2004’s Lifeline, is a gospel record it’s fair to say that she ain’t on the trendy side of Nashville. In fact her style could harly be further removed from the country-pap that you hear on country radio stations and the teevee. DeMent is proper old-school you see. Her songs are often filled with wistful sentiment and sometimes with outright melancholy in the grand old country tradition. But they’re always humane and heartfelt. Plus, of course, her voice has got that terrific Ozark twang to it. Here she is performing at a Transatlantic Session (with Emmylou on backing vocals and

If we could choose to sound like anyone, Waylon once said, we’d want to sing like George Jones. And frankly, not too many people have ever bothered to disagree with Mr Jennings’ verdict. And like Waylon and so many other country greats, the Possum has not always had his troubles to seek; rather he’s plunged head-first into them. For years he was known as “No Show Jones”; these days, happily, George Jones seems pretty content. Still playing, still getting as much satisfaction from keeping his lawn in perfect condition as he does from entertaining his fans. But the voice is the thing. The Possum can take something corny and distil

Dolly Parton is a lady and Emmylou Harris is a dame, but Patsy Cline was a broad. A rootin’ tootin’ bar-room broad as fond of cussin’ as she was of a beer and a good time. You gotta have her in this series sooner, rather than later. Unusually for a singer, she’d hang out with the songwriters – including Harlan Howard, Willie Nelson and Roger Miller – at Tootsies Orchid Lounge in Nashville; equally unusually she’d thank them for writing the songs that made her famous. Nelson, of course, wrote Crazy, the song that became Cline’s signature. Her style evolved from cowboy hats and country dresses to cashmere and pearls.