| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 29/05/2011 : 18:21:40
Gram's importance to the development of country/rock music... Gram was the cosmic cowboy and his immersion of true country into his soul made for some of the best in the genre.
Interview with Gram about "GP" with Emmy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mVKggDKrGE
In My Hour Of Darkness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbw0yFuEtKU&feature=related
The serendipitous pairing of Emmylou Harris & Gram Parsons, through introductions by Chris Hillman, cannot be more important. Gram's two solo albums are unmistakably intertwined with his musical and emotional relationship with Emmylou.
....Harris soon returned to performing as part of a trio with Gerry Mule and Tom Guidera. One night in 1971, members of the country rock group The Flying Burrito Brothers happened to be in the audience. Former Byrds member Chris Hillman, who had taken over the band after the departure of its founder Gram Parsons, was so impressed by Harris that he briefly considered asking her to join the band. Instead, Hillman ended up recommending her to Parsons, who was looking for a female vocalist to work with on his first solo album, GP. Harris toured as a member of Parsons' band, The Fallen Angels, in 1973, and the couple shone during vocal harmonies and duets. Harris was quite pleased, and invested a lot emotionally in their relationship. Later that year, Parsons and Harris worked on a studio album, Grievous Angel. Parsons died in his motel room near what is now Joshua Tree National Park on September 19, 1973, from an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol. Parsons's Grievous Angel was released posthumously in 1974, and three more tracks from his last sessions with Harris were included on another posthumous Parsons album, Sleepless Nights, in 1976. There was one more album of recorded material from that period of time that was packaged with the name, Live 1973, but was not released until 1982.
The working relationship between Harris and Parsons is of great importance in country and country-rock music history. Parsons offered Harris a study in true country music, introducing her to artists like The Louvin Brothers, and provided her with a musical identity; Harris's harmony and duet vocals, on the other hand, were lauded by those who heard them, and helped inspire Parsons' performances. His death left her devastated at an emotional and musical crossroads. She eventually carried on with her own version of Parsons' musical vision, and was instrumental in bringing attention to his achievements. Harris's earliest signature song, and arguably her most personal one, "Boulder to Birmingham", written shortly after Gram's death, showed the depth of her shock and pain at losing Parsons. It was, according to her best friend Linda Ronstadt, the beginning of a "lifetime effort to process what had happened", and was just the first of many songs written and/or performed by Harris about her life with (and without) Parsons.
I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.
—"Boulder to Birmingham"
lyrics by Emmylou Harris
-wiki
"Emmylou Harris' Pieces of the Sky is one of the more welcome entries in her catalog. Before the auspicious and provocative Elite Hotel, issued later in 1975, Pieces of the Sky was the kind of record that became Harris' signature style for most of her time at Warner Brothers, and is one of the most auspicious debut recordings in the history of country music. Accompanied by the Hot Band featuring James Burton, Rodney Crowell, Brian Ahern, Rick Cunha, Glen D. Hardin, Linda Ronstadt, Amos Garrett, Mike Auldridge, and a slew of others, Harris offers a palette of songs that range from traditional country music, including her understated yet deeply moving read of Billy Sherrill's "Too Far Gone," Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors," Merle Haggard's "(Tonight) The Bottle Let Me Down," the Louvin Brothers' "If I Could Only Win Your Love," and the Bryants' "Sleepless Nights" (a staple of Harris when she played with the late Gram Parsons). From the then-current crop of country songwriters, she opened the album with Crowell's "Bluebird Wine" and Shel Silverstein's "Queen of the Silver Dollar." There's also another Lennon-McCartney selection included, with "For No One." But the most moving track on the set is "Boulder to Birmingham," a Harris original and her tribute to the memory of Parsons. In her voice one can hear the human heart break, shatter, and then gather itself in order to move on, forever looking back. When she sings, "Well you really got me this time/And the hardest part is knowing I'll survive/I've come to listen for the sound of the trucks as they move down out on 95/And pretending it's the ocean, comin' down to wash me clean/Baby, do you know what I mean?," the entire world opens in the grain of her voice and bathes the listener in grief, longing, and resolve. [On the 2004 remastered and expanded version of the album Rhino added a pair of Dallas Frazier tracks from the same sessions: there's the hard-singing honky tonk of "Hank and Lefty" and the standard "California Cottonfields." While nothing needed be added to this masterpiece, these cuts following Silverstein's (original) closer do not at all detract from it." -avaxhome
Boulder to Birmingham....for Gram....just beautiful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTry1yKvxZM
Before Believing....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GRh_QauiyA
....
I highly recommend Emmylou's brilliant album...."Pieces Of Sky"
_____________________________________________
So forget this cruel world
and whatever’s going on
I'll accept my fate
while I sing this song.
But if one day you should see me from your cloud
lend a hand and lift me
Away from the crowd. |
| 6 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| rocker |
Posted - 03/06/2011 : 14:07:52
No soul,man.No soul at all.
And that's hard to get. You know I try to listen to as much music as I can but I wish I could go back to those early days where creativity ran rampant theough genres. It was an explosion. Now, I just don't how to characterize it. Don't mind me. I guess I'm a music curmudgeon... |
| captain america and billy |
Posted - 02/06/2011 : 15:27:27
I'll admit that at times I do actually have SOME respect for artists with a decidedly commercial tilt to their approach because many of tehm do EXACTLY what they set out to do.They knew if they got some at least passably good technical musicians and managed to gather some material with some reasonable amount of general public accessibility,they could turn a few bucks and make their dreams.As much as I despise the musical likes of Lady Gaga,Taylor Swift,and ephemeral bores such as Coldplay and Maroon 5,all of these acts DO REALIZE that in this day and age of "everything's been done" and "most at least slightly intriguing chord progressions and melodies have probably already been written,anything with any kind of small hook whatsoever with half decent musical accomponiment and any sort of competent production values could stand to sell millions and perhaps garner further recognition at the following year's Grammy ceremonies.What DOES arouse my inherent disdain for at least some of these dollar mongers however is the fact that in some interviews I've seen,they actually talk as though their droll offerings are works of highly sophisticated artisans!I saw one interview with the band who did that "Sunday Morning" song about 2000 or so.I think it was Maroon 5?Anyway the following allusion they made to themselves still applies to many artists' potently dilusional self images today.I guess they had booked the famous Abbey Road studios to make their latest album to that point.Abbey Road was,of course,where the Beatles and George Martin created their seriously conceputally involved msterpices.This band ACTUALLY SAID that since they were using the same studio as the Fabs,maybe THEY could create the same MAGIC as well!!They actually used the word MAGIC to describe themselves on top of making the ridiculous Beatles comparison!Look,people,if you can write some passable top twenty fodder that seems to appease an audience greatly underappreciative of seriously good music and turn a sizeable profit in the process,more power to ya.But PLEASE DO NOT continue to present yourselves with the near schizophrenic delusion of grandre that ANYONE who takes up an instrument and can sing a little is automatically some sort of provocateur d'arte.The same goes for most "American Idol" contestants.No soul,man.No soul at all. |
| rocker |
Posted - 01/06/2011 : 18:48:42
You know I remember when the Byrds' country effort "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" came out. That was their respect for that whole country music heritage they grew up on. Yet they got terribly criticized by some performing it. i.e. how can "hippies" do this music? what gives them the right? The criticism then kind of subsided and then we got this great unfolding of country-rock music for the next few years. But after that I think the country radio programmers got hold of it so today "country" I think is locked into a style that's kind of very very mainstream and popular. I think right now it's harder to do what Hillman and Pederson are doing say with "country" music. You surely can't make a living out of it. |
| captain america and billy |
Posted - 01/06/2011 : 16:02:17
Most country performers today need serious lessons from pieces like these and stop porporting the genre to be just for red neck goof offs!I just recently started receiving a country video network as part of my tv package and all I hear is a bunch of stereotypical hay house goons virtually and shamlessly lampooning popular life styles of America's south and midwest.Now these people have a serious power to communicate emotions about an entire region of an enormous country to the rest of us with at least SOME sort of responsibility to not duly misrepresent them all as being ignorant,narrow minded,sex obsesessed, boilermaker guzzling nitwits and buffoons.I think this whole movement may have started with the pompously insufferable, thoroughly sophmoric and near childish ramblings of something called Shania Twain.And as far as Garth Brooks,some of his tunes ARE a bit catchy and he seems to have a terrific sense of stage showmanship,but I can't BELIEVE he's actually the second largest selling act in U.S. recording industry history behind only the Beatles!He has only had about four or five things to say and he keeps re-writing them OVER and OVER and OVER.And don't even get me started on all this grossly overstated Taylor Swift nonsense.I recently saw her on a talk show where she claimed to have spent two years writing her last album.TWO YEARS!!If this is all you can muster in two years of mind's eye brow sweat,you just haven't got it. |
| rocker |
Posted - 31/05/2011 : 14:33:32
Good stuff lk. Gram was sure "down home" if you get the drift. He had "country" written all over him. I don't know but I think if he grew up with just a couple of bucks less he'd be ok today and would be making songs with Harris, Hillman or playing for himself etc etc. We missed his future.
And I'll suggest Harris' work with Knopfler.."All the Roadrunning " too...Real good with the duets!.... |
| ed the bear |
Posted - 30/05/2011 : 19:31:55
Oh yeah.
Thanks for the reminder... |
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