Monday 2 December 2013

EVENSONG. EMMYLOU HARRIS, SLUMMING IT.




Emmylou and her big Gibson, she could harmonise the sounds of the slaughterhouse.  Don't know about him, though; even if he's not unique  you have to admire him as a stylist, but he's hard to like; it's just that, in interviews, he does - if such a thing is possible - a low-key, downbeat  bombast,   an insistent, softly-spoken I-Know-Bestism.  Just becaue he's sold a  hundred and fifty million records and filled amphitheatres of adulation  all over the world.

This, I think, is the best of their rather pointless 2006 collaboration- Emmylou doesn't need to play with an ageing pub rocker, a bald ego from the days of the Compact Disc jamboree.  She brings the odd interesting   dish to the table,  he just eats everything up                                      

6 comments:

Woman on a Raft said...

The interesting thing about him is that he was never a young pub rocker. It is like he was born middle-aged so there was always a feel of someone playing a reunion gig with themselves. Very English, that.

He gets redeeming marks, though, for using a Prohibited Word and thereby finding himself banned and bowdlerized. Gotta be worth something.

call me ishmael said...

Usedta gotta be worth something, mrs woar, but the bald ego has betrayed you. There is a youtubeclip, a big, showy affair, in Montserrat, with Knopfler, Sting, Clapton, Collins, a whole troupe of shiny wankers, maybe even Lady Sir Elton. That pushy percussionist chap, Ray Cooper, fingering his tambourines and licking his bongos, he's there, too, he's always there and in this irritating ensemble's version of Money For nothing, Knopfler, mindful of his showbiz audience, sings not "that little faggot with the ear-ring and the make-up" but "that little mother with the ear-ring and the make-up."
No Sinead O'Connor, our bonny lad, no courting outrage. Brothers in Arms but only with Showbiz.

Interesting thought, that, a reunion gig with himself. McCartney, of coure, has been fronting his own tribute band for decades but at least, unlike Knopfler, he didn't arrive ready-formed.

Down to the Waterline, Southbound Again, that was good stuff, his first record, the rest of it was just bloat and conceit, a love-struck Romeo goes corporate.

Alphons said...

You must admit it is OK "so far" as it goes.

He was better in in younger days in my opinion (for what that is worth)

Woman on a Raft said...

How on earth did they get so many super-size egos on to one stage without it reaching critical mass and taking out half the city?

callmeishmael'sipad said...

Yes, mr alphons, I quite like that one, overall, though the collaboration was pointless, and yes, again, Dire Straits was the last British band over which I enthused, if only for a while.

It was charity, mrs woar, kept the roof on, charity and coke, I expect.

callmeishmael'sipad said...
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