Queensland Gothic.
[ETA]
The diversity of his musical tastes is pretty interesting to see…
Seeing this, it’s not a huge surprise to see why his own music is so diverse and complex… he draws from so many different traditions and comes out with his own wonderful thing…
One thing I respect about Luke Combs’s cover is that he didn’t change the lyrics at all. He sings, “I work in a market as a checkout girl.” It seems minor, but he could have easily altered the lyrics to be from a male perspective and he didn’t. And with homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny not being exactly uncommon among popular country music fans these days, I think it says a lot that he chose to keep the song in the first person and from a woman’s perspective. He said he just recorded the song because it’s always been one of his favorite songs, and that he didn’t expect it to be a hit for him, and I believe him. His cover isn’t transformative. It’s almost a beat for beat, note for note reproduction of Chapman’s.
I appreciated that, too. It’s clear he loves the song, and respect Chapman’s storytelling and songwriting ability.
The industry around country music isn’t serving ordinary decent people who aren’t “based”. Or at least it wasn’t, maybe it’s changing?
We went to see Bob Vylan last night (which was fucking great), but the support are my new favourite band I’ve never heard of. They got major applause and were mobbed afterwards. They can come back on their own anytime:
Was going to post an article about that earlier! Stupid work.
Please do so when you have some free time! It’s a lovely version…
It really is. Of late I’ve heard it most at funerals. So I got chills listening to it.
I can’t remember where it was now but the charity was chosen by her estate and it’s worthwhile: small, local, not changing the world but trying to make people’s lives a bit better. Achievable.
Her (Phoebe Bridger’s) last year charity song was great too but I won’t post it until December. Because standards.
Not a song, but the lyrics were read at my aunt’s funeral in 2016…
Also read the article on this in tbe Grauniad and was going to post it. Like everyone I’d love more OutKast but Andre doing whatever it is that floats his boat is also what I’d love.
I’m an enormous fan of Alice Coltrane and Laraaji and Terry Riley, and Eliane Radigue, and Pauline Oliveiros (who are more the minimal antecedents of this than Reich and Glass mentioned in the article).
ETA the article talks a lot about Alice (less about Laraaji who is I think more relevant, or Eno actually now I think of it who of course first released Laraaji to the general public).
(Ralph Gibson, San Francisco, 1960-61)