Oh good god! Recently I have been getting into country. The image I’ve had of country in the past is that of the Dolly Parton variety. How wrong can you be. So I have been listening to Willie Nelson, a lot of Kris Kristofferson and of course Johnny Cash. It’s such great music. I am rapidly beginning to adore it.
Today I was shopping in Hiroshima (more about that in a later post) and bought The Highwaymen (Nelson, Kristofferson, Jennings AND Cash!!!!!) and Johnny Cash – Personal File. I can’t wait to listen to them thouroughly. I rented a laptop from my hotel and I decided to check out Johnny’s web site. It’s cool. It has WHOLE songs (not samples) that you can listen to. It also has videos – which I clicked on straight away. And watched the video for ‘Hurt’.
Now I have heard quite a bit about how good his cover of this song is. Words don’t do it justice. Not in the slightest. Are you beginning to see how much I am falling in love with this song? Oh god. Watch the video. Cash filmed it six months before he died. He looks old and frail. While sad, it’s nice that he was doing what he loved right up until he died (he said his childhood dream was to be played on the radio). His wife, June, is in it (she died two months after the shoot). It’s obviously become especially poignant.
The song is on his album American IV: The Man Comes Around. I had thought I had bought enough CDs on my jaunt but now I am off to Tower Records in the morning to get that album. I NEED that song. It’s an example that mp3s and digital media do create sales, that’s one extra album I’ll bought because of them!
I have really only been listening to what you might call ‘Classic’ Cash. Today as I said, I bought Personal File. I hve listened to CD1 (interrupted by my ‘discovery’ of ‘Hurt’), it’s a wonderful collection of songs, many of which are introduced by Cash. It’s my first foray into his later minimalist style (despite the fact all the songs here were recorded before 1983). I’m looking forward to getting American IV: The Man Comes Around, ‘Hurt’ could easily become one of my all time top five songs.
The other CD I bought was The Highwaymen “The Road Goes On Forever”. I’m listening to it now. I love their eponymous song and regularly murder it at karaoke! This is the first time I have listened to one of their CDs and it’s bloody good.
But ‘Hurt’ though ………….Damn!