|
Faithful husband, soccer dad,
basset owner, and former cowboy
Return to TboggHomePage
FELLOW TRAITORS
*The Nether-Count*
100 Monkeys Typing
Ain't No Bad Dude
Alicublog
Americablog
American Leftist
Attytood (Will Bunch)
Bad Attitudes
Balloon Juice
Better Inhale Deeply
Bitch Ph.D
Bloggy
Bob Harris
Brilliant At Breakfast
BusyBusyBusy
Byzantium's Shores
Creek Running North
Crooked Timber
Crooks and Liars
Cursor
Daily Kos
Dependable Renegade
David Ehrenstein
Democratic Veteran
Dohiyi Mir
Down With Tyranny
Echidne of the Snakes
Edicts of Nancy
Elayne Riggs
Eschaton (Atrios)
Ezra Klein
Failure Is Impossible
Feministe
Feministing
Firedoglake
First Draft
Freewayblogger
The Garance
The Group News Blog
Guano Island
Hairy Fish Nuts
Hammer of the Blogs
Hullabaloo(Digby)
I Am TRex
If I Ran the Zoo
I'm Not One To Blog
Interesting Times
James Wolcott
Jesus' General
Jon Swift
Juan Cole
King of Zembla
Kung Fu Monkey
Lance Mannion
Lawyers Guns and Money
Lean Left
Liberal Oasis
Main & Central
Majikthise
Making Light (Nielsen Hayden)
Mark Kleiman
Martini Revolution
MaxSpeak
MF Blog
MyDD
Needlenose
The Next Hurrah
Nitpicker
No More Mr. Nice Blog
Norbizness
Norwegianity
Oliver Willis
One Good Move
Orcinus
Pacific Views
Pam's House Blend
Pandagon
Pharyngula
Political Animal(K.Drum)
The Poorman
Progressive Gold
Right Hand Thief
Rising Hegemon
Roger Ailes
Rude Pundit
Rumproast
Sadly, No
Seeing The Forest
Shakesville
Sisyphus Shrugged
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Slacktivist
SteveAudio
Suburban Guerilla
TalkLeft
The American Street
The Left Coaster
The Road To Surfdom
The Sideshow
The Talking Dog
The Talent Show
Tom Tomorrow
Tom Watson
Whiskeyfire
UggaBugga
Wampum
Wonkette
World O'Crap
TOSS ME
A BONE
Amazon Wish List
SOURCES
MSNBC
CNN
The Washington Post
Media Matters
The New York Times
The Guardian
Yahoo News
Salon
The Raw Story
Common Dreams
Media Transparency
The Nation
Alternet
Joe Conason
Talking Points Memo
THE VAST WASTELAND
Captain Corndog & Friends
Cheerleaders Gone Spazzy
80% True
Corner of Mediocrity and Banality
Village Idiots Central
Darwin's Waiting Room
News for Mouthbreathers
Mailbox
Your e-mail may be reprinted sans name and e-mail address. Think about how stupid you want to appear.
Blogroll Me!
Site Feed
|
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Remembering the Grievous Angel
As a rule, tribute albums (CD's) generally suck. A few by-the-book covers by name acts to guarantee sales, an edgy remake or two by someone who should know better, and, bringing up the rear, a few more interpretations by second-tier acts that make you realize why they are a second-tier acts. That's why it was such a pleasure to come across a Return of the Grievous Angel a tribute to Gram Parsons yesterday, a CD I bought my wife a couple of years ago, and yet for some reason never listened to.
For those not familiar with Gram Parsons, one could safely say that he's the father of country rock. Without Parsons the Byrds would never have recorded Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and there might never have been any Eagles, Poco, Pure Prarie League, Uncle Tupelo, Jayhawks, or Whiskeytown, and we may never have heard of Emmylou Harris, which would have been a tragedy of epic proportions. Parsons died at the age of 26 having recorded only two solo albums, but he fathered a genre that lives today under the banner of alt-country or No Depression. He left us with songs like In My Hour of Darkness, She (a song I heard Norah Jones perform a few weeks ago), Hickory Wind, and Luxury Liner. For years, the Parsons torch was carried by Emmylou Harris who kept him the public eye just enough to allow later generations to discover him.
Getting back to the CD, suffice it to say that it is a piece of art that brings together Emmylou Harris (as producer & performer), the Pretenders, the Cowboy Junkies, Beck, Evan Dando, Steve Earle, Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Wilco, the incredibly underrated Raul Malo, Whiskeytown, and Gillian Welch for very straighforward versions of Parson's songs that are true to the spirit and understated eloquence of the originals. There's not a bad one in the bunch, although I'm sure someone would quibble over the Cowboy Junkies version of Ooh Las Vegas which is closer to the Cocteau Twins than the Flying Burrito Brothers.
You can read about Parsons here and make sure you take the time to read about the circumstances surrounding his funeral, which is both funny and weird.
Oh. And buy the CD through one of the left-wing America-hating fair & balanced blogs.
You won't regret it.
|
|
