Gillian
Welch, The Harrow & the Harvest. To be able to challenge time and
take the faithful on a trip to another era is the sign of a real artist.
Singer Gillian Welch has been doing that since the very start when she
planted her music in the long-ago South and decided that was where she
belonged. Never mind she grew up in Southern California, because
imagination trumps all. After several distinguished releases and even
some genre-stomping exercursions, Welch now whittles things down to
their essence and strikes a chord of redemption.
What could almost be a concept album with two separate
sides, what is immediately striking is the heavy cardboard compact disc
cover. It sets the tone that the woman is trying for a new approach in
how her music is presented, likely hoping to break from the past. It
works, too. With longtime partner David Rawlings on guitar, banjo and
harmonica, their voices circle and inspire each other like plants
growing together. It's such a winsome sound the lyrical darkness almost
sounds like light. Almost.
Song titles like "Dark Turn of Mind," "Down Along the
Dixie Line," "Hard Times" and "The Way the Whole Thing Ends" speak for
themselves. The juxtaposition of simple harmonies and straight-ahead
string playing has always been perfect accompaniment for mining the
depths of the human spirit. Country music was built on just such
despair. How Gillian Welch is able to zero in on the essence of such
puzzling wonderment is a gift for us all.
Various Artists, Buddy Holly Rave On. Tribute albums
remain tricky exercises in restrained hubris. To take the songs of one
person and devote a whole album to different interpretations is to beat
the drum pretty hard for the originals, at the same time hoping that the
new versions don't pale in their revamped life. Obviously, there is no
way to beat the Beatles or the Rolling Stones at their own game, but
Buddy Holly? His many hits will always stand as high points of '50s
rock, showing how a seemingly common man could pull off an
almost-miraculous feat of musical transformation. Holly was a Clark
Kent-figure, looking like a high school science teacher with a slight
build and thick black-framed glasses. But once his guitar started
snapping out "Oh Boy" and "Peggy Sue" and all those other stellar
classics he became so much bigger than life.
A wide range of artists take on his catalogue here, and
there are some beauties. Patti Smith heads the list with "Words of
Love," giving a master class in how true inspiration fuels the soul.
Others aren't far behind, whether it's Nick Lowe or Cee-Lo Green and Lou
Reed or the Black Keys. In the end, the best tribute albums don't so
much go beyond their inspiration as redefine what makes the music great.
That's what happens with this collection, and for a proud West Texas
son like Buddy Holly it's a shining star in his already stellar universe
to hear what he started.
There is no way to tell what might have been if the
musician's plane had not gone down all those years ago, robbing us of
several rock 'n' roll pioneers. But to feel how Buddy Holly's music
continues to reverberate with such riveting power through the hearts of
all these fans is to hear an historical hallelujah of the highest order.
Rave on now and forevermore.
John Hiatt, Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns. Take the long
road out to where nerves are shot and the way back home looks much too
dark to ever return. Then keep going, so it gets a little harder to
breathe and there is a distinct chance the end of the road is right
ahead. That's where John Hiatt goes in so many of his songs, like he's
used up his nine lives a long time ago yet has somehow survived. There are
very few contemporary songwriters able to invoke the chilly sweat of
knowing it's nearly all over like this man, and the way he gets there
again on his 20th album is astonishing.
Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns captures the twilight zone
John Hiatt knows so well. It's a world of poor choices and wasted love,
but underneath all that shines a light that just will not go out. If any
modern musician has proven the power of love better than Hiatt it would
be a miracle. It's not like he hasn't been tested, either. Those who
know his history sometimes shudder what those early years were like, and
what he had to experience. But the songs, as always, keep coming and
the 11 here are among Hiatt's best. The supremely expressive voice is
all there, strong and centered and ready to make listeners squirm in the
tough glare of reality.
Producer Kevin Shirley has helped the music walk the
tightrope between passion and polish. There comes a point where a little
perfection needs to creep into the mix, but the trick is to keep the
sound centered down in the dirt. And if you think that's easy, listen to
99% of what's out there now and find anything that tops this album.
It's not going to happen. John Hiatt remains one of the heart's most
astute excavators.
Baron Wolman, Every Picture Tells a Story...The Rolling
Stone Years. In November 1967 when the first issue of Rolling Stone
magazine showed up unannounced on newstands, it was like a huge exciting
lightbulb came on. Finally, someone realized that those who loved and
lived for rock 'n' roll were ready to read about it in the same aura
it was now being created. Forget about the teenybopper press; these San
Francisco heads were introducing a whole new journalism outside the
hipster enclaves of New York and California.Baron Wolman was their very first staff photographer, and received the keys to the kingdom in the Bay Area and beyond by having that world to work in. He got to document a evolving musical scene as very few others ever did, and didn't waste a single shot doing it.
Equally intriguing is Baron Wolman's story. He talks about
being at the right place at the perfect time, but also sensing that the
culture was changing right in front of his eyes as he became an
energetic chronicler of the life around him. All those images in this
gorgeous new book are achingly real, documenting such a sumptuous time
of faces and places that it feels like a dream seeing them together in
one place: Janis Joplin looking pensive one moment and escstatic the
next; B.B. King lost in a world of blues we can only guess at; Jimi
Hendrix ready to explode with emotion in front of his mesmerized fans.
Nostalgia is a slippery ride, but there is no way not to sense what's
been lost the past 40 years while we marvel at an era still unequaled in
musical evolution.
Wolman's work is a testament to someone who cared enough
to get it right. Rather than becoming obsessed with setting up a photo,
he let the people themselves become the driving force in the frame,
allowing them an atmosphere of trust so they could be themselves. That
it worked every time shows the photographer knew to let well enough
alone, and also see exactly where greatness walked. Baron Wolman got it.
