Sunday, October 20, 2019
Live at the Fillmore
Fine. Yesterday we hearkened back to the beginning; We asked, what was for us the first greatest album ever made. And we found a "best of" album, by the Beatles, called the Red Album. And that's all well and good. You read my description, wept, listened to the album, went to the library and got a copy, listened to it, and said "Oh yeah. These. These are good songs." Like it was a surprise.
Well it was a surprise to me too in in 1978.
But what is the most recent album I listened to where I said to myself:
Holy shit. This is the greatest album ever made!
This is the subject of today's thrilling blogpost!
It's our first live album too.
The Live at the Fillmore of our title refers to Lucinda Williams Live at the Fillmore. It is the greatest album ever made.
Oh, you think that's a device now, don't you?
It's going to get ugly then.
In my first of the 100 greatest albums of all time I extolled Neil Young's On the Beach as possibly the saddest album of all time. It's not. This is. This is. Her voice is more broken. She's older. More dreams have fallen. She doesn't expect them to come true. This is not a disaffected rock star, as gorgeous as that can be. This is a person! You! You can count on your blessings. I'll just count on blue.
Take Ventura, please.
But first we must talk about Caravaggio. We must talk about magic.
Caravaggio paints a collar bone, a shoulder, and your heart melts and it makes no sense. A bit of cloth, a moment, a splash of light. Well here it is. What does Lucinda Williams write about here?
Fucking soup. She makes fucking soup. She sings about fucking soup and I'm crying.
Driving. Showers. Watching waves. Throwing up in a toilet.
Being purified.
This is the greatest album ever made.
She puts Neil Young on and turns it up.
No, seriously, it's in the song. She knows where she comes from. Everything required is here.
The sort of cool Minnesota radio station where I first heard Lucinda Williams did a poll of the best 893 songs of the 2000's.
Ventura didn't make.
You can count on your blessings. I'll just count on blue. Fuck Minnesota.
You choose:
Blue
Ventura
and...
Literally the most exquisitely unbearable song to listen to ever written (at your own risk):
Bus to Baton Rouge
2 comments:
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OMG I never listened to that live version of "Blue." Thank you. OMG that's so pretty, so sad. I wonder if "Minneapolis" is just too heartbreaking to play live, like if she did there would be a rent in the fabric of the world. But maybe that would be a good thing.
ReplyDeleteWell, if she can play "Baton Rouge" I think she can manage "Minneapolis". Nevertheless I'm pretty sure she is a rent in the fabric of the world.
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