Yes. A whole post for John Prine. I have followed him since his first album which came out while I was a student at SUNY Buffalo. Singer / songwriter. Country-ish story teller. One of the greatest songwriters of my lifetime. Songs often written in the “voice” of someone else, i.e. “I am an old woman, named after my mother, my old man is another, child that’s grown old.” Angel from Montgomery (a song which has been covered by tons of performers).
The songs range from downright hysterical (Dear Abby) to woeful tales of loneliness and sorrow. Unlike Dylan (the other great in my book), his songs are usually stories that can be understood – not always from the first listening, but eventually they dawn on you.
Yes – he had throat cancer (heavy cigarette smoker) but I’ve seen and heard him since then and he’s still okay as a performer.
My list of favorite musicians is thin. Like a iceberg, if you were to look by artists’ name, you would only see a few, but if you were to look beneath the surface, you’d find, that just as I’ve done with writers that I like, I have everything I can put my hands on for these artists: Randy Newman, John Prine, (to some extent Dylan, but his recorded output is really for collectors), Tom Waits, and it’s hard to think of anyone else that I am still that gung-ho about.
Definitely a similarity. They are story tellers that often use literary devices. Every once in a while, they will have a song that hits mainstream, but as great a writer as Randy Newman is, I’ve been to concerts at small venues in New York that he couldn’t sell out. And Governors Island isn’t exactly Madison Square Garden, though I’m sure Prine has played there before. But they made it. Randy Newman has had a couple of top hits, like I Love L.A. but his real mark on pop culture is probably the soundtrack for The Natural. Yes, that’s his score, and one of the great ones of recent years (no wonder – he comes from a line of Hollywood orchestrator (all uncles) such as Alfred Newman, and Lionel Newman. Other Newman scores include: the music for A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Pleasantville, Ragtime, Seabiscuit, Toy Story.
Anyway – that’s one aspect of my own character – the idea of finding a few artists and having long-standing, deep relationships with their work, that I can trace back to the idea of serialization that began, in my own case, with the Hardy Boys and continued into the realm of the Russian novelists, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, and so on.
At least with Dostoyevsky – there’s always more. With Gogol, you will find yourself re-reading his books, or finding a book written by another Russian about him. I suppose that affinity for Russian 19th century work can be traced back to my own Russian ancestry.
Anyway – there you have it. John Prine. Sept. 10th. Governor’s Island. I’m informed that photography is permitted, and I will be one of those nuts that will be waiting ahead of time to try and get a good seat.
John Prine and Iris DeMent’s “In spite of ourselves” is one of the great duets of our time. Iris is so beautiful in that video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5axlwCBXC8
Natalie Merchant, Michael Stipe and Billy Bragg cover “Hello in there”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPIpyB_ZtJ0
What a beautiful song from a brilliant songwriter.
Enjoy that concert Dave.
Thanks Phill. Really looking forward to it. He is long past his prime as a performer but I could care less.
There are some performers that I would pay just to see them sit on stage and read the phonebook. And Prine is one of them.
Awesome. My current Facebook status is, “There’s flies in the kitchen. I can hear ‘em, they’re buzzin. And I ain’t done nothin, since I woke up today.” Angel from Montgomery is one of the great songs (especially when you learn that an angel from montgomery is a last minute pardon from a death sentence, of course in the song the woman’s life is her prison). I actually hadn’t read much about John Prine until recently. Many songwriters look up to him as one of the best, or one of the few whose music they listen to on a regular basis (including Dylan). Apparently Kris Kristofferson said he was so good someone should cut his thumbs off. Strange thing to say really.
Anyway, enjoy the show! Wish I could be there.
Some warnings about the venue. The only way to get to the island for the concert is by ferry from Manhattan. They start running at 6 PM, but the crowding and waiting to get on the ferry is bad. I was thinking that it might be better to get the regular 4 PM ferry which runs on Fridays and spend a couple of hours on the island taking photos, etc. I don’t know if they allow that. And there may be lots of people with the same idea. I hear the waiting for the ferry going back is also bad.
Then there’s the seating. For $75 you get a seat and for $30 you get general admission standing. If I’m not mistaken, the standing is close to the stage and the seats are further back. It might be better buying the cheaper tickets, unless you have vericose veins.
Then, of course, there is the weather. It’s an outdoor venue and the concert is rain or shine, so if there’s a noreaster, you get very wet, which is not healthy for photgraphic equipment. The site says you can bring a camera unless you’re a professional phtographer. You’ll have to disguise yourself as an amateur photographer, which means donning a false nose and moustache and keeping the lens cap on the camera while shooting.
You mentioned some of your favorite writers and I know Poe is among them. There is a book written in 2006 you must read called “The Beautiful Cigar Girl” by Daniel Stashower. It’s one of the best historical, biographical, real-life murder mysteries ever written. It tells the story of Marie Rogers, a beautiful and popular girl who worked in a cigar emporium in lower Manhattan frequented by all the famous politicians and writers of early 19th Century. She was murdered and found floating near Hoboken soon after Poe came to work in NYC. Poe used the story as the basis for his “Mystery of Marie Roget”, changing the setting to Paris and having Auguste Dupin attemtping to solve the case.
The book is beautifully written, with the suspense of a fictional murder mystery, and the author gives an incredibly detailed account of Poe’s life and NYC before the Civil War.
“The site says you can bring a camera unless you’re a professional phtographer.”
Be careful that’s not a euphemism for “No DSLRs”. ‘Coz obviously, if you have a DSLR, you must be a professional…