Music and Opera

Three months ago I wrote here about my chronic Amazon habit, in which I recklessly buy books, DVDs and CDs I will never have time to read, watch or listen to. It has been costing me as much as drink did when I was still a practising alcoholic. I made a firm decision in print to get the habit under control and spend no more than £75 a month. Recklessly, I said I would report here to let you know how I was getting along. Well, the news isn’t good. Looking back over my Amazon account — and the online mail-order supplier provides a scarily precise record of just what

Country music ain’t always about cowboys and outlaws; there’s the distaff side of strong and righteous ladies too. Notably, in this instance, Loretta Lynn and her warning that You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)…

There was almost as much hackery as brilliance in Johnny Cash’s career and even his terrific late American albums are pretty uneven. But when he was good he was very good…So here he is lamenting – or celebrating? – those old Folsom Prison Blues...

I’ve been listening to George Jones a lot, lately. So here’s video of a younger Possum singing, in his usual style, Things Have Gonel to Pieces which is, I suppose, a decent-enough summary of an entire school of country music.

Been a long time since this pair featured in this slot. Too long. So here they are performing their already-classic I Want to Sing That Rock’n’Roll at St Luke’s in London a few years ago: Bonus: There’s another, perhaps even better but sadly unembeddable version, here.

Taking Sophocles’ least-known play and reinterpreting via the hymns and songs of gospel music is, damn it, just the sort of thing that you expect from Edinburgh* in August. Thankfully, Lee Breuer’s plundering – adaptation is too limited a term – of Oedipus at Colonus is a monumental success. If you ever get the chance to see it in London, New York, DC, Chicago or wherever then for god’s sake get yourself a ticket. Most of the reviews of the Gospel at Colonus have focused, understandably, on the music and, unavoidably, on the tensions between Christian and classical Greek theology and you can certainly argue that the production loses some

Hands-up if you think Willie Nelson and Lucinda Williams are a good combination? That’s most of you, eh? Good. Well here they are with a very Nelsonesque take on Williams’s Over Time:

You can never have too much Emmylou and her appearance, backed by the brilliant Hot Band, on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977 is a joy from start to finish. Here she is with Making Believe – a Jimmy Work song that had previously been a hit for the great Kitty Wells too.

You don’t get much more old school than Jimmie Rodgers do you? No you don’t. Here he is with the classic Waiting for a Train. Terrific and chock-full of the things that would become country staples.

Been a while since Waylon was in these here parts. No longer! So here’s the Great Outlaw with some marriage advice for y’all…

Philip Glass doesn’t approve of intervals. Last week, at Yale University’s Sprague Memorial Hall, the prolific composer gave a preview of what audiences in Dublin, Edinburgh and Cork could expect from his piano performances a few days later. He starts by declaring that pauses in performance “damage the concentration” – and he ended it in front of an audience both entranced and exhausted by the musical equivalent of an optical illusion. For ninety minutes, Glass barely allowed a moment of silence to indicate where one piece ended and another began. His performance stands in a long East Coast tradition of using smaller towns – in his case New Haven, Connecticut

Occasionally, people complain that this series isn’t contemporary enough and that it ignores the good country music that is still being produced in spite of the commercial interests of Nashville-pap. That’s a fair criticism. So here’s an acoustic version of Josh Ritter’s Folk Bloodbath – a hymn to the murder ballad which is, as Radley Balko says, splendid and part of an album that merits your investment.

I reckon it’s been too long since Dolly Parton featured here. So here she is making her debut on the Porter Wagoner Show way back in 1967 and performing Dumb Blonde:

Way back when back in the distant times I was at college I had – still do, in fact – a friend who was a John Denver fanatic. Aged 20 or so he’d seen the great troubador more than 20 times. In those days I had not yet seen the country light and, sad to say, scoffed at this enthusiasm. So this one’s for you Nick. Here’s Mr Denver and his Wild Montana Skies….  

This week I am handing over the column to David Vick, who has contributed what I regard as the best (so far) of all the Top Tens I have received. Sound in judgment and admirably wide-ranging, Vick has in particular introduced me to Kurt Elling, an amazing jazz vocalist, still only in his early forties, of whom I had never previously heard. Having checked Elling out on Spotify, it’s clear that he is a superb artist, and I have now ordered several of his CDs. Trust me, trust David Vick. This guy is sensational and I cannot understand why he is so little known. Now, over to you, Mr Vick.