OK, the harmonica is really really good and saves the song; like walking out of the restaurant into a cool night air.
The soft spots here, however, are all enough to make you wish for "Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart" and "Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog."
An epilogue of sorts...
Damn, but I started doing too much research; checking into all the liner notes of all the albums, reading newspaper articles online. It's just gets too too sad, where you have to step back, take a deep deep breath and revisit death. And that's about the time I start to feel words, my words at any rate, are sticking like pink, tasteless gum on linoleum and inadequate.
June Carter Cash has her own 2-CD set, Keep On the Sunny Side: Her Life In Music, coming out the very same day, Aug. 2. Who's going to write about June Carter Cash in the same ways, in the same volume as her husband? She has a strong woman's tale. For god's sakes she gets Reese Witherspoon - and Cash doesn't fare much better with Joaquin Phoenix playing him in the coming "Walk the Line film (November). It doesn't work. Both Cashs are still too alive in our hearts.
They shouldn't even have a biopic. Ray began before he died so they can be forgiven (for continuing; it still wasn't a tale told very well. It's secondhand.) How about they release documentaries and live Johnny Cash videos to the cinemas in November? Can it get any better, any more real or dramatic than old concert footage and an evening that starts with the "Hurt" video? Sure John and June are - together and separate - American icons. Today that's means "get em fat for pickin' " time.
They were real - and now their memory will be dredged up for no damn good reason at all. The music is where it's at and it will always be.
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Shit I think I just described why I like music and books so much better than films.
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
wonderful, Temple, wonderful. i so need to get this set. And a slight word of defence with regards "Walk The Line" - the trailer looks great, an also, it was intended to be released in Johnny's lifetime. a lot of the script is from talks the director had with the man himself regarding the project. but i agree, i'd much rather have a wonderful cinema re-release of the brilliant docuementary, the name of which i always mess up. The Man, His World, His Life, His Music, i think. that is a wonderful film right there. Johnny singin songs he's just written to June, those prison shows, my god. what more do we need?
3 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
an man, that Mariah spam amused me no end. "broken worldwide records everywhere", indeed!
4 - Bryan McKay
I would like to break her records everywhere worldwide. That would solve lots of things.