I was told when I started to play that simple music is the hardest music in the world to play. And blues is simple music.
~Albert Collins
Most of the time I hum what I’m playing so sometimes it bleeds through on the track. That’s why I get hoarse sometimes when I try to sing, I’ll be humming my notes, and I’m not always aware of how hard I’m doing it. That’s really how I started playing, just with my mouth.
~Albert Collins
If trouble was money, I’d swear I’d be a millionaire
If trouble was money, babe, I’d swear I’d be a millionaire
~Albert Collins (If Trouble Was Money)
They declared me unfit to live, said into that great void my soul be hurled. They wanted to know why I did what I did; Well sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world. –Nebraska
“The fact that you didn’t intend to release it makes it the most intimate record you’ll ever do. This is an absolutely legitimate piece of art.” Steven Van Zandt
“I felt that it was my best writing. I felt I was getting better as a writer. I was learning things. I was certainly taking a hard look at everything around me.” Bruce Springsteen
I really love this album. I did not buy it in 1982 I got it a few years later, I listened to it at the record store when it was released, but it didn’t impress me. I couldn’t connect to it musically or lyrically. It is not an album that imidiately catches your attention, it needs to be listened to, properly.
When I did that I became very impressed!
Some facts (from Wikipedia):
Released
September 30, 1982
Recorded
Mostly January 3, 1982 at Springsteen’s Colts Neck, New Jersey bedroom
Genre
Americana, folk rock, folk
Length
40:50
Label
Columbia
Producer
Bruce Springsteen
Nebraska is the sixth studio album by Bruce Springsteen, released in 1982 on Columbia Records.
Rock n’ Roll came from the slaves singing gospel in the fields. Their lives were hell and they used music to lift out of it, to take them away. That’s what rock n’ roll should do – take you to a better place.
~Meat Loaf
I never fit in. I am a true alternative. And I love being the outcast. That’s my role in life, to be an outcast.
~Meat Loaf
“All the songs had to work completely and honestly by themselves on acoustic guitar or on piano. If they didn’t, they weren’t worth putting on the record.”
~Ryan Adams (about ‘Gold’)
“[Gold is] me not buying my own bullshit for two seconds.”
~Ryan Adams
Gold is the second studio album by Ryan Adams, released September 25, 2001 on Lost Highway Records. The album remains Adams’ best-selling album, certifying gold in the UKand going on to sell 364,000 copies in the U.S. and 812,000 worldwide.Adams noted that “with Gold, I was trying to prove something to myself. I wanted to invent a modern classic.”
“I woke up this mornin’ and none of the news was good And death machines were rumblin’ ‘cross the ground where Jesus stood And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way And there was nothin’ anyone could do or say
And I almost listened to him Yeah, I almost lost my mind Then I regained my senses again And looked into my heart to find
That I believe that one fine day all the children of Abraham Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem” – Steve Earle (Jerusalem)
Steve Earle released this “protest album” post 9/11, but contrary to widespread belief it is not a concept album about the tragic events on that date. Yes, there are some songs relating to it, but only three out of eleven (maybe four). There were som controversy when it came out, especially the song John Walker’s Blues were widely discussed and often slated in right wing media. It is not a song that takes sides, it is a song that tells us that an ordinary American kid fell in with the wrong crowd (in this case, the Taliban). Earle make us look at this boy, and he does not say that he is innocent, but he says that he should be treated like a human being despite his faults and despite his guilt. It is a fantastic song.
“…Earle has crafted a vision of America thrown into chaos, where the falling of the World Trade Center towers is just another symbol of a larger malaise which surrounds us. Before its release,Jerusalem already generated no small controversy over the song “John Walker’s Blues,” which tells the tale of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh as seen through his own eyes. While “John Walker’s Blues” is no more an endorsement of Lindh’s actions than Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” was a tribute to mass-murderer Charles Starkweather, even though it’s one of the album’s strongest songs, if anything, it doesn’t go quite far enough.”
– Mark Demming (allmusic.com)
Photo AllDylan
Steve Earle made a “state of the nation” album, and he is confused and he doesn’t come up with the answers, but he asks the important questions!
