Rosanne Cash, classic or dud?

But R. Cash seems neither C nor D. Middling.

"Blue Moon With Heartache" -- perfect melancholia.

Listening to "Rainin'," "Hometown Blues," and other gems from Seven Year Ache. She direly needs re-evaluation.

concur 100%

Implied it upthread, but as the missing link between punk, country, and L.A. studio rock she should be blasted from every car stereo. She's so simple in her effects that I'm not surprised she's underrated.

she was a total godsend in the 80s. Seven Year Ache and Kings Record Shop are classics. great live performer too. saw rosanne and lucinda w on the same bill once in central park -- no comparison.

Kings Record Shop would easily be in my top ten of all time.

I think I put Hits on my iPod before flying across the country. Will listen tonight.

"i don't know why you don't want me." swoon.

saw rosanne and lucinda w on the same bill once in central park -- no comparison.
I was at that show too, lovebug. Rosanne went out of her way to praise Lucinda's songwriting, singling out for special mention the song that mentions a casserole. It was the beginning of the end for me.

lol

Most pop should sound like "Never Be You" and "Halfway House."

or "I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me"

I like the Drifters homage "The Way We Make a Broken Heart."

Rosanne on Sarah Palin:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081027/cash

Anyone bought The List yet?

Read folks whose views I respect say that it was too stiff and mannered and so I can't even bring myself yet to find it online or listen to a sample. Still curious though!

she duets with Springsteen, Elvis Costello, & Jeff Tweedy and uh, Rufus Wainwright. how about giving some work to some lesser known singers Roseanne, hm?

it's nice but not interesting. she sounds good, the songs are obviously good, but there's no real surprises in the choices and even less in the arrangements and execution.

about what you'd expect, basically.

her recent albums (by that i mean since 1988) are srsly boring.

This is her Raising Sand.

I'm listening to Rhythm & Romance for the first---I knew the big singles from various greatest hits compilation, but whoa @ "Halfway House": huge distorted chords (plus the solo!) plus Cash's voice in piercing form. And "Pink Bedroom" is almost as good, with a really great lyric ("She paints her fingernails forbidden tones / She wants nervous youth on the telephone").

I read a bit about this period earlier: evidently she spent much of the first half of the eighties doing "truckloads" (her words) of cocaine with Rodney Crowell, and then went into rehab in 1984.

Agreed -- "Halfway House" is top five Cash. "Never Alone" is another goodie (all the songs with "never" in the title are terrific).

huh, "Pink Bedroom" is a John Hiatt song. I don't know anything about his music.

She also covered Hiatt's "The Way We Make a Broken Heart."

yes, "Never Alone" is on now, and it's great too: a Vince Gill co-write. Earlier I listened to part of a bootleg from 1983 (I wanted to hear the cocaine in action) and Vince Gill sings backup on "Seven Year Ache". It's a good performance, pretty fast as you'd expect, and Cash sounds brittle.

Madonna would have done a nice "Never Alone", I think.

I still give KRS the edge for its variety of musical and vocal performances -- R&R's final "Never" song shows her trying too hard to rock -- but R&R is my second favorite, and certainly the last time she straddled country and what was left of New Wave.

I listened to KRS earlier today; I wanted to hear "Rosie Strikes Back", which is up there for me in her oeuvre, and then I couldn't stop listening.

"Rosie Strike Back", sorry

KRS is in my all-time-top-ten.

yeah I love that album a lot; I think it's a bit top-loaded but that's not a problem when the top is that heavy.

"Never Gonna Hurt" isn't that great a performance, but it has a nice double helix of a lyric. I'm guessing she wrote the lyric first, maybe with a rough melody in mind, and then trying to turn it into a burner didn't really work.

"Closing Time" isn't a great closer either, or rather doesn't have a compelling arrangement, but I suppose it ends the album on a happy note.

Now to Right or Wrong for the first time too.

Still haven't heard that one!

It's def. more a "classic" country album, rather than the New Wave-y fusion she brings soon thereafter. For instance, the song I'm currently on is called "Man Smart (Woman Smarter)", which kinda says it all.

ok, I get it now; King's Record Shop is an absolute masterpiece: razor-sharp vocals, & the synths are softer than they were in 1981 but the songs are as edgy, & deeper too.

The sound of "Tennessee Flat Top Box" doesn't fit the album, but the lyrics are right on: her dad was a pretty good songwriter, no? The song reads like "Seven Year Ache". Acc. to the Wiki entry (with a citation! so not so bogus perhaps), she didn't know it was her father's song when she recorded it.

Kings Record Shop would easily be in my top ten of all time.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, December 26, 2007

I've listened to it a bunch before, but this is the first time it's all come together.

"Somewhere, Sometime"!

Yeah, "Somewhere, Sometime" is as nervous as the best of 1981, but there's more weight to it than she could have pulled off in 1981 I think.

"Rosie Strike Back" is the one I play all the time.

4 country #1s from this album!

are the bonus tracks any good? I only have the original cd.

OK live tracks. "707" too.

I'm almost finished reading Rosanne Cash's memoir, which is fascinating. She's a really fine writer.

I'll bet that is really good! I'll add it to my list.

Reading the memoir now. I didn't realize she and her dad were always so close; I'd gotten the impression they only reconciled in the last ten years.

<3 her so much

no of course not. sound is still trapped in interiors/the wheel. the writing is sharp as ever

Ends with a cover of that True Detective S2 "My Least Favorite Life"! (No synths.)

i keep wanting to make a poll for king's record shop but also wonder if anyone would vote

i also picked up her memoir when i was in nashville and i'm gonna read it as soon as i finish doctor faustus (soon) (i hope)

Just got “7 year itch” on vinyl and it’s great

Her memoir's good but like all eighties survivors she has different standards about what works: she's contemptuous of Rhythm and Romance, often to my ears her second best album.

i expect no artist to have the same ideas about their work as i do

The memoir's best when she addresses her dad. She's a solid writer.

Rhythm and Romance is the best new wave album.

Rhythm and Romance is the best new wave album.

hah yeah, I was just taken by "Never Be You" and of course listened to the whole album as a result, and now put it on again. Every song expresses anxiety from a distinct perspective. "lovers all have to stand trial" indeed.

The guitars here stomp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihyHTKqBU5Q

yes, that's the song playing right now on this second playthrough of the day. I'm guessing she wrote it after receiving "Never Be You" from Petty & Tench, since the choruses sound alike.

Never knew about her crazy health problems before she made The List. Also, did she ever find “The List”?

next album, but "Runaway Train" is so beautiful. I can hear Springsteen recording it...or even her dad on one of those latter day albums.

We haven't even talked about this one, a perfect song from the flickering synth to the conceit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4aQPFM1shc

oh man "Halfway House" is fantastic. I think about all the drugs she was taking in this era, and how bad her life sounds in these songs (even if a writer doesn't talk about her own life necessarily, we know how her relation with Crowell ended up): this is more effective than just say no.

Am I the only one who found Crowell didn’t really add much as a talking head in the Ken Burns Country doc?

He didn't.

Seemed like he was there mainly as a member of the extended Cash family, similar to Hank Jr.’s daughter, even though he commented somewhat vacuously on Guy Clark and such, and maybe on Emmylou Harris as well, although I can’t recall an incident of this latter.

It all went down
On the inside

i keep wanting to make a poll for king's record shop but also wonder if anyone would vote

― american bradass (BradNelson)

do it, ivy!

Yeah do it!
Getting to be that time of the year for her cover of "Biloxi"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDhV5SscEgc

Listening to The Wheel this afternoon (happy birthday to Rosanne!), it's still as unsettling to hear as ever. I usually think what it would be like hearing an album like this made by a partner at the tail end or aftermath of our relationship, but I'll also wonder what it would be like to have a grown-up child making an album like this and how distraught I might feel listening to it.

(like you've done your best to raise them and guide them through life, but still there's only so much you can do for them and at the end of the day they have to experience the same pains as most people)

Never listened to that one.

She has the same birthday as Bob Dylan.

Archie Shepp too. May's been an impressive month for birthdays, and I only noticed because back in April, I decided on a whim to just listen to anyone or anything celebrating a birthday or release anniversary. (I figured it would make it easier to pick what to play on any given day.) I was surprised that Brian Eno, David Byrne, Jonathan Richman, Robert Fripp, Bill Bruford, Joey Ramone and Pete Townshend among others all had shared birthdays or birthdays within days of each other as some combination of them travelled within the same orbit. Same goes for here re: Cash and Dylan.

I met Archie Shepp's son last week, but we did not discuss his father's upcoming birthday.

Her autobio, Composed, is exemplary for taking us through early life w formidable parents, sans psychobabble and excess melodrama, then her father astutely gets her a job w CBS Records in London, where she starts making her own connections. The rest is personal life as context for record life, and vice versa. It's exemplary, and she says her husband wants her to do a sequel, Decomposed, but it hasn't happened yet, alas.

Yeah, she takes us through, album by album, at just the right pace (ditto kid by kid).

Sounds like something I would like to read, thanks.