Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:

Angry_Dragon wrote:I used to think he was great.
Then he wrote a Celine Dion song ie. "I See A Darkness".
Unforgivable.
I threw all of his records away after that.
CRAP

If it's good enough for the late Johnny Cash, it's good enough for me.

What about "One" by U2? Is that good enough for you as well?

Angry_Dragon wrote:What about "One" by U2? Is that good enough for you as well?

If Johnny Cash is singing it, yes.

Angry_Dragon wrote:I used to think he was great.
Then he wrote a Celine Dion song ie. "I See A Darkness".
Unforgivable.
I threw all of his records away after that.
CRAP

i would like to hear Celine Dion sing "We can stop our whoring", i might even buy that record. wait, no.

i am not really down with his live schtick. i have seen him four times, and every time it was 'experimental' to the point of self-indulgence.

one time was just dull. two times were terrible. messes. people jumped on any shred of recognizable anything like hungry dogs. every now and then, some semblance of songness would come out and the starved crowd would have a cow.

the one time i saw him be ok, that was the time i at least understood what he was doing, and i think it put his deal into perspective for me. it was at the drag city new year's party a couple years back. he was playing for a bunch of drunken scenesters, who were talking and laffin' and generally carrying on rather than pay attention.

oldham was exactly the same guy in front of those drunken scenesters as he was at the other shows. same degree of attention to what he was doing, same demeanor. and at one point, he leaned over to the electric piano player, and, very deliberately, said 'e minor. g. d.' he looked at her for a few seconds to make sure she had it.

it was obvious she had never played the song before, which you can either go along with or regard as lazy or even kind of lame, as i think he probably does that in front of paying audiences with some regularity. yet i realized, seeing this interaction, that it wasn't his intent to be half-assed, exactly. i think he gave a shit how it turned out. he just wanted to see what happened under a specific set of circumstances, namely flying by the seat of his pants.

i think flying by the seat of one's pants is vastly overrated. but i have a lot more respect for wanting to live on the edge than i do for not giving a shit. this combined with a couple of his records that i liked (_viva last_ and _arise therefore_) equal not crap for me, though i am not a big fan all in all.

Boring Crap



-Noah

i never liked him until i heard him do dylan's "is your love in vain?" a tossed-off, fairly shitty song (from street legal) that he made into something really beautiful. his cover was even more tossed off and sloppy than the original, but it was incredible. he made more sense to me after that. i don't think he's leonard cohen, but he isn't crap.

Great great stuff, and the entire strange myth he's surrounded by completes the package. Even two days ago I blew my friends mind by telling him Will Oldham and Bonnie Billy are the same person.

I got a little worried, because the Greatest Palace Music double LP was fucking horrable, and if he continued along in that vein it would have ended my days of buying his music.

Thankfully, the new Superwolf is great, his best since I See a Darkness. I know he didn't write some of the music on the new LP, but it's still really fucking good.

I will grudgingly agree that Will live with a band (especially at the start of a tour, when everyone is trying to figure out what he's expected to do) can be tedious or laughable. I think this is great, in its way. I also understand that it is "too much" for some people.

The records are made in much the same way, at least those I'm familiar with, and I think they prove the method.

In a position to just knock out the old favorites, Will is still making music in a way that keeps him interested in the moment and uncertain of the outcome. This is totally laudable, and I envy him. He is fearless about his music, and that means a lot to me. One can quibble about the results, but he is totally genuine (even when he is making nonsense or a disheveled mess), and he often makes sublime, crying-in-public-worthy music that can come no other way.

Not crap, Louisville affectations and perversity aside.

patrick md wrote:I got a little worried, because the Greatest Palace Music double LP was fucking horrable, and if he continued along in that vein it would have ended my days of buying his music.

He ruins some of his own songs (WTF?) on there, esp 'New Partner', one of my favorites of his

But as a self-serving, bizarre, over-produced joke, it wasn't all that bad

mattw wrote:

patrick md wrote:I got a little worried, because the Greatest Palace Music double LP was fucking horrable, and if he continued along in that vein it would have ended my days of buying his music.

He ruins some of his own songs (WTF?) on there, esp 'New Partner', one of my favorites of his

But as a self-serving, bizarre, over-produced joke, it wasn't all that bad

I read an interview with the artist fomerly known as Will Oldham in which the interviewer asked why he had recorded this greatest hits, did he need clothes for his kids? He said yes something along those lines.

I thought this was a bad album except for the sax solo in Pushkin(?). That was bold.

Will Oldham vs. Bonnie Prince Billy. This is one the best things I've ever read.


Blue Lotus Feet, not crap.