In the square peg world of folk music, John Prine was a round peg. He was too folk for the country music world, but too country for pure folk. Yet he earned the respect of not only fellow folk musicians, but popular artists like Bob Dylan.<\/p>\n
His 1971 self-titled debut contains some of his best-known works (even if they\u2019re known because of other artists performing them). And while there is some great music to be found on this disc, it has just the hint of what could have been.<\/p>\n
Prine himself admitted he thought his performance on this album was not up to par, simply because he felt a bit intimidated from shifting from the coffeehouse stages to a major studio with professional musicians backing him. Yet there are times in the first half of the album that Prine\u2019s songwriting talent belies any doubt he might have had in his performances.<\/p>\n
Take a song like \u201cHello In There,\u201d which captures the discomfort of not only aging, but having to face the loss of identity in life (\u201cWhat could I say \/ If he asks \u201cWhat\u2019s new?\u201d \/ \u201cNothin\u2019. What\u2019s with you?\u201d \/ Nothing much to do). I only recently became aware of this song through my performing at an open mic, and when I heard another musician cover this song, I had to ask why I was just now discovering it.<\/i><\/p>\n
John Prine<\/i> is possibly best known for the song \u201cSam Stone,\u201d a tale of an Army veteran returning home from armed conflict (suggested to be the Vietnam War, but never actually identified) and left do deal with a rampant drug addiction with little to no support. It is the song that first exposed me to Prine over 30 years ago\u2026 and, surprisingly, it wasn\u2019t enough to get me interested enough to dig into his discography much.<\/p>\n
Believe me, there are moments on John Prine<\/i> that leave me kicking myself in the ass for that oversight. \u201cParadise\u201d is a tale of childhood memories in a simpler time and place lost to progress; the assistance of fellow folkie Steve Goodman definitely adds to the atmosphere. Similarly, \u201cDonald And Lydia\u201d is a surprisingly dark tale of love \u2013 or was it simply lust in the form of loneliness? – that will have the listener hanging on to every word. And someone tell me that \u201cYour Flag Decal Won\u2019t Get You Into Heaven Anymore\u201d wasn\u2019t 50 years ahead of its time; its sarcasm and satire are biting and surprisingly accurate.<\/p>\n
Yet there are a few head-scratching moments on this one. The opening track \u201cIllegal Smile\u201d is decent enough, but Prine\u2019s choice of closing the song with non sequitur phrases that rhyme with \u201cjust tryin\u2019 to have me some fun\u201d and that have bupkis to do with the song itself is just off-putting. And as strong as some of the songs are, others like \u201cSix O\u2019Clock News,\u201d \u201cFar From Me\u201d and \u201cFlashback Blues\u201d just don\u2019t have the same emotional or musical punch as their counterparts. It doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re bad songs, just that they feel a bit out of place.<\/p>\n
While a good album overall, John Prine<\/i>\u2019s biggest weakness is that it doesn\u2019t quite know which musical direction it wants to go. Some would argue that this defined Prine\u2019s career to a T; he was perfectly happy following the musical muse in whatever direction it steered him, to hell with categorization. This is still a disc that is worth checking out, even if it\u2019s only to hear the original versions of songs like \u201cAngel From Montgomery\u201d. Who knows? You might find yourself humming something else along the way that you discover. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10739],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-46350","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-john-prine","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46350"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}