On January 4th 2006 the house where Johnny Cash lived for 35 years was bought by Bee Gees singer Barry Gibb. The rustic house near Nashville, Tennessee went on the market in June 2005 with an asking price of $2.9m (£1.7m). Gibb said he planned to preserve the house to honour the Cash memory. Unfortunately Gibb’s ownership of the house was short-lived. In April 2007, the house burned to the ground during renovations when a flammable spray sealer caused fire to break out during construction. The Gibbs built a new house on higher ground, keeping the original Cash home foundations as a testament to the memory of Cash. The new house has been sold a few times since. So let’s get this straight, Johnny’s old house became a ring of fire, a bloke with the voice of a boy named sue seemed to be stayin’ alive!
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Mayhem’s 12 Days of Christmas posts are now at day 7. The six posts so far have featured the Apocalypse Disco, Radiohead, Black Box Recorder, Shrub, the Postal Service and Tom Waits. This years theme is not very festive and is perhaps our darkest theme so far. But with all the crap in the world at the moment much of it driven by Putin’s Pedo Pet in the partly demolished White House I thought I would celebrate Chrimbo this year with songs about the end of the world. These are twelve fabulous tracks despite the rather savage theme. Music has, and will always accompany me wherever I go, even if that is into the heart of the forthcoming (???) Armageddon! Maybe I need to make them into a playlist, what do you think? Some of you have contacted me with a resounding yes to the playlist. It will appear when we post the final installment a.k.a. day 12.
Today’s track is from Johnny Cash and the song is “The Man Comes Around”. The song gives itself to the title of the album it was featured on, ‘American IV: The Man Comes Around’. This was the fourth Johnny Cash album produced by Rick Rubin. It was the first in the American Recordings series to make the UK chart, it peaked at number 40 after its release in 2002. The song was released as a single in 2002 but failed to make the charts. The series produced six albums and lasted from 1994 until 2010. The lyrics reference the biblical book of revelations and were written by Cash years before this recording and they were updated for this record. The titular ‘man’ is most likely Jesus Christ. In my opinion this is a worthy part of our end of the world series!
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On 1st January 1959 Johnny Cash played his first free concert for the inmates of San Quentin Prison, California. Nineteen-year-old Merle Haggard was among the audience members. He was serving a 15-year sentence for grand theft auto and armed robbery, but served only three years. Another very important man was born on that very day. Can you guess who? It was me 🙂
On 5th March 1953 Air Force Staff Sergeant Johnny Cash (yes, the man in black himself) intercepted a coded message from Russia. The message confirmed that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was dead. Cash enlisted in 1950 after he turned 18 and was assigned to the 12th Radio Squadron Mobile of the US Air Force Security Service at Landsberg, West Germany, where he proved his skill as a Morse Code operator.
5th March 1965 saw an 18-year-old David Bowie feature on the second Manish Boys single, “I Pity The Fool”. It was produced by Shel Talmy, (who also produced The Who and The Kinks). Jimmy Page was Talmy’s regular session musician and played the guitar solo on the track.
In 1955 on 5th March Elvis Presley made his US TV debut by appearing on the weekend show ‘Louisiana Hayride’ on KWKH TV, broadcast from Shreveport Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana. There are many different claims for his first hayride appearance, 5th March is the one I have found mentioned most times.
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On 5th February 2016 a newly discovered species of Black Tarantula living near Folsom Prison, California was named after the late, great Johnny Cash. It was named Aphonopelma johnnycashi and was one of fourteen new tarantula species from the southern US which were described by biologists in the journal ZooKeys. Getting bitten by one of them would “Hurt”, right? Would the spider bite you “One Piece At A Time”?
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Many of you who know me will by now know that my wonderful wife Catherine will very soon be embarking on a mammoth 109 mile charity walk on the Cleveland Way in the North East of England. A map of the Cleveland Way is shown at the very end of this post. Why is she doing this? Well four years ago Catherine and I were totally devastated by the loss of two children as a result of an adoption disruption. It was clear to us that the support needed by vulnerable children was just not available. There was no money and no urgency to the long term support that was needed. It is incredibly important to both of us that the children and young people in our community have access to the support they need to thrive and to grow into happy and resilient adults. We know that we are unable to do anything now for the children we lost, but we want to try and make a difference to the lives of other children and young people. We want to do whatever we can to try and prevent what happened to our children from happening again. Please feel free to contribute toward Catherine’s target of £10,000. Her efforts so far means that she is already at 46% of that total. Click here for the link to donate.
Anything you can add to that will be invaluable to the two charities we are supporting. Those charities are The Island (Enhancing the quality of life for vulnerable children and young people in York) and SASH (Working to prevent homelessness in young people aged 16-25 in York, North Yorkshire & East Yorkshire).
The Island offers support to vulnerable 8-13 years olds in York who are struggling to cope at home, at school, or in the wider community, or who are experiencing difficult transitions in their lives. The Island links these young people with volunteer mentors with whom they meet on a weekly basis over the course of a year (or longer if required). This allows them to develop supportive, ongoing relationships, whilst also providing them with the undivided attention and the ‘islands of space and time’ they need to increase their confidence and self-esteem, participate in worthwhile recreational activities, and move forward in their lives.
SASH run supported lodgings schemes which help young people develop the skills they need to live on their own. They provide an emergency nightstop service that makes a difference to young people’s lives when most needed.
Both charities need your support. They only exist because people in our community care enough to help them do what they do. Please click here to find Catherine’s Virgin Money Giving page. Now obviously this blog is essentially a music blog so I have picked ten walking themed songs (ok the first one loosely links to Catherine’s walking route) I hope that you enjoy them. In fact feel free to listen while you donate 🙂
The other day I decided to take a quick count of all the artists in my album collection where I have at least 10 albums by a single artist. I included CDs, LPs and cassettes (although the only non compilation cassettes that I have are David Bowie bootlegs). Oh and while I’m on bootleg recordings obviously I have included them whether they are live, studio outtakes or simply unreleased stuff. I have not included digital recordings. I was surprised to find that there are 4o artists where I have at least ten releases by them. The list is below, (artist followed by the number of albums) there are no real surprises for me, are you surprised at any on this list? Have you ever done anything similar? I have also added a song from each of the top ten artists 🙂
David Bowie 141
Bob Dylan 30 Johnny Nash 26 Bruce Springsteen 26
Beatles 25
Neil Young 25
Elton John 19
Bob Marley 19
U2 19
Rod Stewart 18
Pink Floyd 17
REM 17 Elvis Costello 15
The Eels 15
Prince 15
Paul Weller 15
Ryan Adams 14 Led Zeppelin 14
Madonna 14
The Clash 13 Elvis Presley 13
Radiohead 13
Kate Bush 12
Oasis 12
Lou Reed 12
Stevie Wonder 12
Morrissey 11
Tom Waits 11
ZZ Top 11
Jeff Buckley 10
Julian Cope 10
Johnny Cash 10 Michael Jackson 10
John Lennon 10 Manic Street Preachers 10
Kylie Minogue 10 Iggy Pop 10
Rolling Stones 10
Frank Turner 10
The Who 10
In my teenage years I would never listen to country music of any kind. Largely because my Mum And Dad loved it so in my youthful mind it became uncool. However as I have got older I have grown to love much country music; Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash among many others. But my favourite country artist right now, although it’s fair to say that her songs transcend the genre, is Roseanne Cash. Actually forget the genre comment she is simply one of my favourite singers. I fell in love with her music after hearing the ‘Black Cadillac’ album in 2006. She is an incredibly talented songwriter and she also has an amazing voice.
The show at the Brudenell on Tuesday night was a purely acoustic set which she performed with her supremely talented husband John Leventhal. They both had a great rapport with the audience many of whom have seen Roseanne Cash play live countless times. She mainly sang songs from her wonderfully story filled current album ‘The River And The Thread’. That LP won three Grammys earlier this year. She also had a great story to tell about the origins of the songs from that album too. Notably how the beautiful and melancholy “When The Master Calls The Roll” came to be written. Her son had done a school project on the American Civil War. On the Civil War database they found photographs of two of the Cash family. There are not many pictures on that database and the Cash family had ancestors on both sides of the conflict.
She sang a really moving version of “The Sunken Lands” which is my favourite song from that album. Along with “A Feather’s Not A Bird” and “The Long Way Home”. She played a few older songs, including a couple from ‘Black Cadillac’. There were also a selection of tunes from her album of covers of songs that her father Johnny kept on a list of 100 songs that where in his opinion pretty much all the songs you’d ever need to know. In my opinion that album, ‘The List’, is perhaps one of the finest covers albums ever recorded. She played “Girl From The North Country“, “Heartaches By The Number” and “Sea Of Heartbreak”. John Leventhal took over the vocal support role provided by Bruce Springsteen on the album.
Roseanne and John are clearly very happy together and their understanding of each other is clear. They both come across as very real, very humble and very human. They were also clearly having fun on stage. I will definitely go and see another Roseanne Cash show in the future. Catwoman and I enjoyed this show immensely. I should also mention the marvellous support act Ags Connolly. He comes from near Oxford and his album was recorded in Scotland but it really does have a brilliantly authentic country sound.
Here comes the usual public service announcement. None of the pictures or clips in this post were taken or filmed by me.
It’s December 16th and therefore day 16 of the With Just A Hint Of Mayhem advent posts. I’m enjoying the music in these advent posts and I hope that you are too. So on to two songs with the number sixteen in their title.
The first song for today is from Ernest Jennings Ford who was better known as Tennessee Ernie Ford. The song is about working in a coal mine and it is called “Sixteen Tons” it reached number 1 in the US charts in 1955. The song has been recorded by many artists; including Stevie Wonder, the Redskins, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Bo Diddley, Robbie Williams, Dandy Warhols, Tom Morello and the Eels. Whilst Elvis Presley never recorded the song he did play it live when touring the US in 1955. The Clash had the Ford version of the song played just before they came on stage during their ‘Sixteen Tons’ US tour in 1980.
The second for today features an artist that appeared as part of one of his earlier bands on day 7 of my advent posts. It’s Jack White with a track taken from his first solo album, ‘Blunderbuss’ released in 2012. White says that the inspiration for the song came from his daughter. When Jack asked her what she would like as a snack she said sixteen saltine crackers, he said she could have three. The singles B Side was a cover of U2’s “Love Is Blindness“. The single was sadly largely ignored in the UK reaching only number 129 in the UK singles chart. The album went to number one in the UK though and also reached the top in Belgium, Canada, Switzerland and the USA.
Friday 13th December, one step closer to Christmas and a fabulous day unless you are triskaidekaphobic. So on with the show and today that show comes to you courtesy of two iconic music legends. One from the US and one from the UK. One is sadly no longer with us and the other is very much alive.
First up it’s the now departed Man In Black, Johnny Cash. The track I have chosen comes from the first of the albums that Cash recorded with Rick Rubin; ‘American Recordings‘ released in 1994. The song was written for Johnny by Glenn Danzig and it is called “Thirteen”. It took Danzig just twenty minutes to write the song. The album won a Best Contemporary Folk Album award at the 1994 Grammys. Cash joined the US Air Force in 1950 and for a time his role was to intercept morse code messages made by the Russian military. Apparently he was the first US radio operator to learn of the death of Joseph Stalin. The Cash family line could be traced back to 11th century Scotland.
The second song for today comes from that spikey, scouse minstrel Declan McManus who most of you know as Elvis Costello. The title of that song is “Thirteen Steps Lead Down” it is taken from 1994′ s ‘Brutal Youth‘ album. This was the first album that Elvis had recorded with the Attractions for eight years. The song was released as the lead track of an EP; the “Thirteen Steps Lead Down EP” which included three other tracks. Those were, “We Despise You”, “Basement Kiss” and “Puppet Girl”. Did you know that the backing band on Costello’s first album ‘My Aim Is True’ were called Clover and that they went on to form the nucleus of Huey Lewis and the News? Well you do now. I had the pleasure of seeing Mr Costello play live in June this year and he was brilliant.
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 