«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

@immatthewj 

Oops, sorry about mixing up who I was responding to!

As far as not hearing much Dylan in the latter half of the 60s and early 70s, that was likely due to the fact that he got married, had kids and took a hiatus from touring starting in 67 until 74 and only released two or three albums of new music during that period. The fact that you were in a small town in Montana probably had something to do with as well.

Really a lovely thread and ensuring discussion especially in light of the new years and choosing growth  n learning, new musical experiences…

@tyray so glad you are here…

i probably missed mentions of them but i greatly miss Lowell George and Warren Zevon and …..so many who have passed.

@slaw nice !
@bdp24 Caught Iris several weeks ago in a trio… wonderful 

The fact that you were in a small town in Montana probably had something to do with as well.

That probably had the most to do with it, @ezwind . They played top 40 hits and old-goldies and C&W. They probably played Blowing In The Wind back then, unless it had some kind of bad rap of being a protest oriented song--as good as my memory is, I do not remember. My Mom liked different types of music--she was relatively open minded. Relatively. She bought the 45 rpm of Hey Jude because she thought it was beautiful when she heard it on the radio. She did like what she heard by Paul Simon, although she was a bit aghast by Kodachrome ("When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school . . .").

My Dad was different story. I remember playing an 8 track (I think it was a greatest hits) for my mom because I had just discovered Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and I thought it was so cool, and my Dad walked by and was quite condescending. He liked Lawrence Welk and he also liked Kenny Rodgers. In the ’90s, after my mom died, he’d come to visit us for Thanksgivings and one year we all went to DC to see Lucinda Williams at the Oh Nine Thirty Club and that didn’t do anything at all for him. A year or two later we went to a local club to see Jill Sobule and Warren Zevon. Not impressed. I played him some Leonard Cohen on my system which was, even back in the later ’90s , not a bad system, and maybe you can guess how he felt about that. He wasn’t liking the Cowboy Junkies cover of I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry; "I don’t think that’s how Hank Williams meant for that to ever sound."

Which is all to say that different people have different thoughts about what is great and what is pathetic.

@tomic601: Damn Jim, where'd ya see Iris with accompaniment? A bassist and guitarist? All four times I've seen her she was solo, which was fine with me. I've seen Joan Osborne with just her pianist and guitarist, and with her I missed a rhythm section. Still great though.

About a year ago I saw two new young(er) artists and an old-timer touring together, in a great little theater in Portland, Mississippi Studios. They were Kelly Willis, Brennen Leigh, and Melissa Carper. Melissa was playing an upright bass, Kelly and Brennen acoustic guitars. A night of great songs, singing, and playing! The audience was divided about equally between greybeards (such as myself) and young hipsters. Outrageous alcoholic beverage prices! I gotta start sneaking in my flask.

@bdp24 - yeah, Mississippi Studios is great venue and environment; saw Stan Ridgway up there about 20 or so years ago...