The Samurai - 15 May 2008 07:14 PM
Hey Willy, I like all your choices but I have to confess that I am a Beatles guy.....the Stones are just okay in my book. Everything else you listed is outstanding stuff, no doubt about it. I am a huge Elvis fan, I live in Kentucky so there is hardly anybody bigger in this state than CCR, possibly Lynard Skin-yard.....awesome list however. I’ve been playing Rock Band on PS3 alot lately so I have been into some Deep Purple from back in the day...."Highway Star” in fact. I do love me some Johnny Cash I just downloaded his album, The Man Comes Around, great freakin stuff!!
Fair enough about the Beatles thing, my wife and her entire family are HUGE Beatles fans, and my family and I are Elvis people. Needless to say, I’m always antagonizing them about how much better the King is than the lads from Liverpool and we banter back and forth like that, but when I bring up the Stones, there is almost no debate as they feel that they don’t even merit discussion vs. The Beatles. Cash is the man; a alot of people are quick to dismiss him as another hillbilly country yokel(which is a shame as there are so many good country artists from the old school. Patsy Cline, Willie, George Jones, etc.) But Cash was THE best story teller by way of song that I know of. He stood up for the poor and the disadvantaged and held firm in his beliefs, despite the celebrity machine that would try and quell unpopular and divisive opinion. On his variety show in the 60’s he would have black artists that couldn’t get booked on most t.v shows(Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles), as well as having a very left leaning Bob Dylan during the height of Vietnam. Not to mention, that when asked to play for Nixon at the white house he sang the ballad of Ira Hayes(about a brave Native-American World War II hero who was mistreated upon his return home), and “what is truth?” which is a protest song. The man and the music are equally great.. But enough of a Cash bio, I’d like to recommend a few good contemporary Hip-Hop artists for all the heads out there that come from the Great White North: Kardinall Offishall and K-os.
