Zack wrote on Sep 5
th, 2009 at 7:57am:
Thank goodness he changed his shirt.
LOL!!!
check out the first line of the review
By JON PARELES
Published: September 3, 2009
John Fogerty wore a country-singer outfit — including a black cowboy hat and black cowboy shirt — when he performed at the South Street Seaport’s Pier 17 on Wednesday night. And he sang some country songs, like Hank Williams’s “Jambalaya (on the Bayou)” and Buck Owens’s “I Don’t Care (Just as Long as You Love Me),” with down-home flair. For this concert Mr. Fogerty was reaching back to a mythic rural America — one he prizes now as much as he did when he led Creedence Clearwater Revival in the 1960s.
Back then, when many of his fellow musicians were out to transform or at least warp the future, Mr. Fogerty was thinking about roots: the rockabilly, country, blues and R&B that went into his Creedence songs. Those pithy, twangy rockers were both catchy and durable. In 1973, after Creedence broke up, Mr. Fogerty looked back further: to older country and gospel songs, which he recorded as the Blue Ridge Rangers, playing every instrument in the studio.
He has just released an unexpected sequel, “The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again” (Fortunate Son/Verve Forecast), and Verve Records sponsored Wednesday’s free concert.
“Rides Again” changed nearly everything but the idea of Mr. Fogerty singing other people’s songs. This time he was backed by studio musicians, many of whom were onstage with him, including Jason Mowery on fiddle and Buddy Miller on guitar. Instead of remaking Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, Mr. Fogerty drew most of the songs on the new album from more recent decades. He also remade one of his own: “Change in the Weather,” a worried vision of global warming.
Before the concert, the original versions of the songs on “Rides Again” were played on the sound system. By comparison, Mr. Fogerty’s affectionate remakes backdated them and pushed them toward the honky-tonks, punching up the beat and lacing them with fiddle, mandolin and pedal-steel guitar.
There’s a thread of environmentalism in the songs on the new album, like John Prine’s “Paradise,” and a fondness for the comforts of home, as in John Denver’s “Back Home Again” and the Jumpin’ Gene Simmons hit “Haunted House.” At Pier 17 Mr. Fogerty played them alongside Creedence songs like the nature-loving “Green River” and the satisfied homebody sentiments of “Lookin’ Out My Back Door,” in which he listens to Owens on an old Victrola.
The remakes were fond and good-natured, but Mr. Fogerty’s own songs were better. At 64, he still has the biting yowl and near yodel of his Creedence days in his voice, and his guitar parts are pure and chiseled: riffs, strums and a little chicken-plucking lead.
For “Keep On Chooglin’,” he claimed psychedelic-era guitar as an American tradition, edging his tone with distortion and feedback. Elsewhere he barely changed the arrangements of songs like “Fortunate Son,” “Born on the Bayou,” “Bad Moon Rising” and — with the river behind him — “Proud Mary.” Some songs don’t need remakes.
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John Fogerty (nsc) (Read 1,406 times)
