TOOK A WRONG TURN INTO JUAREZ WITH JUANITA ON MY LAP
I don't fall in love with the work of musicians very easily. Unlike most people today, I don't make music my source of meaning or the center of my emotional life.
I do make some exceptions, though. Blondie is one of them, as you know, and Devo, Talking Heads, and Warren Zevon are some of the others. But probably no musician has had a bigger impact on me than Johnny Cash.
This goes back, too; I liked Johnny long before it was cool to do so, and I owe that to my dad. We were living in Greenwich Village in the 70's, when it was unheard of for Bohemian types to like country music. My dad had gone to Andover and grown up in the lap of luxury on Philadelphia's Main line, but he liked Johnny and played his albums. Our old family friend Malcolm Braly (America's greatest novelist of prison life) turned my dad on to Mr. Cash, and I'm still grateful.
I'm half a Southerner and I'm going to teach a class on the Civil War this fall, and I may just ask my class to listen to Johnny if they want to understand Southerners. Oddly enough, it turns out that Jaime Hernandez, my favorite cartoonist, likes Cash too. Terry Downe, my favorite "Locas" character, is a guitarist in a punkabilly band, and I'm sure she must be playing tunes by the Man in Black. Some of Cash's numbers--"Ring of Fire," "The Long Black Veil," "Orange Blossom Special," "Wanted Man"--seem particularly relevant and appropriate to the "Locas" universe, and to Terry and Doyle Blackburn in particular.
That's by way of introduction. Here is the man himself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl0shYecWAc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQUBE0OP0Jk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCSNGQpZXB
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK2uGftt5dM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n34JDY6uXPQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-AED1BjuJ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lhf9U5Wf3Q