“Emmylous Harris looks like a hippie, but don’t be fooled: She’s total goth.” — Jody Rosen, RS 6/12/08
I grabbed an issue of Rolling Stone to read on the flight to New York from the airport newsstand and read it during a delay in St Paul. The issue's feature was “The 100 Greatest 100 Guitar Songs of All Time” and pictured J. Page, E. Van Halen, B. Guy, BB King, J Mayer and several other guys on the cover. That's a lot of testosterone (not speaking badly here, as it’s no secret I’m a sucker for a killer solo), so I was excited to find tucked away in the CD review section, a review of the latest Emmylou Harris CD “All I Intended to Be" (produced by Bill Ahern). The disc only garnered two and half stars by RS. While not completely damning, the subhead “Wrapped up in country-folk melancholy, she takes too much comfort in being sad” and the use of the word ‘congealed’ in the review could hardly be taken as a reason to rush out and buy the disc. But given I’m wrapping up tracks for a CD that is hardly something to which you party, and that I’m a big fan of Emmy Lou, I took it upon myself to go looking for the disc on my first day in NYC (aka a good reason to visit a bunch of music stores). Alas it's not due for another 10 days. I'll buy it next week--it features songs by Patty Griffin, Tracy Chapman and as well as Harris so I'm interested whatever the RS reviewer says. We all gotta rail against the dying of the light in our own ways, it's what makes it interesting, and I'll take Emmy Lou's version any day (as well as BB's and ...:-))
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