Coverji, kot jih je uganjal Johnny Cash, so menda tako znameniti ravno zaradi prevrnitve razmerja original – kopija. Tisti najbolj uspeli pravijo: “Mar ne vidite, da so vsi ti mulci pognali iz moje korenine?” Cashevski songi, ki so bili z naknadno obdelavo uradno posvečeni v Cashove.
Tukaj je case study (mimo najrazvpitejšega): The Mercy Seat, pod katerega so bili originalno podpisani Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Mercy Seat
Cave je (tako rekoč latinskoameriško) obseden z dialektiko pekla&nebes. Vsekakor žanr, ki sta mu privržena le dva tipa umetnikov: bebci – in klasiki. (V vmesnem času se skušajte spomniti tretjega.) Da Mercy Seat vendarle pade v slednjo kategorijo, med drugim kaže pripisati kaznjenčevemu/naratorjevemu stopnjevanju v zaključnih vrsticah, ko je z vsakim nadaljnjim zanikanjem krivde bliže priznanju. Kako cashevsko.
Po Cashovi prilastitvi, ki se zgodi na albumu Solitary Man, Cave morebiti začuti, da si dolguje vsaj zarezo. Udejanji jo v živo, koncertno: verz “And God is never far away”, ki ga je Cash moral posvojiti s posebno naslado, premenja v “And God is very far away”.
To je Caveov “crown of shit”, s čimer postane le še toliko večji junior. Zgolj skušnjavec.
Cash je Skušnjavec. Na način, ki ga gre opredeliti z besedami:
“To lead into temptation called faith”.
###
The acclaim of Johnny Cash covers has probably something to do with the reversal of relation between an original and a copy. The most accomplished ones are saying: “Don’t you see that all these kids have grown out of my root?” They are all Cash-like songs that have been – after subsequent handling – officially consecrated into Cave songs.
Here’s a case study (skipping the most obvious one): The Mercy Seat, under which originally Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds were signed.
Cave is obsessed (in an almost Latin-American way) with dialectics of heaven&hell. Definitely a genre, which has devotees in only two types of artists: the idiots – and the classics. (Try to think of the third type in the meantime.) That, after all, The Mercy Seat belongs to the latter category should be attributed to the gradation of convict’s narration in the concluding verses; with every further denial of guilt he is closer to confession. How very Cash-like.
After the Cash’s appropriation that takes place on the Solitary Man album, Cave perhaps feels that he owns himself some kind of a scar. He attains it live: the verse “And God is never far away” – which has most probably been zealously adopted by Cash – is transformed into “And God is very far away”.
This is Cave’s “crown of shit” that makes him even more junior. A mere tempter.
Cash is the Tempter. In a way that could be expressed by saying:
“To lead into temptation called faith.”
Leave a Reply