Popdose - Latest Comments in The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

Katie Dewitz — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 10:21:47 -0000

We're sharing all sorts of CW gems on the Facebook group I administer. Check us out at https://www.facebook.com/gr... . We've also created a Chris Whitley collection of bootlegs on the Live Music Archive: https://archive.org/details.... And I blog re Chris on WordPress and have a YouTube channel of CW videos. Enjoy!

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

jefito — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 09:58:28 -0000

Holy crap, I had no idea this existed!

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

Katie Dewitz — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 21:21:27 -0000

For those of you who would like to hear what Din of Ecstasy was supposed to sound like (and catch a song unavailable anywhere else!), see Danny Kadar's SoundCloud site: https://soundcloud.com/dann...

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

Shit4brains — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:29:12 -0000

i stumbled on Livin w/ the Law and hung around looking for more, it never came, but what followed was worth the ride as the pleasure was all mine to discover a true artist. To hear the guitar growl, bend, howl in an unheard of register, a voice that was unafraid to be soft and so full of emotion, but like listening to a granny smith apple, made for ear to soul connections.
i think the review missed the release Perfect Day. i had never heard anything so depressing and enjoyable at the same time. i do wonder what he presented for the original Din sounded like. yes, i will always want more, always a fan.

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

david dobens — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:21:43 -0000

hey ya eric would you please listen rocket house and see how you like it all the best...david

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

aerique — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:32:43 -0000

Nothing about "Pigs Will Fly"? It's a pretty easy-going record, but I like it.

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

Jack Feerick — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:33:47 -0000

I was mostly joshing, but... I'll e-mail you later today.

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

jefito — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:21:27 -0000

Any artists you want to write up?

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

Jack Feerick — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:12:11 -0000

Shit, jackfear, you should have written this

Hey, if any up-and-coming pop culture website were to, y'know, ask me...

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

Jack Feerick — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:35:42 -0000

The hands - God, yeah. There's a photo in the Living with the Law booklet where he's hunched over the National, his face half in shadow, those huge meathooks of his just dominating the composition. Hands like a strangler.

But it wasn't just power, or speed. There was such precision. On the solo demo of "Kick The Stones," for instance, it sounds like there's at least two guys playing, maybe three.

(Nick Drake had that, to—muzzy little whisper of a voice and hands that could bend a quarter in half.)

And I just can't wrap my head around what he's doing with his tunings. I worked out a halfway-decent version of "Living with the Law" in a simple drop-D, and was feeling pretty proud of myself; then I found out the tuning he was actually using, and I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

The magician shows just how he does it, and somehow it only deepens the mystery; that's one hell of a trick.

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

reval5 — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:07:05 -0000

Thanks for this.

Whitley was one of those few artists that I knew from the beginning that I would buy whatever he put out, always picking it up on release day. I first saw him open for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in 1991 and was appropriately blown away. I was a newbie to the concert scene, but I knew I had been given a gift. Those were the high-gloss commercial days, but after the band gradually left the stage during the coda of "Bordertown" I knew I had to devour everything I could get my hands on.

I have the strongest connection to that first album, but Dirt Floor and Reiter In deserve to be hoisted to the top of his catalog. I honestly didn't get a whole lot from most of his albums, but the richness of LWTL dictated that I owed a debt to Chris throughout the rest of his career, which I happily paid.

I saw him live several times, sharing a double bill with Toad the Wet Sprocket, or between albums keeping his name out there and finally during the Rocket House tour, a day or two after an infamous meltdown in Portland. To say that he struggled with "demons" would be a quaint way to put it and the show that night was listless and uninspired. I left early, but there was always something about Chris Whitley that kept me coming back. He was a confounding artist, but he's one of the few that I discovered on my own and kept close to my heart for reasons I'm still not sure about.

I shook his hand after a show, just a few years after Din came out. His hands were enormous and strong and it was clear that they were his greatest asset - the way he made his living. It's not surprising really, considering the way he abused that National. They felt like what I imagine the hands of John Henry felt like - and for my money Chris Whitley deserves to be an American legend on that level.

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

jack — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:14:41 -0000

I loved "Living With the Law" when it first came out, then like most fans, had no idea what to make of "Din of Ecstasy" and finally lost touch after "Terra Incognita."

But we happened to see he was playing in a tiny little place in 2000 (or 2001... I forget exactly), just him, his guitar, and his feet beating time, and he just owned all of us from the first note. He was something to experience.

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

jefito — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:08:45 -0000

Shit, jackfear, you should have written this. I bow before you.

As for "Perfect Day"...it's a covers record. Not your typical covers record, sure, but that was why I didn't cover it when I originally wrote this, and yesterday when I was fleshing it out, I thought it was more important to add "Reiter In" and "Dislocation Blues."

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

jefito — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:06:54 -0000

Eep. I'm going to fix that right this minute. Thanks for letting me know.

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

David_E — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:04:34 -0000

Tremendous guide. My favorites are these, where I've only passing knowledge of an artist, and end up kicking myself for not digging deeper.

For this relative newbie's money, "Her Furious Angels" and "Narcotic Prayer" aren't quite as inaccessible as you present them. Maybe just 'cause I like my blues leavened with a little dirt n' machine.

One final note – the hard drive crash of '0whatever futzed "Fireroad (For Two)," marrying it (and it was an ugly, shotgun wedding) to the Pet Shop Boys' "What Have I Done To Deserve This." Wow.

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

Jack Feerick — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:55:15 -0000

Nicely written, Jeff.

I’ve got a slightly different take on the first two albums and the way they work together—in retrospect, there’s a real arc there. Living with the Law was about a lot of things, but it was in part about the tension between country and city. The songs implied a character—a backwoods kid with poor impulse control, aching to burn down the trailer park and slip across the border, into the big city. Din is decidedly an urban album, steeped in grime and heroin. In a way, it shows what happens to that kid once he washes up in the city; cut loose from the traditional strictures that both nurtured and suffocated him on Law, he winds up seduced by the twin demons of smack and electric guitar—freed, but also corrupted.

One more point; listening to the solo demos of the Living with the Law material (i.e., the bonus tracks on the Poison Girl CD single), I was struck by the fact that, for all his fiddly production, Malcolm Burn really didn’t add much to the songs. All the elements are there in the dense, intricate acoustic guitar parts; Burn is really just recording the songs and fleshing them out a little. Din of Ecstasy also has a quasi-live feel, albeit with the full band—set ‘em up, roll tape, and let ‘em play. Terra Incognita, though, was the first time I heard Whitley using the studio as a compositional tool—using it to develop the songs, rather than simply to decorate them. And that, I think, defines the real dichotomy of his recorded output, between performance records (Law, Din, Dirt Floor, Hotel et al) and assembly records (Terra, Rocket House, Soft Dangerous Shores).

Also: no love for Perfect Day? It’s a flawed record, yeah, but its flaws, its weirdness. are important pieces of the puzzle, I think.

Re: The Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley

eric — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:26:01 -0000

Listening to Big Sky Country, something in the timbre of Whitley's voice made me think of Darden Smith for a minute. (Not that I've heard anything Smith has done for a dozen years or so.) I thought early on, when Smith was with Columbia, he was a promising artist. Whitley is not nearly so user-friendly. Not my cup of tea, but you increased my musical IQ. Thanks.