Yeah, so unless you live under a rock, Johnny Cash died. I've thought about everything that should be said, and everything that will be said, all the photo tributes, the contemporary rock stars who will cash in for a sound bite on mtv news, etc. I'm sure MTV will put on some kind of production celebrating his life with bands like Metalica and Kid Rock talking about how much influence he had on them, but it will be too little, too late, too much like every other "icon" show. He was a legend in life, and I'd much rather remember him as such, than as an after thought on the part of a music industry that has much more to do with marketing an image than actual music. With that in mind, I think the best thing I can do is keep my feelings about his death to myself, keep it personal, you know.
Johnny's influence doesn't really need to be discussed. It goes without saying. He was an icon in the most religious of terms to music. He was there throughout my life. If you were to ask me who my favorite bands were, his name wouldn't come up, because I expected you to know, subconciously, that it all came back to The Man in Black. I have several JC albums, not the American recordings, but the old ones, collections of his own work. I don't listen to them very often. I don't need to because his legacy is carried in everything I listen to, from Rancid and Social Distortion to Blood for Blood and Motorhead to the Wu Tang Clan. Whenever someone threw a nod to the outcast, cast off, underclass, the rebel, the addict, the outlaw, the veteran murdered in flesh or mind by a rotten socio-political system, the hated and proud, the beautifully ugly, the tragic, the antihero, hopeless, wasted youth, the hero turned sinner, the convicted victim, Johnny was there, whether or not the artist knew it at the time.
Johnny's influence doesn't really need to be discussed. It goes without saying. He was an icon in the most religious of terms to music. He was there throughout my life. If you were to ask me who my favorite bands were, his name wouldn't come up, because I expected you to know, subconciously, that it all came back to The Man in Black. I have several JC albums, not the American recordings, but the old ones, collections of his own work. I don't listen to them very often. I don't need to because his legacy is carried in everything I listen to, from Rancid and Social Distortion to Blood for Blood and Motorhead to the Wu Tang Clan. Whenever someone threw a nod to the outcast, cast off, underclass, the rebel, the addict, the outlaw, the veteran murdered in flesh or mind by a rotten socio-political system, the hated and proud, the beautifully ugly, the tragic, the antihero, hopeless, wasted youth, the hero turned sinner, the convicted victim, Johnny was there, whether or not the artist knew it at the time.