What's new
  • Please note members who been with us for more than 10 years have been upgraded to "Veteran" status and will receive exclusive benefits. If you wish to find out more about this or support IcMag and get same benefits, check this thread here.
  • Important notice: ICMag's T.O.U. has been updated. Please review it here. For your convenience, it is also available in the main forum menu, under 'Quick Links"!

John Prine; Soulful Writer, Musician & Vocalist

M

moose eater

Normally not phased much by too many famous folks facing life's struggles like the rest of us. It's life. But John Prine goes way back; maybe like some sort of an unintended choreographer for life's journals and photo albums.

It was a show at the Panida Theatre in Sandpoint, Idaho about 1987 or early 1988, maybe, when life looked bleak, and there was a cross-roads to be dealt with.

Lots of memories and changes before, during and after that show.

Johnny P is struggling with the current viral threat, and is in rough shape, per recent news blips. He's whipped cancer twice, but now faces this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJPvc5vvKY4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j9f501YxVw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVZmSEpuJtg
 

GOT_BUD?

Weed is a gateway to gardening
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Jesus. Beat cancer twice only to get taken out because some guy didn't wash his hands.
 

aridbud

automeister
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Back in 1899, when everyone was singing "Auld Lang Syne"
A century took a long, long time for every boy and girl.
Now there's only one thing that I'd like to know
Where did the 20th century go?
I'd swear it was here just a minute ago
All over this world.

Chorus:
And now the 20th century is almost over,
Almost over, almost over
The 20th century is almost over
All over this world.
All over this world, all over this world
The 20th century is almost over, all over this world.

Does anyone remember the Great Depression?
I read all about it in True Confession
I'm sorry I was late for the recording session
But somebody put me on hold.
Has anybody seen my linoleum floors
Petroleum jelly, and two World Wars?
They got stuck in the revolving doors
All over this world.
And now...

Hoping Mr. Prine can fight this elusive virus. Saw him 3x in my life, usually with Arlo Guthrie or Bonnie Raitt.

God Speed, John!
 
M

moose eater

JP often engaged the audience in ways that even if the story was rehearsed or told many times, it rarely showed unless you'd heard it before.

A favorite involved his time in the US Army during the 'Nam era, and the fact that he'd filled out his aptitude test randomly, just filling in circles, after which a CO came and told him he was a mechanical genius, and they put him in the motor pool.

One day, preceding an inspection, they discovered they had an extra dozer, and as JP stated, in Uncle Sam's Army, having too many of something was as bad as having too few. So they took one dozer, dug out a pit, placed the extra dozer in the hole, and buried it. Problem solved.

There are many stories like that. Different subjects, but delightfully real.

Here's an interview preceding one of his later albums, 'The Road to Forgiveness.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPBoRxqTEtM

A private Christmas party a year+ ago, with Gordon Lightfoot in attendance; one of JP's musical heroes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Rkm_dqm7A

Lastly, Kacey Musgraves sings, 'Burn One with John Prine,' to John Prine, live, on stage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A-pRJxCKR8

Years gone by of feeling the spirit of this guy... with a thumb out on the side of the road, milking goats or slopping hogs, at protests, and more. Someone commented that he's an American treasure. Yep.
 
M

moose eater

Thanks everyone. I'm out of rep.

HG Griffin, great article, encapsulates JP nicely.

Humanity that rarely stumbled downward in karmic value due to fame.

I hope JP continues onward, but I have my concerns at the moment.

'Bruised Orange' (live)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hos21J2kAWQ
 

GOT_BUD?

Weed is a gateway to gardening
ICMag Donor
Veteran
FOX was reporting that he is in stable condition. If he stays in stable condition and improves remains to be seen.
 
M

moose eater

FOX was reporting that he is in stable condition. If he stays in stable condition and improves remains to be seen.

Very cool. His wife had tested positive earlier in March, and they had quarantined themselves.

He's at an age, and with high risk medical history, to the extent that quarantining with a known positive tested person, was a statement of solidarity in my opinion.

Can't say I would've called it any different. Love has different meanings for many.

I hope he pulls through. He's a warm, compassionate human being. And I'm hoping for more years standing in hopes of an encore tune or 3.

Strawberry festival and Music Clinic; Interactive with the Audience... or, as John Prine stated, Music 101. Sweetness abounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOVRg6aV-_A
 
M

moose eater

I haven't readily encountered any new updates re. Mr. Prine's condition, so I'm assuming he's still stable and on a ventilator. If he beats this, he might be the guy to take along on any lottery ticket-buying, or to a poker game. How many beat cancer 2 x's, then a pandemic for toppers?

Folks near Mr. Prine asked for people to continue prayers, thoughtfulness, and to play his music and celebrate his being.

Bonnie Raitt's tribute to John Prine at the 2020 Grammy Awards

https://www.grammy.com/grammys/vide...ine-angel-montgomery-2020-grammys-performance
 

H G Griffin

Well-known member
Just got my ability to 'like'. You get the very first one, moose eater. I've enjoyed your posts here and in the covid threads.
I've long suspected you Alaskans are damn near good enough to be Canucks. ;) (cheers from Alberta)

Hope you and Mr Prine both are doing well.

Here's one of my favorites. He just has this ability to get to the very heart of whatever subject he writes about.

Take the Star Out of the Window
https://youtu.be/sDR35dfVgDs
 
M

moose eater

Just got my ability to 'like'. You get the very first one, moose eater. I've enjoyed your posts here and in the covid threads.
I've long suspected you Alaskans are damn near good enough to be Canucks. ;) (cheers from Alberta)

Hope you and Mr Prine both are doing well.

Here's one of my favorites. He just has this ability to get to the very heart of whatever subject he writes about.

Take the Star Out of the Window
https://youtu.be/sDR35dfVgDs

I'm honored, flattered, and humbled, H.G.

While I once traveled extensively & routinely over much of N. America, I lived briefly in the Yukon Territory in the later mid-1970s, before moving to Alaska, and staying a resident here for a variety of reasons. I now see the Yukon Territory far more frequently than I do the Lower-48 States.

Lots of Alberta has changed since the 1970s; just passed through Whitecourt, bringing up a vehicle for my wife from the SW US last February, 2019, and that whole stretch between Edmonton (explosion of urbania, extraordinaire), Whitecourt (that used to be a tiny sleepy burg, now over-run with oil workers and associated labor) Grand prairie, Ft. St. john, etc. Some places I could no longer recognize after years of using the Stewart-Cassiar Hwy down through B.C. instead of the Lower Alcan.

I've hitch-hiked across your Country many times in the 1970s and 1980s, including off-the-main-byway places, and ridden motorcycles, driven trucks and cars across there as well. Been addressed as 'Sir' by your RCMP on the sides of your highways, despite my pony tail, flower-patched bib overalls, etc. Versus sometimes having Lower-48 cops engage in all kinds of disrespect and expression of unfounded fear, such as pulling firearms when thumbing.

Before that, I lived on an off-grid homestead farm in the UP of Michigan; again close to Canada, across Lake Superior. John Prine's music, along with others in/of similar genre, featured prominently for the first time in my life, as I associated and lived among a small enclave of Vietnam vets from all branches of service, who, in disgust toward the Gov., society, et al., had joined the back-to-the-land movement of that time. One of them had taken me in when I was 16 y.o. and there as a result of leaving behind some drug-related legal tensions in SW Michigan.

The tune you linked to was a heartfelt tune among combat vets there, who'd turned to milling their own lumber, growing dope, their hair, beards, raising children, goats, pigs, chickens, sheep, ducks, bedding plants, and more. It would later be a favorite protest tune when appropriate.

"Take the star out of the window, and let my conscience take a rest."

Thanks.
 

H G Griffin

Well-known member
That is quite the history, ME.
I would love to sit around the fire shooting the shit and listening to stories of your travels.(maybe share a few of my own of hitching the backroads of very redneck Alberta in the 80's, among other misadventures. Actually had the whole 'everyone in the bar stops midsentence and stares' happen to me and another longhair in the Bentley Hotel one fine afternooon:woohoo:)

We had a hippy life skills coach and his two adopted black kids move in across the road from us out in the boonies when I was a teen. The son and I became good friends and I met all sorts of characters over there that I would have never crossed paths with otherwise.

One day I was over there and a guy was playing guitar and it was basically an east-coast-style kitchen party. One song was played that I loved, but it was probably close to 25 years before I found out the name of the song and artist(pre-internet days). It was "Please Don't Bury Me". Once I knew, I sought out Prine's work and have discovered one gem after another.
The insight in his songs is unprecedented, imo. Even the goofy ones have a way of making you look at things with a new perspective.
 
M

moose eater

LOL, for real!!

Whether walking into off-the-road diners in tiny farm towns in Saskatchewan, or similar diners in the plateau country of Utah, riding a motorcycle with an extended front-end, and a king-queen seat, or into a tiny Colorado town just east of Wolf Creek Pass on that same bike, or.... a hundred other events, I know that 'sound-of-a-pin-dropping' moment all too well. Learned to ride a motorcycle with a hot cup of coffee in a disposable cup between my thighs, leaving one such moment in rural plateau Utah. ;^>)

The café east of Wolf Creek Pass (same day I rode through a snow storm on a motorcycle for the FIRST time ever), and ordered coffee. I was hypothermic, and bringing the cup to my mouth, it 'clinked' off my front teeth, as I was shaking from the cold.. The folks at the counter all leaned forward and stared down toward me in silence. I suspected they figured I was either high or in withdrawal. I WAS high, but it was hash, weed, and speed. I was shaking from the hypothermia.

JP has his fingers on the pulse of the human spirit, from all walks and places, and can help you to cry for it, or laugh at it, sometimes in the same 10" or 20" period.
 
Top