Wow. I just found this video, and it makes me both sorta happy and depressed at the same time. Give it a look(and listen) and then meet me below...
Again...Wow.So much of this video is so depressing, I'm sorry to say. Jerry looks terrible. Watching this video, I am honestly surprised that he lasted another month.He looks so frail and OLD in this.But then, from about the 8:24 point on, when he just starts wailing...I find that incredibly powerful, and uplifting in some weird way.
I love this song, and love this version of it, perhaps BECAUSE it makes me feel such a wide range of emotions, as so much of the GD music does, I don't know.
Honestly, I think my feelings about this are summed up really well by Mr. Eric Pooley's essay in the "So Many Roads" box set. It was titled "Red and White, Blue Suede Shoes", and this section he's talking about the last few years:
"...Now they seemed sweeter and deeper,perhaps because they were unfolding on borrowed time(aren't we all?), perhaps because I was older and the good times were harder to come by. But I cheered for Jerry when his fragile voice nailed the high notes on "Morning Dew", and I cheered when he missed. And, after a few more years of real power, when his health declined and his energy dwindled, the stakes became enormous. His courage was something to see."- Eric Pooley,"Red and White,Blue Suede Shoes"
I don't know if any of this makes any sense at all, but I just caught the video on YouTube, and I had a strong reaction to it, and I wanted to write that down. So, if you watched the video and read this, Thanks.
2 comments:
I was looking for a good 'So Many Roads' and my search led me here...and whadyaknow, there were some words of my own waiting for me. Yep, this is exactly what I was writing about almost 20 years ago. Thanks for posting it!
--Eric Pooley
Eric!!
How great that found this(and I apologize for my delayed reply). I remember e-mailing you when the boxed set came out to thank you for writing that essay. It so eloquently stated how I was also feeling about them.
I still have a xeroxed copy of that page of the So Many Roads booklet up in my office.
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