Lonesome, On'ry and Mean
is the quintessential
Waylon Jennings
outlaw
record.
Waylon
produced the set -- the first unfettered by the bonds of
RCA
-- with his own band, and the results are nothing less than electrifying.
Steve Young
, the perennial
country
and
folk
music outsider, may have penned the title cut, but
's delivery as an anthem bears in it all of his years of frustration at not being able to make the music he wanted to. Fury is a better word for what is heard in the grain of the song's lyrics.
Young
's own version is devastating, but this one is transcendent. (And why is it that
Travis Tritt
was picked to sing this at
's memorial instead of
, who was also present? Talk about misguided justice.) But the boundaries between
rock & roll
come down once again on this album in
Kris Kristofferson
's
"Me & Bobby McGee,"
as
and post-
psychedelia
meet Texas in
Mickey Newbury
"San Francisco Mabel Joy"
and the broken, road-weary
pop
honky tonk
balladry
of
Danny O'Keefe
"Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues."
Add to this
Johnny Cash
"Gone to Denver"
Willie Nelson
"Pretend I Never Happened,"
and you have an outsider's dream. That the rest of the recording is just as consistent, just as seamless in its execution, production, and delivery, makes
the first seriously pitched battle in the 1970s
music wars. And this one went to
Jennings
and his fans, hands down. ~ Thom Jurek