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McMurtry Maddness
September 24th, 2006James McMurtry is evidence that the line between madness and genius if very thin … thankfully.
Like a sonic lovechild born from Ray Wylie Hubbard and Tom Waits, McMurtry writes songs that are beautifully ugly in a down-home sort of way. Waits can sing depressingly about alcoholic love affairs while McMurtry sings boisterously of alcoholic carnal affairs with his cousins (”And them skinny little halters, And they’re second cousins to me, Man I don’t care I wanna get between them, With a great big ol’ hard-on”). That should drive some Republicans crazy.
More important though is that like Waits and Hubbard, McMurtry’s lyrics paint vivid mental pictures. One cannot prevent images erupting in the mind’s eye when encountering words like “Aunt Clara kept her Bible Right next to the phone in case she needed a quote” or “deadly as a Texan on ice.”
(Anyone who has not been on a public highway in north Texas during their freakish winter ice storms knows not the definition of terror)
It is the shared trait of Waits, Hubbard and McMurtry that makes songs special. Like reading good fiction, the listener is escorted momentarily to another reality because the words create an alternate place and time, populated with people you might not want to know, but who are like people you already know (maybe even like yourself — I know I had a cousin who … never mind). Contrast even the worst prose penned by any of these gentlemen against the spiritually empty lyrics found in popular music, and one instantly understands why these three develop enduring, almost cult like followings. Unlike yesterday’s pop stars, Waits, Hubbard, and McMurtry will always have an audience.
