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Townes Van Zandt - Rear View Mirror (Volume 2)
- As a songwriter, Townes Van Zandt was a diamond in the rough.
He magnified American imagery with his heady boil of country western folk songs. Texas standards is what they sound like. A bold splash of poetry, mostly about girls from here and there, of love lost and found.
He embraced the vagabond lifestyle of which music demanded. You can hear his passion for traveling in his songs. "I'll Be Here in the Morning" is a perfect example of this. He examined the good and the bad of this and sang as if to say, "you know what I mean," even though we don't, after listening to his songs, we do - kind of. He once said, "I don't envision a very long life for myself, I think my life will run out before my work does, I've designed it that way."
His vocal ability wasn't good but it was attractive. He had a whiskey tainted Texas drawl. It was something you hear at a Texas bar, a place where he fit right in. This made him quick for dismissal by critics. It was only years after that he was fully acknowledged as an artist. Recently, a DVD was made about his life, called "Be Here to Love Me."
This album is a great place to start if you want to hear a heartfelt, stripped-naked singer/songwriter. It analyzes the lonliness and fulfillment his passion brought him. Unfortunately, he was a beaten man: beaten by depression, addiction, and his own lifestyle. He died of a heart attack at age 52. Posthumously he has been recognized as the artist that he was.
Reviewer: Stefan Julian
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Reviewer's Rating: 9.5
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Added: 24-Jun-2009
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