NP: townes van zandt

[Thomas Eckhardt,]

Van Zandt penned about twenty of the most beautiful songs 
ever written.  "Nothin'" is an existentialist tone poem, 
"Pancho and Lefty" the perfect outlaw ballad (beginning 
with a breathtaking shift from second to third person 
narration), what exactly is up with the surreal imagery of 
"Two Girls", I can't say, but what a way, again, to start 
a song: "The clouds didn't look like cotton/They didn't 
even look like clouds".

See also "Tecumseh Valley", "Snake Mountain Blues", "You 
Are Not Needed Now" etc. - Guy Clark or Steve Earle never 
wrote anything half as good, IMHO.

If you are into this kind of music, I highly recommend van 
Zandt's friend David Olney. Speaking of Paris 1919, not 
only John Cale but also Olney's "1917" comes to mind. 
Olney also recorded a song in which the story of the 
Titanic is told from the POV of the iceberg.

Thomas