![]() He also told plenty of intriguing stories, usually at the introduction of the song he was about to perform. You believed every word he sang - a rare treat in 2023. Mellencamp’s vocals were more gravelly than in his commercial prime, but that only seemed to heighten the authority and maturity of the lyrics. “I just played Portland a couple of nights ago,” he said. The highlight of this middle section of the show came when he played “The Eyes of Portland,” a moving new song addressing the plight of the homeless that Mellencamp wrote after visiting the Oregon city a few years back. New music: We Are Messengers, Lana Del Rey, Yazmin Lacey “I can tell by looking out at the audience that some of you people can relate to this,” Mellencamp said in the introduction of the old-age ode “Don’t Need This Body.” Related Articles ![]() Mellencamp then gave fans time to catch their breath as he veered from the longtime fan favorites to some lesser-known cuts, including “Dear God,” “Jackie Brown” and “Don’t Need This Body.” In all, eight of the 21 songs performed were from those two records. All of those numbers hailed from Mellencamp’s two ’80s albums - “Scarecrow” and “The Lonesome Jubilee” - which rank as the finest outings in his entire catalog. Right around 8:30 p.m., the screen lifted so that the crowd could see Mellencamp and his superb six-piece band launch into the deep cut “John Cockers” from 2008’s “Life, Death, Love and Freedom.” The star was also accompanied onstage by some creepy looking movie-star mannequins, including one that was supposed to be Brando and another that may have been Paul Newman - although, honestly, it looked as least as much like Pee-wee Herman from my vantage point.įrom that soft-sell opener, Mellencamp quickly shifted into high gear for a great three-song run through “Paper in Fire,” “Minutes to Memories” and “Small Town,” the last of which truly got the crowd in party mode. This tie-in with tour sponsor Turner Classic Movies, however, only worked moderately well, as the noise from the crowd made it really hard to hear the dialogue. That was underscored during a 30-minute opening segment where snippets from some of Mellencamp’s favorite classic films - 1954’s “On the Waterfront” and 1960’s “The Fugitive Kind,” both starring Marlon Brando - flashed on a big screen at the center of the stage. He cares a lot.Īnd he certainly cares about old movies. And he works really hard to put on a show that matters both to the audience and to the musicians onstage. His comments to the crowd on Friday - the first half of a two-night stand at the venue - made it clear just how much the art of songcraft still matters to him. ![]() And that’s sort of what ‘Pink Houses’ is about.He’s still championing social issues through song, both in his older numbers and in the new ones he’s been writing. I don’t mean to get political, but I do get wound up about these kinds of things because so many people see it as it’s really not. ![]() I’m not condoning what Russia did, but that’s bullshit! There’s so many things we’ve done, and then we expect them to apologize when we had a spy plane beside the plane that got shot down! Let’s see the deal as it really was! And the majority of the public is going to fall right in line with the way Reagan wants them to think. It’s like the Russians shooting down that plane, and we want them to apologize. It’s not rah, rah, rah America at all, and I think it puts America in its place. The American dream has pretty much proven itself as not working anymore.” John Mellencamp (223) “It’s saying the American Dream and all that shit is propaganda. This one has been misconstrued over the years because of the chorus – it sounds very rah-rah. So I went with that positive route when I wrote this song. I thought, “Wow, is this what life can lead to? Watching the fucking cars go by on the interstate?” Then I imagined he wasn’t isolated, but he was happy. He was sitting on his front lawn in front of a pink house in one of those shitty, cheap lawn chairs. “I was driving through Indianapolis on Interstate 65 and I saw a black man holding either a dog or a cat.
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