Don Henley pays tribute to the music he grew up listening to on the radio in Texas with “When I Stop Dreaming,” joined by Dolly Parton.
On Don Henley’s upcoming deluxe album Cass Country, he pays tribute to his years growing up in Cass County, Texas and listening to the radio with his father. On one of the tracks from the album, Dolly Parton joins him on “When I Stop Dreaming.”
The song is a classic that was recorded by the Louvin Brothers. Check out the former member of the Eagles and the legendary Dolly Parton singing “When I Stop Dreaming.”
Henley’s album Cass County, which features covers and Henley originals, will be released on September 25. Several of the songs feature guest artists like Mick Jagger, Miranda Lambert, Merle Haggard, and Martina McBride.
Finally, below is the Louvin Brothers version of “When I Stop Dreaming.” Check it out.
What do you think of Henley and Parton’s version of the Louvin Brothers song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Up until a few weeks before his death, Chris Farley was recording the voice for the animated lead character in Shrek (2001). Although the Saturday Night Live alum had recorded the overwhelming majority of the movie before his untimely death at age 33 in 1997, it still was not finished so producers had to re-record the part with Mike Myers taking over the lead. If you have ever wondered what Farley might have sounded like as Shrek, now you can find out.
A newly released video features storyboard drawings with Farley voicing Shrek and Eddie Murphy as the voice of Donkey. Check it out.
After Farley’s death, the voicing of Shrek still took awhile. After Mike Myers was cast, he insisted on a rewrite of the script. Myers tried various accents throughout the process, and it was only after he had recorded the part that he asked to re-record it again with the now-familiar Scottish accent. While Shrek came out very well and Myers did a wonderful job, I still cannot help wondering what the movie might have been with Chris Farley.
What do you think of Chris Farley as Shrek? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Southpaw (2015) begins with Jake Gyllenhaal’s Billy Hope on top of the boxing world, but we get the impression that Hope is at the top more from his willingness to take a beating than his stellar boxing skills. Soon, Hope undergoes a number of blows outside the ring that further test his ability to take a beating and bounce back. The movie attempts to be a combination of a serious family drama and sports movie in one. Although it is not really a champion in either category, it is a decent summer film that at least aims high in a weak cinema summer.
The basic plot of Southpaw involves Hope facing a tragic loss that he magnifies because of his inability to manage his anger. As he struggles to win back custody of his daughter, Hope finds some help from the wise boxing coach Tick Wells, played by Forest Whitaker. Will Hope find redemption?
Yes, Southpaw is full of cliches. After all, the main character’s name is “Hope.” But the acting performances by Gyllenhaal, Whitaker, and Rachel McAdams — along with excellent fight scenes by director Antoine Fuqua — make it decent entertainment. I also appreciated that the movie treated the big fight more realistically than some of the later Rocky films, avoiding the temptation to turn it into a big cartoonish revenge battle.
Of course, Southpaw is no Raging Bull (1980) or Rocky (1976). Yet, one could have an interesting discussion about how it compares to a movie like Cinderella Man (2005), another boxing family drama, although the latter was aided by the fact it was a true story about James J. Braddock. Overall, if you really like boxing movies and do not mind some moving family drama (or vice versa), you might still find Southpaw entertaining. Conclusion?Rotten Tomatoes gives Southpaw a 58% critics rating but a decent 83% audience rating, which probably reflects audience members who are looking for something to enjoy and not the next great boxing classic. If you want to get out of the heat for a few hours of air-conditioned entertainment, you could do a lot worse than Southpaw.
What did you think of “Southpaw”? Leave your two cents in the comment.
On Friday, Bruce Springsteen showed up at U2’s concert at Madison Square Garden to help out the band with “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Then, they followed that up with a version of Ben E. King’s classic, “Stand By Me.”
The show was the final night of U2’s eight-show run at the Garden as part of their Innocence and Experience Tour, which will begin its second leg in Europe. So far, U2 has welcomed a number of guests on this tour, including Lady Gaga and Jimmy Fallon and the Roots. Below, check out Bono and Springsteen performing two great rock songs.
Reportedly, the power of the Boss and Bono were enough to get everyone to stand in the audience, including Bill and Hillary Clinton.
One of my favorite songs by John Prine is “Lake Marie,” which first appeared on Lost Dogs + Mixed Blessings (1995). The song, which is also a favorite of Prine’s, tells a love story intertwined with history, legend, murder, and heartbreak. One may interpret the song in a number of ways, but John Prine based some of the images on real people and places.
“Lake Marie” The Song
The tale of the peaceful waters of “Lake Marie” can be divided into three segments. First, the song begins with a story about Native Americans along the Illinois-Wisconsin border discovering two white babies. Although it is unclear how the Native Americans learn the names of the two babies, they name their Twin Lakes after the two little girls. The smaller and less fair lake is named “Lake Marie” after the less fair baby.
In the second part of the song, the singer tells about falling in love with a woman at Lake Marie. Many years later, the two go to Canada to try to save their crumbling marriage.
The third part of the song tells of a crime scene, where police find two naked bodies, apparently by Lake Marie. The singer then brings this third part of the story back to his lost love: “All the love we shared between her and me was slammed / Slammed up against the banks of Old Lake Marie.”
Below, Prine performs “Lake Marie” in 2010 at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.
What Inspired John Prine to Write “Lake Marie”?
There are in fact two lakes like in the song, Lake Marie and Lake Elizabeth. A John Prine fansite, the John Prine Shrine, explains how Prine came to write the song. While Prine was in Wisconsin for a show, a crew member told Prine a tale about the local Lake “Marie” (actually, it is “Lake Mary”). As the crew member told a mysterious tale about the lake, Prine decided he wanted to visit the lake. So he and the crew member drove twenty-five minutes to see the lake.
After seeing the lake, Prine and his brother visited a library to read stories about the lake. There, Prine discovered that Lake Marie and its sister lake, Lake Elizabeth, were named after two babies discovered by a Native American tribe.
From there, Prine began writing the song that began with the baby story. The Prine Shrine explains:
But after that [first verse], John went into some fictional story-telling about a marriage on the rocks, and a shadowy double murder that took place in the proximity of Lake Marie. “When I was done, it was exactly what I wanted. I guess the point of the song is that if the Indians hadn’t named the lakes after a couple of white girls, they would still be peaceful waters.” (Puckett 15)
What About the Dead Bodies?
And then there is the crime scene in the story. In an interview in No Depression, Prine explained that the dead bodies in the third part of the song were inspired in part by Chicago news footage he saw as a kid about a series of murders.
Regarding the bodies in the song, though, on various discussion sites, listeners debate the relationship between the story of the narrator and the double-murder at the end. Is the narrator one of the victims of the crime along with his lover (or former lover), or is the narrator the perpetrator of a murder-suicide? Or, is the narrator just someone watching about the murder on TV?
I lean toward the latter interpretation. It seems that the narrator is seeing the story on television. That explains why he is seeing it in black and white: “You know what blood looks like in a black and white video? / Shadows!”
The TV interpretation is consistent with Prine’s statements about the song. The crime scene at the lake seems to reflect on how the land had changed since the white people came and took the land from the Native Americans.
This TV interpretation also fits with another quote from Prine. He reportedly said that the reference to the TV coverage of the murders was not a particular murder. He knew it seemed like a sharp left turn in the song, “but when I got done with it, I kind of felt like it’s what the song needed right then.”
A Great Song
The love story and its struggles and its heartbreak, though, are what tie the song together and make it a classic, not to mention Prine’s wonderful emphasis on certain words and syllables as he talks through the lyrics. It is a brilliant song. Heck, it is Bob Dylan’s favorite John Prine song, which says a lot.
As Prine explained generally about his songs in a 1970 article by movie critic Roger Ebert about the then-young singer, “In my songs, I try to look through someone else’s eyes, and I want to give the audience a feeling more than a message.”
So enough with the analysis, and you should just enjoy the feeling here in a more recent version of “Lake Marie” on Sessions at West 54th, in a John Prine performance that one commenter called, “Arguably, the best 10 mins of music on You Tube.”
Southpaw (2015) begins with Jake Gyllenhaal’s Billy Hope on top of the boxing world, but we get the impression that Hope is at the top more from his willingness to take a beating than his stellar boxing skills. Soon, Hope undergoes a number of blows outside the ring that further test his ability to take a beating and bounce back. The movie attempts to be a combination of a serious family drama and sports movie in one. Although it is not really a champion in either category, it is a decent summer film that at least aims high in a weak cinema summer.
(1995). The song, which is also a favorite of Prine’s, tells a love story intertwined with history, legend, murder, and heartbreak. One may interpret the song in a number of ways, but John Prine based some of the images on real people and places.
(1997), the various artist collection 
(2001).