In my review of At Folsom Prison I said, "a lot of Johnny Cash music at once will put me to sleep." I glad I was able to find the original LP version of At San Quentin because it's only 40 minutes long. As far as I'm concerned that's the butter zone for a perfect album length. For a while it looked like my only choice was to listen to the "Legacy Edition", since it's the most common edition available. That would'a sucked because that version clocks in at close to 100 minutes. I'm betting it'll be tough to stay awake through all that dum ditty dum ditty dum ditty dum even at 40 minutes.
Fucking sensors screwed up the whole thing by bleeping out the curses. It would be one thing if they just edited out Cash speaking at that moment and left the music underneath alone, but they bleeped out all the audio. Maybe this recording wasn't multi-tracked so they had no choice. I mean, they did have a choice, they could have left it the fuck alone.
I love the album's pure raw sound, and how Cash is constantly heard coughing. Not joking, it's actually sounds really neat in this context, because it's live, and it makes Johnny Cash seem like a real human being who puts everything into a performance even if it kills him to do so. Maybe that's why all that dum ditty dum ditty dum ditty dum he plays doesn't get as tiring as it would be if someone else were to play it. I'm certainly willing to put up with more bullshit from Johnny Cash because he seems to legitimately be a badass.
Eventually Cash gets around to playing his promised "brand new song" that he wrote just for that performance named "San Quentin." And now I'm annoyed, because it's just another dum ditty dum song. Did anyone have an easier time in their life writing new songs than Johnny Cash?
Like I said, Johnny Cash puts on a great show, so it's hard to not kinda like At San Quentin even if the songs all sound the same. 3 stars.
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