John Mellencamp
Live At Town hall

I want to live in the countryside, aaahhh aaahhh, aaahhh aaahhh ... I don't know about you, but I've never seen Toto Cutugno shoveling pig manure; I rather envision him siphoning millions from the pockets of gullible Russian oligarchs.

Call him a fool, our National Toto, because staying in the countryside for those who are born there, live there, and die there, might not be all that fun.

I think, if someone like John Mellencamp knew Toto Cutugno, he would purposely tour Italy just to have the pleasure of kicking him all along the way from the Apennines to the Appalachians.

In 1985, the young Mellencamp became an advocate for Farm Aid, alongside Neil Young and Willie Nelson: that initiative was set up and continues to this day to support American farmers against the threat of being stripped of their possessions by American financial firms; the same ones that, over the years, helped them by throwing a noose instead of lending a hand.

In those same days, Mellencamp was leading the charge in «Scarecrow», and some doubted whether it was just one of many Live Aid-like phenomena devoted to the cause, but more so, to their personal wallets.

Those who continued to follow him dismissed their doubts immediately or gradually, thanks to works like «Trouble No More» and «On The Rural Route»; and today, those like me who lost track of Mellencamp after «The Lonesome Jubilee» and «Big Daddy», coming across «Live At Town Hall» can’t help but tip their hat and bow respectfully to an Artist of this caliber.

«Live At Town Hall» is the first live album released by John Mellencamp, after nearly forty years of a distinguished career punctuated by about twenty studio albums: for someone considered a stage beast, akin to people like Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Petty, not bad. This alone dispels any remaining doubt, if anyone still doubted, that Our Man is after selling his passion.

But that’s not all, because «Live At Town Hall» is the antithesis of the classic commemorative live album, to be clear, merely a greatest hits for fans in withdrawal, who only need a little to flick their lighters and sing the most predictable of «Alè oooh oooh, alè oooh oooh».

Quite the opposite, «Live At Town Hall» is an album released eleven years after the tour in which Mellencamp reprised «Trouble No More» in its entirety. Now, for those who don’t know, «Trouble No More» is among Mellencamp’s least "commercial" recordings, relying solely on obscure traditional songs, folk, and blues fragments, and I dare see how many of you, thinking of Willie Dixon, recall «Down In The Bottom».

Then, it’s true, the concert also features the cover of «Highway 61 Revisited» and the performance of three original tracks, but the only classic among them is «Small Town». And here's where we should pause.

First, to reflect on how Mellencamp embodies in 2003 the soul of a modern storyteller, the kind around whom a modest gathering assembles, eager to know what happens outside their backyard or simply to clear their minds after days spent shoveling the manure I spoke about at the beginning, and someone has to do this dirty job, after all. You know all those songs that start with the call to gather around the passing minstrel to hear the story he has to tell? All those songs that marked the lives of Guthrie and Dylan, just to name two? On those occasions, it invariably happened that the singer would adapt a traditional melody, more or less known, this doesn’t matter, to capture and never let go of the audience's attention for as long as needed.

It happened then, and thanks to Mellencamp, it happens today too, with the only difference being that the modern traditional might be called «Highway 61 Revisited», and all the better to use them to cast a bit of doubt on what a “peace operation” is, seventy years ago, or ten, even in August 2014; because if words have meaning, then that meaning must be asserted and rooted in consciousness.

And here Mellencamp strongly reaffirms that meaning for one of his best-known compositions, that «Small Town» which, with its brisk and catchy rhythm, risked many misunderstandings, much like «Born In The U.S.A.» an unfading anthem of American pride. Let’s put it this way, «Small Town» does not mean that living in a small town is an ideal, everyone knows each other, loves each other, and we leave our doors unlocked at night, certainly not; living in a small town can be oppressing, always seeing the same faces and hearing the same old stories can drive you mad, and if you have a pinch of ambition, you better have guts as big as a tractor wheel to get out of it.

Mellencamp was born and raised in a small town and lives there, and perhaps will find his burial there; yet he brings his songs to sing at New York’s Town Hall, where back in the day Leadbelly and Pete Seeger performed. Perhaps this is the meaning of «Small Town» and so Mellencamp makes it a slow, dark country-blues, like Springsteen eventually began to perform «Born In The U.S.A.» at his shows. And then there’s that repeated final insistence on the burial that really makes the 2003 (and 2014) small town something incomparable with that of 1985, at least emotionally speaking.

Moreover, the only sensible thing to write about «Live At Town Hall» is that it is an "emotional" album, and whenever I’m faced with an "emotional" work, I end up talking about everything except its content, so I assume that, by this point, some might be asking «Yeah, okay, but how is this Mellencamp live album?».

Emotional ones like me knew, or rather felt, already everything after holding it in their hands and taking a quick glance at the cover.

For everyone else, the invitation is to embark on a long journey into the depths of the blues and the folk-grassroots of Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie, progenitors of that bastard «R.o.c.k. In the U.S.A.» of which Mellencamp knows by heart; keeping in mind that sometimes music is merely the means (terrifyingly effective) to sing about the lives and deaths of poor souls, outlaws, and whores with hearts of gold, and people who tried to lay the groundwork for a new world in their own way, from Robert Johnson to Lucinda Williams.

Because yes, if Mark Lanegan had revealed to the unspirited how the wonder of the Gun Club was equal to that of Leadbelly, Mellencamp embarks on the desperate project of pairing «Lafayette» with «Highway 61 Revisited». And he fully succeeds.

Don’t worry, there are also bursts of rock'n'roll, «Highway 61 Revisited» before anything else, and if that’s not enough, head straight for «Teardrops Will Fall», just to admit that Mellencamp's version has replaced in your hearts that now dusty version of Ry Cooder.

And everything comes back, and the circle closes, and Mellencamp performs «Down In The Bottom» as Jeffrey Lee Pierce would have back in the days of «Fire Of Love»; and Mellencamp will occupy the place of honor in the centennial celebrations of Woody Guthrie’s birth; and Nora and Arlo, who closely followed him on the adventure «Trouble No More», will want Lucinda Williams and Ry Cooder at those celebrations too; and those who think they don’t fit, probably will never understand this «Live At Town Hall».