This is truly difficult. Just as it is difficult to talk about Love, Death, Beauty. You could write about them for hundreds of pages without being able to explain anything. Or choose silence. Silence that explains better than thousands of useless thoughts and words what someone is communicating to you, in this case in words and music. Sometimes Art needs nothing more. And then afterwards, perhaps, turn off the stereo forever. What else would be worth listening to?
It has been almost thirty years since Timothy James Hardin has been of this earth no more. For more than half of the thirty-nine years he breathed its air, the demon of unhappiness must have been his faithful traveling companion. A story already seen and heard: his exquisite talent, capable of bringing together country, blues, and folk, was appreciated by critics and more illustrious colleagues (Dylan, Fred Neil, and John Sebastian, among others) with whom he shared the marvelous season of Greenwich Village, yet these skills were hardly recognized by the great public who never wanted to grant him success. Or rather: it was others - for everyone, Rod Stewart - who made some of his most beautiful songs achieve worldwide fame. And so Tim’s fragile soul knew pain, insecurity, and isolation. And since we mentioned it being a story already seen, alcohol and heroin took care of soothing his suffering for a little while.
Although recorded twelve years before the fatal overdose and in the meantime leaving space for five other albums, some not even to be despised, Tim Hardin's artistic testament lies entirely in this live album. Recorded in 1968 at New York's Town Hall with a group of absolutely valuable jazz musicians, "3 - Live in concert" is a timeless masterpiece in which the artist uses the live dimension to lay himself completely bare. And those same songs that in his two previous albums - mind you, they are both beautiful - sometimes suffered from arrangements that were a bit too polished or which, especially in the first, indulged too much in the canon of "easy" country-folk, in this new jazzy guise shine with a soft and intimate light that renders the best possible service to the melancholic and tormented interpretation of the loser from Oregon. Songs already extraordinary in themselves like "The lady came from Baltimore", "If I were a carpenter", "Reason to believe", "Misty roses", "Don't make promises", "Red balloon", "Tribute to Hank Williams" soar incredibly high thanks to the miraculous blend in which, aided by a measured jazz atmosphere of brushed drums, fingertip pianos, plucked guitars, and delicate vibraphones, the folk ballad, country, and blues unite through an interpretative pathos reaching the highest peaks of song artistry of all time. And then, that song, "Lenny's tune" - which Nico will cover in his first solo album - dedicated to the departed friend Lenny Bruce. Seven minutes of liturgical singing in a spine-chilling atmosphere. If you can listen to this song without getting emotional, we truly have nothing more to say to each other.
But as I said at the beginning, words in this case should not be needed. Just the heart. If you want to have no more than five live albums in your discography, make sure "3 - Live in concert" is one of them.
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