Customer Reviews

Outlasting the Blues / Power of Love

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This cd contains two albums, one from 1979, the other from 1981(I think). The former, Outlasting The Blues, is my favorite Arlo album. He really hit his stride with this one. His song Prelude is simply beautiful, and his version of Pete Seeger's Sailing Down My Golden River is perfect. His band, Shenandoah, is in top form. Don't miss this one! Arlo is one of those artists whose mission is to generate goodwill. We need more like him.

It seems like a million years ago when Arlo Guthrie played the northwest university I was attending after making Outlasting the Blues with Shenandoah. The audience was pretty much split between fans of Alice's Restaurant who figured Guthrie had probably followed Janis, Jimi and the rest of the rockers into the great beyond, and the more aware crowd who showed up for "City of New Orleans." No one was ready for the very much alive and not tamed by radio Guthrie or the ch-ch-changes he'd been through. The big news was he'd become a monk, in the same Franciscan lay order as John Michael Talbot, from the country rock band, Mason Proffit. So along with the Arlo crowd pleasers, from "Comin' into Los Angeles" to "I Don't Want a Pickle" and "Alice's Restaurant," he previewed songs from this incredible rock masterpiece, songs of vision and power, notably, "Which Side Are You On?" So, for all the old 'sixties icons who had "sold out," (whatever that means), some were still searching. They included Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary, whom Bob Dylan advised to read the Bible, and like Dylan, Stookey embarked on his own spiritual search. One of his best-known concert songs is an Arlo-Guthrie-penned tune that appeared on his Paul And album, "Gabriel's Mother's #16 Talking Highway Blues." Other bands also later covered songs from Outlasting the Blues.

This combines the last two of the major label releases by Arlo Guthrie. I have to echo the other reviewer--Outlasting the Blues is Arlo's best album. Great singing, tight playing and some of his best songwriting, together with well chosen cover tunes. Koch did a great job squeezing two LPs onto one CD. Rickie Lee Jones duets on one song on Power of Love. Call it folk-rock or singer songwriter, but either way it doesn't get better than this two-fer. This went out of print way too quickly.