Nashville!

by contributing author Matt Rogers

Since his passing in 2003, Johnny Cash’s popularity among folks outside of the country genre has spread like wildfire, due especially to the success of the Oscar Award-winning film, Walk the Line, in which actor Joaquin Phoenix portrays the Man in Black with brilliance.

This sort of popularity, however, is often contrived. And the truth is, the masses tend to become fans of an artist once that artist passes. It has happened time and time again — with Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Tupac Shakur — novice listeners all of the sudden allege lifelong reverence. Unfortunately, Johnny Cash is no exception to this social norm. People “hear that train a’comin’” and they jump on it as soon as “it’s rollin’ ’round the bend.” And guess who’s conducting the latest Cash train? None other than Snoop Doggy Dogg, who landed an executive production gig for the latest Johnny Cash tribute record.

Johnny Cash Remixed, set for release on Compadre Records in October of this year, features modern interpretations of 13 Johnny Cash classics, including “I Walk the Line,” “Get Rhythm” and “Folsom Prison Blues.”

In general, the majority of the record sounds like a bad acid trip at an underground club in some trendy city. Sure, it’ll probably get a crowd moving, but the coupling of massive amounts of synthesized noise with Cash’s low, monotone voice results in a vibe that’s nothing short of bizarre, and in many cases, downright uncomfortable.

Legitimate Cash followers are going to have difficulty settling into this record – and for good reason. The simplicity and ruggedness that makes Cash’s music so appealing is entirely lost, modernized and digitalized in a way that renders the material virtually unlistenable.