The Score

There are few artists that have had such a prolific, wide-ranging and long-lived recording career as Johnny Cash. Now it appears that not even death can stop him.

Much to The Score’s amusement, disbelief and general apathy, Cash’s son, John Carter Cash, and Rick Rubin, who produced Cash’s last five albums, have decided that what we really need is a remixed, rap version of the classic Sun Sessions recordings.

Now, we’re not averse to a remix - and neither was Johnny, he worked with a phenomenal number of artists from all spectrums of the music world - but this sounds too much like a cash-in (sorry) to us.

Has Johnny’s estate dried up? Is John Carter in hock to some mob-bosses? We can think of no other reasons for anyone to release a remixed Johnny Cash album where the frequently turgid Snoop Dogg features, rapping out a version of ‘I Walk The Line’.

Apparently it’ll be “traditional yet ground-breaking”. Which bodes ill, as any album that’s ever claimed to be “ground-breaking” in its press release has invariably turned out to be an ill-conceived, cobbled-together bucket of aural vomit.

This news distresses us, as we love Johnny Cash’s output, particularly his early and latter years (the less said about the late 70s and 80s the better). Still, we could be wrong. Either way, the album’s due for release on the 14th October. Someone else buy it and let us know what it’s like, please. We can’t bear the thought of wasting a tenner that could be spent on something with more guaranteed enjoyment, like a giant bag of chocolate brazils, or loads of those pink flying saucer things that we used to get as kids. They were filled with sherbert. Mmmm.

Jim