Throwback Thursday – Terry Allen/John Hiatt – “I’m Not That Kat Anymore”
Posted on | November 5, 2009 | 1 Comment
1. Doug Sahm had his own way with the blues. Filtering it through his own blend of British Invasion pop and the Tex-Mex he grew up with in San Antonio (a combination mythologized by Bruce Robison’s It Came From San Antonio), the blues became something else entirely. I covered Sahm’s Doug Sahm and Band on an earlier Throwback Thursday, but today, I would like to check out two versions of “I’m Not That Kat Anymore” filtered through a few near-legends, John Hiatt and Terry Allen. The song describes to a man with an identity crisis, who loudly claims not to be his flaky older self, but whose actions show that not a whole lot has changed.
2. Hiatt’s version, from the fantastic Heard it on the X, is closer to Doug’s original style, with the hard charging, Vox organ-fueled rock that Sahm built his name on. His growling voice delivers an earnestness for the listener to believe him, yet the song’s tempo and swirling sound show that life is going by too fast for the narrator to change his wild ways. A fuzzed out baritone guitar pays tribute to the border blaster Mexican radio stations of the early 60’s that broadcast rock and roll into the United States, presumably where Sahm first heard his British heroes.
3. Terry Allen’s version from this year’s Keep Your Soul has his typical (as of late) lurching, David Byrne via west Texas style. More of a recitation than a vocal performance, Allen’s rendition gives the narrator a little more swagger, only revealing a little bit of vulnerability when he admits that after getting his pleasure from “making the pretty girls hot”, he felt “lowdown”. Of course, immediately after, he offers to be on call for a presumed pretty girl, finishing up with the now-ironic declaration that he ain’t who he used to be. Allen’s delivery highlights the more unrepentant side of the narrator
4. Sahm’s original track showed a two-faced man, conflicted about who he wanted to be versus who others thought he should be. While Sahm was noted for his groove, his wry songs were too often overlooked. John Hiatt and Terry Allen show two sides of the same song, showing how much power of interpretation to paint two pictures of the same scene.
John Hiatt – I’m Not That Kat Anymore
Terry Allen – I’m Not That Kat Anymore
Comments
One Response to “Throwback Thursday – Terry Allen/John Hiatt – “I’m Not That Kat Anymore””
Leave a Reply
December 20th, 2009 @ 12:49 pm
You neglected to mention the Bottle Rockets awesome cover of I’m Not that Kat Anymore!