Lucinda Williams To Perform Full Albums During Mini-Tour

Earlier this week Rock Daily celebrated the resiliency of the album, noting how Slint, Sonic Youth and Wu-Tang's GZA are playing full albums live this summer. Now comes word that alt-country poetess Lucinda Williams will perform five of her eight studio albums, one night at a time, from start to finish in the fall. Williams will take over Los Angeles' El Rey Theater September 5-6 and 8-10, then head to New York to play September 29-30 at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza and October 2-4 at Town Hall. On the first night of each run, Williams will perform the entirety of her 2003 record World Without Tears. Each subsequent night will feature one of the following albums: 1998's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, 2001's Essence, 1990's Sweet Old World and 1988's Lucinda Williams. The singer-songwriter plans to follow each full-album performance with a separate, more free-form set.

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Song Stories

“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

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