Kris Kristofferson live at the Olympia
The legendary storyteller showed a full Olympia how it's done
Robert O'Connor, 16 Aug 2010
"Why didn't y'all go to the football game?" Kris asked the audience. While most of Dublin clamored to get in the Aviva stadium, an almost packed house at the Olympia gathered to watch Kris Kristofferson, the legendary singer-songwriter.
Kris is a born storyteller, with some of his songs having an English folk-ballad style to them like ‘Darby's Castle’ and ‘The Promise’. Other stories are American in style like ‘Here Comes That Rainbow Again’ and ‘Billy Dee’, both of which are redolent of his old pal Johnny Cash.
Kris, a Rhodes scholar, also drew upon folk music the way an ethnomusicologist would in songs like ‘Johnny Lobo’ and ‘The Circle’. These songs have a strong streak of activism, about causes like American Indians, Iraq, the American prison population and the people disappeared by Jorge Videla's government in Argentina.
Kris played more classic songs in the first half of the show - with the audience singing along to ‘Best Of All Possible Worlds’ and ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’. During his biggest hit, ‘Me And Bobby McGee’, he added the lyrics "good enough for me and my Bobby McGee... and Janis." Kris dated Janis Joplin shortly before her death, and it was her version of that song that topped the US Singles chart a year later.
He stumbled a little in the lyrics and in his guitar playing a few times, but he laughed them off: "I wrote this song 40 years ago. Don't ask me to play it again." And no one cared, because it's Kris Kristofferson.
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