Johnny Cash died six years ago today. I actually remember quite distinctly when he died. I was driving down Gilbert St in Iowa City in my old beat up car, listening to Rock 108. If you’re not from Iowa, or not a fan of rock/metal music, Rock 108 is a great rock station that plays absolutely only rock/metal. If it’s borderline on pop or country or rap, they won’t play it. Rock only, almost religiously. Which was why it was particularly odd that when I changed the station to them, a song that was a little bit folk-ish was on. My first thought was actually that the station must have been sold and got a new format, but as it played, I realized it was a cover of a Nine Inch Nails song. And not just a cover, but one of the exceedingly rare occasions where the cover absolutely out does the original. Afterwards the DJ said that the cover was by Johnny Cash, and that he had just died.
As I’ve mentioned before, I hate about 95% of music videos out there, am indifferent to about 4.99%, and only actually like about .01% of them. Most either seem like they’re whatever semi-novel thing that they could come up with to put on screen so the song could get played on MTV-18 (unless that’s become all reality shows as well and we’re on to MTV-19 now). I really, really like this one. It makes the song even better. It may well be my favorite music video. It was the last video Johnny Cash made before he died.