Search - Loudon Wainwright :: Last Man on Earth

Dora you can do it with all your pots and pans

A. D. Lewis | Blackwood, S. Wales | 08/19/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'll keep this short. Haven't bought a Loudon record for a long while, though I've seen him live a couple of times. I think the final track 'HOMELESS' is utterly beautiful, honest, painful, heartfelt. It is worth the purchase price for just this track. It is a very special piece of song writing from a unique and special artist."

Wainwright's best

snideelf | Texas | 12/28/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is definitely Mr. Wainwright's best album ever.



The music is great and the words to all of the songs are great.

I was surprised to see it further down the list of his bestselling CDs here at amazon.



I strongly recommend it to everyone who has hesitated in the past to buy one of his CDs.



This CD is especially special to the boomers. Don't know how else to word it.



The song where he visits a graveyard is really telling. He sings "I go to the graveyard, but I'll be back again" Great song because we all avoid thinking about the inevitable.



In "Homeless", he sings about no longer really having a home now that his mother has died. A very sad, but beautiful song.

He sings on "Last Man on Earth" about how the best things in life are worthless now because they are free. His words.

In that song he protests the present age of portfolios, SUVs, computers, e-mail, air-conditioning?, politicians, and about life in general.



In the song "I'm not gonna cry" you'd think it was some sad ballad about heartbreak, but it isn't.

Instead, he goes on to use almost all of the expressions we use about crying. examples: 96 tears, tears in your beer, crying over spilt milk and so on. A very creative and funny song with some great banjo and fiddle work there in the music.



The song "Surviving Twin", Loudon sings about how tired he is of being told how much he looks like his father.



Wainwright wrote the songs with all of the baby boomers exactly in mind.

Well I don't know if that is exactly true, but his life experiences, being a boomer himself, are our life experiences.



You will not be disappointed after listening to this CD."

Songs For Aging Children (Oops!, Adults)

Alfred Johnson | boston, ma | 06/22/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Okay, I have written plenty of prose stuff about the trials and tribulations, political or otherwise, of my generation, the now aging children of the "Generation Of '68. But who will chronicle in song or verse the "not going gently into that good night", as Dylan Thomas would have it, of that generation? Well, I have at least a contender for that position in the songwriting division, Loudon Wainwright III. For those who are unfamiliar with the name Brother Wainwright was something of well known, if secondary, figure on the 1960's folk revival circuit. If that is not enough information then he was once married to Kate McGarrigle, one of the accomplished folk- singing McGarrigle sisters. If that is still not enough then he played, in several episodes at least, the guitar- strumming GI in the television series "MASH". For the younger set, Loudon is Rufus Wainwright's father. There, I think I have touched all the bases.



Why is Brother Wainwright my candidate for the oracle of the swan song of our generation (it appears that he is an almost exact contemporary of mine)? Well, just take a listen to this CD(or read the lyrics)," Last Man On Earth", and you will know. Sure, it is a little light on the need to continue the political struggle that we started in our youth but on the questions of losing parents, reconciling with the lost of parents, reflecting on that fact that some issues between the generations never got resolved (and now never will) and dealing with the inevitable, if sometimes humorous, medical questions, of our own aging process he is right on.



That list of issues further includes the whys and wherefores of a lifetime of frustration about artistic endeavors (or whatever road we traveled), the little question of immortality and the now really big question of how to get through to the next day. It is all there. I want to say that this is a man's CD, and as to subject matter and "feel" it is, but I think Brother Wainwright has captured many a dilemma that we can all, male and female, relate to. Hell, Rufus can sing to the kids, Loudon is ours. That is the "skinny" here from one "last man on earth" to another.

"