Neither one of them can touch Donnell Leahy.
Johnny and the Devil can both sit down and let this feller show y’all how it’s really done.
Down in Central/Eastern Europe, there are some crazy wonderful Balkan/Gypsy/Folk/Klezmer style fiddlers that I’ve always wanted to hear solo on something like Devil Goes Down to Georgia. Like Felix Lajko, from the Vojvodinian area of Serbia. It’s hard to summarize him in one clip, but that’s one that kind of shows the melodic and rhythmic folky side of his work, with even some rock/blues influence there, if I’m hearing right, coming at around 4:18. He really starts tearing it up right there–I kind of think of it an Eastern European folk version of the Freebird solo.
Not all of his stuff is flashy like this (you can get a taste of it with some of the slow breaks in that song), and his influences are from all over the place. I was just trying to find one that might be in the spirit of Devil Comes Down to Georgia.
Johnny won, and he sucked too. No wonder the devil was way behind, he’s an incompetent loser who needs to get back to his midnight busking slot at the bus stop. Jeez, does he EVER get his way? Tries to take over heaven, loses. Tries to make Job cry, loses. Tries to get Jesus to take a bite of a Snickers bar, loses. Tries to best some three fingered hillbilly on a moldy-ass fiddle with three strings and a fuzzy bow, loses.
I voted for the devil because I took Pascal’s wager with the points.
He makes Job curse the day he was born, and also gets God’s OK to kill a bunch of people, including Job’s children. I’d say that’s doing pretty good.
Not to mention, there’s no final accounting between God and Satan in Job. Who won this argument? We don’t know.
Fair enough, Sunday school was nearly half a century ago. I reckon God & Satan had the usual wager: $1
Johnny seems better by a mile. It’s not that Johnny sounds like a virtuoso, but he at least plays a bunch of stuff. The devil just mostly does a special effect where he keeps the bow moving across and slides his hands up and down to make a sound. Once you get past getting a sound out of the fiddle, this would be trivially easy.
That said, Johnny doesn’t vary up his licks all the much, and mostly seems to just be playing different chords. There’s nothing all that special about it. Even if not a virtuoso, I’d expect something other than just basic fiddle playing, given the song’s concept.
It always seemed weird to me that neither were very good.
The part where the lyrics come in are not sung just by Johnny. It’s him plus backup singers who sing the chorus right after Johnny says he’ll show the Devil how it’s done.
Then a lot of rather basic fiddle playing, playing basic patterns to the chords of the song.
The Devil is like someone who knows how to play some slides on the piano, and can hit some random notes in the middle. And Johnny can do some basic arpeggios at tempo.
What’s up with the need to judge everything lately? Georgia got fiddle? The F-factor? The fiddle of Georgia? Should we put Johnny and the Devil on a deserted island and put them to several unrelated challenges to determine who is the better fiddle player? Both Johnny and Beelzebub have more skill in their little fiery pinky than any one of you talentless nincompoops. Learn to play the violin and then maybe you can have an educated opinion on who is the most skillful musician of the two.
As for the winner of the golden fiddle, the Devil KNEW that he’d been beat. It’s a clear cut case. But give the devil his due, he did not set out to be the better fiddle player, he came for Johnny’s immortal soul. By letting Johnny befiddle him, he brought out the worst in this simple rural youngster who immediately takes the bait and declares himself “the best that’s ever been”, therewith committing the mortal sin of superbia (pride) and condemning himself to eternity in hell, where Lucifer will no doubt have him listen to André Rieu and be judged by talentless Brittish record producers until the end of time.
I think that’s where I saw John Mellencamp.
mmm
Yeah, by my count, Johnny has committed at least three of the seven deadly sins in this little contest – pride (“I’m the best that’s ever been”), greed (why would he wager his immortal soul against a couple of pounds of gold?) and maybe sloth (didn’t he have anything better to do than sitting around playing his fiddle?). Wrath is a possibility too; his final comment to the devil showed a lot of unnecessary anger (“you son of a bitch”). We didn’t see any evidence of lust, envy or gluttony, but who knows what that little prick did after the song ended. I think the devil lost the fiddle but probably got Johnny’s soul anyway.
The State of Georgia is heavily Baptist. Johnny would just have to go to the front during the altar call on Sunday to be good and clean again, so the pride and greed and sloth and wrath don’t really matter none in the ultimate accounting.
The devil could’ve won this bout, though he didn’t play far. But Bobby… Bobby has a secret weapon.
(Courtesy of The Kids in the Hall.)
Nah. First of all, salvation is by faith, not by works, as any boy from rural Georgia certainly knows. Second, God is surely pleased with anyone who makes a fool out of the devil. After all, Archbishop Dunstan did so and he became a capital-S Saint.