Rolling 2005 Country Thread

BILLY DON BURNS
DEANNA CARTER
SHELLY FAIRCHILD
SHOOTER JENNINGS
MIRANDA LAMBERT
MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO.
TIM MCGRAW “Drugs Or Jesus” single
ELIZABETH MCQUEEN AND THE FIREBRANDS
MARY PRANKSTER
LEANN RIMES (not nearly as good as her previous disco one, though)
SAWYER BROWN WITH ROBERT RANDOLPH “Mission Temple Fireworks Stand” single
DALLAS WAYNE
WIDE RIGHT - cover of "The Pill" by Loretta Lynn on their imminent but not otherwise country second album
LEANN WOMACK
*The Little Darlin Sound of Should Have Been Hits* reissue comp

but the new Kathleen Edwards album is a complete bore (and i'd liked her first one a couple years ago okay)

VH1 Country has been playing a lot of some dude's version of Hank Jr.'s "It Takes a Whole Lot of Liquor to Like Her," anyone have any ideas who this big Bubba Sparxxx lookalike is, and is it from this year or not?

I still didn't hear the new Kenny Chesney album. I'm sure I'll probably like it when I do, though everybody saying how "quiet" and "intropective" it is isn't as encouraging as Kenny saying on CMT that he's been listening mainly to Bob Marley and Jackson Browne records on his boat lately. I was kinda hoping that "Island Boy" was gonna be a come-out-of-the-closet song, maybe even an answer to the old Elton John hit, but somebody would've said something by now if it actually was, right? (Other bad news for gay marriage in Nashville fans: Big Kenny apparently got married to a woman last weekend. Though Kandia Crazy Horse swears that "Little Kenny" is the guy who inspires more rumors down there. Jon Caramanica has said that the male bonding in the backstage tiki bar on Kenny's last tour was quite impressive as well.)

This weekend, the HACIENDA BROTHES album kicked in for me -- somebody at Koch is apparently making a concerted effort to get me to finally like alt-country, and they're doing a real good job. (Who knows, maybe they have Dwight Yoakam doing A&R. I can totally see him loving those new CDs by the Hacienda Bros and Dallas Wayne -- who is from Springfield MO not Dallas by the way, and whose last album on Hightone was really good too, and whose new album's title track concerns a stalker fan who winds up murdering said fan's idol at the surprise ending -- not to mention he'd love all that Little Darlin stuff Koch has been reissuing lately. I really liked the Groovy Joe Poovey collection they put together last fall. Other people would maybe like their new Johnny Paycheck and Jeanie C Riley reissues more than I do. The *Should Have Been Hits* comp I mention above has five or six pretty great tracks, and 14 or 15 other ones frequently endearing in their catchy ineptness.)

One last thing: If I hadn't let *Black Shelton's Barn and Grill* sit around til early January without listening to it, it easily would have made my 2004 country top ten. My favorite track, even more than "Some Beach," is probably "What's On My Mind." And okay, this is *really* stupid -- only in the past week did it occur to me that Blake Shelton (who kinda drawls like John Anderson, to my ears) and Ricky Van Shelton are not the same person! For weeks I kept thinking "Didn't he used to be totally boring and puritan? When did he suddenly get good??", and now it's clear that they are two different people. So. Does anybody know whether Blake's previous albums are worth looking around for?

the new Trace Adkins single "Songs About Me" is almost good, I like the concept, but the melody and especially the chorus never seem to get going.

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We're all looking for love and meaning in our lives
We follow the roads that lead us
To drugs or Jesus

Out of context, it might as well be Depeche Mode.

akron/family (lifeless alt/art-country on m. gira's label): thumbs downer

*You Ain't Talkin' to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music* (Columbia/Legacy three disc set).

I am playing the advance now, and (so far) it is amazing.

well for one thing there are TWO different versions (by charlie and by arthur collins) of "moving day", which holy modal rounders covered on their great first-i-think album, and two (by charlie and by gid tanner & faith norris) of "goodbye booze," which peter stampfel covered sometime later (on *going nowhere fast* with weber, a/k/a/ the best folk album of the '80s, maybe?). also cameo tracks by the north carolina ramblers, floyd county ramblers, highlanders, blue ridge highballers, peerless quartet, virginia string band, the immortal uncle dave macon of course, big chief henry's indian string band, and many more, most of them seemingly doing versions of songs that charlie also did. also two versions of a somewhat offensive ditty called "coon from tennessee," including one by the georgia crackers (is that emmett miller's band? i think it might be, though i dunno if this is him here). and of course charlie's "seet sixteen," which invented bubblegum music since it's about a 16-year-old girl literally fond of chewing gum. is that enough for now? (so who would wind a battle of bands, charlie poole or dock boggs? i have no idea.)

and he is GOOD rapper, by the way.

ITEM: One of the best country singles of the year so far is Intocable's "Aire," currently #1 on the Latin charts, what a great band.

I'm listening to Blaine Larsen's autobiographical coming-of-age album right now, too, and he sings really well, especially for a guy who just turned 19.

I'm also kinda liking this guy, Dave Insley, who's very post-honky-tonk, on his latest, called "Call Me Lonesome," which features some truly outré pedal-steel solos. Very well thought-out, formalism for sure, but I find him immensely appealing. Not a great or deep singer. But the tempos are up, the band rocks, and the attention to detail is quite high.

That Elizabeth McQueen album I like...I find her versions of those pubrock classics comparable with the originals, and she sure can sing. She knows the songs are second-hand and funny.

Chuck E. right about that Blake Shelton song "What's on My Mind"--that's the one I got in my head too.

But I like the record too. I have a big crush on the character from "Katie" but I imagine that's the point...she probably looks like the teenage Deana Carter.

Btw, "excellent" was a bit of an exaggeration above in re: Jan Bell's Maybelles bluegrass band. But much better than competent, for sure...

As for Big Kenny, I could only get through a couple tracks (again) on this morning's drive back to New York from Bucks County. Part of my problem is that nonstop fucking drum machine, which is completely immobile; why the heck didn't he hire a drummer? (Big & Rich work with great ones.) Or better yet, maybe hire somebody who could give the drum machine some funk? (Who does he think he is, the Postal Service?? Har har.) As for the "Trip" song, it turns out to be about *not* going to California (or Colorado, or Kansas), and it is the only track that references Wizard of Oz (more blatantly than anything on *Horse of a Different Color,* actually.) And as everyone knows, Oz never did give nothing to the Tinman that he didn't already have.

(A cool drink of water, such a sweet surprise.)

(hank iii does a live version called i put the cunt in country and the dick in dixie whic actually manages to hit the same buttons--so maybe its something else that is annoying me (facial hair and blackberry might be it)

i think that the kenny album is more universal then personal, not spoon river at all, but really really mellow--and i like that, though boston is not a song i like, and i would include the first track and soul of s a sailor as the best ones (though i invoked shania and faith hill instead of alan jackson--wbo is capbale of both great metaphors and a brilliant voice--his latest monday morning church)

petty booka have been around forever doing things of this nature, though i don't think they're really punk, they're more of a lounge/exotica thing. they can be excruciatingly boring, but their version of "summer breeze" was rather brilliant. they're playing at sin-e in new york on march 21.

1. actually, trish murphy has a lot of sheryl crow in her, i just realized (though it is pretty obvious). probably more sheryl crow than carlene carter. not sure to what extent that will affect my evolving opinion about her; i frequently don't hold shery-crowness against lady country singers (at least not as much as some other people seem to.)

2. the jazzy song toward the end of chesney's album says he reads lots of hemingway; i''d meant to mention that before. this does not feel like a hemingway-reading album to me, though.

3. i enjoy the video where deanna carter dresses up like kurt cobain.

I do hear the Beatles on some songs. and the bacharach i hear in the non-obvious minor-key melodies. most of the songs don't just go for the jugular, they move around in tricky ways. I love that in pop music. some of it reminds me of Iris Dement's My Life. But My Life really was more of an art-project and much less poppy. I seem to recall Iris getting a little poppier on her album after that, but I didn't think that it worked as well. At least for me. The duet with Delbert was nice though. (I don't own a copy anymore.) I don't know much about Deana's other albums so I don't know if she has always mixed these elements of folk, pop, and country together. What I love about this album is how deep it is. quality-wise, that is. and, what the hell, lyrically too at times. The last 4 songs might be the strongest on the album! Which fits in with the whole conept-album design. She is stronger and wiser by the end of it. The first song is the obvious single. It's catchy top-40 stuff. And the hook: "I wanna be the girl you left me for" is so simple and perfect I can't believe that 400 people haven't come up with it before. Maybe they have. "One Day At A Time" is the most country-radio/CMT ready of the bunch. Plus, it has all those pop-cult pairings that stick in yer head: Singing along to "Jack & Diane", Thelma & Louise,Elvis & Kurt Cobain, Jesus & John Wayne(!). The acoustic guitar in it sounds a lot more alt or contempo folk then country acoustic usually sounds to me though. "Ordinary" has Shania-like rhythms and vocal lines, but Shania would never admit the following: "Oh wouldn't it be scary just being ordinary" because Shania is usually way too busy trying to convince people that she is an actual human being. It has that nice Beatlesesque ending to it too, but nothing that Mutt wouldn't try someday. Nice all the same though. The miracle of a song like "In A Heartbeat" is that it sounds like a song that was built to be oversold. The chorus, the arrangement, the whole thing should be a goopy string-laden bid for hitdom, but it's not! She undersells the vocals and makes it so much more effective by doing so. This is what a good interpreter does of course. They serve the song. But it's rare to see someone not go for the easy knockout punch these days.(in pop and country or country-pop). It makes me like her even more. "She's Good For You" sounds like one of the best Sheryl Crow songs I've ever heard. "Not Another Love Song" is definitely Webb-worthy! I'd like to know if Deana wrote it. I think I threw away any press stuff that came with the cd and the cd I got doesn't have any info. It's so simple and strong. The album is the story of her life, does she write all her own stuff like Iris? "Sunny Day" (and it's funny cuz I'm listening to a Free album right now and as I typed that song title I realized that they were also singing a song called "Sunny Day".) has a great Fleetwood mac/FM radio Cali vibe to it. Love that guitar too. I love the production, her voice, these songs. Just a joy to listen to. It's kinda nice to hear something that just hits you immediately in the pleasure center of your brain. I'll keep my eye out for her other stuff.

-- scott seward (skotro...), February 3rd, 2005. (scott seward)

Yeah, it grates--I guess, though, that she's working hard on referencing, period, on this record...getting up to speed. Catchin' up...getting drunk with a Monet over her head. Not Manet or Jeff Koons.

Deana did write "Not Another Love Song." I've listened to this a lot--it's such a great '70s singer-songwriter kind of move. "Ordinary"'s coda is truly Lennonesque, too. I really like the way they use piano on this record, especially on "She's Good for You." Which I think is the best song on the album myself. I like the way she's written songs with real bridges, real modulation, and also the way she uses strings sparingly. It's never overdone at all--the only thing I find less-than-perfect is the drum feel on some tunes, maybe. This record illustrates my theory that Nashville-identified-artists can do that whole thing that power pop or whatever you call it does, and better, they've absorbed that harmonic language at some strange level. Anyway, "The Story of My Life" is a pop record by a woman with an accent, just like the incredible song on "Blake Shelton's Barn & Grill," "What's on My Mind," which I keep playing--quite an amazing track.

I'm still really into the Reckless Kelly record, "Wicked Twisted Road." I guess it's because they're a real band--they've mastered form, every song does something different within a hard-assed but not unsympathetic worldview. I mean how many "country" records have two songs over five minutes that are the best things on the record? So many albums about "the road" are one-dimensional, but this one really goes through a lot of shifts in tone. "Nobody Haunts Me Like You" is quite amazing, too. I think it's kinda brilliant, actually, that whole record.

i agree. it's southern pop. or country-pop if you want. but not really pop-country. okay, it's pop by a woman with an accent.

really? why not?? it's totally catchy, totally pretty, totally rhythmic, totally weird, totally engergetic, and i've always been a fan of non-slow polkas and fiddle reels. seems more or less custom made for me; what about it did you think i wouldn't like? ( i guess there are some draggy folkloric parts, but they seem to be few and far between -- often just self-proclaimed "roots" interludes lasting a few seconds each.) (best track: #2, followed perhaps by # 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, and 14, though not necessarily in that order, and i'm probably leaving some other gooduns out.)

yikes, my third favorite song (more or less) on that trish murphy album appears to be written by lyle lovett! (maybe even a cover.) but i think she wrote most of the other ones, including "the trouble with trouble" (probably the best track) and the thelma and louise one (which may or may not be as good as deanna carter's thelma and louise one) (p.s.: in my book, pop with a {southern} accent *is* country. or at least if it's sung by someone who has had country hits and who CMT still plays videos by it is.)

old me votes deana, "cause she's a rebel maaaaan, indie alt.country steeped in power-pop, first song sounds like Avril, yeah!"
new me votes lee ann, "intentional throwback attempts always suck except this one, harder to pull a pierre menard out of a hat"

WHICH ME WILL WIN

I dunno, I got to listen more to Lee Ann, it hasn't grabbed me so much yet.

re:Chesney, he has annoted (sp) all of the tracks on this album, via video on the website--i dont have speakers on this machine, anyone want to see them ? (does the word lover jar anyone else on old blue chair ?)

the lee ane womack is jeannie c riley w/o any of the twang, but she has some absoutely heartbreaking deliveries.

did anyone hear crystal gale at the opry today--shes promoting a cd of hoagy carmachel songs (wtf?) and her voice is trashed, completely.

and speaking of gale--the long black train dude, whats his name ? anyways his new single is the worst of martina mcbride treacle but with more silly jingoism.

has anyone else avoided laughing at her new single--is so over the top, it becomes camp.

i want to hear the fiddle/polka album--i adore trad polka

i am working on a theory that a bunch of these country guys have been listening to frampton and journey--at least lyrically---i am not sure of the impliactions of this.

Lyle Lovett is indeed one of the biggest dullards of our time (or at least his), which is why I was so surprised to see his writing credit on a song I liked on the Trish Murphy album. So *maybe* he's (slightly) better than I'd figured.

I meant NOTHING by this

I really thot the Vagina song was much much better then Cletus Judd--can we let Starlite take the nashville jester postion away from him ?

There are a few Crystal Gale songs that are just fucking amazing, among the best country ever recordings ever, and it is entirely due to her voice (which in many ways was more techincally astute then lorettas--i mean lorretta had a million things to make up for it, attitude, fire, wit, grace, etc etc but her sister sang better i think.)

I was going to write up the womack for stylus, but everytime i write about country for them, i tend to get abused...though i keep thinking its really good, so i might break down...i havent heard the new deana--i dont get cds sent to me, and im tending towards broke...(which means i take charity burns and tapes)

I really really love stawberry wine--i was reminded of that having breakfast in a painfully hip cafe at qsw, and having one of the guys play it to torture another barista, and it made me homesick, sort of the nausea you get after being punched in the stomach, it was all her voice, and the lonliness.

countrys so good at faking the authentic, that i dont think the audiene sometimes knows when its being led on--but then i think pop is the pposte for similar results.

ANTHONY EASTON IS ON THE MONEY AGAIN, WHEN WILL IT EVER CEASE

yeah, i don't get this either -- what music *doesn't* fake authenticity, and what music has an audience that *does* know when fake is happening? seems to me you could say the same about r&b, hip-hop, metal, country, teenpop, just about anything!

Anyway, I think it's obviously an illusion, the thing I try to remember is that people singing songs for an audience work on a shared body of experience, but that includes a lot of mythology. I'm not so enamored of someone like Albert Murray, the daddy of neo-con blues and jazz scholarship so willingly exploited by Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis--if Ray Charles used Sunday morning gospel conventions to sell Saturday night, more power to him. But I see how someone far more conversant with Sunday-morning-gospel reality and how using that might piss people off who are ready to be offended by said use might find it troubling, that mixture. I guess in country it's the same thing to a degree, except I'm trying to think of a white country artist who used white sacred music in a profane way. Were the Statler Brothers an extension of all that, did they use it in their novelty-act way? I dunno.

I'm listening to the Billy Don Burns, thx Chuck! I'm pretty impressed. I quite like "I Was There," which seems to be relevant to the idea of autobiography, for sure; ditto "Haggard and Hank" and "Runnin' Drugs out of Mexico." I mean, I don't think it's great singing or anything, it's all right, and he's definitely playing on his "life experiences" with all those photos of him with Sam Phillips, Paycheck, getting Tanya Tucker to fly in from Europe to cut, etc. But I'd play off it too, I guess. It kinda seems like a better version of some of the stuff I've heard at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, these guys singing with the little bucket full of dollar bills in front of them, reeking of that country-music mythos. Nice banjo playing. Real interesting.

figure out the sentiments (if not the music) of jody "jo dee" messina's "my give a damn's broken" = "get over it" by the eagles, right? i.e., please don't tell me about your damn victimhood no mo.

decided also i do not despise "you're my better half" by keith urban, after repeated exposure to it on the excellent *now that's what i call music! 18* comp. mid-'80s police bassline, suburban scenario, some space in the sound, brief jiggy guitar solo toward the end. he is *at least* as hard for me to hate as he is for me to care about.

also I love a lot of tunes on the new Terri Clark album Honky Tonk Songs, especially the one where she says we should get our supercalifragilistic grooves on and shake our stiff asses.

I'm not sure if I love it or hate it yet.

I'm not sure about the Dhuks...I have an animus agin bluegrass music. But they are miles better than Chatham. I'd like to know, Chuck, what you like about it...I guess I find it hard to get past that instrumentation, you know.

CMT video award nominees:

Male--Urban, "Days Go By"; Chesney, "I Go Back"; McGraw, "Live Like You're Dying" (yeeesh); Keith, "Stays in Mexico."

Female--G. Wilson, "When I Think about Cheatin',"; M. McBride, "How Far"; Reba, "Somebody"; Terri Clark, "Girls Lie Too" (no nom for her Dodge commercial)

Group/Duo--Big &, "Holy Water"; Lonestar, "Mr. Mom"; M. Gentry, "If You Ever Stop Loving Me (I'll Activate Your In-Home Sprinkler System, Costing You a Fat $50,000 in Repair Bills)"; Rascal Flatts, "Feels Like Today"

Collab Video--Paisley/Krauss, "Whiskey Lullaby"; Buffett/Black/Chesney/Jackson/Keith/Strait, "Hey Good Lookin'"; Nelly/McGraw, "Over and Over"; Twain/Currington, "Party for Two"

Hottest (!) Video--Urban, "You're My Better Half"; Chesney, "Old Blue Chair"; Sara Evans, "Suds in the Bucket"; T. Keith, "Whiskey Girl"

Breakthrough--Big &, "Save a Horse"; Wilson, "Redneck Woman"; Josh Gracin, "I Want to Live"; Julie Roberts, "Break Down Here"

Most Inspiring--Big &, "Holy Water"; Joe Nichols, "If Nobody Believed in You"; McBride, "God's Will"; McGraw, "Live Like You're Dying"

Directors of "Redneck Woman," "Stays in Mexico," "Whiskey Lullaby," and "I Go Back" nominated. Broadcast April 11.

Anthony identifies with cougars! I love that LAW record too.

Edd, someday when I have more time on my hands I'll do a song-by-song rundown of the Duhks album, which I've already played just about as much as any album this year. And, again, I am a bluegrass hater from way back. But the instruments used aren't what bugs me (I don't really get that -- fiddles can rock! and here they do!!); it's *how* they're used. And here there is no show-offiness or school-marm-smarminess to speak of, and tons of humor and hooks and beauty. And SONGS, one of which is French. So far my favorite song is the (slow, oddly enough) one about Baltimore (which is followed a couple songs later with one about Dover, Delaware). But my opinion is still evolving. So far, I believe this to be a pretty great album. Again, the only valid comparison I can think of is the Dixie Chicks (though Don's worthy faves the Mollys also come to mind, come to think of it, as will some others if I give the subject more thought, I'm sure.)

and by the way, that joe dee broken give a damn song not only reads like the eagles, it also *sounds* like the eagles. blatantly -- something off of *the long run,* i think.

I saw the footage of his funeral for the first time (kodachrome from the 50s) for the first time today, on a trashy cmt biodoc . The footage was edited badly and the voice over was distracting---but there were thousands of people in black, a mass on the steps of nashvilles Memorial Stadium. There was the thick crush of mourners over graveyard under white tents standing on green grass. There was him in his coffin--grey suit and white satin.

Then there was the front row of the audience:
his ex wife, his current wife, his mistress who buried the man on the evening of the fourth and gave birth to his child on the sixth.

The doc ended, and Shania Twains video for Party of Two came on.
I turned off the television.

(and oh yeah by rr's "fastest" songs i may have just meant "loudest.")

xp = nope haven't heard new terri c yet, though i often like her lots.

I've liked her live a whole lot, but never warmed up to any of her albums yet.

I mean there's a studio in town, Alex the Great, run by Brad Jones, and there's been a claque of folks in N-ville recording there obsessed with power pop for years, like the Shazam, who are actually now better than they were as they ditch the effeteness for more power and better more compact tunes.

i am not sure i like terri clark

i'm pretty sure i find mary gauthier a major bore (or at least i'm pretty sure i did the one time i tried to listen to an album by her)

>In other matters, Shooter Jennings suprised. "4th of July" is best tune --I like! The "put the O back in country" is a convenient sham, OK, because I approve of convenient shams carried out by the circumstantially doomed 100 percent of the time. The best tunes sound like his glam band lightened up although the very -last- tune, "Daddy's Farm," on the rekkid is no-holds-barred. <

>To my surprise, I sort of like the Shooter Jennings album. I liked a Waylon Jennings album once, back in the late '70s or sometime, the one with "Would Hank Have Done It This Way," if that's the title, which had a drone that reminded me of the Velvet Underground. In any event, Shooter's voice is even worse than his dad's I think, though "worse" might be the wrong terminology. Shooter's voice never quite seems *there*. So, when he sings (in at least *two* songs) that Nashville has no soul, I want to retort, "Well, you have no voice." But he kind of does have songs, and an idea of what his voice should be doing if it existed. And he has guitar licks. And the emotional age of a 10-year-old (so the ten-year-old within me gets a kick out of the album title). And his ideal of a blues band seems to be Blue Cheer.

By the way the Hacienda Brothers = awesome.

and in another vein--the new aliasdar roberts is v. pretty, v. low key, feilditous to the childe/border ballads tradition with out sufforcating it dead with his respect.

i would recommend it deeply. (on drag city)

Been listening to both Dierks Bentley albums. I like him a lot. "Lot of Leavin' Left to Do" is probably my single of the year so far, just a great, great ramblin' fear-of-commitment anthem, and it stomps and it swings and it jams like crazy, but stays light on its feet all the way through. Not sure if I said all that before or not. The rhythm *isn't* Latin, but it's total dance music, non-stop forward motion. You could mix it into a disco set, easy. AMAZING drummer. My favorite songs by him otherwise so far are the ones that sort of split the difference between George Strait in his "When the Cowboy Rides Away"/"Amarillo By Morning" Glen Campbell forlorn fugitive cowpoke on the desert highway mode and Montgomery Gentry-style hard rock (though he's never a Montgomery Gentry-style asshole about it, except your usual no-woman's-ever-gonna-tie-me-down kinda asshole I guess, and in one song he does keep a gun next to him while driving and making out in his truck.) The new album (due in May) has his band stretching out more, and they do it with a real ease. But the debut sounds pretty good too, at least so far. New album could have a shot at my top 10.

I assumed he was gettin himself a little "piece" on earth, actually!

watching GAC or CMT the other night, by the way, i realized that i THINK the nickelcreed sounding country hit i'd been curious about a few months ago (including on my pazz and jop ballot) is by cross-canadian railroad or whatever they're called. i'd heard an album by them i kinda liked once; kinda country-rock, as alt-country goes (which is probably why they've got some commercial airplay), but i never realized how fake grunge they sound til now.

Hmmm....well, Ben Ratliff (I think) in the Times yesterday called their voices "strong but unvirtuosic" (or something like that), so I'll go with that choice instead. I dunno, they're no Leanns or Lee Anns, obviously. But like I said, not alt-country wallflowers either. Anyway, I may go see them live Saturday; if so, will report back.

Still haven't made it through the Van Zant CD, for some reason. Did jump forward to "Plain Jane", and slightly heard "Sweet Jane", and if AC/DC's there that's even *more* slight, I think. Don's description above does put me in the mind of Kix's "Same Jane," which was great (though probably more "Gudbuy T'" than "Sweet." Maybe THE Sweet, tho.)

Artist Jamie O Neal
Album Brave
Song Naive

How you been, boy you're lookin' good
Are you still livin' down in Birmingham
Funny how things didn't turn out like we thought they would
Now here we are standin' face-to-face again
Two old long lost friends
Laughin' 'bout when we'd sing

"Born in the USA"
And we'd scream it at the top of our lungs
Remember how you'd always say
You were gonna change the world
And yeah, I would always be your girl
And we dreamed about runnin' away
Just takin' off and chasin' the sun
Man, we really had it made
We were young, in love and free
And so naive, so naive

But Haikunym is OTM about Buddy Jewell

Also, Jamie O'Neal album on now. Track 8; I have liked at least five songs so far, a pretty awesome batting average already. My only complaint is that the record company sent me the dance remix CD single of "Altantis" (which may well be great; haven't listened yet) instead of the dance remix CD single of "Naive" that I requested.

And the Duhks rocked live -- I actually think the lead singer has a real good range, from hi lonesome down that bluesy low register. The drummer was pretty good except when he took a long boring extended solo (I can totally see them appealing to a jam band audience). High point: the rennaisance fairish song that, what with its pounding and stomping underneath, momentarily put me in the mind of Led Zeppelin.

But okay, another question: Who does the (I assume current) country hit with a high ethereal male voice saying the same borderline-incomprehensible thing over and over again over what sounds *exactly* like a loop of a great guitar progression from "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger (which *maybe* a little "Night Moves" tossed in, I'm not sure.) I really really really need to know.

has anyone heard how do you get so lonely, im not sure who did it, but its this 18 yr old kid talking about a classmate who killed him self, and its so matter of fact, refuses to talk about god, refuses to engage in chap sentiment, the music is really simple and hte voice is amazing--its haunted me, it makes me umcomforatble to listen to, because of its power.

is it wrong to laugh at a twelve year old--its the most epic car wreck of cliches and mawkish sentiment.

Not sure whether *Car Wash* by the Howling Diablos (from Detroit, apparently Kid Rock pals whose previous album struck me as too stodgy or minstrely or something) belongs on this thread or the metal thread, but there is no badass early-ZZ/John Lee boogie thread, so I will plug it here regardless. Title track is the best song about working at the car wash since the one by Rose Royce. My other two favorite tracks so far are "Mean Little Town" and, bizarrely, "Elvis Lives." I wish their singer had a smidgen more personality in his voice, but given the guitarist and drummer, I can live with it.

Have also been trying to appreciate *The Essential Poco,* too, but too no avail. As Eagle-lites go (whether they initially predated the Eagles or not), I'd say I prefer Firefall (who I've never had much use for). And as recent '70s afternoon-rock comp CDs go, Little River Band's blows this one out of the water. I hardly remember ever hearing any of these on the radio, either -- maybe "Crazy Love" and "Heart of the Night" (with its cryptic reference to "the Ponchatrain," which I still think of as a hotel in Detroit, where I first heard the song on the radio). Anyway, Don or Edd or whoever, am I missing something with these guys? I think the first edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide (the grades in which George Smith says should only be trusted in reverse) gave one of their albums (the debut?) five stars out of five, but I'm not hearing much anything here that holds my attention at all. So...am I just not trying??

I can't figure out what that song is with the Seger-isms, Chuck, I've been listening but haven't heard it yet. I'm still way into some of that Keith Anderson CD, especially "XXL," which is rockin' my world.

Poco--I never really cared for 'em myself. Pretty much lacking in detail compared to Mike Nesmith or Brewer and Shipley, even, or Firefall or even the New Riders of the Purple Sage, or Pure Prairie League, or John Phillips. Pallid, poco indeed. I think all the drugstore cowboys of circa 1971 were fine as long as they were worrying about living in L.A., got intolerable when they hied off for the wide open spaces and started working on those harmonies.

Shooter Jennings "4th of July" vs. X "4th of July" vs. Martina McBride "Independence Day" vs. um., whatever the Springsteen and Van Morrison ones were called

(i'd take miranda's, since hers rocks harder.)

The two songs I mentioned from Donna the Buffalo are the only two that grabbed me. I like the sly swing of this group at their best, and yeah, the lyrics are a bit too good-liberal for me, and I'm a good liberal. The great thing about the Dierks record is indeed the swing, and the way they use what might be dorky bluegrassy instrumentation in new ways. In the radio interview I heard with Dierks, he talked a lot about how careful he was in mixing that record, and how important the sonic mix between, say, the banjo and the electric guitars are. But at their best, Donna the Buffalo are getting there, I think.

two good new superstar singles:

shania, "i ain't no quitter" or whatever it's called. WESTERN SWING, for real. not some cheap imitation. who is the band playing on this? that ain't just mutt. lovely.

toby (at least i assume it's toby -- sure sounded like him, damn he's an amazing singer, but the DJ didn't say), the one where he's in a bar and two, um, swedish twins or whatever they are hit on him but though his ego is willing he's older now and his body ain't what it used to be: sounded great, the one time i heard it. also extremely good-humored, so rob sheffeld must've missed it when he wrote his rolling stone of the album. but i will forgive rob, if only for his hilarious joke in the same issue about Ratt's singer becoming the pope.

And here is George Smith, via email; who is the na-na-na-na lady?

>I've been watching CMTV over the past couple months and it's the
triumph of the legacy of Bad Company. Bad Company never sounded very
British. The whole idea was to get rid of the Brit music hall "sound" of Mott the Hoople and the "blooz boom" thing of Free for the American arena. And that's what they did and so the big country hits acts all have drummers who sound like Simon Kirke (thump! [bass drum] bang! {snare shot} thump! bang! repeat at mid tempo) and everyone, excluding the Telecaster crowd, has the Bad Company guitar thang -- Les Pauls. "Straight Shooter" was a goddamn modern country album with really loud guitars, for cryin' out loud.

Even after Rogers left and the hacks were hired for "Holy Water"-era
Bad Company, big country USA sounds even closer to that model. What's the chick's name who does that song that end with the long outro "na-na-na-na"-- man, she is so Bad Company. And all the guitar players look like Boz and Simon, they wear black T-shirts and jeans and all have a slight stubble and and are basically short to medium height so the girls who aren't sure of their sexual allures re the "star" can think they surely could win the sidemen over backstage.

Yeah, but only their lamest stuff. C'mon, that song is stoopid. (Altho it does have a sense of humor, which is something Chris Knight doesn't and Steve Earle doesn't enough. But being kinda funny isn't really enough.)

New Nickel Creek, due in August: I definitely like track #10, "Best of Luck." Maybe "Somebody More Like You," "Scotch & Chocolate." "Doubting Thomas," and/or "Helena," too.Maybe more than that. Maybe not. I probably won't like it as much as James Hunter (who says it is great) does, though. But they really do have their own sound that's nobody else's, I have no doubt that James is right about that. I just wonder if there is too much indie-rock in it sometimes. (No Pavement covers this time, though. Also, are they a Christian band? I forget.)

Also might check out the Nasvhille Music Guide-touted, allegedly "sax and bass horn"-augmented website of St. Louis combo the Well Hungarians ( www.wellhungarians.net ) one of these days, if I remember to do so.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0521,dozen,64242,22.html

Glad you like the Nashville Music Guide, xhuxk. It's something else as well, and you should have seen it before they cleaned up the writing.

I can find Brad Paisley sttuff as well, but my compact discs are in victoria.

I can find Brad Paisley sttuff as well, but my compact discs are in victoria.
(little moments--which has always irked me to peices, because it treats his wife like a 6 yr old)

Well, so did every song Pat Benatar ever sang. But the Doublemint twins that the Tobester needs Viagra before he can consider going home with aren't the same as the the big guy who he wishes he didn't pick a fight with at the bar, right? (Or at least that what I *think* he's singing about - I heard the song once on the radio and saw the video once on TV, so I might be getting it wrong.) Also, wasn't the woman in "How Do Do You Like Me Now" a valedictorian in high school (just like in some Phil Vassar song around the same time)? Not sure offhand how he has contempt for her there either, but maybe I've blocked that from my memory. (By the way, I just realized that the words in "How Do Ya Like Me Now" are at least as close to "On Your Radio" by Joe Jackson as to "How Do Ya Like Me Now" by Kool Moe Dee; is that cool or what? Also, isn't there a new high school reunion song on the country charts now? I think I noticed it in Billboard, but I forget what it was.) (I will point out, though, that the girl in the "Whiskey Girl" video did not look anywhere near as "tough" as Toby said in the song. She just looked like a model! She should've looked like Whole Lotta Rosie instead.) (Anyway, I guess my bottom line is that Toby strikes me as pretty self-effacing, when you get down to it. Even when he does braggadocio about the college boys all went home for the summertime {like Thin Lizzy, only backwards!} and he's the real man in town, though, it implies that he had to wait until summer to take their place, right?) And especially when he's trying to get a word in edgewise between the medical charts and when she starts. None of it seems mean-spirited to me, for damn sure.

(just teasing, anthony, but damn does people doing that on the internet drive my brain crazy.) (he says in all lower case letters.)

anyway. i never saw the flameworthies, though their name alone is worth of your gay country thread. what did alan do, forget to rhyme "chorus" with "thesaurus" or something?

my own question of the day: What is the deal with Trick Pony? Are they any good? Were they ever? I kinda don't mind their Bonnie Tyler cover CMT has been showing (sexy video, too, and somebody dies at the end) (though it'd be even better if it was a cover of "total eclipse of the heart" or, um i know, "bette davis eyes"!) But my REAL Trick Pony comment has to do with the fact that one of the guys in the band (in that video) sure does seem look (and even dress) a lot like Big Kenny. Is that a new thing? Or did he always look like that? Is it at all possible Trick Pony were proto-B&R? Would that explain why I kept thinking they were called Trick Daddy instead? I know nothing about them, and now I'm wondering if I should've been paying more attention.

and ps: speaking of Big Kenny, people know that the woman he married is his *stylist*, right? And the last couple photos I saw in Billboard had him looking somewhat more rugged and less flamboyant than in the past. Let's hope this is not an omen of things to come.

speaking of little kenny, has anyone seen the new photos of him hatless in LA, he looks like a fetus.

can we talk about Aaron Prichett ?

I don't know much about Trick Daddy. I sort of like that video too--it is sexy--and they sound good. I'm intrigued. I have to see this upcoming CMT special about strange country moments--footage of Bill Anderson's disco song--and I have to find out why they flashed a picture of Sonny Boy Williamson in the promo spot.

This one's weird though, it's also a template for making the perfect country song, and a mockery of everyone who thinks they can do it. It is a mechanical paean to the power of a good hook and that, said it sounds it. No real energy, no rambunctious joy?just a barely disguised fuck you.

Alright, what happens here is that Alan Jackson brings his work to a mechanic, who told poor Alan that his car repairs would take nine hundred bucks, after spending the entire verse cataloging everything that could be wrong with his car?the chorus starts and it's supposed to be a sing-along, but it's sort of anemic, and he harmonica is perfunctory.

The mechanic sings?and then Alan Jackson talks about how badly written the song is, about too many adverbs and verbs that are too weak, well that works, that's easy writing advice if you are bob Dylan or Britney Spears. Where it gets weir ,are the next lines. The most technical explicit discussion of the actual transcribing and writing of music I have ever encountered, it's studio notes from the guitar gnomes of Nashville made public.

Do you think that anyone who listens to country knows what ?it?s got so many dotted eighth notes in it? or the importance of ?50 beats per minute? or how many ?augmented chords? are too much. He then charges the mechanic a hundred bucks more then the car?proving to the world that mechanical, technical craft is needed and a form of skilled labour, like carpentry or being a rigpig?something that blue collar, but just a little more special, a hundred bucks more special, really. Smarmy shit all around, and not as humble as he needs to be.

from nypm

That's pretty funny on Alan Jackson, actually. I wonder if anyone's ever done a "Star Making Machinery" kinda book on making of a Nashville album (that book's about Commander Cody trying to make a commercial album)? I heard Dierks Bentley say he made his latest album in 10 days, and I thought that might be atypical, but people tell me the typical Nashville album is made in maybe 2 weeks...

CMT roundup was great last night--Big Kenny's having a baby. Garth proposed to Tricia on stage! Shania rolls out her new fragrance line.

"I'm Down." The rhythm guitars get a great freight train going. And there's a classic rock shred in the outro.

btw chuck lonestar does "that used to be us (class reunion)"

COUNTRY ALBUMS
1 Honkytonk University — Toby Keith
2 Loco Motive — Cowboy Troy
3 Feels Like Today — Rascal Flatts
4 Be Here — Keith Urban
5 Modern Day Drifter — Dierks Bentley
6 Twice the Speed of Life — Sugarland
7 Here for the Party — Gretchen Wilson
8 The Right to Bare Arms — Larry the Cable Guy
9 Delicious Surprise — Jo Dee Messina
10 Get Right with the Man — Van Zant

COUNTRY SINGLES
1 Making Memories of Us — Keith Urban
2 Songs About Me — Trace Adkins
3 Lot of Leavin’ Left to Do — Dierks Bentley
4 Homewrecker — Gretchen Wilson
5 Fast Cars and Freedom — Rascal Flatts
6 What’s a Guy Gotta Do — Joe Nichols
7 My Give a Damn’s Busted — Jo Dee Messina
8 You’ll Be There — George Strait
9 That’s What I Love About Sunday — Craig Morgan
10 Something More — Sugarland

-- forget the new nickel creek album. "best of luck" is the only even *possibly* great track on it, and i'm not even positive about that one. the only other fast songs are instrumentals -- why are bluegrass bands these days so afraid of talking fast over fast jig rhythms like all the guys on that charlie poole box set used to? i think this might kinda be a problem with the duhks, too, actually.

-- though i still say no fucking way does the world need another version of "honky tonk blues," i have to admit now that the kentucky headhunters' rendition boogies WAY harder than i'd given it credit for above. not as hard as "big boss man", maybe, but close. now that i have the album in my random CD changer, more tracks than i would have expected are sinking in. including the dylan cover.

-- on the turntable right now: george strait's first MCA *greatest hits* album, from 1985, purchased recently for $1 cold cash at princeton record exchange. and it is way more western swing and warmer and less goody goody and more post-gary stewart and more proto-garth brooks than i'd remembered. though i still say george gotta way duller (and straiter) later. and the best track by far is still "amarillo by morning," as i predicted upthread. but i like way more tracks than i thought i would.

-- also like way more tracks (including dylan cover) on jason and scorchers' *fervor* EP, which i just listened to for the first time in years if not decades. they really could rock; the guitars in "both sides of the line" really crank it up. but i think the track i'll spin at my next DJ gig will be "help there's a fire", for its totally unexpected b-52s and devo influence ("find me a POP-sicle, take her to the DIS-co") not to mention its proto-cowboy troy hick-hop vocal cadence.

anthony, post the darn toby review already! you don't need to ask us permission (i don't think. actually, i never read the rulebook.)

http://deanesmay.com/posts/1117638206.shtml

http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1117758173.shtml

his favorite songs:

http://plasticboy.com/archives/2005/05/17/2014/

--------

latest cmt = hard rock george smith email:

>...is the equiv of the Rick Springfield album from last year. Man, this shit rocks out on acoustic guitar. "Renegade" is the biker rock song of the year and it's about a horse jumping up and down on assholes until they're dead. I'd swear it was Nugent doing unplugged with a better sense for lyrics, story and dynamics. Easily in my top three slot. Nothing will dislodge it. It's also a natural for CMT -- actually superior to 98 percent of CMT. Proves you can make an album that is as good or which greases most commercial product. Note I am specifically speaking of the White Stripes.

As you know, Kentucky Headhunters is also maximally hard in places. "Big Boss Man" is difficult to top. No metal band, even the extreme ones, this year have attained the crunch, groove or density of it. My calculations have that record batting a solid .500. And the good songs are really great. However, "Hey Good Looking" and things like it are supremely awful and could have been left off.

And, fucking fuck, "Rock of Ages" [by Def Leppard -- ed.] is a grand compilation. There are four songs on it, which -- like Bad Company -- form a template for CMT acts, none of which are country at all, but American stadium rock. ("Let's Get Rocked" -- add Shania Twain fiddle and it's a Shania Twain tune; "Two Steps Behind -- no changes necessary; "Promises" -- very few changes necessary, less compression and -loudness- maybe, and "No Matter What".)

The Bad Company companions:

Sugarland -- straight Bad Company, Joe Dee Messina -- sounds like Don
Henley cops, Keith Urban -- "holy water" Bad Company; Erika Joe or whatever her name is on "I Break Things" which is -straight- Bad
Company, specifically "Movin' On."

It's also displaced hair metal, slightly diced with look and exclusion of guitar wank plus addition of fiddle and mandolin ( disguised to look like a teeny-sized acoustic guitar) mixed so low you can't hear it, only see it. And the Simon Kirke drum style applies with all. Def Lep drum style, too, after the guy lost his arm, which made him do a Simon Kirke imitation. (Listen to the change in cadence and complexity between when they sounded like AC/DC and Kix, and when the arm was cut off and they did the mega-stadium hits. This cannot be overlooked. Def's drummer completely abandoned rolls and syncopation -- he had to, he only had one arm -- but he
compensated with drama and swing, or Lange did.)

Rascal Flatts is Bon Jovi imitation except with a ham hock in place of the pretty boy. I like many of these acts but Flatts just plain suck. And Gretchen Wilson's "Party" song is shitty generic stadium hard rock. Everything Brooks and Dunn have done in the last year or two stinks, too. It's their picture in the dictionary next to the definition of phony.<

-----

Actually, I think he's right about Brooks & Dunn, believe it or not. Everything I've heard (four or so songs) by them since *Red Dirt Road* has been really lame; I'm always shocked by how much they bore me, since I liked that album so much. Are these recent singles all old outtakes that wound up on their best-of CD (which I have yet to see a copy of) or what?

While I'm add it, I will add that the debut album by teenager Erika Jo seem to promise real bubble-country potential, but most of it is a total snooze. "I Break Things," "Good Day" and the cover of "I'm Not Lisa" seem okay, maybe. But Killdozer did that last song way better.

TERRY ALLEN's *The Silient Majority (Terry Allen’s Greastest Missed Hits)* is quite entertaining, however (and also maybe old outtakes, judging from the title.)

"Yellowhand & Noka...is the equiv of the Rick Springfield album from last year. Man, this shit rocks out on acoustic guitar. ..."

and I meant to say:

"While I'm at it, I will add that the debut album by teenager Erika Jo seemed to promise real bubble-country potential.."

Do other people hate Sugarland? (Blount's "gah sugarland!" would suggest so, and I think Jon Caramanica told me he has no use for them, either.) What's not to like? I think they're pretty good!

See that new Dwight Yoakam video "International Heartache" debuts CMT Thursday 6/9. I recently sat thru this Gram Parsons video tribute thing, with Keith Richards, Norah Jones, Dwight, Jay Farrar, Lucinda Williams. Strange, but of all of the songs Norah's version of "She" was about the best...and Dwight was pretty fine, the one person on the program truly up to Parsons, I think. Didn't hurt that the band featured Al Perkins on steel, and James Burton was playing too.

Cross-threading to the P&J '05 thread, I do think Charlie Poole will make it. Cowboy Troy, whose current song I think is kinda the best thing to come out in the wake of Musik Mafia--a gas, actually--and I'd sure like to think Deana Carter's flawed but great little album would make it.

I'll keep the new White Stripes, too, even though it is almost definitely their dullest album, and a lot of it reminds me of when Drive-By Truckers made *their* snoozeful alt-country move last year.

>

http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000954856

Edited By Jonathan Cohen. June 10, 2005, 11:00 AM ET

New Big & Rich Album Due In November

By Phyllis Stark, Nashville

photo
The sophomore album from high-voltage country duo Big & Rich will be released Nov. 8 on Warner Bros. The leadoff single is titled, appropriately enough, "The 8th of November."

John Rich tells Billboard.com it's a song he and partner Big Kenny wrote about a friend of theirs, a Vietnam vet who survived an ambush that killed most of his platoon on Nov. 8, 1965. Since that time, Rich says, every Nov. 8 the man "puts on a suit and goes out by himself, eats a steak dinner and drinks Jack Daniels to celebrate the lives of those killed that day."

Calling the man's story "epic," Rich says the song is "probably one of the best things Kenny and I have ever written."

This Nov. 8 will be the 40th anniversary of the ambush. Since it also happens to be a Tuesday, Rich says "all the stars were lining up" to make it the right release date for the album and the ideal first single.

Big & Rich's debut album, "Horse of a Different Color," reached No. 1 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart in September 2004 after 16 weeks on the chart. The set, which also peaked at No. 6 on The Billboard 200, has sold 2.2 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The duo's current tour drops in on Devol, Okla., tonight (June 10). The group will join Brooks & Dunn's summer North American tour in late July.<

Here's the link to the video:
http://music.yahoo.com/promo-18684304--smash

does anyone have any way of sending out the big and rich video so i could see it...

here is my toby keith review:
Toby Keith is popular because of his politics. The sun rises in the east. But also, his shrewdness explains why he isn’t slinging hash in some arctic rig camp. This new album moves from a combination of personal and geopolitics, to eleven cheating songs and a self-aggrandizing autobiographical single.
This is a shameful admission, but I generally like his genial misogyny, bulldog braggadocio, and the hickboy posturing. Sometimes the brain needs to shut off and the balls or guts engage. His best work is propulsively raw refusing to be nice. The lack of politeness, tact or bullshit is refreshing. This is not his best work. The misogyny is much less genial, the braggadocio is desperate, and he attempts to be clever--often failing.
The work here ranges from the patronizing (and he has never been patronizing to the women in his work—there is a violent wrestling for power and privilege which results in a respect for all sorts of power that is no longer here) to the overly simple to the ridiculous to the kinky (and not the good, libertines growl of his last big hit What Stays in Mexico).
The only thing that manages to retain any dignity is the Merle Haggard duet She Ain't Hooked on Me Now. A subtle love-as-addiction song which is infused with years of hard drinking, drugging, loving and criminality. There is hope for redemption in Haggard's voice-. The guitars are soft, the bass has a heart beat, and no one wails on the drums. Even Keith knuckles his voice under Haggard's immense power.
For that brilliance, we endure the half hearted and badly constructed. A rip-off of Kenny Chesney's island rhythms was recorded in Key West. He didn’t even have the dignity to go the extra hundred miles to the Caribbean. (As Good As I Once Was). There is a song that has about a dozen words including rhyming sad and bad. (I Got It Bad) . Those are just the lazy ones.
Then t here are the truly offensive ones. I thought Angry American was interesting, I recognized the anger that permeated Beer for My Horses Keith does a good job at offense. But lines like “Your just a queen/looking for a crown (from Your Smile) or he ran out of money/he’d run out of luck/he’d run out of gas in his pickup truck are diffent (From Where You Gonna Go) tell women “get in the kitchen, bitch”.
It is important to remember that Keith’s refusal of the sentiment surrounding marriage is one of his strengths. An attempt to change this is ludicrous. Having two separate songs where he works through a corrupted matrimonal ethic is not worth hearing.
The songs where he is glad to have women leave or not be around at all would be more interesting, if they didn’t seem intended to shock a mainstream audience,. As Good As I Once Was has a fuck or fight message that frightens, reflecting that a “rodeo:” threesome with twin sisters and a bar fight might require the same resources.
The slick, honky tonk sing along--She Left Me is very similar to the Texas Swing of You Ain't Leavin—except for the latter is country’s first leaving song alluding to hot tub full of drunken hotties. If this was based on a real time incident it should be filmed and spread all over on the web if it worked for Fred Durst imagine it for Keith.
Country needs it’s outlaws What offendeds then is a moving away from his powers and into something more cozy. He conceded and you can tell his discomfort. Which means a decision about how far he’s going to go, and what exactly what he wants to do with issues of marriage and women. Right now his ambiguity is fairly dangerous.

hmmm....which would be what? personally i've yet to hear a single steve earle or billy joe shaver song that rocks anywhere near as hard as the best tracks by montgomery gentry, big & rich, van zant, brooks & dunn, shania twain, miranda lambert, shooter jennings, dierks bentley, toby keith, or plenty of other artists currently on the chart. but it's very possible i've missed a few, so maybe you're right. but as george pointed out in his bad company comparison, chart country nowadays rocks *plenty* hard, in general - harder than any other genre i can think of at the moment. steve earle, meanwhile, has never rocked as hard, near as can tell, as I wish he did or as people give him credit for, and I've heard plenty of his records. I've heard less shaver, though. (yet sabbath *is* definitely an exagerration for aldean, regardless. what i mean, I guess, it that the "hick town" riff sound more heavy than hard --which is something new, somehow. I'm not yet sure how else to explain this...)

(never heard the ballad that j. blount mentioned above; who does it?)

This is a big exagerration, too - though his politics don't *hurt* his popularity, usually.

>the latter is country’s first leaving song alluding to hot tub full of drunken hotties. <

this reminds me that nobody here has yet mentioned that totally sleazy phil vassar hot tub hit (which sometimes I don't quite hate.)

i think he is a (different) but better singer then springsteen, and as good as waits, in that gruff, silver jews all my favourite singers couldnt sing way (also, i think we need to connect him to the whole indie song writing section of singers--not slick people like chesney, but people like john darinelle, bill callahan, will oldham, and even antecedents, like kirs kristoferson (sp), and shaver, and some of the rockabilly cats.)

and can we actually talk about the lefty borgie dyke folk, its a major guilty pleasure, and i dont know what to do about it (bragg, of course, but dar williams and the indigo girls, etc etc)

and he sang billy bragg, in such a clear way, so close that it sent shivers up my spine, and i was talking about how much i found myself obsessed wtih california lately--and he saing help save the youth of america--and its s deeply silly song, and i know its silly, and i love the beach boys too much to take it seriously

but hearing him singing it--and then hearing a bootleg billy sing the internationale at some concert in belgium--w/o irony, with a suriety adn an earnestness and a devotion, and an openess, it was like all those atheists who love gospel, and the boy had the dying words of christ tattooed up and down his arms, and he believed in the social gospel of jesus christ--he believed in the father, and in socialism...

now im sure that bragg doesnt belive in god, but matthew did--and there is something in this shedding the snake skin of irony and post modernism and bricoloauge and pastiche and all the genre fucking, and singing as loud as you can something you believe in--and you know what--the internationale is actually not a bad coda (and neither are the more hippy sections of jesustalk)

its funny the dying words he chose werent eli eli lama sabach--they were into my hands i commend my spirit--which i never really found impt. the difference between the two of us then, was forsaking vs commendng, and there is something to be said about braggs accepting

yeah, that maybe makes sense -- i've never really understood the appeal of the music or lack thereof by these guys, either. though john clearly has a way with words, and can obviously be a totally entertaining writer about music. and i liked a couple smog songs OK once. and kris knew how to write a song, too - though there are those (including christgau, as i recall) who say he's the flattest singers in human history, and they are probably not all *that* far off.

and do you know what, it doesnt matter

I like a lot of Steve Earle, but it's probably telling about both him and me that my favorite album is his acoustic one (which is way better than his bluegrass one, and rocks harder than some of his rock ones). His last album, I love "F the CC" because it sounds like the Ramones, and the Iraq trucker song is good. Beyond that I don't remember a whole lot of it. He's definitely been running on fumes for a while.

I'm admittedly having trouble coming up with great male alt-country types. I like Lyle Lovett no matter what y'all say, but I won't argue for his pipes.

All I know about Aldean is that he came here from Macon/Atlanta in about '98, scuffled around, wrote some, and got dropped from Capitol a few years back when they were going thru their big internal turmoil. And picked up a manager who caught him one night at the Wild Horse Saloon, that got him the Broken Bow deal. But he's been a Warner/Chappell writer for a good while, I think. Far as I can tell, he's not associated with the MM in any formal way.

Dwight Yoakam's new album does not entertain in the
usual ways, and it does not go out of its way to puzzle or complicate.
Recent critics tend to place brilliant bricoluers above singular
craftsmen. It is why Big and Rich's Muzik Mafia have gotten so popular
and why Lee Ann Womack's critical similarity to the singer-song
writers of the 70s, or the packaging of her album got as much
attention as her immaculately lush voice.

Laura Cantrell's Humming By the Flowered Vine isn't quite as good but it's still worthy, esp. the opener "14th Street." I like to think of her as kind of a low-maintenance Gillian Welch, not nearly as ambitious artistically, which means you don't get stuck with spectacular bores like GW's Soul Journey, but it also means you won't get anything as wonderful as Time (The Revelator) - one of the most underrated records of the decade imo.

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=3127

Didn't this do really well in pazz & jop?? (Which isn't to say that it can't still be underrated, i suppose. And my own aversion to ice-queen quasi-dust-bowl schoolmarms is well known, so beyond that i willl just keep my trap shut.)

So, decided the Dwight album (deliberately didn't read your stylus review yet Anthony but will) is one weird-ass sucker, some of it's kinda forced/phoned-in, and ultimately I'm not real sure his Beatley/Brit-invasion/Jimmy Webb (on the last tune, traditionally DY's big end-of-album, I've knocked around yet another model and so tired, so tired and wanna use these strings here, moment) signify all that much. But, love "Intentional Heartache" and several others. Great guitar playing as usual, he's hip enough to use Bobbye Hall on percussion and one of the guys from the Ventures on it, I enjoy it, but I put it away and go, well, that's over, kinda like the newest Beck album somehow.

And, decided that the Ky. Headhunters is one of those rare records on the cusp of creative incompetence, I like it but the drummer on that record, after I listened real hard to it one day on a big stereo, is out to lunch, some of the funniest non-fills and behind-the-beat but I didn't mean to be playing I've heard in years. Good guitarist. Every song is how to not play the drums but I love it anyway. The Buck Owens tune is good...and I saw them down at the Riverfront playing last week and they were much better there, pretty rocking and I had a great time.

http://www.ouramerica2005.com/

but i didnt hear the drone

the new dwight yoakam album may be more "interesting" than good, i still haven't quite decided yet. i definitely like it, but definitely not as much as his previous one. the second half seems much better than the first half. there is a blatant elvis imitation, and a song that sounds exactly like "walk the line" by johnny cash, but with different lyrics. there's also a song that starts with dwight talking in a sarcastic quasi-proper uppercrust british accent that reminds me of electric six, of all people. elsewhere i always tend to like his singing voice, but i think there's something perfunctory and generic about much of the songwriting that keeps it from connecting with me on an emotional level. or maybe it's his voice that doesn't connect (what frank kogan said about willie nelson once) despite it's beauty. anyway, if somebody thinks they can convince me to get off on the new dwight more than i do, they are welcome to try.

re nicholson, i should also give props to his band, whoever they are, who seem pretty impressive. the song with the "teen spirit" riff (not the MAIN "teen spirit" riff; the one that makes weird al bend his guitar and insert farm animal noises) has the riff building and building and then turning into either a cool sax solo or a cool guitar solo that sounds like a sax solo, i haven't decided which yet. and some of the other songs really swing.

finally, a note on that jason aldean "hicktown" song -- turns out (as i learned in a rentacar friday night) that the heavy fucking riff is really only fucking heavy if your stereo's bass level is turned way up. so do so, i guess....

Trying to figure out the domestic situation in Tim McGraw's "Fries Come with That." The guy's in a tent in Tim's back yard, and Tim's afraid he's gonna hit on his wife, steal his boat? Very odd. A friend, a cousin, a co-worker down on his luck? Good song though.

Got the new Brad Paisley yesterday. Only listened to the first song and the last one--very interesting guitar sounds you don't usually hear on country records, starting the album out. And there's a funny one called "Cornology" which seems to be about Dolly Parton's tits...featuring James Burton on guitar sound effects, and dirty jokes from Little Jimmy Dickens, Bill Anderson (I think), George Jones and Dolly.

And I wish the new Laura Cantrell had more stuff on it like the first track, which hints at girl-group dynamics, and the last one, a pretty amazing piece of work that is folk-country as soundscape territory a la something off that last Chris Stamey album, maybe. And it uses a really effective, simple, swinging gospel kinda bassline under her story of taking a walk in downtown Nashville, past the Alvin York memorial and noted land-grabber president James Polk's grave...it's political and a bit anguished (the Tennessee war hero goes to the big city and gets his ticker-tape parade) without making a huge deal out of it, and does bookend the album nicely, the first song being about a walk down 14th Street in NYC. I want to listen to it again before I make up my mind about it, but it's a very intelligent, and at times beautiful, piece of work--maybe a little over-earnest and boring, not sure yet.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0528,eddy,65746,22.html

i am waiting on a couple of best ofs from universal

Also, Eddie Stubbs does an oldies show on WSM Wednesday nites...and I always learn something. He played a bunch of Wynn Stewart records the other night...WS was the father of the Bakersfield sound, I guess, big influence on Merle, Buck, and by extension the Burritos and Dwight Yoakam. Pretty fine honky-tonk (I got interested after listening to Laura Cantrell's fine cover of "Wishful Thinking" on her new one). And, heard a great Mel Tillis song, his first hit, "Stateside," in which he's in Tokyo and he's got a thing for a geisha (pronounced "gee-i-sha"). And Dave Dudley's "Pool Shark." So now I have to find a Wynn Stewart best-of, ditto on Mel's early stuff ("Stateside" is '59, I think) and Dave Dudley.

caitlin cary & thad cockrell, *begonias* -- listened to this cuz bob christgau said i should. he loves the opening track, which is a sort of lamenting-our-open-marriage duet, and i guess it's pretty nifty as blando alt-country with vaguely pretty singing and a decent melody and no other music to speak of goes. i think i liked the song where some girl tries to escape to califonia and only made it halfway better. i guess lyrics about california let alt-country bands have hooks that aren't otherwise allowed or something. and the one about waiting for some girl named june in january was kinda clever. but still, way too NPR, way too genteel, way too afraid of the messiness of life and afraid of life in general. bob seems to think it's kinda sexy; i think it's kinda sexless. caitlin used to be in whiskeytown, apparently. don't remember if i ever heard them.

bobby bare - *the moon was blue* -- i don't know jackshit about bobby bare. i guess "detroit city" (that's him, right?) is great (but how does it go?) (great title, anyway.) and i think i have a 45 called "alimony" which rhymes with baloney just like in that one jerry reed song. anyway. this album seems like it might be okay. cool song selection -- "everybody's talkin at me," "ballad of lucy jordan" (marianne faithful -- one of her greatest songs, which okay isn't saying much - one of the best songs on the only album by her i ever liked then), "it's all in the game," "shine on harvest moon," "love letters in the sand," "my heart cries for you" (brooks & dunn, maybe? i don' t know yet.) so far, i kinda like the thing.

The mailing came with a reprinting of his "so you're going to prison" article, excerpted from his book that's out of print.

As for Bobby Bare: Turns out I think I like the idea of his album more than its actuality, which is kinda dull. Though it'd be pretty hard for a good singer to do a version of "Everybody's Talkin at Me" that didn't sound kinda great, I suppose (Bare's version has weird ambient techno blipping at the start -- reminds me of the opening of Loretta Lynn's "Portland, Oregon" last year.)

Mel Tillis wrote it.

Probably doesn't fit there exactly, either. Not a trace of Neurosis or Pelican or Euro-vistas in it.

and the eagles and gnr (and n.w.a.? and other people?) probably influenced how songs about cali sounded in their respective daze, too. still - the counting crows stuff surprises me.

Anyone know if his other songs are just as good as this one?

the *dukes of hazzard* soundtrack is an excellent if somewhat obvious collection of redneck rock of many stripes, though even i can't stand jessica's breathy "boots" remake. only recent country artist on it is montgomery gentry, whose "hillbilly shoes" is better than i'd remembered. but there's also allmans, skynyrd, molly hatchet, james gang, stevie ray vaughn, cdb ("south's gonna do it again" always amazes me by how JAZZY it is -- it basically turns into glen miller in the middle!), and the completely insane looong version of ram jam' s "black betty", which my otherwise now wu tang obsessed kid sherman made me play six times in the rentacar this weekend (he'd never heard it before. he hated molly hatchet's singer, though, and whenever montgomery gentry came on he said "is this big & rich"?) also a dirty southern culture on the skids party number that blowfly or hasil adkins would appreciate, a typically worthless piece of blackface bullshit by jon spencer, and a rocking cowpunk tune by the blueskins, who i never heard of before. anybody know who they are?

(okay, that had nothing to do with country, i guess. but i had to say it.)

the soundtrack to the movie is actually on my best country of the year list so far. (i should ask todd if i can review it)

[the cougaresque opening to silvertide's album is pretty much "thundering hearts" (possibly jcm's best song ever), by the way. but the song itself doesn't live up to the opening's great promise. other parts of their album remind me of collective soul crossed with guns n roses, and there is a ballad that sounds kinda trainish or wallflowerish or something like that, but oddly i don't hate it..]

And if he gets any money or impetus and a video is furnished to CMT, he might get played until we vomit and poke out our eyes.

Was probably the old album cut which, indeed, had a hoedown in the mids. There were a few country-ish things on it, some of them very good, like "Right On the Money."

I haven't really gone back to Blaine--I mean the guy has a song about "doctors and lawyers with PhD.'s," and I don't think they get PhD.'s, exactly, do they--sounds like he needed a rhyme with "degree" to me. It's a decent enough album about high school, I guess, couple of good songs. His honesty, as far as it's honest, and his callowness--they seem attractive enough to me. And as my friend pointed out listening to it, where Nashville falls down these days is in writing good melodies, most of the time--never that moment of surprise you get in pop music, and I think he's got a point there.

Dierks I still like OK, but I think he's kind of a singles artist, and that record seems to me to be all about *how* the music is being played (and I think "Lot of Leavin'" *sounds* great), like a Beatles or a Poco record or something minus the "songcraft," and not about the songs, which are nice but the same old trucks and domestic beer and you can't hold onto me 'cause I'm a ramblin' man...plus I don't think I like his haircut...and for me, the ugly question of content rairs up...

>HACKENSAW BOYS -- The fun on this banjo-weirdling Virginny retro-country 10-piece's new *Love What What You Do* feels a bit less forced when its reels get speedy and silly than when they get slow and serious; topics include big buildings, small towns, parking lots, and cunnilingus. "Alabama Shamrock” no doubt has some redneck Irish jig in it.<

I guess that bluegrass stuff like Del Mc is math-rock and to some extent heaven-rock, in the Richard Meltzerian way of thinking. I think of it like I do fusion music--it's mostly not funky or anything, but they think they're being funky, and in my more lenient moments I hear the funkiness of it all--the whole thing of "they playing not the notes, but the molecules" as some Beale Street guy once said. So I guess the way to hear it is live--and that performance I heard on the Opry that night was amazing, by Del and Band.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0531,christgau,66398,22.html

my motivation would be to see kenny and john? are they good live? and does the spectacle scale well? i love it on my tv, but what about from football field's distance? (there'll be live cc tv, i guess though)

>the intertexutal positiong of faiths new single<

i have no idea what this means, anthony! can you de-crypt a little?

the other song faith's summertime sunshine song reminds me of is rebecca lynn howard's pink flamingos one from a couple years ago. guess i'm just a sucker for songs about parties on suburban patios. (i realize that kinda thing might make some of my more suburbaphobic NYC friends cringe, though.)

and the thing about the party on the patio one is that that kind of hasbrook heights suburban utopia is probably almost a nostalgia thing by now; rebecca's pink flamingos were more blatant about the kitsch of it all (as were zz top imitating b-52s in "party on the patio" i guess) , but i have a feeling faith kinda knows the utopia's a lost cause by now too. though then again, i can imagine she and tim throwing great patio parties to this day, so maybe not.

I heard something strange last night, right after I listened to that Anthony and the Johnstons album for the first time, this record by Ian and Sylvia Tyson recorded in '69 and produced by Todd Rundgren, called "Great Speckled Bird." Sylvia's voice actually reminds me of Anthony's in the use of vibrato--she's more annoying than Anthony, whose appeal I haven't yet figured out--but Ian sang OK. Anyway, it's got this French version of "Crazy Arms" that had everyone falling out laughing, but it's a great example of some kind of Burrito Brothers style of playing, with more balls--Buddy Cage on steel guitar and Amos Garrett on guitar, pretty amazing actually, and N.D. Smart on drums. I burned it just to be able to forward thru the singing to hear the band play.

And, I'm real interested in this guy named Jim Ford, there's a piece in the Oxford American on him as a country-soul guy from Kentucky coalmining country who also hung out with Bobby Womack and who apparently was pals with Sly Stone and might even appear on "There's a Riot Goin' On"! That country-soul genre is huge right now in Nashville, too--Frank Black's record tries to do it but doesn't really cut it; if there's a more unlikely person to cover "The Dark End of the Street" I don't know who it is--Anthony maybe?

and this is at a time when being "Authentically country" is out of fashion (almost out of fashion--cf big and rich, southern rock, tim mcgraw/nelly, kenny chesney/bubba sparxx/,cmt crossroads)

and i also find it interesting that you know exactly what she is talking biographically--so going to hollywood is not a general dig on LA, but a spec. reference to her being second on a marquee for a artisitically/finiaclly(sp) bankrupt big remake.

not sure what Xgau sees in the Pinson record - aside from the vox, I just don't find his lyrics very interesting - they're "clever" I guess, but mostly just filled with generalities, you don't get the nice little touches about things like White Rain and Laura Ingalls like in "Hicktown."

in fact there's one song on her album that seems to be some kind of desperate housewives situation, if i'm reading it right (which i may not be; i might even be reading it backwards in fact, and i've been too lazy to check the lyric sheet). obviously it would be better if it concerned a soccer mom selling marijuana (i swear, i have to finally get a bigger cable TV package now, i REALLY want to start watching *weeds*), but it might be okay regardless. in fact some of the slower songs like that one may well sneak up on me over time. or i might wind up despising them, who knows? there's also one about being in paris which seems to say everybody in paris is stoned or something. on the CD cover, it's the last (and therefore "bonus" maybe?) track, with an eifel tower icon instead of a track number! (worst track may well be the overblownedly sappy ballad duet with hubbie tim, or maybe not.) (it should be noted here that it took me something like ten months and four singles for me to realize that i kinda sorta like *his* most recent album after all. i'll still take "drugs or jesus" over pinson's "nothing ever happens in this town" -- same theme -- any day of the week.)

Yeah, I caught it. The women really upstaged the men. Urban and Fogerty reminded me of two men sitting around the salt wafer barrell at ye old tack shop. Fogerty's face continues to pull away from his teeth and one song they performed together, "Sugar Sugar," was truly terrible.

(The only boring one I've seen was Martina & Benetar, but that's just my taste, and Neil Yoko Geraldo's overshlocking Pat's act, as always when I've seen her live)

I thought it was all right but I'm a guitar guy, so Geraldo, who chewed the stage mightily was entertaining. Benatar's obviously used to him but it was amusing watching Martina react graciously to a guitar player who works at blowing everyone else off the stage. Closed with "Independence Day" which was a good choice, Geraldo having to ratchet it back a good bit.

Heart and Wynonna were the best but you would have had to be ready for big band hard rock. The Marshall half stacks were out in force and Nancy Wilson was way into rhythm guitar heroism. Ann Wilson has become rather awesome looking -- coupled with Wynonna, who is intimidating. Closed with Led Zep and Nazareth's edition of "Love Hurts." Tickled to death that it's the heaviest hard rock performance I've heard this week and it was on CMT on Sunday night. I'd buy a CD of the performance with the stupid yack cut out of it. Donna Summer was in the audience and asked the inane question, "What's it like to women in rock," as if she didn't have a good idea, being on the label with Kiss.

Didn't make it through Dolly and Melissa Etheridge.

Naw, Donna was doing rawk records but she had to know what was going on if she was ever in the Casablanca building when Kiss was there with there entourage. She was obviously liking the Crossroads show.

"Yay, we saved Bush! But the war's kinda going uh" And obviously, since then, the polls continue to show more and more turning against the war: the way it's conducted, and even the original (bipartisian) mandate. But still Faithy must hedge her bet, if she doesn't wanta get Dixie Chicked, seriously.

I'm still waiting for Luke's "American by God's Amazing Grace" to come in the mail. Bluntly, not enough death and maiming in the current war to make country artists consider ranting. The audience's great statistical mean may be wavering but it's still not too close to making up its mind. Although I reckon some near Cincinnati and the woman camped in Crawford have made up their minds. The pain's not widely enough distributed, it's in spicks and specks. So there will be no good music from the war, unless you count good country with made for the USO-tour lyrics, which Toby Keith has carved out.

The philosophy of "American by God's Amazing Grace." I well worn out on support the troops rationalizations and bumper stickers. The country was itching for a war and waged it about as poorly as possible. But it's still a remote war for most Americans who aren't in the Guard or who don't have to join the Army or Marine Corps to get out of town. The Guard's essentially broken. Who would join the reserve now? It's the equivalent of saying you want a ticket to the Eastern Front in "Hogan's Hero's."

Can't bang up country too hard for not getting down to the nitty gritty. No one else does either at the risk of being put on a list.

Wonder how LIVE FROM IRAQ is?

Was going to pop for a copy. But the more I looked at the mist surrounding it the more it seemed like it had to be totally duff. I mean, really, O'Reilly interviews 'em what does that mean? He regularly goes on rants about how hip-hop is the end of civilization.

My rule of thumb: If it's first and primary mode of entry into consciousness is through the regular "news and opinion" side of the newsmedia, as art, it's shit. Ties in with my belief that newspaper journalists at big operations write about art that they think is -good- for their readership, a readership considered to be almost the same but slightly dumber than the journalistas upper middle class upbringing. -Live from Baghdad- was a natural. It was from THE SOLDIERS, the one's fighting for our freedom and stuff, and they did it between missions, so pay attention already, they got shot out for you. But does it stink? Hey, that's irrelevant -- it's good for you and good for them.

Spent some time listening to Hot Apple Pie (past the single) today. Boy, what a thin and dry sounding band. Fail.

I spent most of yesterday at the cduniverse.com listening to Bare's back catalog in 30-second bites - got a good sense of what he was doing, but due to shortness of clips couldn't evaluate how well it worked. I see how his staying in country allowed for sentimentality and cornpone sincerity that the hard cool world of '60s pop wouldn't have tolerated, yet he flew with the '60s wind, made a concept album about franchise stores and unemployment, sang folkie standards like "500 Miles" and "Four Strong Winds" but with countrypolitan strings and leaden, swingless choral arrangements adding MOR piety. As Bill C. Malone points out in the liner notes to the Smithsonian country box, "Detroit City" is basically "Sloop John B" set in industrial Michigan (but sans humor, so no cooks throwing fits and grits and no mates going bonkers). "I wanna go home." The strings may have helped his voice to swell, or alternately, fuzzed up its impact. In any event, his using strings now isn't without precedent, but the latter-day strings move and soar and like the rest of the music they seem to be stepping beyond themselves, not just fitting in like in the old days.

Intriguing Bare track from 1967, probably belongs in the category What Were They Thinking?: "The Piney Wood Hills" - is very good, actually, but is out of time; perhaps was intended to cross over to pop, has sentimental lyrics for the country fans about returning to the piney wood hills of home but a rock 'n' roll melody that follows the chord pattern of "I Will Follow Him" (and half a million other rock 'n' roll and doo-wop songs), hence was utterly passé in the pop world but still nowhere near c&w. It didn't chart.

Was "Dropkick Me, Jesus" a Silverstein ditty?

Cowboys and Daddys [RCA Victor, 1975]
Bare's cowboys wonder how come they're in Calgary, eat stew just like in the movies, scoff at poets, fuck cows, and lie about their age. His daddys lie about cowboys. With two good-to-great songs apiece from Shel Silverstein ("The Stranger" comes complete with bleep), Dave Hickey ("Calgary Snow" is as intricate as good Jackson Browne and a lot wiser), and Terry Allen ("Amarillo Highway" melds Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills for a self-conscious age) plus Marty Cooper's theme statement, this does as much for the outlaw ethos as Waylon and Willie put together. A-

(However, Bob didn't like the other two Bare LPs he reviewed that decade.)

Clint Black to play 9/11 anniversary show put on by the Pentagon

RUMSFELD begins rant on Iraq with non-sequitur pre-amble on World War II ---->

"Some 60 years ago, with the war in Europe turning against them, Hitler's forces faced defeat, and in desperation, the Nazi regime carried out some of the most indiscriminate acts of violence that had been seen during the war. With allied forces closing in on Berlin, Hitler ordered destruction of German infrastructure, and sent Germans, even very young children, Germans, out to face almost certain death as soldiers. If Germans were no longer willing to shed their own blood to ensure their right to survival, Hitler said, they deserved to die. The world saw in these acts the true nature of totalitarianism and its capacity for self-annihilation."

[Somehow, this compares to Iraq in 2005. Then a few hundred words are delivered about how things are going OK, or we're winning the war, or the nature of the enemy, etc.... all deleted for the same of this posting.

And then an advertisement, to divert you from all the depressing nauseating shit that was just delivered. Come to the party! We'll be serving tea, coffee, cakes and the marzipan and strudle I know you enjoy so much here in the briefing two hours before showtime.]

"One additional note. Every year since September 11th attacks, Americans have commemorated that anniversary. This year the Department of Defense will initiate an America Supports You Freedom Walk. The walk will begin at the Pentagon and end at the National Mall. It will include many of the major monuments in Washington, D.C. reminding participants of the sacrifices of this generation and of each previous generation that has so successfully defended our freedoms. Freedom Walk participants will be invited to a special performance by country singer Clint Black. And more information about this event will be on the Department of Defense website, www.americasupportsyou.mil."

ive been lisenting to lots and lots of the jerry lee lewis country albums from the 70s, the one that Tosches talked about so much in hellfire--and the weird thing, is that they have none of the high floating big ideas that tosches claims for him (has tosches written on elvis btw?)...but his cover of the bobby bare song with the line "by the day i worked the bars and by the night i worked the bars" is one of the hardest, most blue collar line ive heard, steely in the most literal sense of the word... and then martin sent me some other bare stuff, and as a writer, i wonder why he isnt more respected (cf parsons, hazelwood, even cash). his writing as a solidity that i find really complicated.

the trace atkins song is called arlington, and i find it really interesting, in a few of ways. his delivery is v. soft, and does not rise to any rhetorical heights. he claims the same kind of family authority as chely wright, but people die in adkins, and they are buried. (i have written about this before) but for the first time in history, we have a war that is hugely docu,ented, both inside and outside (note the article in wired this month about soilder bloggers) (articles i have read bout soilder citizens in the last month aside from the blogs, and the net, the daily papers, bbc, cbc, cnn, al jazera, details, radar, time, new yorker, the new york times, the economist, people, gq) articles that i have heard or seen documented the presence of corpses:some of the web/al jazera. al jazera is supposedly the enemy, and for this audience can be dismissed. the web photos have images of boxes wrapped carefully in the american flag. we dont have the spanish loyalist on the hill side, we dont have barney working on the battle fields. its the deadliest combat since vietnam, and vietnam showed the bodies. adkins surely believes in abstractions like god, country, the flag, etc--he is not country joe macdonald, but he also makes this statement: if we want to keep living the way we do, people might have to die. people have died. there is something radical in that, strange and radical.

i sent chuck too many words on paisley, so he wont be publishing it, but todd might be...and its an album that i am really struggling with. its good musically, but politically its more then a little unpleasent.

Hitler didn't invent "scorched earth" policy or "self-annihilation."
"Scorched earth" has been a western modern tactic in strategic war since William T. Sherman's march to the sea or the burning of Atlanta or whatever. And probably before. Krushchev, as a Stalin underling, instigated "self-annihilation" and "scorched earth" before the advance of the Wehrmacht into Russia prior to Stalingrad and the relocation of Soviet leadership to Kubyshev when it was still thought Moscow would fall.

Up to the top of US political leadership, it is relied upon that Americans no nothing about the history of military action and world conflict. This makes it simple for those like Rumsfeld to make superficial and idiotic comments to newspapermen about the nature of war and how Americans don't do things that the villains always do.

How do I know this? I had to study it as a requirement of a very odd education.

And now let me speak briefly about Jon Randall's solo album, the singer-songwriter who furnished Paisley with "Whiskey Lullaby." Man, that's a song to chug a quart of JD in thirty seconds to and wind up unresuscitatable in the emergency room. Rest of the solo album is ballads and sadness and regret except for two mid-tempo r&B boogie rockers and the title cut, which would have been great for Bryan Adams and/or anyone like him. Randall's a great songwriter of sad songs I don't need to hear that much of.

the deadliest combat since vietnam,

Amateurs. Relative to what? In terms of total war, it's not spectacular. The army and marine corps aren't slugging it out against relatively comparable foes defending urban warrens to the teeth.

This is an ambush and soft target war. Roll by or over a mine or roadside bomb, get targeted by a suicide bomber in a car or truck or wearing an explosive vest with a twenty foot blast radius. This ain't shit like Vietnam, where the military was often in contact with an organized regular army of the opposition. The mobilization v. Vietnam was also much greater than the current conflict, even more so if you consider that the order of firepower available per unit is a magnitude or so higher.

There is also a significantly large number of forces in theatre that are corporate outsourced military forces, mercenaries, if you will. At least 20,000 which is a considerable private army payed for by the taxpayer but whose actions are essentially off the books in terms of the regular news. This is radically different from past recent US warfighting.

Consider for an instant the ramifications, morale and command wise, of a mixed military force employed by US corporates, a business which pays six figures a year tax free per individual, with regular army men who earn low five figures a year in the same theatre. And the six figure earners are soldiers who have fled the army for better paychecks.

Paisley had an hour long special on cable this week. I fell asleep about halfway through. He's a good guitarist and singer, but really predictable with the added crippler that he never gets righteous.

Alt-country single (and most rocking suicide song) of the year: "Callin' In Dead" by Mazzy Gardens & the Brick Hit House Band, disguised (all the way down to the attic-wrinkled-for-three-decades generic 7-inch sleeve) to look like a reissue of a minor country hit (on the apparently phony Åmbassador Records) from 1972. But it's actually a great new song.

-Two elite North Vietnamese divisions, the 325th and 304th, were identified coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a force of between fifteen and twenty thousand men...The Marines [at Khe Sanh] braced -- and the base was quickly reinforced to ... 5600 men.-
-- "The Ten Thousand Day War"

My Luke Stricklin "American By God's Amazing Grace" CD still has not arrived. I should've seen it coming.

New York Times belted on Clint Black and the Pentagon's Freedom Walk scheduled for September 11 as inappropriate, deceptive and stupid. Special scorn developed in one sentence for Black's "I Raq & Roll,"
which is amusing for reasons Don and Chuck know. I noticed an uptick in web hits after the end of the weekend from people inexpertly searching Google and getting now what they expected.

If you're jingo, it's better to be Luke Stricklin right now.

>J. D. Blackfoot's "Yellowhand." If he were a young man and this were on something from the industry with muscle, not a label out of Christchurch, NZ, you'd think it belonged in the country rock, emphasis on rock, charts. "The Renegade" -- best noble rebel outlaw horse song, ever. Maybe the only the one, too. Drums by Corky Laing, which add real thump. Also qualifies as rock opera about a horse and an eagle who detested Custer.

no, the one i love is souls' chapel, which I think would be anthony easton's favorite album ever: country gospel with humor heart and hooks! also he's releasing a live bluegrass record this year!

(About to get booted off library computer, so not time to say more.)

Hall is ace on "Testify" and "John the Revelator," but on others he's short on terror and hunger and triumph, though he does swoop effectively enough through the melodies. (Don't know if I'd ever even heard him in Wet Willie, or elsewhere. He just got done touring with Jeff Beck.)

I like the one song that drummer Jon McGee sings, laid back, like a wizened old preacher who's set up his portable stool a few yards down the lane from the county's permanent floating carnival and crap game, and rather than bellow in our ear, he'll slyly cajole us into moving in his direction instead of theirs.

I also like how on "John the Revelator," rather than following the Blind Willow Johnson strategy of spooking you with tenuous otherworldly shivers, the Mighty Jerrys simply nail us to the wall; whereas on "Amazing Grace" they forgo usual strategy - which is to shiver our timbers and nail us to the trees - and instead get gentle and haunting.

I'm now prejudiced in favor of Greg Martin, with whom I've had some friendly email back-and-forth on the subject of what garage rock the Headhunters ought to cover, but nonetheless I think I'm correct in observing that the guy is absolutely throwing flames. (And don't take my word for it; Ronnie Montrose says as much in the CD booklet.)

(I told Greg that the Headhunters could do a killer "Mony Mony." He suggested a revved up "Little Girl" - I'd be skeptical of their pulling off the latter. They could certainly rock the roof off it, but the original has the most contemptuously malicious laugh in all of music, and I doubt that malice is in the Headhunters' repertoire.)

Oh yeah, and one thing I've always liked about "John the Revelator" is that it's about a writer.

One of my favorite recent country songs - one of my favorite recent songs, period - is that Travis Tritt track I've been raving about, "Too Far to Turn Around," which is sung from the position of having salvation within your reach but not knowing how to call for it, as you go down.

(Jeesh, and I used to be a proofreader, too!)

Witty line in "Tell the Truth": "Jesus said to love your neighbor, and not your neighbor's wife." Hall's good on this one too, sings with a jauntiness that goes with the riffs, which are old bawdyhouse, basically; using this bawdyhouse style is canny, given that the style accompanyies an anti-fucking-around song.

Don, you're hearing Hall as trying too hard, while I'm hearing him as not holding the floor or carrying lightning in his fist (in other words, as not being enough of a star). Maybe those two ways of hearing it augment rather than contradict one another? Is it Hall or just the words that sound like they're trying too hard? (Hall didn't write any of the words, I don't think.) Of course, since the words are in his mouth, they're his.

But what I was getting at with my Travis Tritt comments is that Tritt has a Greg Allman hard-burning moan, so you feel the sin that eats into him, and sin or salvation sounds like a lived issue; whereas in the Mighty Jeremiahs the message is about a salvation that's already at hand, game's won and we're telling you what we know, rather than struggling for it. Is that what you're saying? (But the preachiness doesn't bother me so much, since the overall sound supersedes the lyrics for me.)