No Depression Top 40 of 2005

BUT...as a happy ND contributor i will say that "morons with sticks up their asses" is way unfair. really. the guys who run the magazine are smart and dedicated and they've kept it going for 10 years despite (i'm guessing) not getting fabulously wealthy along the way. they like what they like, but they're hardly small-minded about it. they were more than happy -- solicitous even -- to run a little essay i wrote about bubba sparxxx and country/hip-hop hybrids (and yes it mentioned big'n'rich). and even if you don't dig all the people featured in the magazine -- and i don't either -- so what? there aren't many magazines that give space to so many actual independent musicians (in the sense of being on small labels or no label at all), and it helps people find a potential audience that wouldn't hear of them otherwise. an old-fashioned virtue, maybe, but not a bad one.

and also, like all critics' polls (ahem), by virtue of rewarding consensus this one obscures more than it illuminates about the diversity of tastes and interests among the publication's contributors and readers. e.g. see bill friskics-warren's essay accompanying the poll, which says that his own favorite records of the year were m.i.a. and gogol bordello.

but yeah, ok, it's obviously a niche publication and it serves its niche well. that seems like an ok thing to do.

And yeah, point well taken. But still...how many votes could Tim O'Brien or Eliza Gilkyson or Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion actually have gotten? (Who are they? Any good? Maybe one voter gave each of them #1 votes or something? How many voters were there, anyway?) Seeing no-names like that up there but not even, say, Bobby Pinson (who's as much a folkie a a country popster himself to my ears; dry enough for the *ND* aesthetic, I'd think, but maybe not) or, again Gary Allan (not *that* far from Yoakam) weirds me out.

and it hasn't been a year and a half since the bubba article, i only wrote it in about march...but i know what you mean. i personally like a lot of stuff that counts as alt-country, but "bizarre genteel middlebrow folkie delusions about tastefulness, purity, etc," is a persistent problem -- less, maybe, for the people who write for ND than for the people who read it. (like, i don't think grant or peter are hung up on that stuff at all)

having lived in tennessee i'll also say that when you're actually around all that stuff a lot, writing about mainstream nashville can seem about as appealing as writing about wal-mart or coca-cola. it's in some ways easier to appreciate from a geographic and cultural distance.

i agree with chuck that their failure to see what is excellent in nashville today -- and to eschew that in favor of the uber-boring, stiad, state fair/ coffee house/ garrison fucking keillor pap of tim o'brien (a decent player but his albums suuuuuuuuuck) -- is a huge blind spot.

i wrote for no depression a teensy bit in its first year or so. they even let me write some bullshit in '97 about "recombinant roots" -- weirdos who took folk and stretched it out, made it fucked-up, and yeah i connected harry smith and the holy modal rounders and pre-califone 'supergroup' loftus, if i remember correctly -- but this was before the anthology was reissued and that became the most obvious thing to do.

wait, that sounded like bragging. my point was that i did get to write about something outside their confines a tad. but as with the one 'forementioned hick-hop piece, to my mind it's an exception proving the rule.

grant alden was/ is a talented editor and a very fine dude, but especially now that no one gives a fuck about alt-country i have a hard time believing that anyone reads no depression at all.

ps: when i lived in east tennessee (only for four years but that was long enough) i went to see some big pop country acts just for the hell of it and had a great time there, just for the sheer weirdness of it. but then i never really felt fully like i lived there, i always knew i was visiting. okay i shut up now.

I agree with the assessment that most alt-country these days is just hookless folk music, although to be honest I don't hear any commercial country that sounds any better. That's why I was suprised that the last Dwight Yoakam CD (#38 on the ND Top 40) was so good. I hadn't listened to him in years, then along came this CD...it's nice to hear somebody in country music (alt-, commercial or otherwise) writing SONGS again. With HOOKS. I mean, over in the underground, these singer-songwriters are singing these dreadful coffeehouse ballads and in the overground everybody's trying to make Lindsay Lohan music with a twang. So, even though Yoakam's been around so long it's easy to take him for granted, he waylaid the competition on both sides.

Let's face it - Kasey Chambers is supposed to be the hip underground? Keith Urban represents the commercial world? Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...

xxpst

Rolling 2005 Country Thread

I do not think both editors live in Nashville now. I bought an issue awhile back and recall noticing that(but I do not have the issue near me to say specifically where they live). Plus, contributing writer Geoff Himes lives in Baltimore, and I am sure some of their other writers live around the country as well. I wonder how Grant and Peter would react if their writers pitched pop-country features or reviews?

That's not an indictment, by the way, just a flat-out observation.

#12 Nov-Dec 1997
Ricky Skaggs
#34 July-Aug 2001
Patty Loveless
#40 July-Aug 2002
Kelly Willis
#43 Jan-Feb 2003
Alison Krauss
#59 Sept-Oct 2005
Nickel Creek

Yea, it's a niche magazine, but if they can reach out now and have articles on Lizz Wright and Mavis Staples, why not pop-country? The Beat magazine is a niche reggae, carribbean, and African magazine, and they have a once-a-year dancehall(commercial reggae) issue, and a columnist who covers dancehall, ever if their main focus is on more 'traditional' sounds.

xp well, Huk sort of answered the Ricky Skaggs question. (But the artists he listed are almost all more bluegrass than pop-country.)

They alos review dancehall throughout the year, even if most of the people with lengthy columns tend not to like it. (Incidentally, it's going to start putting out only four issues a year, according to the most recent issue. I suspet it is on its way out altogether.)

JBR OTM.

well that's always been the joke, hence the long-running (but recently if lovingly retired) tagline "whatever that is."

here's the thing: "alt-country" started out as a way to identify -- and pay attention to -- stuff that was not on the pop charts or the commercial radio stations. so the only stuff that was sort of de facto excluded was anything that was available in those places, the assumption being that it was well-attended to elsewhere. it was also -- to a degree probably underappreciated in yr liberal coastal bastions -- a political and cultural stance of sorts against NOT blue-collar culture (as chuck notes) but the sprawling mcMansionated ford explorified ess-you-vee yoo-ess-ay megachurchgoing exurbs that are the real heart'n'soul of CMT and GAC's demographic profile. which does not excuse turning a deaf ear to ace pop wherever it may be found, but at least to some degree explains the sense of purpose. (when politics not infrequently peeks its head out in ND, it's almost universally of the liberal-populist variety.) one of the puzzles of the whole thing, really, is alt-country's joining of traditionalist (not to say reactionary) aesthetics with liberal/progressive politics. but of course that commingling goes back at leasst to the outlaw willie-waylon-kris school, which in turn obv. came as much out of the neofolkie singer-songwriter movement as it did out of nashville. so yeah, it's more properly understood i think as derivative of the folk tradition -- with all of its admitted baggage -- than commercial country, which is why they're more likely to dig it when dolly does her bluegrass thing than when shania does her pop-metal thing.

but so anyway, even tho there's obviously lots of good stuff being done in commercial country, it's just outside the bailiwick of ND for the most part (with notable exceptions like Lee Ann Womack -- at #12 there on the poll -- and the Dixie Chicks, who get lots of ND love). if you define yourself as "roots music that's not on the mainstream charts," which is as close a definition as i can get of ND's range of interest, then...you don't do much coverage of the mainstream charts. when brad paisley stops selling so many records and puts out a gospel bluegrass album on dualtone or something, i'm sure he'll get some ND love. and at that point he'll be glad to have it.

i thought that was the alt-country audience.

>one of the puzzles of the whole thing, really, is alt-country's joining of traditionalist (not to say reactionary) aesthetics with liberal/progressive politics. but of course that commingling goes back at leasst to the outlaw willie-waylon-kris school<

So you're saying that Willie and Waylon (and David Allan Coe etc.) were traditionalist aesthetically why, exactly? Because they were harking back to '60s Dylan or something? Not sure if that's the same as alt-country's allegiance to how country sounded back before most alt-countryphiles were born (even if it doesn't actually *sound* like country did then -- though then again, maybe that just means Wilco are prog how Willie was prog, maybe not really traditionalist after all. Though Wilco are an extreme case in this world, I suppose.) Anyway, my point I guess is that the outlaws didn't tend to sound repressed and reined in like alt-country does; they were wild and wooly, and sonically they often seemed to be doing a pretty good job keeping up with '70s hard rock, even maybe disco in some cases...

i thought that was the alt-country audience.

not hardly. i mean, most alt-country acts come from the south and midwest. one of the unfairest generalizations about alt-country is that it's a buncha carpetbagging slickers dressing up cowboy. i lived in knoxville for a long time and there's a great big alt-country audience there, and people like lucinda, steve earle, lyle lovett, alison krauss, etc. pack the houses. i mean, there's a big commercial country audience too -- kenny chesney's from knoxville, and don't they know it -- but see, again, that helps fuel the alt-country scene. it's harder to get excited about nashville pop when it's presented to you as part of the dominant suburban evangelical gay-bashing bush-voting culture.

I originally thought that alt-country DIDN'T mean:
(1) all the popular MOR stuff in the middle (shania twain)

I've been reading ND off and on since it's inception, and to their credit, they KNOW that "alt-country" can be stretched to mean anything at any time. Do they still have the slogan: "Alt-Country (Whatever That Is)?"

And yes, I agree - if Brad Paisley or even George Strait had rockabilly haircuts, dressed a little funkier (like Joe Ely in his early-80's cowpunk period) and recorded for Yep Roc or some other indie label, the hipster crowd would love them.

yeah, but they certainly seem to know what it isn't.

well, they were explicitly reacting against the commercial country trends of the era -- rawer sound, no string sections, etc. those guys (and their decidedly non-liberal-coastal fans) were bitching about poppified country way before robbie fulks got to it.

definitely true that contemporary alt-country doesn't have a david allan coe to its name, but not all of it sounds repressed either. what it doesn't tend to have is big-bam-boom production, which is a problem depending on how much you like big bam boom, but plenty of it rocks. (steve earle's acoustic album, e.g., is actually his hardest-rocking record, for my money.) try, say, scott miller's "goddamn the sun." or the title track on robbie fulks' "let's kill saturday night." or some of the stuff on neko case's live album (great cover of "train from kansas city").

Do they still have the slogan: "Alt-Country (Whatever That Is)?"

It has recently been changed to "Surveying the past, present and future of American music." Which should maybe say "roots music" to make it more accurate, because i don't see ND doing take-outs on young jeezy anytime soon.

(Also see: Roseanne Cash.)

xp

Except Shania pushes C&W's boundaries way way way more than anybody on that No Depression list (and also rocks harder too).

Ha ha, that's great. (What happened to his singing voice, though? Was he born without one? I vaguely remember him singing okay way back on *Guitar Town,* but now he ranks with the worst singers on the planet.)

wait, is that a cover of the Swans song!! a country tribute album to the swans would make my year.

no deanna carter on that list makes me say boooooo! too poppy, i guess. when antiseen makes the cover of no depression, i will subscribe. they are great roots rockers.

yeah, i think that's all true. (altho to be fair i think country-pop enthusiasts can oversell the merits of the music as much as alt-country diehards.) i think there's a cultural barrier there for a lot of people, just as much as there is with hip-hop. i love stuff from all of these genres, so i'm as bothered by people sealing themselves off from one or another as anyone. but it's not just a "fussy collegiate" thing. i know some hardcore good-ol-boy types who love junior brown and robert earl keen but get downright hostile toward what they think of as wimpy suburban minivan country. alt-country has a real blue-collar following (if you don't believe it, go see steve earle play somewhere south of baltimore).

Except Shania pushes C&W's boundaries way way way more than anybody on that No Depression list (and also rocks harder too).

i know.

I voted for her! as did some other writers, I'm pretty sure. We should have placed her higher, though. Next year, I'm strategizing. There were only 44 voters, so a #1 for Shooter Jennings or Miranda Lambert or Gary Allan or whoever could do some damage.

None! I never even heard of him til now. But now I want to hear him!

I really like "All I Wanna Do Is Play Cards"
Apparently, he's about to open for Chuck Prophet in the UK.

haha, if only. but no. still a good song tho.

politics. it's the only reason i can think of for anyone to listen to steve earle these days.

or force of habit. i liked his fuck the fcc song -- it sounded like the ramones. for me, his first two records, plus half of copperhead road, plus his first two post-jail records plus half of the third one -- a total of, uh, 5 -- are all worth the trouble. which is more than i can say for a lot of people. but he has been on the snoozy side for a while, yes. and selling "the revolution starts now" for use in a protectionist/dirty-furriners truck commercial didn't exactly burnish his socialist street cred, either.

TS: Whiskey bottle vs. Jesus

Junior Brown is okay, although his albums don't 100% convince me. And that includes the live album that came out this year.

TS: Lone Justice or Cruzados or Drivin' & Cryin' or Green On Red or Del Fuegos or Jason & The Scorchers or Long Ryders or Bodeans?

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:8x7tk6jxqkrg

As is his wife's best album:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:4ll67uq010jd

Which says a lot about how their schtick works best in small doses.

Hey wait, shouldn't Mountain Goats be on the list?? (I have nothing against Kanye and S-K being on there -- as I said in my first post, I find that interesting -- but aren't Mountain Goats more alt-country?)

Bodeans/Drivin' & Cryin'/Lone Justice: safe AAA music. I like the Bodeans and D&C at one point, but now I think they suck as bad as Lone Justice.

Del-Fuegos: thought they were a breath of fresh air in the synth-o-centric 1980's, but I think thy're deadly dull now.

Everybody else: I heard a song here and there back in the eighties and liked all these bands, although I never got around to buying an album. I wonder what I'd think of them now, 20 years down the road. Maybe I'll get a Long Ryders LP next time I see it in the used bargain bin.

indie folky singersongwriter story song = alt-country, right?

(which was my point) (plus, sufjan is up there)

*Smoke* is a rocking album, almost ac/dc metal at points and with beautiful southern rock guitar tapestries elsewhere (but with vocals that are either too introverted or not mixed high enough, i dunno which. or maybe the singer just liked michael stipe too much.)

Jason and Scorchers peaked with their first two EPs, though a couple later Ringenberg albums still contain one fairly kicking track each.

(Other cowpunk thoughts of mine are on that thread Scott linked to.)

they ran a tMG story once but generally speaking No Depression don't wanna know about no Mountain Goats - I think one of the hallmarks of No Depression-approved music is "somewhat accomplished musicianship," especially where the acoustic guitar is concerned = tMG don't qualify

1) Charlie Poole: You Aint Talkin to Me
2) Bob Dylan: No Direction Home
3) Johnny Cash: The Legend
4) June Carter Cash: Keep on the Sunny Side
5) Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run
6) VA: Night Train to Nashville Vol. 2
7) Doug Sahm: The Complete Mercury Masters
8) Roky Erickson: I Have Always Been Before
9) Ray Charles: Pure Genius: Complete Atlantic
10) The Band: A Musical History
11) Elvis Costello: King of America
12) Jimmy Webb: The Moon's a Harsh Mistress
13) Son Volt: Retrospective
14) Shel Silverstein: Best of
15) Blind Arvella Gray: Singing Drifter
16) VA: Good For What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows
17) Jelly Roll Morton: Complete Library Of Congress
18) Rosanne Cash: King's Record Shop
19) VA: One Kiss Leads to Another: Girl Group Sounds
20) VA: Does Anybody Know I'm Here? Vietnam Through the Eyes of Black America

This list made me realize I'd forgotten all about the Roky Erikson anthology

based on that list, and based on my afternoon trying to find some of the stuff mentioned on the rolling country thread that i haven't heard yet -- in williamsburg, unfortunately -- i'd define alt-country as any and all roots music that indie rock record stores are actually willing to stock. i could have easily picked up almost all of the no depression top 40 in williamsburg if i tried hard enough and if i cared (though probably no nickel creek or patty loveless). but i live in the wrong neighborhood to find a gary allan record, that's for sure. then again, considering what they charge for cd's at those stores, i'm not sure why i should care.

One thing ND does, and does well, is the long historical feature on a major, often overlooked figure. That will bore lots of folks--me I dig history. Mazor's fairly important Lil Miss Cornshucks epic is the best example of that. I can't think of another state side music publication that would have run it, let alone made it a cover.

ha, ditto.

I haven't heard this, never paid much attention to those guys, but I like their newer *Electric Blue Watermelon Screwed and Chopped EP.* I'm not making this up! I wonder if *No Depression* reviewed it.

actually, it syrups it down more than juicing it up, of course, but somehow that helps (as does the fact that it's just an EP, probably.)

Outed! :) Hi Jesse!

2) You are not wrong about Marty Stuart's vague rockabilly leanings. At one point, a few of the country artists on Columbia's roster were being steered in a Springsteenish "roots-rock" direction (like Rodney Crowell), and Marty's self-titled Columbia album reflected that. Then when he pressed on to MCA, his first album for them (if not one of the first) was HILLBILLY ROCK, featuring a title track that kinda leaned in that direction.

3) Even though Joe Ely had his "introspective songwriter" moments ala Steve Earle, the honky-tonk and rockabilly influences on his earliest albums kinda balanced it out, so it was easier to take coming from him. I like him, although the most recent J.E. album I have (1987's LORD OF THE HIGHWAY) is a shade boring.

4) If ya gotta talk about powerpop country, don't skip over Roseanne Cash's SEVEN-YEAR ACHE (my, did she get boring later on) or Foster & Lloyd (in general). Or if you wanna get MORE esoteric: Brownsville Station's "I Got Time" or selected tracks from the Raspberries' SIDE 3 LP.

Apparently Carlene has gotten clean and has been performing some. Would love to hear a new album from her. It's been, what, ten years?

Robbie Fulks called this era country's "integrity explosion," where quirkier artists like Dwight Yoakam and Mary Chapin Carpenter were coming up and getting hits.

You know those days are gone, right?

Yeah, but I hate integrity, so good riddance! (Actually, I did like "Achy Breaky Heart" though, and a handful of Mary Chapin hits, and several heaping handfuls of Garth hits. But I never had any use for the even more integral Lyle -- talk about a total stinker of a singer -- or K.D., who also had hits back in those days.) But pop-country is better now; was better in the '80s too, actually. (And yep, I did see yr Bocephus thread, Rev., and posted on it lots) (and not only did I not forget Seven Year Ache, the new-wave-haircut peak of Rosanne Cash's career, but I mentioned it upthread and named it my #5 country reissue of this year on my Nashville Scene ballot, though as I said probably Roky deserved that slot more) (and good point about Brownsville Station! I've got *Motor City Connection* and the self-titled red album on the shelf here, and *Yeah!* standing permanently at the ready in my DJ bag should I ever get called on for another spinning gig in the middle of the night. Which album was "I Got Time" on, though? Cub Koda had NO integrity, and good for him!)

2) I know you like the champion the underdogs just 'cause they're underdogs, but even through the eyes of nostalgia, 80's pop-country is just as bad as what's out there now. I'd love to go against the grain and say that Gretchen Wilson is a prophet and we all should listen, but if it don't fit, I'm not gonna force it - I'm not really hearing anything there (same goes for the 80's "urban cowboy" stuff).

3) "I Got Time" was on Brownsville Station's A NIGHT ON THE TOWN album. To me, Cub Koda was just as important to the D-town rock scene as Iggy Pop, Wayne Kramer and George Clinton. Seven albums, and only two of them are horrible (MOTOR CITY CONNECTION and AIR SPECIAL), but the other five LP's wipe the floor with the Detroit Cobras. But we were talking about alt-country...

My favorite '80s country artists, in some order or other: John Anderson, John Conlee, Terri Gibbs, K.T. Oslin, Bellamy Brothers, Lacy J Dalton....eh, I gotta be forgetting some, but there's a few. Though as I said on the Hank Jr thread, "All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down" might well be my favorite country hit of that decade. (Don't worry, I won't try to convince you to buy any Juice Newton or Sylvia records, though I like mine just fine.)

And oh yeah, "Battleship Chains" was always better than "Keep Your Hands to Yourself."

My mixed feelings for Gretchen are documented elsewhere (but she is far from the best thing that's' come out of Nashville in the past few years. Maybe not even in the top ten.)

About two of the six acts of Xhuxk's small list of 80's country acts he loves has some kind of traditional/alternative appeal, which he claims to be skeptical of. (And then there's John Conlee, who going by the one album I have, was on the fence - sounds like he couldn't decide whether to stay in the honky-tonk or go full-tilt crossover.)

"Achy Breaky Heart" sounds like "Battleship Chains" turned sideways, but I still like "Battleship" in spite of itself.

and i must've misread your earlier brownsville post. now i am trying to remember why the hell I still have *motor city connection*. one of these days i'll put it on and report back.

i never noticed the achy breaky/battleship similarity, but yeah, i think you're kind of right.

the judds are yet another act who peaked on an EP (the debut). and the kendalls were WEIRD: a dad and daughter singing cheating songs about each other, what the hell? including one called "pittsburgh stealers"! i have three LPs by them I ain't getting rid of.

and don't forget big & rich, whose debut album is drenched in power-pop signifiers in both melody and harmony. how the trad power-pop crowd missed that album is completely beyond me. or maybe they didn't miss it and nobody told me.

well, i'm guessing the trad powerpop crowd might prefer their pop "purer" -- i.e., without raps and funk beats and metal guitars and queen harmonies and cossack disco breaks and spaghetti western interludes attached. so maybe it just confused them! and they also, as scott says above, tend to opt for stuff less pop and less powerful than their name implies.

It was also printing pro-electric-Dylan pieces by Paul Nelson, Tony Glover, and others: the argument got heated, just as arguments get heated here. I've rarely looked at No Depression, but if the mag isn't carrying such arguments - as opposed to, "Oh, look, we're expanding our coverage by saying nice things about this and this and this which we'd previously ignored" - they're probably not really serving their readers.

I assume (hope) that most people who write for ND also like music that doesn't fit that magazine's mission, but that doesn't mean you have to vote for them in a poll in that magazine. I'm not voting for the Hold Steady and M.I.A. in the Nashville Scene poll.

Ry Cooder?

The Mary Gauthier album is totally ridiculous, but it's hardly pure and tasteful. When I heard it I was reminded of a story that my friend Jim once told: a Famous Conductor was rehearsing Handel's "Messiah"; a Famous Opera Singer Whom The Conductor Did Not Much Respect had just finished her solo, and the conductor stopped the music, turned to the orchestra, and said, "Gentlemen, we have just witnessed the mad scene from the 'Messiah.'" Or perhaps it could be a National Lampoon a parody of Lucinda Williams–style Velvets-Neil-Dylan-Patti-influenced alt-countryisms. Possible ad slogan, "Let my voice be your entrance to the gaping pit."

Oh, and middlebrow ideas of risk and audacity are mine as well, pretty much, which is why I was such a fan of the Stooges and Sex Pistols. The Gauthier album has at least one potential masterpiece, "I Drink," though I hope someone will do it better than she has. Surprisingly enough, Blake Shelton's restrained version is less effective than her overwrought one.

If only this were true. I can't think of anybody in country over or underground whose trying to sound like Lindsay. Were you thinking of any of her songs in particular, or were you just using "Lindsay Lohan music" to signify "pop music with teen leanings," or something?

To the Shania defenders (Xhuxk and everybody else):
I'm not gonna think she's cool for a MINUTE just 'cause she sounds like warmed-over Simpson sisters (a/k/a Ashlee and that other one).

And this makes no sense, given that (1) Ashlee and that other one don't sound much alike at all, actually, and (2) Shania doesn't sound much like either. Well, honestly, I've not dived deeply into Shania, so she's a subject for further research. The only connection I can think of is that John Shanks, who produces Ashlee, goes for something of a Mutt Lange arena-guitar tone, but the melodies (guitar melodies and vocal melodies) aren't much like Leppard's or Shania's. Again, as with Lohan, are you hearing actually affinities to Ashlee and Jessica, or rather are you choosing them because of what they represent? But, melodies aren't similar, grain of voice isn't similar, vocal attack (stuff like drawl, growl, melisma, vibrato) isn't similar, at least from what I've heard.

(Also, Shania doesn't much represent the country mainstream anymore. She also doesn't represent standard-issue Frank Kogan ideas of risk and torment, whereas one of the Simpson sibs does, at times.)

Wow, can't believe I'm going to play devil's advocate here, but I'd say Sleater-Kinney sound way more like Lucinda Williams (see also: alt-country's apparent roots in Velvets and Patti, as Frank points out above) than Bubba or Banner do (neither of whom, to their detriment as far as I'm concerned, included any county-type stuff on their '05 releases -- hey, did Bubba's even ever come out, come to think of it?) And as somebody mentioned above, maybe Kanye's ticket into this world is his Ray Charles samples. Anyway, I guess the point, which this thread kind of reiterates, is that "alt country" and "country" might well be two completely different sounds; i.e., "alt country" may not really have all that much to do with country in the first place -- or, okay, that's wrong, but at least maybe country is not the *main* element in alt-country. So maybe qualifications for this list aren't the same as qualifications for the Nashville Scene poll after all. (And I'm sure ND'ers would say it's not all alt-country anyway; theoretically, it's folk and blues and gospel and soul too, though take those last three with a grain of salt. I'm sure they would have loved Los Lobos, too, though I'm not sure how much they deal with Latin rhythms. Were there any on that Ry Cooder album?) One guy who I think *would* have made more sense than S-K or Kanye on the list above is Buck 65, who I maybe should have included on my Nashville Scene ballot but his best-of this year was mostly all old stuff to me (plus I first got an advance in like June '04, so it's not like it was on my mind much this year; it seemed old in at least two different ways, though it's great.) Not sure what *new* hip-hop could have counted as country in '05 -- "Rodeo" by Juvenile, maybe? No, maybe not. And either way, even if it's country, it's probably not alt. Anyway....I'm curious about what Frank said about including the alt vs. pop argument (a la this thread) in the actual magazine; does anybody know if that ever happens? Has anybody *defended* pop country in No Depression, and if so, has anybody ever argued back? I get the idea the magazine is too polite for much arguing, but maybe I'm wrong, and I do agree it would be more useful if the argument was included. (Then again, does anybody defend pop metal or even blues-based hard rock in *Decibel*? Does anybody defend Aaron Carter's rap tunes in *Murder Dog*? ND obviously isn't alone.)

wish me luck, I'm attempting to address *some* of this in a fairly long piece I am working on for ND right now, it's actually going to be fairly difficult to do it right, I think. I bet someone has defended it, but so far I haven't been able to find the back issue of ND that would contain it. One thing that always struck me is the way that a lot of people believe that "country-rock" began with the Dillard-Clark records, whereas I think that was just "folk-rock," and of course there's a big difference between Dillard and Clark and the Burrito Brothers doing "Dark End of the Street," because at least Gram Parsons had some ideas about glamour and risk that I don't find in folk-rock. I think the recent autobio of Dave Van Ronk, for example, and this year's Dylanology-in-spades, have some relevance, obviously. I want to talk about Nashville's relationship to "pop music" in quotes, I guess, and it seems like this last year might provide a whole lot of examples for me to write about.

it's been that way for decades. pop music places a huge stake on cutting-edge production.

Again, I haven't seen the issue in question or read No Dep. in a few years, but my problem isn't so much that No Dep. includes Kanye or S-K or Sufjan or whatever, but that I suspect those records aren't included because of any thoughtful consideration about how they fit the musical niche No Dep. purports to cover but because the writers in question just happen to like those records, which is fine, but if I picked up an issue of The Source to see what they thought the best hip-hop records of the year were, it wouldn't be helpful to me to see Coldplay on the list just because some of the writers liked Coldplay. (Unless they conceived Coldplay as "hip-hop" and made a case for why, which would be interesting.)

On the larger point, I'm pretty non-partison when it comes to the mainstream/alt divide in country/roots music. But I think this has been a particularly bad year for "alt" country and a particularly good year for mainstream country, which makes the No Dep. list look worse than in might have in other years. I only voted for two "alt" records on the Scene poll (Amy Rigby -- very debatably country -- and Robbie Fulks, which just slipped in at #10). If I'd voted last year, I would have voted for Todd Snider, Jon Langford, Drive-By Truckers, Loretta Lynn, etc., all of which I assume are No Dep faves.

i think she qualifies as pop (thanks to pop's generous open-door policy), but her detractors are quicker to define her by what she supposedly isn't (not-jazz, not-country) than whatever the hell she is. npr music maybe, but there was something that got her out of that ghetto and into the mainstream.

BILL FRISKICS-WARREN, senior editor
1. Brooks & Dunn, Red Dirt Road
2. Bettye Lavette, A Woman Like Me
3. Patty Loveless, On the Way Home
4. Caitlin Cary, I'm Staying Out
5. Drive-By Truckers, Decoration Day
6. June Carter Cash, Wildwood Flower
7. Hank Williams Jr., I'm One Of You
8. Shelby Lynne, Identity Crisis
9. George Strait, Honkytonkville
10. Dixie Hummingbirds, Diamond Jubilation
11. Louvin Brothers tribute, Livin' Lovin' Losin'
12. Howard Tate, Rediscovered
13. Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez, The Trouble With Humans
14. Eric Bibb, Natural Light
15. Joe Barry, Been Down That Muddy Road
16. Jayhawks, Rainy Day Music
17. Dolly Parton tribute, Just Because I'm A Woman
18. Jolie Holland, Catalpa
19. Bottle Rockets, Blue Sky
20. Amy Allison, No Frills Friend

And you suspect this because? This is going to sound totally assholeish but you haven't read the magazine, so what's the point of the suspicion? The Senior Editors all got space to consider, pretty damn thoughtuflly I think, their picks and their sense of music/politics/culture/whatever in '05. Those comments don't explain everything about the ND list but they make pretty clear that ND isn't just about covering records that sound like what alt.country is supposed to sound like--it hasn't been for years.

I don't know if it all comes down to this (the political critique on this thread seems pretty right to me) but I basically agree. "I'll puke if that jukebox plays John Cougar one more time"--even though obviously alt.country fans probably like a lot of Coug. It's the idea of him they can't stand.

what IS the idea of him?

xp (to Roy's post about Cougar.)

And even more so, the idea of the Eagles (and most of their music), I'm guessing.

The *Voice* ran a feature by Kurt Gottschalk last month, the week of the CMA Awards in New York, about the local alt-country scene(s) in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and this quote from local musician Alex Battles might be as succinct a definition of alt-country as anything on this thread:

>"The sound of country music that's played in Brooklyn doesn't go past 1975, which is when the Eagles' influence changed the sound," he said. "We all ride the train every day and we all like train music, which is Johnny Cash. Folk music is supposed to be the songs that everyone knows. They're easy to play on guitar and everyone knows the words. That means Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and the Beatles, and I can't play Beatles songs because they've all got ninths in them.

"It's not like we're not adding anything new to it," he says. "We're just not taking from anything that came after it," he says.<

(And of course the Eagles were to L.A. and cocaine as the Velvets were to N.Y. and heroin; I swear they had a lot in common, though that's not an argument I much want to start here.)

[oh yeah and i'm pretty sure it's unfair for xxuxk to take some random asshole quote from a brooklyn guy no one's ever heard of to stand for all alt.country fans or no depression writers]

I think alt-country fans balk at John Cougar's drum sound more than his image, which is a shame, and which they'd never admit of course. (He had a protest-song CMT hit a couple years ago btw with Travis Tritt, who is apparently rather right-leaning, from what I read.) (But yeah, I agree, if CMT sounded more like *Lonesome Jubilee* than like "American Fool* they might not mind so much. Fiddles are fine; it's powerchords that freak them out.)

And hell, *I* balk at the idea of Montgomery Gentry! It's their music that I find hard to resist.

This is as close as this thread has gotten to defining the difference here.

only that you seem
to take it as gospel truth;
who the xuxk's that guy?

wilco plays train songs?
ryan adams doesn't like
power chords? i say!

What post-Eagles country music do they draw on, Matt?? I'm curious. (I guess Wilco draw on Radiohead, by now, but by now is Wilco even considered alt-country anymore?) The part of the Brooklyn guy's quote that I thought rang true, as I said, is that cutoff. The assumption is that c&w somehow went downhill after the mid '70s, except when it looked back to before then. I'd love to hear alt-country examples where this is not the case.

(And oh yeah, Beck's album had Latin rhythms too. Did Kanye's? I'd have to go check.)

I like Xgau's definition: alt.country is bar music for people who hate techno, or something like that?

alt.country is all
"pre-lapsarian," it's true,
which is some BS

but the eagles' main
influence on country was
80s/90s, no?

What about his lyrics? Perceived as hackneyed in ways that altcountry faves are not?

Most pop country is bar music for people who don't like techno, too! (Except when it is stadium music for people who don't like, techno, I suppose.)

Well, one of them can sing, and the other can't. And one has songs which are about 100 times more catchy than the other one. (But I actually remember liking Earle OK at his most Coug-like; I will buy another copy of *Guitar Town* again one of these days, I promise.)

i like some alt.country, and i'll even cop to liking the dreaded son volt, but GAH THOSE LYRICS -- and i betcha most son volt fans are in it for the guitar sound and not cuz they think farrar is "deep" in any way.

speaking of alt-country vs. Music Row, or political differences, I'm surprised no one has mentioned that new Chris Willman book Rednecks & Bluenecks on this thread yet. I like it a lot, and it's basically about a LOT of what's being discussed here.

I almost bought that Willman book at Mondo Kim's a few weeks ago; it looked really intriguing (even if EW does think Kathleen Edwards made the fourth best album of 2005,and Big & Rich made the worst one. Which probably wasn't Chris's doing, though he did put Martina McBride's dullest album ever in his top 10.) Anyway, I should try to get ahold of a review copy, obviously.

but it's true that if steve earle can dance i've never seen any evidence of it.

so nothing you hear on contempo C&W radio sounds like them? remember, I DON'T LIKE THE WHOLE (current) TEENPOP THING, so it all sounds like homemade shit to me! don't ask me to distinguish one from the other; all i know is that they all stink.

i may have HEARD those girls, but i never LISTENED to them. life's too short...

*feels a chill in the air*

It's been four years since the last album from Giant Sand (Cover Magazine doesn't really count), and Howe Gelb is still making albums to please himself. Which is as it should be, since no one makes records that sound quite like this: a shambolic, atmospheric mixture of hushed tones, deadly distortion, tender poetics, and rock & roll. There are some new members in the Giant Sand family, but they sound just as versatile and fit as the too-busy members of Calexico, Joey Burns and John Covertino. The songs are great, featuring Gelb's often near-whispered vocals, pretty resonant piano, acoustic guitars, and some of the most crushing distortion ever recorded (which is likely to appear and disappear almost anywhere). Take the lovely "Classico," where the guitar solo is traded off between an acoustic nylon-string guitar and an electric with the amp turned up WAY past 11, or the multitude of hairy guitars in "NYC of Time" that disappear, giving way to a very nice piano segment. Gelb's voice gets the distorto treatment on "Remote," and "Drab" has some fine buzzing prepared piano. But it's not all about distortion (which really comes and goes); there's an acoustic element to every track and most of these songs would work as purely acoustic pieces. "Rag" is just a piano rag with drums, and "Les Forçats Innocents" is not only sung in French, but has a tasty mandolin accompaniment. And only Howe Gelb would have the good sense to include a Sex Pistols/Waylon Jennings medley. Almost 20 years on, and Howe Gelb and his Giant Sand compatriots have made concessions to no one, and if you're a fan, that's a very good thing.

it was spotty, but i'm still completely infatuated with that "el paso"/"out on the weekend" medley.

they're more noize than people give them credit for. in their best moments they're a droney sludge-metal spaghetti-lounge band.

x-post

Dude, Clutch are awesome. "Cypress Grove" funks like a motherfucker.

ok, I LOVE jlp, I have some stuff of his that nobody but NOBODY needs to own & can recite "fire of love" from memory, but I have become convinced that he was actually tone deaf. Listen for any melody that's actually ON the chords - nothin'. Listen to "yellow eyes" from Mother Juno (or "The Breaking Hands," or "Eternally Is Here" from Pastoral Hide & Seek and tell me the guy singin' actually could sing a straight melody.

This is hardly on topic but realizing this was pretty eye-opening for me.

isn't that song on the las vegas story?

i never listened to pastoral hide & seek that much, i must admit. i never listened to lucky jim that much either. i should go back and re-listen. mother juno is godhead to me (other than the first album and miami.) breaking hands makes me wanna cry like a baby. port of souls might be my favorite gun club song. for real. wilco never reduced me to tears. Shit! there are i go again. sorry!

I'd like Clutch more if they actually did boogie more. "The Mob Goes Wild" on the one before the most recent did but that was about all for that one. Haven't listened to the new one. I always expect big rock things from Clutch, either because of the packaging or titling, and then it never quite happens.

the alt-country phenomena brings out some of the popism/rockism debate that ilm likes to go on about. misguided snobbishness, listening to so and so is "smarter" than listening to whatsherface, etc. i know it brings it out in me. it can't be helped.

Heh. I think of it as fitting the "music that is good for you, like vitamins for the brain" slot. This in a country where the A&E channel went from being "TV that was good for you," a poor man's PBS, to documentaries on the flavors of American white trash, bounty-hunting, life in tattoo parlors and some welders in orange county who build the same custom chopper over and over. So I see the theoretical need, sort of.

Wait, edd, are you saying that Dylan doesn't count as glamour and risk [no, you're not; you couldn't be] or are you saying that Dylan isn't folk-rock? That doesn't make sense either: the term was invented to characterize Dylan, Byrds, et al.

Oh sure he is. After all, he played drums for one of the Simpson sibs.

How about liking country when it's dark, or liking country's way of being dark? Both seem reasonable, though surely not someone's only reason for liking country.

And also, given the other records that got voted for, I share Chuck's amazement at Gary Allan's not placing, since Allan seems to be making just the sort of music that the voters would like.

him and the byrds. though i am bad with timelines. but they were both making folk-rock by 65.

Bringing It All Back Home came out a few months before Mr Tambourine Man, not that that matters really. The Byrds may have been folkies going rock, but nobody paid attention before the debut.

two different *kinds* of risk, Scott. the extreme formalism of the Byrds took risks because they skirted turning the whole project of folk music into a fucking joke, and I'm skeptical enough about folk music to applaud them for it. Dylan was too sardonic and suspicious of the whole pop-music project to do that kind of formalist innovation; I suspect in his heart he maybe really wanted to be Del Shannon or the Beatles but didn't want to take the time to do it, scribbling furiously as he was.

as far as country music goes, I think it was, up until fairly recently, the most purposefully limited major genre I can think of, which isn't pejorative at all. the soft liberation of no-limit? I prefer to remain ambivalent about all this, which I suppose makes me a less-than-ideal No Depression kind of person, and why I couldn't care less about a lot of the records on their year-end list. I'm probably just confusing y'all even more, so I'll stop and go to bed.

I'm just thinking on my feet here. or perhaps on my ass...

My ignorant guess is that country starts defining itself as noninnovative in the '50s and '60s, in being differentiated from rock 'n' roll and then from rock. And therefore it conceives countrypolitan as the genre going pop or stylish rather than as the genre innovating musically, though of course it is innovating.

These generalizations are too glib, but I can see what Edd is getting at.

But I can't see what Edd's getting at when he claims Dylan wasn't grappling with form, since he most certainly was, though perhaps "exploding" is a better word than "grappling" when it comes to the progression from "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" to "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" to "Subterranean Homesick Blues": the first two in essence take lines mid-verse and vamp on them for a while, longer vamps on each progressive verse; the last one simply is all vamp (with one brief change whenever he sings a line beginning with "look out kid...") with no chorus or middle-eight or anything else from folk or pop song form. The only pop equivalents at the time were the Yardbirds and (occasionally) the Kinks in their rave-ups, and James Brown (live especially) when he'd toss a six-minute vamp into a two-minute ballad like "I Lost Someone" and "Prisoner or Love." My guess is that Dylan got the idea from poetry, though maybe it was from Brown or Yardbirds or mambo or jazz. Or maybe it just came to him, "I'll start adding lines."

(By "vamp" I'm meaning "repetition" more than "improvisation." Anyway, a verse that had, say, eight lines in verse one might get twelve in verse two and twenty in verse three, as a musical line is repeated and repeated.)

Well, this is kind of the crux, isn't it? Not that No Dep is a niche mag (I can't think of any music mag that isn't), but that its particular niche is "alt," which is to say its particular niche is "since we push boundaries we're not just a niche" and "we're the people who push beyond ourselves." This is a profound paradox or a lazy dishonesty depending on how much artistry, intelligence/cloddiness, stupidity you throw put into it.

As for their definition of "alt" being "alternative to whatever's on the charts" (assuming that *is* the definition, though to somebody's credit at least Womack placing suggests otherwise) what are they, all 12 years old? Or just idiots?

So you've Charlie Rich, whose country has been laced with blues and/or rock 'n' roll and / or jazz and / or pop over the years, setting fire to the slip of paper saying John Denver's won a CMA award, on the basis that JD's not country. It's maybe because it doesn't really stand still for long that country feels the need to reassure itself that it's still the real thing.

(Please forgive any ignorance on display here, and please accept my thanks for these country threads: in the UK it's hard to keep up with what's happening in country music, especially when your knowledge mostly ends, as mine does, in the early 1980s.)

Was that the basis? Rich thought himself more of a jazz guy than a country guy anyway, so it might have just been that he thought Denver was craven swill. (Btw, I love "Leavin' On a Jet Plane," which I heard John do live when he was still in the Mitchell Trio.)

(Just kidding. Some are in their early twenties.)

In my world CMA stands for Content Management Application.

and i DO think that alt = "we had to come up with an alternative to nashville music, it's all crap, not like in ye olden times when it had integrity, when it was real, yo, like the Outlaws, Waylon and Willie"

and all this you guys are saying, and keeping me straight, helps immensely, as I attempt to do a piece for ND on pop's relationship ("reflexivity" and all that) to country. seems to me as well that last year's stuff really was in many ways a watershed, and it just seems strange to me that something like Deana Carter's record, or Keith Anderson's, didn't get more cred in the mag. so I hope to twit the readership a little bit, come at it from my admittedly pop-centric viewpoint, as well as the viewpoint of someone who loves country music but often finds it difficult--challenging, more fun than anything else I do-- to write and think about it at the level I wish I could operate at. I think it's too facile by a country mile to say that certain songs are obviously indebted to unlikely sources (pop sources) but I want to talk about that a bit, just because it's fun to do so.

anyway, any examples of Nashville songwriting before about 1967 that really work with form in the way that Frank attributes, and I think rightly, to Dylan (good comparison to the Kinks there) would be appreciated.

and Rich is a good example, too; he did indeed consider himself a jazz guy. Christgau compares him to Nat King Cole in his '70s book, which I think is apt.

I don't get the non-ND love for Allan's record either. it seems so beautifully grounded in country basics, so adventurous, even experimental in some ways (the sonics on "Nickajack Cave," for example), such a true marriage of disparate elements that to me doesn't sound like anything else. maybe it's just a quirk, maybe it's the perception that "Best I Ever Had" is "just a pop song" or something. I dunno. I certainly think it's far more significant than the New Pornos. perhaps it's the deceptive modesty of Allan's voice, the way it can seem inexpressive, sunk into the workings of the music itself, which is what I was trying to get at when I wrote that he understands how "nuance creates emotion" in my piece on him.

xps

HEY!

(pardon the thread derailment)

Maybe 12 year olds (in red states) do like all this stuff, I am just putting this out for those who know more than I do.

Are there any videos that get on CMT and MTV?

In terms of exploding the blues as a form, the Beatles did so much more than Dylan, with songs like "Day Tripper" which starts like a traditional 12-bar blues and then goes someplace else entirely, or "She's a Woman," which tags a pop-tune chorus onto a 12-bar blues.

(xpost)

He got it, some of it, not all of it, but a lot of it from Chuck Berry. cf. "Too Much Monkey Business."

I think there's something to this, in terms of mainstream country's self-fashioning, but (for me anyways) it's important to remember that it's a constant push-and-pull within country, a push towards sonic and lyrical innovation throughoutit's history (not just in the last 15 or whatever years, please), and a pull back towards tradition and rural roots, which it knows (as much as a genre can know) is both essential to its self-definition and its market. Where I get uncomfortable is when we start equating pushing limits with getting more pop or reaching out to the pop audience. That can be a way of traversing limits, but it's pop-centric in the extreme to think that's the primary or most interesting way, and doesn't do justice to how country negotiates genre limits. That's not intended towards Edd or anybody else, just me, like everybody else, thinking out loud. I'm really looking forward to Edd's long-overdue ND piece.

As for the Beatles, one could also say they were also running variations on older British pop forms (which doesn't meant they weren't running variations on the blues simultaneously, or that one song couldn't be both). Peter van der Merwe in his Origins of the Popular Style traces the I-IV-I-V-I pattern back to a song that was the rage in 17th-century London; and then he cites the opening bars of the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There" as 20th-century nonblues version of the pattern. (Van der Merwe was tracing the non-African as well as the African sources of the blues, but his bringing in "I Saw Her Standing There" also showed that those British sources had nonblues progeny.)

Where I get uncomfortable is when we start equating pushing limits with getting more pop or reaching out to the pop audience

But no one equates the two, that I know of, except to say that getting more pop can be a way to be innovative (not that it necessarily is and not that it's the only way). But as far as I know - and I could be totally wrong here, as my knowledge of the country and alt-country critics conversation is limited - country that pushes out towards "pop" where "pop" means "mainstream adult contemporary" (rather than for instance towards hip-hop or funk rock, which of course are also popular forms) is rarely called "innovative" even when it is, which is one reason that people like Faith Hill and LeAnn Rimes don't get called innovators outside of ILM threads (I don't think the people posting here are typical of either country or alt-country critics). But also, within mainstream country, the fact that Faith and LeAnn aren't conceived as innovators (even if they're conceived as sellouts) perhaps is one thing that allows them to innovate under the radar, as it were.

I almost x-posted the following, Frank, but I think your basic point is right about the aversion to thinking about "mainstream adult contemporary" as innovative. God knows, I have a hard time thinking of it that way myself! But that other Ray, Ray Price, is really interesting to look at in this regard. Here's a dude who was supposed to be the successor to Hank, the heart and soul of country, and then went bananas pop, even middle-of-the-road borderline muzaky pop, and then, on top of that, he started hanging out with hippies. (By the way, have any of you all seen him in the last few years? If not, do not miss him. He's still got it, and often shows up with a string section.) The back of a bunch of Price's '60s albums bend over backwards to remind the reader of his down-home, Perryville farm roots, but also aggressively sell him on his "innovation," breaking boundaries between country and pop, city and country, creating "a whole new way of listening for all of us." You go, Ray.

(I don't utterly agree with that last sentence; her image is ordinary, but her vocal pyrotechnics at least sometimes symbolize spectacle and display, not normality.)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000282RZ/qid=1137008261/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-0227664-5327031?s=music&v=glance&n=5174

Now if they'd just get around to collecting his post-honky tonk records, most all of which are out of print, and which, with all props to George and Lefty, contain the most thrilling singing in country music.

Excellent.

I need to get off my freakin hobby horse but why, if Reynolds is going to broad-stroke, couldn't the terms soul and country in this sentence be switched and have it be just as accurate or inaccurate?

I once rode on the very same tour bus that Celine Dion used for a Texas tour. I was going to one of Willie's picnics. The fridge was totally stocked. "Tiny Dancer" did not play over the radio though.

this is excellent, and I too am uncomfortable with the notion, which is of course simplistic. I'd like to think that "reaching out to the pop audience" exemplifies a kind of democratic thinking that I wouldn't hesitate to embrace totally, but things just don't work that way.

I wouldn't hesitate to embrace it either. One of the problems with the historical ND and alt-country, as said or implied on this thread, is less a misunderstanding of or fear of pop music, and perhaps more of the pop world or mass culture or whatever.

again, thanks for all your thoughts--Chuck, Frank, Roy, everyone--on what I think is a great thread. helped me immensely in thinking about this. damn, you got me salivating over the Price set. between that one and the two Everlys boxes from Bear Family...now on to thinking about Townes Van Zandt...but for now, I must watch "The Big Heat" on TCM, one must never miss that wonderful chemistry between Lee Marvin and the awesomely sexy Gloria Grahame.

there's an interesting subtext buried in all this about the marketplace. or maybe that's the actual text, whatever, but to some degree the "alt" involves a distrust of the marketplace -- that, on the one hand, people who are primarily motivated by commerce are less likely to produce interesting work; and also that the marketplace itself is suspect, subject to manipulation and artifice, snake oil and chicanery. none of which are unreasonable suspicions, because obviously you can find plenty of examples of those things. but it also of course underestimates the marketplace, because the marketplace gave us louis armstrong and hank williams and elvis and james brown and on and on all the way up to eminem. i think liberals (and i am one) tend to discount how radical the marketplace can be. (not that radicalism is the only or even most useful thing about the marketplace -- a lot of times it's just good for sorting out a good tune)

Don't know if they've been called innovators inside ILM threads, either. I wouldn't be the one to make the case for their innovations (though I'm sure that some exist), just that those two are sometimes great - LeAnn more often than Faith - when they try and cross to pop.

now *that's* a provocative thought! I'm gonna have to think about that, but I think I know where you coming from...still, tell me more, Frank...

In other news, I've decided the repetitive seven-minute talking blues drone of "We Can't Make It Here" off James McMurtry's *Childish Things* (#6 on the ND list above) actually gives it real propulsion, and most of the current event details in the lyrics (wheelchaired Vietnam vets, textile mills closing, poor kids forced into the military, job outsourcing, Singapore sweatshop shirts stocked at Walmart, gang graffiti on freight trains, economic survival of the fittest creepiness) hold my attention pretty well; the song only sinks into corniness a couple times. "See the Elephant" and "Memorial Day" on his album are also tolerable; maybe other cuts too. The guy can write; just wish he could sing. I'm realizing that who he really reminds me of his T-Bone Burnett, who I also found tolerable once. Can't imagine why somebody would think his album ranked among the 10 most exciting of the year, though. Possibly in the Top 500, though.

ALT-COUNTRY SYLVIA: ONE GIRL'S QUEST FOR JEFF TWEEDY-DOM
Sylvia

From an early age, I fell in love with the inexplicable genre known as alt.country. Named for an early nineties internet message board made for fans into (duh) alternative country music, sadly alt.country is now a dying movement. Of my original triumvirate of alt.country poster boys (Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Ryan Adams of Whiskeytown and Rhett Miller of the Old 97’s), one has become obsessed with Sonic Youth and “noise rock” and one has decided that he is in love with New York City (ignoring your roots is so not alt.country). All have decided that what they really want is some mainstream success, which releasing cool, well-written records that include odes to the Southern/Midwestern town you were born in, the poetic deadends of your youth, and the actress/model that you are currently in loooove with do not necessarily bring you. No, now these men need fancy producers and guitar/pop hooks. I don’t mind their new records, but I fear the death of the alt.country art form.

But all is not lost! In a final attempt to save my favorite genre, I am creating a guide to how you can further alt.countrify your own life. You don’t have to be from a dying industrial town or even have traveled south of the Mason-Dixon line to cultivate this attitude. Instead, here are a few recommendations:

1. Get some flannel/ripped jeans.
Okay, I know that you’re laughing, but my obsession with tasteful flannel/plaid is totally appropriate. It gives you the ‘I don’t care what you think, and I’m comfortable in my own skin’ edge. The jeans should not look shitty. They should be tastefully ripped, and possibly spattered with acrylic paints in a nonchalant manner.

2. The bestest hair!
Alt.country girls can:
a. Make like Neko Case (long, dyed, often in braids)
b. Make like Gillian Welch or Caitlin Cary (variations on the ‘this haircut is so not hip that it’s hip again’).

Alt.country boys can:
a. either grow long and unattractive ‘lumberjack’ beards (not my favorite)
b. grow their hair until it’s shaggy and only wash/brush it every three days.

3. An accessory.
I recommend either a stylish belt with a large (slightly ironic) buckle or vintage cowboy boots. But never both at the same time.

4. Cultivate a “record” collection.
Of course, I mean emotional “records,” not the pretentious vinyl kind (though if you’re way into the scene, those are helpful, too.) You cannot be alt.country unless you know the pain of a broken heart, the feeling of being totally screwed over by the world, and a good amount about popular/literary culture.

To experience an evening as an alt.country-er, listen to Wilco’s Being There while reading Don DeLillo or Sylvia Plath. Go out drinking with your friends (preferably in a deserted train station or some otherwise desolate area), until at least one person is totally fucked-up. Envy that person. Smoke a cigarette while walking along a city street, feeling the wind shake your cold frame and thinking about how warm (yet desolate!) it is back in your hometown. Go to your apartment. Lie on your bed. Call your significant other, and hang up after you hear his or her voice. Listen to any Whiskeytown record. Feel shitty about your life. Write a song about it. Fall asleep. Wake up hung over and sad.

and, decided I couldn't get into that Patty Hurst record. just reminds me of the Gin Blossoms or bad dB's. so far, I think that Pinmonkey's new one is better. and since I'm here and not on the country thread, I'll say that I'm currently in love with Stoney Edwards's "Mississippi You're on My Mind," which I just picked up for cheap.

Actually, though, in that song, it's possible the immobile cement-pillar uber-seriousness of his vocal is part of what makes the song so inexorable; i.e., its lack of movement is what helps it keep pushing ahead. Not sure if that makes sense, and not sure if I totally believe it even it does, but it's possible. I mean, it's not like he's really using his voice as a battering ram or anything; he's just refusing to let anything stop him for seven minutes. And I don't see how, if he gave it more swing, if he was Dylan in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" or Charlie Daniels in "Uneasy Rider" or Melle Mel in "The Message" or Beck in "Loser" or whatever, that wouldn't make the song even more powerful and unstoppable than it already is.

Strap them kids in
Give em a lil bit of vodka
in a cherry coke
were goin to oklahoma
to the family reunion
for the first time in years
its up at uncle slatons
cuz hes gettin on in years
no longer travels but hes
still pretty spry
hes not much on talk
and hes too mean to die
and they'll be comin down
from kansas and west arkansas
it'll be one big old party
like you've never saw

uncle slaton's got his texan pride
back in the thickets with his asian bride
hes got an airstream trailer and a holstein cow
still makes whiskey cuz he still knows how
plays that choctaw bingo every friday night
you know he had to leave texas but he won't say why
he owns a quarter section up by lake ufalla
caught a great big ol bluecat on a driftin jugline
sells his hardwood timber to the chippin mill
cooks that crystal meth cuz his shine don't sell
he cooks that crystal meth cuz his shine don't sell
you know he likes that money, he don't mind the smell

my cousin roscoe, slaton's oldest boy
from his second marraige up in illinois
he's raised in east st louis by his
mamma's people where they do things different
thought he'd come on down
hes goin to dallas texas in a semi truck
caught from that big mcdonalds
you know that one thats built up on that
big old bridge across the will rogers turnpike
took the big cabin exit stopped and bought a carton of cigarrets
at that indian smoke shop with the big neon smoke rings
and the cherokee nations hittin the skogee late that night
somebody ran the stoplight at the shawnee bypass
roscoe tried to miss him but he didn't quite

bob and mae come up from
some little town way down by
lake texoma where he coaches football
they were two-A champions for two years running
but he says they wont be this year
no they wont be this year
and he stopped off in tushka at the pop knife and gun place
bought a sks rifle and a couple full cases of that steel core ammo
with the beardam primers from some east bloc nation
that no longer needs em
and a desert eagle thats one great big old pistol
i mean fifty caliber made by bad-ass Hebrews
and some surplus tracers for that old BAR
of slatons as soon as it gets dark
were gonna have us a time
were gonna have us a time

ruth-anne and lynn come from baxter springs
thats one hell-raisin town way down in
southeastern kansas
got a biger bar next to the lingerie store
thats got rollin stones lips up there in
bright pink neon
and they're right downtown where everyone can see em
and they burn all night
you know they burn all night
they burn all night

Ruth Ann an Lynne they wear them
cutoff britches an' their
skinny little halters an' they're
seconds cousins to me
man, I don't care I wanna
get between 'em with a
great big ol' hardon like a
old bulldart fencepost you can
hang a railpipe gate from
do some
Sister Twisters til th'
cows come home an' we'll be
havin' us a time
havin' us a time

Uncle slaton's got his texan pride
back in the thickets with his asian bride
hes got a corner pasture and an acre lots
he sells them owner financed strictly to them
its got no kind of credit
cause he knows they're slackers
and they'll miss that payment
and he'll take it back
plays that choctaw bingo
every friday night
he drinks his johnny walker
at that club 69
were gonna strap those kids in
give em a lil bit of Benadryll
were gonna have us a time
were gonna have us a time

Ok, so it's a little long for karaoke. But the version on the live album from a couple years ago is vicious. He's a real good guitar player too, tunings weird enough to give Sonic Youth fits.

http://www.soulandbluesreport.com/default.asp

Condescend much? Nobody makes Bettye Lavette sing anything. And Dolly Parton and Rosanne Cash and Bobbie Cryner aren't folkies, ok?

I mean any fan of those Burke and Tate and LaVette records ought to check out Malaco stuff, which is usually pretty interesting as both grease and shlock, with synths--commercial, even, and what's wrong with that? or at least commercial to folks living along I-55 from Memphis to New Orleans, like getting some pretty decent ribs from a Tiger Mart in Jackson.

now who's gonna do a record with Laura Lee?

There is a southern soul website that I'm on, where most of the members are total purists who can't stand the Malaco sound, with the synths and the blatant sexual references. (Ever hear "Bone Me Like You Own Me" by Barbara Carr? She records for Ecko, but her records are quite funny, if you liked Millie Jackson!) Personally, I dig the Malaco sound and the Joe Henry sound equally; at least here we have some producers and artists who understand true soul music. What I really hate is when some houserockin' blues company like Alligator finds an artist like Rufus Thomas or Mavis Staples and records them like they were Son Seals or Koko Taylor, with 12-bar blues progressions (in Rufus' case), thumb-popping bass and arena-rock guitars. It's like they're trying hard to cross them over to the same folks who buy Neville Bros. and Keb Mo records, it's so tacky!

It's funny that even a left-field artist like Dogg looks at purist indie labels that same way Rick Nelson viewed playing oldies revues - a polite way of saying you're a has-been.

I think this is my favorite thing ever written on ilm