Rolling Country 2006 Thread

Anyway, this should be used for reference, obviously, or fun. It's best to start at the bottom, perhaps, and answer those questions here. Or there. Or wherever you want:

Rolling 2005 Country Thread

I'm still wondering if any of our Canadian friends have any thoughts about Bocephus King.

>The rolling 2004 country thread didn't even start until 2004, so i figured it best to get an early start...

yeah that anthony
hamilton errs mightily,
so not country now

the title track is
the best song on there but it
falls when it should rise

I still love his voice
and his lyrics aren't bad
but they've gone downhill

(Dang, three posts into the year, and we've always derailed it from country. It should be pointed out here that Anthony Hamilton's previous CD was one of Matt's '04 c&w faves.)

yeah happy new year
to you and everyone
who posts here. FURTHUR!

er, that should read: "The rolling 2004 country thread didn't even start until October 2004..."
-- john'n'chicago (econjoh...), February 4th, 2005.

I'm listening to two tracks from Rosanne Cash's new one (a concept album about losing her parents) on her website. Has anybody heard the whole thing? So far, it sounds ok, loose drums on a song about the Cash house on the lake, Levenoisisms more taut than pillowy, and the other song, a very sweet piano ballad, about her mom and dad, "I'll Be Watching You." Chet Flippo says she's been listening to Arvo Part. I hope there are at least a couple rockers--because she's too good a singer to just do ballads.

I was wrong toward the end of the other thread in listing Eurodisco as part of Bocephus King's mix; really his extended synth parts are closer to a sort of techno space music, though not without a dance pulse (Joe McCombs compared those parts to Erasure in his AMG review.) Only a couple cuts seem to c&w per se, and those are more western than country -- Canadian cowboy music, maybe. Sometimes the rhythm goes reggae, and one song lilts a lot like "Lola" by the Kinks. The extended instrumental track is a sort of Sergio Leone soundtrack twang thing, and riveting. Really who B.K. most reminds me of maybe Garland Jeffreys (though maybe that's because I can't remember what Hirth Martinez or Andy Fairweather Low or whoever sounded like; I'm sure there's a more accurate precedent than Garland, just can't think of who it is.) Some songs seem to be about drug casualties, and the album clearly has some kind of ambitious overriding concept, too; Joe says it's about corrupt hucksters of religion (it's called *All Children Believe in Heaven*), but following concept albums has never been one of my skills; to me, it's just a bunch of great beautiful songs/tracks/whatever. Would've had a shot at my top ten had I heard it on time. Came out in Canada a year ago; if it comes out here some year, maybe I'll still vote for it.

The Carrie Underwood track I really like that I didn't mention toward the end of the '05 thread is "The Night Before (Life Goes On)." And "Jesus Take the Wheel" is indeed a stellar car-crash song about being, um, saved. Edd Hurt signals out the Dianne Warren tracks, which I agree have a certain physical power to them, but I'm not sure if they have much *more* than that.

>The rolling 2004 country thread didn't even start until 2004, so i figured it best to get an early start...

simple really. i do no fact, spell, grammar or punctuation checking before posting. nor do i ever re-read what i've typed to ensure that it makes any sense.

Comes out Jan 24th, so I guess I should get on the phone to get an advance.

From Geoff Himes at the Nashville Scene:

This is a friendly reminder that the deadline for the Country Music
Critics Poll is Wednesday, January 4, 2006, at 11 p.m. A few of you have
already voted, but I'd like to encourage everyone else to vote as soon
as possible. If you have voted, you should have received a confirmation
from me that I got your ballot.

Several people have asked about eligible recordings, so I am including
Billboard's list of the year's best-selling country albums and singles
as well as the poll's leading vote getters in the early balloting.

BILLBOARD'S BEST-SELLING COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2005:
(* released in 2004 or 2003)

1. * Shania Twain: Greatest Hits
2. * Rascal Flatts: Feels Like Today
3. * Toby Keith: Greatest Hits 2
4. * Gretchen Wilson: Here for the Party
5. * Tim McGraw: Live Like You Were Dying
6. George Strait: Fifty #1s
7. * Keith Urban: Be Here
8. Toby Keith: Honky Tonk University
9. * Big & Rich: Horse of a Different Color
10. * Sugarland: Twice the Speed of Life
11. Kenny Chesney: Be As You Are
12. * Kenny Chesney: When the Sun Goes Down
13. Faith Hill: Fireflies
14. * Alison Krauss & Union Station: Lonely Runs Both Ways
15. Various Artists: Totally Country Vol. 4
16. George Strait: Somewhere Down in Texas
17. * Brad Paisley: Mud on the Tires
18. Larry the Cable Guy: The Right To Bare Arms
19. Gretchen Wilson: All Jacked Up
20. Brad Paisley: Time Well Wasted
21. LeAnn Rimes: This Woman
22. * Blake Shelton: Barn & Grill
23. * Brooks & Dunn: Greatest Hits Collection II
24. Kenny Chesney: The Road and the Radio
25. * Martina McBride: Martina
26. Dierks Bentley: Modern Day Drifter
27. * Montgomery Gentry: You Do Your Thing
28. Trace Adkins: Songs About Me
29. Martina McBride: Timeless
30. * Jimmy Buffett: License To Chill
31. Jo Dee Messina: Delicious Surprise
32. Lee Ann Womack: There's More Where That Came From
33. * Toby Keith: Shock'n Y'All
34. * Josh Gracin: Josh Gracin
35. * Alan Jackson: What I Do
36. Brooks & Dunn: Hillbilly Deluxe
37. Miranda Lambert: Kerosene
38. Van Zant: Get Right with the Man
39. * Reba McEntire: Room To Breathe
40. * Alan Jackson: Greatest Hits Volume II
41. Trisha Yearwood: Jasper County
42. * Various Artists: Blue Collar Comedy Hour Rides Again
43. * Sara Evans: Restless
44. Craig Morgan: My Kind of Livin'
45. Cowboy Troy: Loco Motive
46. Sara Evans: Real Fine Place
47. * Terri Clark: Greatest Hits 1994-2004
48. Jason Aldean: Jason Aldean
49. * Dierks Bentley: Dierks Bentley
50. * SheDaisy: Sweet Right Here

BILLBOARD'S BEST-SELLING COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2005:

1. Craig Morgan: That's What I Love About Sunday
2. Toby Keith: As Good as I Once Was
3. Rascal Flatts: Bless the Broken Road
4. Sugarland: Something More
5. Rascal Flatts: Fast Cars and Freedom
6. Josh Gracin: Nothin' To Lose
7. Sugarland: Baby Girl
8. Keith Urban: Making Memories of Us
9. Faith Hill: Mississippi Girl
10. Montgomery Gentry: Gone
11. Brad Paisley: Mud on the Tires
12. Brooks & Dunn: It's Getting Better All the Time
13. Kenny Chesney: Anything But Mine
14. Jo Dee Messina: My Give a Damn's Busted
15. Keith Urban: You're My Better Half
16. Dierks Bentley: Lot of Leavin' To Do
17. Montgomery Gentry: Something To Be Proud Of
18. Andy Griggs: If Heaven
19. Sara Evans: A Real Fine Place To Start
20. George Strait: You'll Be There
21. Joe Nichols: What's a Guy Gotta Do
22. Brooks & Dunn: Play Something Country
23. Jamie O'Neal: Somebody's Hero
24. Brad Paisley: Alcohol
25. Craig Morgan: Redneck Yacht Club
26. LeAnn Rimes: Probably Wouldn't Be This Way
27. Trace Adkins: Songs About Me
28. Blake Shelton: Some Beach
29. Keith Urban: Better Life
30. Josh Gracin: Stay with Me (Brass Bed)
31. LeAnn Rimes: Nothin' 'Bout Love Makes Sense
32. Tim McGraw: Do You Want Fries with That
33. Gretchen Wilson: Homewrecker
34. Alan Jackson: Monday Morning Church
35. Lee Ann Womack: I May Hate Myself in the Morning
36. Darryl Worley: Awful, Beautiful Life
37. Billy Dean: Let Them Be Little
38. Tim McGraw: Back When
39. SheDaisy: Don't Worry 'Bout a Thing
40. Lonestar: You're like Comin' Home
41. Gretchen Wilson: When I Think About Cheatin'
42. Van Zant: Help Somebody
43. Kenny Chesney: Keg in the Close
44. Rascal Flatts: Skin (Sarabeth)
45. Gary Allan: Best I Ever Had
46. Toby Keith: Honky Tonk U
47. Blake Shelton: Goodbye Time
48. Jason Aldean: Hicktown
49. Reba McEntire: He Gets That from Me
50. Neal McCoy: Billy's Got His Beer Goggles On

ALBUMS GETTING SUBSTANTIAL SUPPORT IN THE EARLY VOTING (in alphabetical
order):

Ryan Adams: Jacksonville City Nights
Gary Allan: Tough All Over
Bobby Bare: The Moon Was Blue
Dierks Bentley: Modern Day Drifter
Big & Rich: Comin' to Your City
Deana Carter: The Story of My Life
Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell: Begonias
Rodney Crowell: The Outsider
Robbie Fulks: Georgia Hard
Mary Gauthier: Mercy Now
Jimmie Dale Gilmore: Come on Back
The Hacienda Brothers: The Hacienda Brothers
Merle Haggard: Chicago Wind
Shooter Jennings: Put the O Back in Country
Miranda Lambert: Kerosene
Patty Loveless: Dreamin' My Dreams
Martina McBride: Timeless
Delbert McClinton: The Cost of Living
James McMurtry: Childish Things
Brad Paisley: Time Well Wasted
John Prine: Fair & Square
Tom Russell: Hotwalker
Marty Stuart: Soul's Chapel
Gretchen Wilson: All Jacked Up
Lee Ann Womack: There's More Where That Came From
The Wrights: Down This Road
Dwight Yoakam: Blame the Vain
Adrienne Young: The Art of Virtue
Neil Young: Prairie Wind

SINGLES GETTING SUBSTANTIAL SUPPORT IN THE EARLY VOTING (in alphabetical
order):

Gary Allan: The Best I Ever Had
Dierks Bentley: Lot of Leavin' To Do
Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell: Don't Make It Better
Rodney Crowell: The Obscenity Prayer
Robbie Fulks: Georgia Hard
Mary Gauthier: Mercy Now
Merle Haggard: Where's All the Freedom
Shooter Jennings: Fourth of July
Toby Keith: As Good As I Once Was
Miranda Lambert: Kerosene
Patty Loveless: Keep Your Distance
Shelby Lynne: When Johnny Met June
James McMurtry: We Can't Make It Here
Joe Nichols: Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off
Brad Paisley: Alcohol
Keith Urban: Makin' Memories of Us
Gretchen Wilson: I Don't Feel Like Loving You Today
Lee Ann Womack: I May Hate Myself in the Morning
Lee Ann Womack: There's More Where That Came From
The Wrights: Down This Road
Dwight Yoakam: Blame the Vain

REISSUES GETTING SUBSTANTIAL SUPPORT IN THE EARLY VOTING (in
alphabetical order):

Terry Allen: Silent Majority
The Band: A Musical History
June Carter Cash: Keep on the Sunny Side
Johnny Cash: The Legend
David Alan Coe: Penitentiary Blues
Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways
Charlie Poole: You Ain't Talkin' to Me
Doug Sahm: The Complete Mercury Masters
Shel Silverstein: The Best of
Son Volt: Retrospective
Various Artists: Good for What Ails You
Various Artists: Night Train to Nashville, Volume 2

From: "Frank Kogan"
To: "Geoff Himes"
Subject: Re: Country Music Critics Poll Ballot
Date: Monday, January 02, 2006 7:37 PM

Hi Geoff - I either will or will not send along comments in a couple of days. I enjoyed the agony of having to eliminate great stuff more than ever this year. Obviously I didn't listen to a lot of reissues, and my oddball choice belongs predominantly to some other country than this one, but there was room, so why not? It's an amazing record.

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2005:

1. Deana Carter -- The Story of My Life
2. Miranda Lambert -- Kerosene
3. Bobby Bare -- The Moon Was Blue
4. Jamie O'Neal -- Brave
5. Shooter Jennings -- Put the O Back in Country
6. Gary Allan -- Tough All Over
7. Lee Ann Womack -- There's More Where that Came From
8. The Mighty Jeremiahs -- The Mighty Jeremiahs
9. Little Big Town -- The Road to Here
10. Dierks Bentley -- Modern Day Drifter

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2005:

1. Deana Carter -- "The Girl You Left Me For"
2. Miranda Lambert -- "Kerosene"
3. Shooter Jennings -- "4th of July"
4. Miranda Lambert -- "Bring Me Down"
5. Dierks Bentley -- "Lot of Leavin' Left to Do"
6. Miranda Lambert -- "Me and Charlie Talking"
7. Kentucky Headhunters -- "Big Boss Man"
8. Jo Dee Messina -- "Delicious Surprise (I Believe It)"
9. Toby Keith -- "Big Blue Note"
10. Little Big Town -- "Boondocks"

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2005:

1. Various Artists -- Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Raw, Rare & Forgotten Archival Recordings from 1970's Shan State. Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma) Vol. 2
(believe it or not, this has a folk-rock, c&w, rockabilly, garage-rock influence)
2. Charley Poole and others -- You Ain't Talkin' to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music
3. David Allan Coe -- Penitentiary Blues
4. --
5. --

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2005:

1. Gary Allan
2. Gene Watson
3. Toby Keith

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2005:

1. Miranda Lambert
2. Deana Carter
3. Jamie O'Neal

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2005:

--

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2005:

1. Deana Carter
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Odie Blackmon

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2005:

1. Big & Rich
2. Little Big Town
3. The Mighty Jeremiahs

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST INSTRUMENTALISTS OF 2005:

1. Deana Carter
2. Greg Martin
3. James Wright (since you don't have a special spot for producers, I put him here)

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2005:

1. Miranda Lambert
2. Shooter Jennings
3. Shelly Fairchild

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2005:

1. Deana Carter
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Bobby Bare

"If only I was the president, I'd paint the white house pink and never have to pay the rent."

I will say that Dierks' being on a major meant there was money to throw at the recording, which may ultimately have been why his record held up for me more than the McQueen or the Maybelles, whose ideas were at least as interesting as Dierks'. Dierks' album had a nice round easy professional motion, and this motion spoke to my body.

xpost (as usual)

The Jeremiah alb is a killer guitar album, too.

In general I like music that overspills its container, though for this to work well there has to be a good container in the first place.

It's like Black Oak Arkansas meets a (white) booty video with the Skynyrd 'turn it up' at the start and a bit of a techno backing thing. I've only seen it as a video and am wondering how it stands up as a song.

and yeah, I did kinda like Carrie Underwood's "The Night Before" (that's the one about the girl leaving home, rhymes "Baton Rouge," "LSU" and "in my rearview?), but for me, that song demonstrates where that whole record falls down--every chorus just seemed *too* overblown and mannered to me, always going for the big place-name drama. She kind of gets around that on "I Ain't in Checotah" but it still feels like a couple of songs tacked onto each other to me, it almost works. I think the Diane Warren songs are better than the other ones they found for her, and seem to be about what happens after she gets successful, with the overblown drama a bit more, uhm, aestheticized I guess. "Wasted" isn't bad either, but I would've liked the record even more if they'd tried to lay back just a little bit. But that wouldn't have played into the whole drama of her ascension.
xps

Huk-L: I hope you give the Bocephus King album a listen. My tastes don't align well with Xhuxk's, either.

woah, xp!! I swear I wrote my entire post before seeing Roy's!!

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2005:
>
> 1. Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, Souls' Chapel
> 2. Gary Allan, Tough All Over
> 3. Deana Carter, The Story of My Life
> 4. The Del McCoury Band, The Company We Keep
> 5. Ezequiel Peña, Nuestra Tradición: La Charreria
> 6. Jon Nicholson, A Little Sump'm Sump'm
> 7. Marty Stuart, Badlands
> 8. Freddy Fender & Flaco Jimenez, Dos Amigos
> 9. Dallas Wayne, I'm Your Biggest Fan
> 10. Jessi Alexander, Honesuckle Sweet
>
> TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2005:
>
> 1. Gary Allan, "Best I've Ever Had"
> 2. Jo Dee Messina, "My Give a Damn's Busted"
> 3. Dierks Bentley, "Lot of Leavin' to Do"
> 4. Intocable, "Aire"
> 5. Lee Ann Womack, "I May Hate Myself in the Morning"
> 6. Del McCoury Band, "She Can't Burn Me Now"
> 7. Grupo Montez de Durango, "Quiero Saber de Ti"
> 8. Robbie Fulks, "Georgia Hard"
> 9. Bon Jovi, "Have a Nice Day"
> 10. Carrie Underwood, "Some Hearts"

i think he and bruce
were more "influential" than
the eagles (or kiss)

plus xhuxk if he did
you would be 'i hate his voice,
it is SO LEADEN'

xp!

Another bet on Womack to win the country poll; voters just visiting country from a rock place and some pure ND sorts (whatever THAT sort would be) vote out of proportion to those who actually follow country closely, in all polls. When somehting scores on both sides of that fence, as Lee Ann's CD does--put your money there. Gary Allan will do well for similar reasons. (I happen to find both albums very deserving, so no arguments here.)

As for the basis of the riff on Lambert's "Kerosene"; you don't have to look further back than Steve Earle's "I Feel Alright "...But she uses it well!

2 1 DIERKS BENTLEY Come A Little Closer 97 93 4 0.8681
1 2 JACK INGRAM Wherever You Are 96 98 -2 0.8678
3 3 CARRIE UNDERWOOD Jesus, Take The Wheel 96 91 5 0.8639
4 4 BILLY CURRINGTON Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right 50 49 1 0.4497
5 5 TOBY KEITH Get Drunk And Be Somebody 48 48 0 0.4289
7 6 RASCAL FLATTS What Hurts The Most 47 42 5 0.4283
6 7 GEORGE STRAIT She Let Herself Go 47 45 2 0.4292
15 8 BON JOVI Who Says You Can't Go Home 33 28 5 0.2968
8 9 LITTLE BIG TOWN Boondocks 32 34 -2 0.2741
9 10 TRENT TOMLINSON Drunker Than Me

That would be me, but I'm actually fairly tepid about the Womack. (And I'm also coming from a disco place, since disco rocks harder than rock; also from a hip-hop place, 'cause hip-hop rocks harder than rock; and a teenpop place, which rocks harder than rock. I guess country rocks harder than rock, too.)

Yes, I'm definitely coming from a rock place (though as a wee-un I was coming from a folk place; that's 'cause in 1963, folk rocked harder than rock).

Such statements always frighten me, as I foresee this follow-up: "OK. Got the Bare. Will never use you as a basis for album purchases in the future."

You used to love her, but it's all over now?

Xgau told me he thought Lee Ann's album was bland; he'd been a fan of "Dance," I think, however. Has he ever liked her otherwise? I think he's also felt both Lee Ann and Deana Carter are overrated, in general. I don't want to put words in his mouth, though.

Am I the only person, by the way, who has trouble thinking of Lee Ann's album as a "roots" move, or whatever people call it? It sounds so pop; I'm not sure she's had a catchier album. Though yeah, obviously, there are throwback string sounds in the production etc. It doesn't *feel* like a throwback album to me, either way. More importantly, though, critics were sent the vinyl version -- So it definitely *looks* like a throwback album to them, if nothing else.

----

Oh wait, here goes:

http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=lee+ann+womack

http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=deana+carter

and yeah, Frank, I thought your Bare/Watson piece was dead-on, at least you seem to be in agreement with me re Bare's voice and the general winding-down aspect of "Moon Was." anyway, I give Mark Nevers a lot of credit for that record--he also worked on Silver Jews' "Tanglewood Numbers," altho apparently he and Berman had a disagreement and Berman took the project away from Nevers in the final mixing stages or something. I had always really disliked Silver Jews but damned if I don't like the new one, even voted for it this year. But as with Bare, not so much the songs--altho Bare's Shel Silverstein take is fine, probably the best thing on the record--as the overall sound of it, is what I like about Berman's record. which isn't something I wanna listen to all the time, too painful somehow, but I sure admire it in spite of myself, and I feel the same way about Bare to a much lesser extent.

xps

Clever and expensive move. I didn't get the vinyl. Can I have yours?

My favorite thing on the Bare is "Everybody's Talkin"--it's not as good as the original, but not much is. Something in the thick vocal dissipation merges so well with the lyrics and melody. When he hits the chorus, the cumulative effect is impossible, unreal.

Hell no, it is beeyootiful!

It's r&b, a lot of it. (But yeah, sure, an old r&b, maybe.) (See also the 100 times I've compared the big hit to "Little Green Apples.") (Which anyway wasn't the kind of country that most neo-trad types embraced, was it? Since when is '70s pop-country considered trad?)

I am probably overstating her soul influence, but what the hell. (More likely, she's inspired by '70s c&w that was aware of r&b then.)

Mike Ireland is a pretty trad-oriented singer/songwriter who really embraces, even obsesses over, elements of '60s-'70s country-pop, and basically approaches them as synecdoches of country tradition, especially the Sherrillian strings.

I think when you nail countrypolitan the way Lee Ann does on the new record, it's a trad move, just not a typical one.

and gosh, soul influences all over the place in '70s and '80s country. even more recent songs like George Jones' "I'll Give You Something to Drink About" show it (I just saw this great clip from some kind of George Jones show that aired in the '90s with him doing this song) like they internalized the bass and drums from Hi Records and added some south-of-border flavor to it all. for that matter, Charlie Rich's Hi/Willie Mitchell sessions are pretty amazing, Hank Williams tunes.

I'm wondering about Lee Roy Parnell, too, now that I've heard his new one (never heard him before; did he have country hits at one point?)

People seem to use "trad country" to mean pre-80s now, a "break" not far from the time, actually, you get the supposedly defining rock/Modern rock break too. Of course, the country sounds of the sixties and seventies were considered by moldy fig types either urbanized sell-outs or bland mistakes then themselves. Even as honky tonk was rejected by lovers of "tradititonal" Acuff and earlier country as too urban, too willing to talk about nasty subjects, and a sell-out when IT came along.

The Womack record largely revives pre-80s sounds. Like Garth never happened. Her music, from the first, referenced and sometimes incorporated honky tonk sounds out of Texas, and much pre-80s twang production and approach, on the ballads especially, I'd say off hand. . The album before this one was simply considered a pop step too far by a lot of people--and that they attenpted to remake LeeAnn's image at the same timemade things worse.

And of course, country music is now and always has been pop music.

This year's record (which for my money, has a very high percentage of strong songs on it), string writing) was a return to the commitment to work in her OWN tradition, essentially. I saw her with a small, tasteful band preview the whole LP live at the Ryman, and the renewed seriousness of COUNTRY intent was unmistakable--at a musical base a lot more sreious than say, Faith Hill scurrying back to get her a "Look; I didn't go Hollywood; I'm just a Mississippi Girl at Heart" shuck. (Womack later did a similar live show on cable--CMT I think.)

At her best monents, I think she's a good a country ballad singer as this generation has; but then, I think Gretchen Wilson is working her way to a strong second in that regard.

No argumento, meanhwile, that the Bobby Bare rceord is generally wonderfu--and lives in a perfect spot between his music and his son's.

(I found this board because Roy Katsen says nice things about it, BTW.And apologize for any of my notorious fast-typing web typos left uncorrected--in advance.)

Faith Hill's most soul music moment is "One" (one of my favorite country singles of the decade.) I kind of hated "Mississippi Girl" until George Smith explained it's basically boogie-rock at heart.

And by the way, welcome, Barry! You should check out that '05 thread, too (and the '04 one, and the No Depression one, and many many more.)

Barry gives the best typos on the planet!

Plus I did not mean
that Earth Wind and Fire was the
soul ne plus ultra

It was just the truth!
And I hear rock but no soul
in Toby Keith's voice

Gary Allan, sure,
many others. (Plus Jessi
Alexander, wow!)

When I reviewed Toby I said that that in a better world "That's Not How It Is" would get play on the Urban AC stations. The song seems to split the difference between Isaac Hayes and Robert Cray. It's more an '80s sound than a '70s (though of course Hayes goes back farther than that).

Black-gospel-based r&b-pop not unlike Whitney, Mariah, Toni (which certainly is soul-related and certainly draws on Ray Charles), but actually I hear something countrypolitan in the tone, though I can't put my finger on it, just as there's something countrypolitan in Celine Dion's tone, though whatever it is it was probably derided as one of the things that made countrypolitan "not country."

To confuse matters, I'll point out that "One" has reggaeish touches in the rhythm.

And to confuse matters more, I think that the Whitney-Mariah-Celine-Faith (though not necessarily Toni) thing draws on Streisand and Garland as well as on Charles, not in the sense that some people find Streisand and Garland camp but rather in S-G's showbiz reaching-for-the-sky moments. Welding Charles and Streisand is intriguing to me since you have Charles' deliberately rough and "sincere" melisma and Streisand's shriek-with-the-birds operatics.

This post is written in what one reviewer called "the Chuck Eddy hyphenated style."

Yeah, but the Kingston Trio clobber the Tokens.

Also, has anyone seen Tanya Tucker lately? I saw her last summer (pre-reality show) and she totally blew my mind (mind you, this was at an outdoor country festival, 2nd day--so I was drunkx2 and had only a hour earlier been charmed by Mel Tellis). She's coming back on a soft-seat/arena tour (soft-seat in my town, arena in the next, go fig) in the spring, and I'm pretty jazzed.

I was reading from this book last night, *Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz* by Rich Kienzle. Horrifying chapter about Spade Cooley; I don't know if I'd ever heard the details before about *how* he killed his wife (in front of their 14 year old daughter, who he also threatened if she told anybody) -- totally gruesome, but it makes me curious to pull back out my Spade Cooley album. Which I never liked as much as, say, the Milton Brown and his Brownies or Roy Newman and his Boys or Smokey Wood albums I've got, maybe because (as Kienzle writes) Cooley's innovation was also working California "sweet" music and even classical parts into western swing's varying hillbilly/swing/bebop/blues/polka/Mex/pop
hybrid -- my guess is, that probably made Cooley less funky and frantic than these guys I like more, but I want to make sure. Jeez, though, what a creepy man. I doubt anybody in my record collection has ever done anything more evil...Anyway, what's really interested me so far in Kienzle's book was how, in the intro, he talks about how, inititally, country music in the 20s was a conscious attempt (idea from record company/radio barn dance execs) to fabricate rural nostalgia, so they at first insisted on keeping instruments that would make the music sound less "pure" (drums, horns, electric guitars) out of it, and that purity pretty much became the standard in the southeast, especially out of urban areas like Nashville and Atlanta -- that is, especially in fundamentalist puritan protestant backwaters throughout the region. But the Catholic Irish/German/ Polish populations in Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis insisted on mixing up country with polkas, hence making it more danceable, and the mix (see above) was even more open-ended in Texas, Oklahoma, and on to Hollywood. So keeping country undanceable, keeping it free of unsavory ethnic influences (including black ones and "urban" ones in general) was in some ways, seemingly, a puritan, even (probably) racist impulse (though I don't think Kienzle uses that word), but also a commercial impulse since the purity was country's inentionally fabricated selling point to begin with. (I.e., purity didn't arise naturally. How this connects to Emmett Miller and Jimmie Rodgers and all the subsequent white guys singing blues in the '20s and '30s I'm not sure - was that stuff *not* considered country then? Or just not saleable? Or was it just really marginal? Or what? Rodgers was obviously a huge star, right?) Anyway, I'm wondering whether one could trace the "pure country" vs. "eclectic country" dichotomy across decades, from then til now. I've always suspected insisting on keeping dance music or pop music out of c&w was a puritan impulse, and this says it was from the start. There's a big story in between.

Or maybe not. I'm hearing more of the swing every time I play this thing; it's just really subtle, is all. First song is called "W. Lee O'Daniel and the Light Crust Dough Boys," which band name is clearly a Western Swing reference in and of itself.

Not me, but Mazor gives her new concert DVD Tanya Tucker Live at Billy Bob's Texas (Smith Music Group) a thumbs up in the new ND.

I'll have to read the "Southwest Shuffle" book, because the diff between "country" in "protestant backwaters" and country in Cinci, St. Louis, Chicago, Texas/Oklahoma and out to California seems to explain, or open up, a lot of stuff that I think is really essential. and today, I think the tension between California-ized ideas of "country" and what Nashville thinks it is--it also seems really basic to me.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:ncex97qjkrjt

http://www.oldblues.net/music/yazoo/yazoorecord/10241-1.jpg

The latter is a great Yazoo comp called "Mr. Charlie's Blues."

On the other hand, were they considered "blues singers" when they actually existed, or only in retrospect? I honestly have no idea.

Another one: Tennessee Ernie Ford, whose proto-rock'n'roll (esp "Sixteen Tons") was huge in the years before Elvis. He was, along with Moon Mullican (who he worked with) one of the country-boogie missing links between western swing and rockabilly; tracks like "Shotgun Boogie" and "Blackberry Boogie" are totally raucous. But he also did really did blues stuff like "Dark as a Dungeon" (about coal-mining, and morbidly appropriate this week, sad to say.)

http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/statusainthood/archives/2006/01/country_music_g_1.php

i am in the middle of reading deloria for the book, can you tell me more about his work in relation to pop culture, i only know him as (a radical, important and cogent) theologian.

Edd, I'm not making sense of this passage, especially the statement "blues was really underground before about 1960 or so when Fahey and Calt and those guys rousted Skip James and Son House out of their obscurity." Interestingly enough, a couple of months ago I read Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, and the impression I got was that "blues", not "jazz," was the basic name for nearly all black popular music between the wars that featured singers rather than instrumental soloists. So a lot that we might in retrospect be calling black pop or rhythm and blues or jazz was all lumped together under the name "blues"; and the reason so much of this stuff is no longer called blues is that starting with John Hammond, white people tended to narrow the definition of "blues." And (if I am remembering/understanding Wald correctly), the broad usage of the term "blues" by black people carried over into the forties and fifties, so if you were to ask a black person in those decades to name a blues musician, they'd name someone like Louis Jordan or Dinah Washington. Blues was not underground, even if Skip James and Son House (who'd never been stars in the first place) were underground. The people Don mentioned - B.B. King, Nat King Cole, Bobby Blue Bland, et al. - were all called blues singers and were all popular black entertainers, as of course were Big Boy Crudup, Junior Parker, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Big Joe Turner but also a whole bunch of West Coast guys with smoother styles who've therefore been written out of history. A gentle smooth number like Chuck Berry's "Wee Wee Hours" would have been considered blues every bit as much as something like "Hoochie Coochie Man." So your original question about the difference or nondifference between jazz and blues singing is on the mark, but from the other side, as it were.

As for Teagarden - yes, I've heard him referred to as a jazz guy, but who knows what he was referred to in his time? (And what about Louis Prima?) The fact that Elvis veered more towards Junior Parker and Big Boy Crudup and Kokomo Arnold than towards the Carter Family - whose material probably wasn't altogether different from those blues guys'; didn't they do their own equivalent to "Mystery Train"? - may be why someone may have called him blues, if anybody did.

According to AMG, neither "Strokin'" nor any other Clarence Carter song charted country.

Gotta be the case. Last time I saw her on TV she lives in one of the pit desert towns on California, making it hard to believe she'd care what the Voice publishes unless it was pointed out with the admonition to launch a protest. So please to remove "lock 'n' loll"
from that review, y'know.

You'll want to be on the lookout for Copperhead's "Live & Lost." Southern rock band with guitar density equiv to "Big Boss Man" by the Headhunters. (Although the copperhead is the northern Pennsylvania strain of the eastern cottonmouth, or water moccasin, so maybe they should have called themselves, Massassauga, the native American name for it and risked getting picketed.) Listening to it repeatedly convinced me my dislike of bands like the Drive By-Truckers is legitimate. Tunes-wise, it has
some good ones although the titles make you think "dreck."

And it has no relationship with the stoner rock contingent that tries
to regularly pass itself off as southern rock or influenced by Skynyrd/ZZ/blah-blah, anything classic rock to get you to listen to the same old horribly bowdlerized Sabbath ribs (and if you think this means I'm talking about The Sword, a contender for most foolish and annoying Texas band I heard late last year, you're right).

Killer version of "Whiskey & Mama" and it's not even the second or third best song on the disc. "Keepin' On" would be great for CMT and all of it would be like Keith Urban if Urban turned up the guitar,
added a loud organ and sounded as classic rocker who rides a motorcycle as he looks. Vocals don't sound Urban, they sound Ricky Medlocke.

Funny, these days I'm getting the best sounds off the frustrated and desperate vanity pressings distributed by CD Baby. If you can sift them on-line, not at CD Baby proper [and I'm not giving away my patented trade secret on how to do it, sorry, although ask private] there are surprises surprisingly easy to find. Which you can't locate via Google or by reading webzines, although -after- you find them, you can track down one or two reviews, almost always on web-only publications in Europe in foreign languages where they are still big on US classic rock. [Thanks Google "translate this page" tab.]

I think a lot of DJs were making the connections as soon as they heard the rockabilies' records; likewise some of the less up-tight press. Guralnick cites a Billboard review of "Good Rockin' Tonight" from Fall 1954: "Elvis Presley proves again that he is a sock new singer with his performances on these two oldies. His style is both country and r.&b. and he can appeal to pop." And another Billboard review from December 1954: "...the hottest piece of merchandise on the...Louisiana Hayride at the moment is Elvis Presley, the youngster with the hillbilly blues beat." Not exactly visionary criticism but kinda accurate. (We should collectively vow to reintroduce the adjective "sock" to the rock crit lexicon.)

if Pete Holsapple
was really Paul Westerberg,
and was on steroids

so, saw the Townes Van Zandt documentary last night. very sad, very troubling. you get the sense that VZ was this still figure around which the normal world whirled, and in everything he said there was this catch, this pause, before he smiled in the most fatalistic way possible. yet I found him very funny indeed, and I found myself admiring the way he simply didn't seem to care about fame, money, backup singers...and although I admire Guy Clark's music, I have to say that if there's an award for "enabler," it seems to me Guy Clark might well get it, as he lived with Van Zandt and seemed to idolize him beyond all reason. the creepiest moments came with Nashville DJ Ralph Emery, who was, uh, taken aback a bit by Townes. and it was even creepier when VZ played his big hit "Pancho and Lefty" on some Nashville Now TV show complete with goopy backup singers and band; he sounded neutered, out of it. but when Townes played Lightnin' Hopkins he seemed most himself, to my ears, so maybe the thing is that he was really a bluesman as well as a songwriter's songwriter...I haven't totally decided yet just how great a songwriter he was, some of what he did falls into my blind spots, but he was damned good, if not "the world's greatest songwriter" (I mean, Randy Newman?). so, fine film, even though it seemed to lay Townes's later problems on electroshock therapy and seemed to gloss over any other tendencies by saying that "Townes was the kind of kid you find in every family who could get anyway with anything, and who didn't care about all his advantages."

http://home.comcast.net/~eddycee28/

no, I don't remember that it did. it seemed a bit hazy and incomplete on his family history, actually. and it seemed to gloss over the conflict over the rights to his music (between Eggers and his family), too.

"Sunlight Breaks In" and "Just Like Me" (off *Tracks* by Uncle Billy's Smokehouse from I guess Worcester, Mass, or thereabouts) are like Guns N Roses crossed with Alice In Chains doing country-rock fit for CMT; the guy's high register actually pulls off its Axl attempts.
(The rest of the album is excellent too, but more hard rock than c&w.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Josh Turner is not an alt-country guy; he projects his voice, and it's a warm booming baritone, I guess (inasmuch as I know how to identify "baritone"). Still not sure how much I like it. He did that long black train song last year that lotsa people loved but which, for me, was more like "lookit me I'm doing a long black train song, how dark is that, huh?" It was okay, though. So's his new album that's coming out, *Your Man,* or at least the 9 songs I've listened to so far --well, not all of them, not even most of them. But "No Rush" is a truly sexy lover-with-a-slow-hand song that reminds me that the Pointer Sisters had their country moments too (not that it remotely sounds like them). And there a song about buying "Loretta Lynn's Lincoln" that drops lots of classic country names that, okay, well, it sort of annoyed me so far I guess. And one called "White Noise" that's a duet with some familiar country voice from the '80s (John Anderson, maybe? Or maybe not) who isn't mentioned on my advance CD; the idea is that country music is "white noise" but one line's a disclaimer about how this ain't a question of black and white, it's about Johnny Cash and Charlie Pride, so I have no idea what the "white" part IS supposed to mean. And there's another duet with some way older country guy (Ralph Stanley, maybe? these are totally wild guesses mind you) called "Me and God"; first line argues that anything's possible with me and God, but at first I swore Josh was saying anything was possible with a MEAN God, which would of course be a much scarier yet more interesting idea, but no dice. So, um....at least ONE good song, the "No Rush" one. But maybe more. (And I am gonna be embarrassed when I figure out who I confused with John Anderson....okay, I'll check the internet: Gulp, it IS John Anderson; Josh co-wrote it with him -- I passed the blindfold test, yay! And "Me And God" IS Ralph Stanley!! I'm shocked I got those right.)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 23rd, 2005.

New Josh Turner winds down to a song about gravity that's sadly more metaphorical than scientific followed by the rote "Way Down South" that ends with some nice jaunty picking of "Dixie". Just remembered there was also an earlier tune about feeling out of place in the big city. If this was an *Entertaiment Weekly* review, I'd give it a B.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 23rd, 2005.

Actually, you kind of CAN sift through bands at CD Baby proper. Searching by subgenre seems to pull up a lot of chaff (though some of it inevitably looks interesting), but there's one search engine function where you can look for bands who theoretically sound like, oh, "Montgomery Gentry" or "Blackfoot" or "Johnny Taylor" or "Opeth" or "Teena Marie" or "Rick Springfield" or whoever else you plug in, and this links to their websites...I just started doing it in the past couple days, and it gets addictive. Will reveal results when I have some.

(They are also what Sufjans Stevens's Michigan album should've been.)

Pedant alert: They were a one-hit wonder, but not with that song. (It was never a commercial single and so never charted.) They followed it up with the Top 20 "Out of My Head," a disposable ballad that is to them what "Look What You've Done" is to Jet. They later did some stuff I really liked but nothing that clicked like "The Way."

P.S. Western PA is an underrated source for indie music today imho.

The numbers are fundamentally astonishing. They come in loads -- 200 at least per week, often as many as 800 some, through the end of the year as the entire catalog is moved on-line for download. Very few of these acts, thousands, get even the slightest mention in even the fringes of the media. Since so many are classic rock and the genres that the writing class likes to shun, it's predictable. Plus these are often bands so clueless they don't even know how to market to the urban slum genre pubs.

But that's where most of my good new listens to are coming from in the new year so far. Electric Boogie Dawgs, for instance, from California, have a name so terrible it's good (like Billie's Smokehouse), but their album is sure a lot better than the gobbler just issued by the Shack-Shakers. And I did like the latter's a year ago.

Anyway, one of the fellows is going out with a girl and her pop is a local country artist. He's so sincere and earnest he instantly inspires nausea. The kid plays electric guitar and does freeform emo Xtian metal which I couldn't stand either but might be someone else's bag if he got on Myspace or something. Heck, maybe he is in on Myspace.

I saw the first episode of "Country Boys.* Not sure if that one kid's student newspaper ever came out. Wonder how long it'll take for the other kid's goofy christ-metal song to inspire a wiseass cover of it.

elieen carey *hearts of time* on now. nashville-based, i think, but she put out the CD herself apparently. first two songs are pop-country backed by stones music, very mellencamp. and a couple of the slower songs that come later ("someone like you," "blue collar man" --nope, not a styx or BTO cover, but that's okay) are just as good.

It's a compilation from Loose Music a UK alt-country label that seems to lurve Canada, lots of covers, which gives the whole thing a nice sense of novelty. Track by track thoughts:

1. Roger Dean Young & The Tin Cup – Stettler - I'm a big RDY & TTP fan, so I was rilly excited to hear this, and it's okay, but it's just a noisy instro, and what I like most is RDY's voice & lyrics.
2. Old Reliable - No Unmaking - Very trad, very earnest.
3. Steve Ketchen & The Kensington Hillbillies - Straight To Hell - More trad, tradder than trad when the "How's about an English jig and reel" line hits.
4. Two Gallants - Nothing To You - Who are these guys? This is a great song, very raw and piercing, like old Mtn Gts. "I'm gay as a choirboy for you"
5. The Only Children - Sky Begins To Storm - Not sure which song this is.
6. Justin Rutledge & The Junction Forty - Too Sober To Sleep - Ryan Adams-ish lament-rock, sure to be a crowd pleaser, in as much as downer songs can be crowd pleasers (which is not too rare in alt-country).
7. Augie March - Little Wonder - Another song I'm not sure about.
8. By The Fireside - Battle Fields - Hey, wow. Is this a cover? It sounds like it might be a Wall-era Pink Floyd song, only with emotions and stuff. Fantastic dreamy soundscapery.
9. The Idaho Falls - Country Song - V. good song, gets to why people like music, but doesn't dwell on it.
10. Charlemagne - Angel Of The Morning - I love Charley Pride, and I love dreamy atmospherics in my alt-country, so this is a winner. Sounds like it was always supposed to be a psychedelic song.
11. Jim Bryson & Jim Cuddy - Somewhere Else - Best Jim Bryson I've heard in a long time, but maybe that's the Jim Cuddy part? Truth be told, I didn't even know Cuddy (Blue Rodeo) was on the track until I cut and pasted the tracklist from Amazon.
12. Langhorne Slim - Loretta Lee Jones - Dizzy rave-up, Modest Mousish/Buddy Holly bluegrass.
13. The Pink Mountaintops - Sweet ’69 - Not country, not even alt-country, Stooges fump-a-whomp. Good fun.
14. Ox – Surrender - Mmmmm, Ox is v. Oldhammish, and so this is Palace covering Cheap Trick. As it was always meant to be.
15. Megan Reilly - On A Plane - Decent.
16. Anders Parker - Feel The Same - Throaty, earnest. Skip forward.
17. Jason Molina - Division St. Girl - Even though Molina's getting to be a really good singer, and his voice is pretty interesting, it's not a very interesting song.
18. Elephant Micah - Dream Feedback - Dino Jr-ish feedback country that's v. pleasing in this song.
19. Blood Meridian - Soldiers Of Christ - I don't know about this one. A little too boiler-plate a/country.
20. The Parkas - Start Your Own Country - I like them Parkas, and this one of their best songs, even though there's nothing about picking fights, unless you count starting wars between nations, which they're only really talking about metaphorically anyway. Still, good metaphor, great harmonies.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/riverside

I suck at predicting things such as commercial viability (so is Sony-Monument, apparently, who dropped these people several years ago and now gets to watch as the indie Equity label harvests the lettuce), but my guess is that if (1) "Mean Streak" is chosen as a single, and (2) some adult contemporary or hot AC station takes a chance on it, these guys go platinum or double and their music becomes ubiquitous.

An indie hipster countrypolitan (between inverted commas no doubt) revival, if that's what Edd's post about L.A. is predicting above, sounds like potentially the most annoying thing since the indie hipster Esquivel revival of the mid '90s, but I will keep my ears open and try my damnedest to stay awake, I promise. I guess the indie hipsters like how unmacho and emo countrypolitan is? And I guess some people liked that album last year by Bonnie Prince Billy or whatever his name is. And didn't Ween make a "countypolitan" album once? God I hate that kinda shtick. Don't hate countrypolitan, but there are many things I like more, I gotta say. Still, definitely a subject for future research. Been listening to this new Time Life compilation CD *Classic Country: Sweet Country Ballads,* and it seems like a nice little overview of the subgenre; I already knew and liked the Eddy Arnold, Ray Price, Charlie Rich, Glen Campbell, Bobby Bare, Don Gibson, Skeeter Davis, and Bobby Goldsboro tracks (make the world go away for the good times behind closed doors by the time i get to phoenix detroit city i can't stop loving you the end of the world honey), but for a bunch of those artists it's the only song I know by them, and the only one of them I've ever investigated in detail is Glen Campbell, who had tons of hits I love. I used to own a couple Charlie Rich LPs; stupid of me to get rid of them. Never have connected with Charlie Pride, whose "I Can't Believe You Stopped Loving Me" is on here; probably my loss. Bobby Goldsboro had better hits than "Honey" (i.e., "The Straight Life," hey what I can say, I like crackers and beer) but I had no idea he was ever considered country, if he in fact ever was. Favorite track I don't recall hearing before so far: "Abeline" by George Hamilton IV. Didn't know he was country, either. Dates range from 1958 to 1970; when did "countrypolitan" (the sound and/or word, which Time Life doesn't use in its title by the way) actually start?

Either way, I'm afraid right now I'd rather listen to the the Little Big Town album, which is more pop than earthy no matter what Don thinks. Sounds better every time I listen; if I did my Nasvhille Scene list over again, I'd definitely list it a few slots higher than #10; possibly even as high as #3. Anyway, Frank: Song credits in the CD sleeve (with copyrights ranging from 2002 for "Stay" -- wait, is that cover? authors don't seem to be people in the band -- to 2005 for most of the rest) don't seem to list lead singers, for some reason; just (session, I assume?) musicians. (Also, Frank, you seemed to say above that they'd been dropped from Sony; was there an earlier album? Or did Sony never put one out?) The slush guy singing in both "Bring it On Home" and "Stay" DOES sound more Eagles than Fleetwood Mac to me --actually, he sounds a lot like Don Henley, and yeah, these are definitely a couple of the lesser tracks, as is "Fine With Me", the melody of which starts out reminding me of some Lionel Richie countryish song (ie "Stuck on You" or "Sail On" or maybe "Easy" I guess) then turns into something else obvious I can't out my finger on. The tracks emphasizing girl voices are definitely better than the tracks without them. But it's not just the harmonies that remind me of Fleetwood Mac - it's also some of the melodies, and I swear there's Lindsey Buckinghamness in some of the guitar parts. One day maybe I'll sit down and take notes and pinpoint where. (Also, it turns out the one line in "Mean Streak" - still my favorite track - I coudn't pinpoint on the '05 thread is "like a frat boy at Hell Week." I can definitely see these people appealing to a frat/jam audience, if such a crowd heard them; they're for sure more rock than Nickel Creek, who I get the idea said crowd already likes.) (Though they're not as earthy as NC, Don! And maybe that would bug the fratters?)

Finally, Povertyneck Hillbillies again: They sent a DVD as well as their CD, and it's quite entertaining, especially the documentary about them coming together in Western Pennsy and winding up with the biggest song on Pittsburgh's "Froggy" commercial country station a summer or two ago off a self-released CD they sold from the back of their tour bus; supposedly, in Pittsburgh, according to a radio station guy on the DVD, they're as big as Montgomery Gentry or Alan Jackson or Kenny Chesney, and the live shows on the DVD seemed to kinda confirm that, though sometimes it was hard to tell to what extent this was staged. I prefer to think of them as a musical equivalent of minor league baseball, which is a pretty cool idea when you think about it. Said local hit is the superdupercatchy love-the-one-you're-with/you're-all-I've-got-tonight "Mr. Right Now" (as in I may not be Mr. Right but I'm Mr. Right Now), and it's more loveable on the DVD than on the CD, as is "Hillbilly State of Mind," since that one shows just about everybody in the audience (including all the pretty girls and a couple less pretty ones who were apparently all urged to stand in the front row during filming plus two little girls in cowboy hats the band brings on stage) doing this completely silly hand-jive dance where they make deer antlers with their hands and show the corn growing up and pump their fists in the air and stuff. DVD has a couple songs that aren't on the CD as well, and the concert on it ends with a nice healthy guitar solo at the end of "Any Road." Singer wears a snazzy black cowboy shirt with a crucifix-shaped cross on either side of its chest, but there's no other Christian imagery I notice. A whole lot of off-roading, fishing, and clay pigeon shooting, though.

I was wondering the same thing this weekend. David Cantwell, who is working on a book about the Nashville Sound (tentatively called Make the World Go Away), isn't sure either, but the term probably dates from the '50s, though it's since been used mostly for the '70s, which is kinda interesting. I'm guessing Billboard put it into circulation but can't find a ref.

Playing new Shooter Jennings album, *Electric Rodeo* now. Sounds great, though sometimes he still sings like Kid Rock. Doubt there's a song I'll love as much as "4th of July," but overall, I'm thinking right away that it's the way more consistent album of the two. The title/opening track and "Bad Magick" are as heavy metal as anything on the debut. Also like the (non Nazareth) hangover head-holder "Hair of the Dog," the cocaine lament "Little White Lines" (where you hear Shooter sniff in the middle and a cop stops him and he seems to refuse a breathalizer then the cop asks him the shave something but he never says what), "Alligator Chomp (The Ballad of Martin Luther Frog Jr") (total Jerry Reed "Amos Moses" swamp-funk rap-neck racial allegory); and at least the hoedown choo-choo chug opening of "Manifesto No. 2" (where he also catches his woman with another man so he shoots her with a shotgun) and the country jazz conclusion of "(The) Living Proof" (dumb question, but is that his daddy's song? Seems familiar, but I'm no Waylon expert.) Also, plenty of winding-road Allmans boogie, and a few goofy lines in "Aviators" (one of a couple Kid-Rock style clumsy ballads) where he takes a date to waffle house and he shoots her dog and slashes her dad's tires but she just don't understand his strange kind of wit.

Tom Keifer hair-metal CMT ballad I mean (hence its inclusion on this thread.)

Related question: Did Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive" sound at all country or southern rock in 1988? If so, I sure never noticed. But Shooter seems to swipe its riff in one of the Allmansy tracks on the new album, and a couple country acts (Montgomery Gentry and Chris Cagle) have covered it. So is it possible that it always sounded Southern rock, and nobody noticed at the time? Or did the cowboy on steel horse and stuff just inspire country people to reinvent it, the way, say, early '80s punks claimed and reinvented "Time Has Come Today" by the Chambers Brothers, and mid '60s punks claimed and reinvented "Louie Louie" and "Hey Joe"? Either way, it's a clear influence on the modern CMT sound.

ah, the old "what does 'rocking' mean" debate again. shooter definitely has louder guitars, but if we're talking about sheer momentum and/or fuck-the-world attitude this might be an interesting debate.

The first pop song I ever loved. 1963. Gorgeous. Sad. Cited birds. They were singing. But they shouldn't have been.

My favorite song so far in 2006 is "Hair of the Dog" by Shooter Jennings, about him waking up after drinking too much alchohol. My second favorite song on his new album so far is "Little White Lines," which is about him waking up after snorting too much cocaine (and what the cop asks him to shave is his face, apparently), and which has a pretty darn heavy riff, it turns out - definitely seems to rock harder than "Bad Magick," which needs more tune to go with its heaviosity; may well rock harder than the title track as well. Some of the tracks go into totally blatant funk breaks in the middle, too. Definitely a hard rocking Southern boogie album, and a real good one.

Finally kinda made peace with Bobby Bare's *The Moon Was Blue* this morning; after months, I've decided I'll keep the dang thing, though I still find some parts (e.g., "Are You Sincere" where I'm still not sure that "Bobby Bobby Bobby" is what those canned backup singers are chanting and the production of which sounds all scuzzy for no reason I can fathom, the Stereolab-produce-Langley Schools junk of "Fellow Travelers") unbearably kitschy. The cover songs are almost all better than the non-covers. Didn't notice til now that "Shine On Harvest Moon" is basically Western Swing. And "Am I That Easy to Forget" has incidental sounds as weird the ones in "Everybody's Talkin'" (which is a great track), or pretty close to it. And yeah, Bobby may well sing "Ballad of Lucy Jordan" better than Marianne Faithful did.

I talked about James McMurtry's 2005 album, which I guess I'll also keep with reservations, on that No Depression thread. Just wannna add here that, when Joe Ely's voice replaces McMurtry's fairly deadassed one in "Slew Foot," the thing somehow sounds way more alive all of a sudden. Go figure. (I hadn't even noticed on the album cover he was on there, then I heard him, and thought "holy shit, that's Joe Ely.")

xps

Both of whom, at least when they recited prose about popular kids and detachable penises, were probably funnier. So no, really probably NOT worthy. (Not that funniness is all I care about. And it does occur to me that titles like "Aftermath USA" and "A World Of Hurt" might mean this CD's supposed to be about current events or something, somehow.)

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/monologues/20ryanadams.html

I think they're all covers.

Was a self-titled album on Sony/Monument. It flopped.

But it's not just the harmonies that remind me of Fleetwood Mac - it's also some of the melodies, and I swear there's Lindsey Buckinghamness in some of the guitar parts. One day maybe I'll sit down and take notes and pinpoint where.

The circular return-to-drone motion on "Bones" and the song's first blast of vocal harmony are both right out of "The Chain," though this emphasizes to me how much more intense "The Chain" and "Gold Dust Woman" and "Go Your Own Way" and "Dreams" are than anything on The Road to Here. That said, those four Rumours tracks were as intense as anything else from 1977 that wasn't "I Feel Love" or "Anarchy in the U.K." (or "Bodies" or "EMI" or "God Save the Queen"). (That I can think of off-hand.) ("Complete Control" was 1978, wasn't it?) So this is not to denigrate Little Big Town too much, but there is something missing, lack of a killer instinct, so far. But I'm enjoying the heck out of the album anyway, if not the hell, and I like "Boondocks" a lot even when its pandering to the prime audience's insecurities makes me say "Damn their lies."

Yeah, this was a good example of the comic overloading of preposterous metaphor that I was praising last week:

Cold as a concrete
Tough as a back street
Like a fratboy in hell week
Babe with a mean streak

Also:

Tough as a dry creek
Sharp as a hawk's beak
Comin' fast as a stampede
Babe, you got a mean streak

Probably deserves inclusion on The Rough Guide to Co-Dependent Relationships Vol. 2. "How to have fun as the victim in an abusive relationship. A special report at 11:00."

This is the song that has the line, "Hey what's the deal with your Jeckyl and Hyde?" Also, if I heard correctly, they go "Hot as my Harley/Burns like a dry heave." Whew! She's really up against it!

Oops. Guess I should've said: The covers of songs I heard before are almost all better than the covers of songs I didn't hear before.

So the high-voiced Drive By Trucker is Patterson Hood, right? At least that's what Xgau tells me. Only place on the new one where his Neil Young and Crazy Horse beauty really hits a dust-storm of paydirt, to my ears, is "A Blessing and A Curse." I've decided not to vouch for "Goodbye," which he might not even sing, or "A World Of Hurt." "Daylight" seems to be an awful attempt at Radiohead (via My Morning Jacket?) style nothingness; "Wednesday" is rote bland alt-country; "Space City" another bore. "Gravity's Gone" is a passable second Stones rip (also mentions coke I think -- actually, seems to be about some sort of high-fallutin schmooze party), but not nearly up to the level of "Aftermath USA," probably the only great cut on here (though I reserve the right to change my mind about any of this).

Bon Jovi "Have a Nice Day." Doesn't seem particularly country to me, though I wouldn't mind if country did drift in this direction, since this is far better than "You Can't Go Home," and more Shanksy, since this one he co-wrote as well as co-produced. I think - or hope - the title is meant sarcastically, though it will be taken straight by the listening audience, since most people will just ride with this sound and not register irony. The only line I jotted was "We're livin' in the broken home of hopes and dreams." Uh, John/Jon, perhaps you need to call on Ashlee, who can write this family-drama stuff for reals, with feeling (but in that case, you might as well have her sing it).

Newsflash: eventually the bowls of cocaine start to work against you. When he gets his nose out of the party favors, Patterson is the high voice singer. I've only heard that Feb 14th track, which I thought was OK but kind of unrealized as southern fried power pop, and I like southern fried power pop.

Yeah, I'm kinda amazed that hasn't happened to Shooter yet!

Avett Brothers *Four Thieves Gone: The Robbinsville Sessions* makes me sick to my stomach. What is it, "old timey" music for Barenaked Ladies and Moxy Fruvous fans or something? Or maybe the singer got drunk and is wearing a lampshade on his voice. God this thing sucks.

Let's see, according to the bio on his Webpage, "Before he even graduated [high school], he was in pop queen Teena Marie's band." Then he did whatever he did, which included producing "Breathe" for Melissa Etheridge (I don't even think I've heard this song, but my general feeling is that Melissa oversings songs to their ultimate demise), and from there started writing, playing, producing for a whole lot of others, including co-writing co-producing "Steve McQueen" for Sheryl Crow, a song that is nice but ho-hum in comparison to most of what she'd done previously. Anwyay, songs he's written or produced that one could vaguely call country-related include SheDaisy's "Come Home Soon" and Stevie Nicks' "Trouble in Shangri-La" (which I used to own and right now can't recall, so I don't know how country it is, but it's, you know, Stevie), and maybe can include Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway," which could have been country if it hadn't already been something else. And - now this is where Shanks starts to have a serious country impact - Keith Urban's "Somebody Like You," which lived at number one on the country charts for a couple of months in 2002. Shanks wrote but did not produce it; being Urban's, it's done with an easy touch. Just skips along, rides a nice breeze, probably a lot harder to do well than it appears, but only catches fire for me during Keith's guitar rave-up at the end (which I suspect most radio listeners didn't get a chance to hear). But then, it's not trying to catch fire. It's way more palatable than most sap in the pop country range. Nice. But it has little to do with why I'm now trying to find out whatever I can about Shanks. The why is "Fly" by Hilary Duff, which would have been my single of the year in 2004 if I'd been giving Duff much attention; "La La" by Ashlee Simpson, which was my number three this year and would have been number one if Shanks and Simpson hadn't tried too hard to make it sound tough; and a whole bunch more: all of the crucial Ashlee tracks, and the woman has yet to put out a bad or merely so-so single; "First" and the other tracks that broke Lohan onto the radio; "Come Clean," Duff's first great single; and back in 2001, Michelle Branch's "Everywhere," which preceded Pink's "Don't Let Me Get Me"* and Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" onto the airwaves and helped to set a pattern: personal (or personal-seeming) lyrics but with, no matter how pensive the rest of the song, a chorus that wails. So far Shanks seems to do best with the young women (and when Kara DioGuardi is on board as one of his co-writers); he doesn't have just one sound. He's gotten delicate beauty from Hilary and hot fire from Ashlee. I'm not sure what to make of his Bon Jovi involvement. I'd call "Have a Nice Day" below-average for a Shanks single, but Shanks has done worse. He's still a subject for further research.

(*On his Webpage he gives himself credit for "additional production" on Pink's "Don't Let Me Get Me," but this is not listed on the album notes, which credit Dallas Austin.)

Shanks-related songs I haven't so far heard include Fleetwood Mac's "Peacekeeper," Vertical Horizon's "I'm Still Here," Alanis Morissette's "Everything."

http://gritz.net/

but their new record
is quite fun and bluegrass-pop
I am in favor

*e.g. The opener is a bluegrass hoedown about a hangover ("Poison / Get thee out of me") that calls puke and/or the runs "bubblin' crude", the closer is another hangover song called "Let Jesus Make You Breakfast"; the midtempo AAA-friendly boogie is surprisingly upbeat in tone considering it's about the framing and incarceration of Leonard Peltier; the gospel song with the jordanaires is actually predicting failure ("I know the devil in me will do me in"); etc. I'm in heavy favor of this.

Yes, this is wrong. Cantrell is country.

and I dunno, Cantrell is kind of a folkie, but she covers Wynn Stewart honky-tonk stuff. but I think she'd sell better out of the folk section, or the Americana section, altho at Grimey's here she's right in with Can and Captain Beefheart.

xps

Albums

1. Lee Ann Womack: There’s More Where That Came From (MCA)
2. Rodney Crowell: The Outsider (Columbia)
3. Robbie Fulks: Georgia Hard (Yep Roc)
4. Marty Stuart & the Fabulous Superlatives: Souls’ Chapel (Superlatone/Universal South)
5. Gary Allan: Tough All Over (MCA)
6. Brad Paisley: Time Well Wasted (Arista)
7. Dwight Yoakam: Blame the Vain (New West)
8. Mary Gauthier: Mercy Now (Lost Highway)
9. Patty Loveless: Dreamin’ My Dreams (Epic)
10. Miranda Lambert: Kerosene (Epic)
11. Bobby Bare: The Moon Was Blue (Dualtone)
12. Dierks Bentley: Modern Day Drifter (Capitol)
13. Martina McBride: Timeless (RCA)
14. Neil Young: Prairie Wind (Reprise)
15. Gretchen Wilson: All Jacked Up (Epic) 16. Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell: Begonias (Yep Roc)
17. James McMurtry: Childish Things (Compadre)
18. Merle Haggard: Chicago Wind (Capitol)
19. John Prine: Fair & Square (Oh Boy)
20. Deana Carter: The Story of My Life (Vanguard)
21. Trisha Yearwood: Jasper County (MCA)
22. Jimmie Dale Gilmore: Come on Back (Rounder)
23. Nickel Creek: Why Should the Fire Die (Sugar Hill)
24. Bobby Pinson: Man Like Me (RCA)
25. Shooter Jennings: Put the O Back in Country (Universal South)

Singles

1. Lee Ann Womack: “I May Hate Myself in the Morning”
2. Brad Paisley: “Alcohol”
3. Miranda Lambert: “Kerosene”
4. Dierks Bentley: “Lot of Leavin’ Left to Do”
5. Gary Allan: “Best I Ever Had”
6. Shooter Jennings: “4th of July”
7. Patty Loveless: “Keep Your Distance”
8. Toby Keith: “As Good as I Once Was”
9. Mary Gauthier: “Mercy Now”
10. Trisha Yearwood: “Georgia Rain”
11. James McMurtry: “We Can’t Make It Here”
12. Gretchen Wilson: “I Don’t Feel Like Loving You Today”
13. Dwight Yoakam: “Blame the Vain”
14. Rodney Crowell: “The Obscenity Prayer”
15. Gretchen Wilson: “All Jacked Up”
16. Robbie Fulks: “Georgia Hard”
17. Keith Urban: “Making Memories of Us”
18. Bobby Pinson: “Don’t Ask Me How I Know”
19. Merle Haggard: “Where’s All the Freedom”
20. Sara Evans: “A Real Fine Place to Start”

Reissues

1. Charlie Poole: You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me (Columbia/Legacy)
2. Johnny Cash: The Legend (Columbia/Legacy)
3. June Carter Cash: Keep on the Sunny Side (Columbia/Legacy)
4. David Allan Coe: Penitentiary Blues (Hacktone)
5. The Band: A Musical History (Capitol)
6. Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways: The Very Best of Emmylou Harris (Warner Bros./Reprise/Rhino)
7. Doug Sahm & the Sir Douglas Quintet: The Complete Mercury Recordings (Hip-O Select)
8. Various Artists: Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows, 1926-1937 (Old Hat)
9. Rosanne Cash: Seven Year Ache (Columbia/Legacy)
10. Shel Silverstein: The Best of Shel Silverstein: His Words, His Songs, His Friends (Columbia/Legacy)

Artists of the Year

1. Lee Ann Womack
2. Marty Stuart
3. Brad Paisley
4. Alison Krauss & Union Station
5. Rodney Crowell
6. Keith Urban
7. Gary Allan
8. Gretchen Wilson
9. Dierks Bentley
10. Patty Loveless

Male Vocalists

1. Gary Allan
2. Dwight Yoakam
3. Marty Stuart
4. Brad Paisley
5. Merle Haggard
6. Dierks Bentley
7. Alan Jackson
8. Robbie Fulks
9. George Strait
10. Rodney Crowell

Female Vocalists

1. Lee Ann Womack
2. Gretchen Wilson
3. Patty Loveless
4. Martina McBride
5. Trisha Yearwood
6. Alison Krauss
7. Miranda Lambert
8. Sara Evans
9. Mary Gauthier
10: (tie) Shelby Lynne / Caitlin Cary

Live Acts

1. Keith Urban
2. Alison Krauss & Union Station
3. Marty Stuart
4. Brad Paisley
5. Big & Rich

Duos and Groups

1. Big & Rich
2. Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell
3. Alison Krauss & Union Station
4. Brooks & Dunn
5. Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives

Songwriters

1. Rodney Crowell
2. John Rich
3. Robbie Fulks
4. Mary Gauthier
5. James McMurtry

Instrumentalists

1. Jerry Douglas
2. Brad Paisley
3. Chris Thile
4. Kenny Vaughan
5. Keith Urban

New Acts

1. Miranda Lambert
2. Shooter Jennings
3. Sugarland
4. The Wrights
5. Hanna-McEuen

Albums

1. Lee Ann Womack: There’s More Where That Came From (MCA)
2. Rodney Crowell: The Outsider (Columbia)
3. Robbie Fulks: Georgia Hard (Yep Roc)
4. Marty Stuart & the Fabulous Superlatives: Souls’ Chapel (Superlatone/Universal South)
5. Gary Allan: Tough All Over (MCA)
6. Brad Paisley: Time Well Wasted (Arista)
7. Dwight Yoakam: Blame the Vain (New West)
8. Mary Gauthier: Mercy Now (Lost Highway)
9. Patty Loveless: Dreamin’ My Dreams (Epic)
10. Miranda Lambert: Kerosene (Epic)
11. Bobby Bare: The Moon Was Blue (Dualtone)
12. Dierks Bentley: Modern Day Drifter (Capitol)
13. Martina McBride: Timeless (RCA)
14. Neil Young: Prairie Wind (Reprise)
15. Gretchen Wilson: All Jacked Up (Epic) 16. Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell: Begonias (Yep Roc)
17. James McMurtry: Childish Things (Compadre)
18. Merle Haggard: Chicago Wind (Capitol)
19. John Prine: Fair & Square (Oh Boy)
20. Deana Carter: The Story of My Life (Vanguard)
21. Trisha Yearwood: Jasper County (MCA)
22. Jimmie Dale Gilmore: Come on Back (Rounder)
23. Nickel Creek: Why Should the Fire Die (Sugar Hill)
24. Bobby Pinson: Man Like Me (RCA)
25. Shooter Jennings: Put the O Back in Country (Universal South)

Singles

1. Lee Ann Womack: “I May Hate Myself in the Morning”
2. Brad Paisley: “Alcohol”
3. Miranda Lambert: “Kerosene”
4. Dierks Bentley: “Lot of Leavin’ Left to Do”
5. Gary Allan: “Best I Ever Had”
6. Shooter Jennings: “4th of July”
7. Patty Loveless: “Keep Your Distance”
8. Toby Keith: “As Good as I Once Was”
9. Mary Gauthier: “Mercy Now”
10. Trisha Yearwood: “Georgia Rain”
11. James McMurtry: “We Can’t Make It Here”
12. Gretchen Wilson: “I Don’t Feel Like Loving You Today”
13. Dwight Yoakam: “Blame the Vain”
14. Rodney Crowell: “The Obscenity Prayer”
15. Gretchen Wilson: “All Jacked Up”
16. Robbie Fulks: “Georgia Hard”
17. Keith Urban: “Making Memories of Us”
18. Bobby Pinson: “Don’t Ask Me How I Know”
19. Merle Haggard: “Where’s All the Freedom”
20. Sara Evans: “A Real Fine Place to Start”

Reissues

1. Charlie Poole: You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me (Columbia/Legacy)
2. Johnny Cash: The Legend (Columbia/Legacy)
3. June Carter Cash: Keep on the Sunny Side (Columbia/Legacy)
4. David Allan Coe: Penitentiary Blues (Hacktone)
5. The Band: A Musical History (Capitol)
6. Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways: The Very Best of Emmylou Harris (Warner Bros./Reprise/Rhino)
7. Doug Sahm & the Sir Douglas Quintet: The Complete Mercury Recordings (Hip-O Select)
8. Various Artists: Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows, 1926-1937 (Old Hat)
9. Rosanne Cash: Seven Year Ache (Columbia/Legacy)
10. Shel Silverstein: The Best of Shel Silverstein: His Words, His Songs, His Friends (Columbia/Legacy)

Artists of the Year

1. Lee Ann Womack
2. Marty Stuart
3. Brad Paisley
4. Alison Krauss & Union Station
5. Rodney Crowell
6. Keith Urban
7. Gary Allan
8. Gretchen Wilson
9. Dierks Bentley
10. Patty Loveless

Male Vocalists

1. Gary Allan
2. Dwight Yoakam
3. Marty Stuart
4. Brad Paisley
5. Merle Haggard
6. Dierks Bentley
7. Alan Jackson
8. Robbie Fulks
9. George Strait
10. Rodney Crowell

Female Vocalists

1. Lee Ann Womack
2. Gretchen Wilson
3. Patty Loveless
4. Martina McBride
5. Trisha Yearwood
6. Alison Krauss
7. Miranda Lambert
8. Sara Evans
9. Mary Gauthier
10: (tie) Shelby Lynne / Caitlin Cary

Live Acts

1. Keith Urban
2. Alison Krauss & Union Station
3. Marty Stuart
4. Brad Paisley
5. Big & Rich

Duos and Groups

1. Big & Rich
2. Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell
3. Alison Krauss & Union Station
4. Brooks & Dunn
5. Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives

Songwriters

1. Rodney Crowell
2. John Rich
3. Robbie Fulks
4. Mary Gauthier
5. James McMurtry

Instrumentalists

1. Jerry Douglas
2. Brad Paisley
3. Chris Thile
4. Kenny Vaughan
5. Keith Urban

New Acts

1. Miranda Lambert
2. Shooter Jennings
3. Sugarland
4. The Wrights
5. Hanna-McEuen

just scanned Geoffrey's essay--here's his main point, I suppose...

*....they returned country music to its roots. No matter what its instrumentation, country has always distinguished itself from the conformist optimism of mainstream pop and the rebellious optimism of rock ’n’ roll, the religious pieties of gospel music and the secular pieties of folk music by embracing the weaknesses and wounds of human nature. By and large, only the blues have shown a like honesty.*

1) the rockabilly isn't always all THAT hi-octane, or all that raw, or all that metal, or all that pervasive. Just sometimes.
2) my favorite songs so far: "i can always count on you (to let me down)" ("gimme three steps" times "who shot sam" or one of those rockabilly george jones songs); "civil war rock" (ubangi stomp boogie woogie in a ubangi style); "confederate money" (as in "your love is like confederate money"); "i rode with j.e.b. stuart" (hard-kicking metal boogie with a manly sore throat -- "sabers and roses" is the same genre, but doesn't kick as hard, though it goes into a nice dobro or mandolin or dulcimer or something break in the middle); "ghost ride" (punk rock stretching toward boogie, and it mentions hagerstown, the maryland city that kix and the left came from, and this sounds more like the left than kix, and has somebody riding their ghosty horse into town and yelling "hurrah for the confederacy!" in the middle. also, it is track #11, not track #10 as erroneously stated on the cd sleeve); "Custard's Luck" (more catchy slimey stones-riffed biker rock; what does "come on you wolverines" mean in a civil war context?). Also there are okay Stones slimers about rebel girls from new york and Southern girls. Some of the more trad and stately and sometimes acapella'd history-lesson stuff is good too ("shadow of the south" is lovely), but i am a rockerist if not a rockist when it comes to country and it will probably take that stuff longer to sink in.
3) the hooves don't clip-clop; they gallop. and there are probably muskets on there somewhere as well.
4) i still can't tell if there are any songs about being a yankee.
5) in "brown sugar" mr. reb ANNUNCIATES, so you can tell she tastes good not just dances good, and he's not a schoolboy but he knows what he likes. still...um, interesting cover choice, to say the least.
6) "maryland my maryland" must be old because it says "the gentlemen were gay" and rhymes that with "philadelph-i-ay."
7) oddly, 22 songs is not nearly as excessive as I at first thought.

In other news, Michaelangelo Matos emailed me this link last night. I never heard of this guy before, and I'd have thought it impossible, but when it comes to keeping up with country, this guy may well leave everybody on this thread in the dust:

http://countryuniverse.blogspot.com/

*"Custard's Luck" (more catchy slimey stones-riffed biker rock; what does "come on you wolverines" mean in a civil war context?)*

ah, I remembered this from my LSU days reading about the Late Unpleasantness (so Custer becomes Custard!):

The name James Kidd (1840-1913) is not altogether unfamiliar to Civil War aficionados, particularly to those with an interest in Union cavalry operations. A twenty-one-year-old University of Michigan student from Ionia, Michigan, Kidd enlisted in the federal army and managed to recruit a company of cavalry that was accepted as Company E, 6th Michigan Cavalry, with himself as captain. Brigaded with the 1st, 5th, and 7th Michigan cavalry regiments, the Michigan Cavalry Brigade distinguished itself under the leadership of its first commander, Gen. George Armstrong Custer. "Custer's Wolverines," as they were popularly known, gained renown as one of the finest volunteer cavalry units to serve in the eastern theater, fighting in more than sixty battles or skirmishes. By war's end, the Wolverines had served in the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac and under Sheridan in his Army of the Shenandoah....

CDbaby.com is the future of music, I swear.

Remarkable, isn't it. Beats hell out of myspace even though a lot of the acts are kind of forced into doing duplicate pages for that service by the tyrannical hype of its benefits.

If tweren't through CD Baby, it would have been missed. I don't think I saw a copy of it anywhere in meatspace.

Fourth song "I Can Make It On My Own" on that great Redhill EP is lyrically a post-breakup survival anthem a la, well, "I Will Survive," or "No Guilt" by the Waitresses or somebody: "Saw you with your new hootchie mama/Have you introduced her to your head-case traumas?," sung to a Diddley beat (go ahead, sing along). The drums and guitars at the start are Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy" into George Michael's "Faith" (both of which were Diddley chillun all along).

By the way, this has been discussed before, but looking over the top 500 singles of the '90s to '05 on that countryuniverse.blogspot site, and I've only begun to do so, I'm kind of surprised by how many singers I now associate with alt-country apparently had actual radio country hits in the early '90s when I warn't paying attention. Carlene Carther, Leeroy Parnell, I forget who else. He's making me curious about lots of singers and songs I never heard or never thought about before. Don't always agree with him (his interpretation of "Gimme Shelter" in his #2 album of 2005 Kathy Mattea blurb is completely nuts, and he apparently has no use for Miranda Lambert at all), but he's got lots of interesting ideas. So who the hell is he?

>Mattea has the moral authority to cover "Gimme Shelter" and "Down On The Corner" - she's been a walking illustration of the virtues of peacemaking and creating art for pure joy that those songs respectively celebrate.<

Rape, Murder. It's just a shot away.

and been listening steady to Townes Van Zandt. I suppose I like the talking-blues aspect of him best of all, he basically talks his way thru the London concert from mid-'80s, and he's really charming, even turning the Elvis movie tune "Song of the Shrimp" (which Frank Black did sorta cool and sorta half-assed on last yr's "Honeycomb") into a mock dissertation on songwriting ("I can't believe this, now it gets worse...Jesus, just let me finish the thing...what were they thinking, now the shrimp is talking??") and talking his way thru "Pancho and Lefty." but there's something in his singing and speaking voice that gets you after a while, something basically good-humored and bemused at his own obsession with mortality, which somehow seems like a joke to him. at the same time, he's a bit boring, a bit samey, and I'm not sure about his allegories and poker tales, altho he has one strange sorta Hawthorne-like death song about a witch living in a hole. so I haven't quite gotten to the point of making up my mind--I do know the damned tempos are too slow for my taste--but I'm basically won over. and shit, Townes is the granddaddy of alt- as much as Gram or Gene Clark or Don Everly or the Flatlanders or...

Yeah! I'd forgotten that's where it dated back to; I've got in on one of those New Orleans compilations on Rhino, now that you mention it. (The Yardbirds did cover it though, right? Or am I just dreaming?)

& Joy Lynn definitely has way more music in her music than Amy Rigby.

the Yardbirds did do it. everyone did those "Naomi Neville" Toussaint songs--like "Fortune Teller," gosh, everyone from the Stones to the O'Jays to Ringo Starr have done that one. I love those New Orleans guys so much--Smiley Lewis, Chris Kenner, K-Doe, Benny Spellman, Lee Dorsey...

speaking of New Orleans, the mayor should've thought hipper and said something about a "café au lait" city. Jeez, what I wouldn't give for a real Progress Grocery muffaletta right now, and a cold Abita beer.

Just noticed his previous one placed #30 in their '05 poll. So, yeah.

1 - "hold my breath until next Wednesday" - I assume this one's "Wednesday" agreed that it's rote alt-country but not entirely unpleasant
2 - refrain is "don't be so easy on yourself" (Isbell sings this one, I liked it)
3 - "Blessing and a Curse" - not very memorable
4 - Gravity's Gone - Cooley sings it, lyrics about handjobs I think and waking sunny-side-up, this one's good
5 - "left w/o saying goodbye" - assume this one's "Goodbye" lyrics sound pretty treacly but I liked the bass on this one, hope it sounds as good on record
6 - "Daylight" (I think Isbell did this one, oh wait yeah this is the one where he's all full-throated screamy, I guess that's where you're getting the Radiohead/MMJ comparison from)
7 - "Feb 14" - slight but decent
8 - something like "wonder why it's taking me so long" also think I heard something about getting dirt off your good name, Cooley sang it and I'm fairly certain it wasn't an old song and hopefully not a cover b/c I really liked it, acoustic and very evocative
9 - "World of Hurt"

so really I guess I've figured 'em all out except 2 and 8.

Feb. 14
Gravity's Gone
Easy On Yourself
Aftermath USA
Goodbye
Daylight
Wednesday
Little Bonnie
Space City
A Blessing and a Curse
A World of Hurt

though lots of times it just settle for just choogling somewhat lazily (which is fine, too.) and i won't absolutely swear they do anything as funky as the gator song on shooter's CD, or the jerry reed song where amos moses becomes gator bait. that'd be a close contest.

switching gears, i just noticed that in my second book i attribute "up against the wall redneck mothers" to bobby bare. amazing song, but i forgot that he'd done it, and i don't remember it being mentioned in all the bare talk in the past year. is he the one who had the biggest hit with it, or was that somebody else? was it an outlaw move for him, or what?

I enjoyed reading the posts and I am looking forward to perusing the archives. I try to listen to as much different music as possible and I'm hoping you guys mention some great stuff I missed.

Thanks for the nice words about my blog. I want to clarify the Mattea comment I made because I think I didn't explain it clearly in the original post. From my point of view, Mattea took two classic songs that aren't easily covered, and I wanted to make the point that the songs are consistent with her musical identity and not just a cheap ploy to sell more records. With the attitude toward the war souring, and never having been very positive to begin with, there have been an avalanche of posturing music stars singing peace songs old and new. Mattea has been recording songs in that vein for a long time and I wanted to make the point that she has the moral authority to sing a song like "Gimme Shelter" because she's always had that worldview and incorporated it into her music; she's not like, say, Madonna suddenly adding "Imagine" to her set list last year.

With "Down On The Corner", which celebrates singing music for pure pleasure, there are few contemporary country artists who can truly claim to be doing that. I think with Mattea walking away from a major label deal (it's a little-known fact that Mercury prez Luke Lewis didn't want her to go) and now recording self-produced albums with her road band that are crafted while playing small venues across the country, she seems to be as close to the spirit of that song as reasonably possible.

I still don't know if that explains things any better, but "moral authority" just meant, to me, that she has the credibility to sing both songs with conviction and not seem like she's just doing a trendy cover or glorified karaoke.

I might or might not have more to say on this subject. I think it's possible Himes has read Robert Warshow's excellent essay "The Gangster as Tragic Hero." Himes is raising interesting issues; he's just not willing to turn the searchlight onto the voters or onto himself.

I surprised myself with how much I ended up liking the Jamie O'Neal album, which I'd badmouthed a lot during the year. I'd say that Gary Allan has generally stronger songs, and he's a beautiful singer, but what works for him is to figure out how to approach a song and then to just follow that approach, consistently. I finally rated O'Neal higher because her music breathes more freely. In the midst of her dramatic story of the stripper - "Devil on the Left," best song on the album - she breaks into scat singing for no particular reason, but this works, as if the dance in her singing correlates to the striptease. And this is important because it's the music and not the lyrics that makes the case for the stripper's dance.

It's a cliché but accurate to say that country & western is split emotionally between a desire for home and family on the one hand and the urge to range wild and free on the other. This can either be a profound paradox or a lazy inconsistency depending on the artistry involved. Shannon Brown's "Corn Fed" is very catchy but appalling in its stupidity: on the one hand she says that in her happy heartland they leave doors unlocked so as not to keep anybody out, on the other she brags that there ain't nothin' but country on the radio. The average eight year old can see the hypocrisy in that one, and for an adult to write such a song and not notice its bullshit requires a deliberate deadening of the intellect. (Gawd, if there were an actual community that said this about itself, how would its teenagers avoid growing up insane? By listening to Young Jeezy records, perhaps, and dreaming of being gangstas.)

But it's the emotional split asserting itself, the gap between one ideal (wild and free, everybody welcome) and another (everybody united in values). Jamie O'Neal's got the split too, which she avoids confronting directly. Her mom-is-a-hero-in-the-home lecture is in one song, her girls'-night blowout is in another. In "Devil On the Left" - where the two ideals co-exist - the words sidestep just what is supposed to count as the angel's dominion and what the devil's: you assume that the strip show belongs to the devil, but does this mean dancing and pleasure belongs to the devil as well? There's a hint in the song that the preacher who prays for her is the one who eventually marries her and takes her to the corn-fed picket-fence land of the happy ending. But in marrying her he gets the carnal dance she'd previously sold to everyone. (The most touching of the many touching moments on Deana Carter's album is where she in effect asks the angels for permission to have a love affair.)

In general I like music that overspills its container, though for this to work well there has to be a good container in the first place. So that's my version of the split (Nietzsche's melding of Dionysius and Apollo, I suppose, though I haven't read Birth of Tragedy in thirty years so don't really know). Anyway, alt-country - alt anything, actually, including the Nashville Scene and New Times and the Village Voice - has its own version of this paradox/inconsistency: it claims to ride free - to be alternative, to overspill its container - and at the same time it turns "we overspill our container" into a container itself, a niche for the likeminded, and without a lot of motion in the niche. Really, Jamie O'Neal's music has way more splish and splash than Mary Gauthier's does, even if the latter claims to be an emotional cascade.

I'm pretty sure Jerry Jeff Walker had the biggest hit with "Up Against the Wall (Redneck Mother" -- written by Ray Wylie Hubbard, who is still underrated outside of Texas. xhuxk and others might prefer Ray's uber-substance-abused outlaw stuff from the late '70s and early '80s, though I think it's all out of print. He's become a friend, so I won't plug his post-substance Rounder albums too much (they're probably too singer/songwritery for this thread, though would it were more country-folkies had his humor and guitar chops). He's got a new record coming out in the spring. And he's become kind of a godfather to the Cory Morrows and Pat Greens of Austin. Oh, his "Conversation With the Devil" says Satan won the fiddle duel in Georgia. When Ray does "Redneck Mother" live he turns it into a frickin hilarious song-effacing genesis tale of outlaw country itself. I can YSI that if folks want to hear it.

Two Nietzche and country connections in less than a week. We need to get Greil over to this thread.

Frank's basically right about Geoff Himes's essay, I think. Even though I listen to way more Nasvhille country than a few years ago, and to my ears I *do* believe it's improved, I definitely don't think it's improved, as I think he implies, by moving toward alt or "getting back on track" (not a direct quote, but the gist of his argument); I'm not so sure I buy that it ever really got off track in the first place. And if it did, that stupidly smug and typically dull Alan Jackson kvetch he mentioned about not-quite-country two-minute love songs was probably more a SYMPTOM of its getting-off-trackness than a solution or answer to it (same with whoever did the dumb murder on music row one -- that was Alan and George, right? Compared to those two guys, most country was *right* to head more popward.)

I guess I should note that Mattea drops the "rape, murder" part of "Gimme Shelter" and by doing so, the song works perfectly as a metaphor for a country on the brink of war. It's not so much a peacemaking song as a stark warning that peace is about to be broken and bad things will come because of it, I suppose.

Regarding country music's quality, I've posted a few times on my blog that I think the genre has suddenly had an artistic resurgence in the past two years, with 2005 being the first truly great year since 1996 or 1997. I suspect, however, that this is just a perception in my head, because access to a lot of different music suddenly opened up through iTunes (for me) and it's so much easier for me to go hear an album that's getting great reviews. For example, "Begonias." I never heard of that album until it started popping up on Best of 2005 lists, but I went and sampled it, bought it, and it popped up on my own list in the end.

This easy access reminds me of the golden era of CMT, when they used to play solid videos 24/7 and everybody had close to equal rotation. So many albums I bought and artists I discovered because of CMT. Remember the first Lari White, Sara Evans, Shania Twain, Martina McBride & Mavericks albums that flopped? I bought them because of CMT. I discovered Bruce Robison, Bobbie Cryner, Joy Lynn White, Mandy Barnett, Johnny Cash's "American Recordings", Willie Nelson's "Spirit" and "Teatro", Emmylou Harris' "Cowgirl's Prayer", Carlene Carter, Matraca Berg, Pirates of the Mississippi, Radney Foster, and even Todd Snider on CMT. I never cared much for radio. I got my music fix from the videos. The new digital delivery methods have opened up the doors again for me to hear a lot of great new music, much like CMT did a decade ago. I worry that maybe 1998-2003 weren't bad years for country music, but rather I just happened to miss a lot of great music that came out.

Last year or longer, from:

Let's all write the same thing at once! Gretchen Wilson provokes wistful nostalgia for Hee-Haw Nation

Today's Sunday LA Times FEATURE, again fit for THEY PHONED IT IN: on Gretchen Wilson -- genuine redneck woman, putting 'redneck' back in country, setting the stage for a new breed of do-it-yourself redneck stars. Hoo-boy, do we love rednecks like this one in el_Lay media, just not our local rednecks, of which there are thousands.

===

Dateline Nashville -- "When Gretchen Wilson reached for a paper cup during an interview on her tour bus, I assumed she was going to pour some coffee. Instead, she brought the empty cup to her mouth and casually spit into it -- brown tobacco juice."

Proof she's a redneck woman? Or maybe she's just crass, chaw spitters being a dime-a-dozen from east coast to west.

"No wonder record executives in this country music capital all but ducked under their desks when the former Illinois bartender and bouncer (and 'bouncer' is gold-plated intelligence-insulting bullshit) came calling time after time only a few years ago looking for a countract..."

"Now, here was someone who'd remind all those pop fans that country music is the land of Hee-Haw and trailer parks..."

"Eager to find Wilsons of their own, execs may now even be ordering spittons.

"A songwriter who collaborates with Wilson says/claims/spouts: "...the country audience related to her right away. She was drinking a beer in her videos and belching. Now everyone is trying to sign a redneck..."

Wilson's mother worked at "a bare-knuckle bar" where "a 12-gauge shotgun was kept."
===

I'd include more but it is really too phoned in.

i think that gretchen wilson is better then her personae lets on.

>Alligator Stew studio album *A First Taste of Alligator Stew* from 1991 sounds tougher, tighter, meaner, and brawnier than the live one I talk about above, with more gunslinger ballads, more cowbell (in "four winds"), more comprehensible words about actual alligator rassling (in "shiner," where the singer keeps saying he's a shiner, a job which, though i've never heard the phrase before, seems to have something to do with bagging large carnivorous reptiles); also, turns out that "blood money" (here in both electric and acoustic versions) is about an offer of $7000 to get off your feet but you have to kill your brother to get it, wow; i'd thought it was about robbing a bank, but apparently i was wrong. also, with the clearer fidelity, it's now obvious the singer grunts or groans more like meat loaf or billy ray cyrus (i.e., aiming for springsteen, probably) than like jim dandy mangrum, which i do not mean as an insult. the fellow can really sing.

mixing cover tunes,
original psych rock and
covering hank I

(1) It's one of maybe about 12 "best" songs on that album, which doesn't have a bad one and would have made my Pazz & Jop ballot if I'd listened to it a couple of days earlier (it's the Burmese album I shoehorned onto my Nashville Scene reissues list).

(2) I just listened to 30-second streamed clips of Brownsville Stations', Hanoi Rocks', and Commander Cody's versions of "Lightnin' Bar Blues," and damned if I don't think you're right, Chuck (though "Lightnin' Bar Blues" may possibly be a knockoff of some earlier rockabilly track). The way Saing Saing Maw sings it reminds me of Ricky Nelson: Relaxed. As Dylan says, not rootin' the mountain down.

(3) Chuck, did the Robyn CD arrive?

Oops, the waltz is "Heart Over Head Over Heels." "That's the Way" is more like a zigzag (at leat that's what Samantha says: "gotta zig gotta zag gotta travel my jagged road." To Mexico with Romeo, maybe. But she also says she changes direction like a pendulum, and this song doesn't, and nor does it swing like England and a pendulum do.)

I did get Robyn, Frank, thanks! I like it, especially "Konichiwa Bitches," though I doubt I like that anywhere near as much as "Jam On It" or "Attack of the Name Game." Enjoy the rest; not sure yet how much. (CD-Rs are always hard for to motivate myself to listen to!)

Shawn Camp *Fireball* on now; he wrote "Two Pina Coladas" for Garth and "How Long Gone" (which I don't remember off the top of my head) for Brooks and Dunn. He sounds like Ricky Skaggs with (sometimes, when he's good) John Anderson's or Blake Shelton's self-effacingly cornball sense of humor (though Skaggs himself could be self-effacingly humorous too, come to think of it). He's got as much bluegrass in him as Dierks Bentley, I guess; i.e., not enough to make him seem like a priss, but enough to make things interesting. Not a purist, in other words, and plenty of fast catchy songs. Leaning toward liking "Fireball" (about a gal), "The Way It Is" (is the way it was is the way it's gonna be, or something like that) "Hotwired" (multifaceted title metaphor), "Beagle Hound" (about his dawg), and "Drank" (about drinking) most, at least so far. Seems like he's not so good with the dark deathbound stuff, but I could be wrong.

Second song ("You Can Have Me") they're doing pretty much the same, the melody is almost as good, though the arrangement is more ordinary and less garage; and oddly enough I hate this track - falls into the category of "some guy trying to sing soul." I hear all the weaknesses that didn't bother me on track one, the singer not quite hitting the notes (the rough-hewn delivery masking the misses), out-of-tune backup singing. New Jersey white soul? They're a Chicago band, but they feel like Jersey.

I may report further when I listen more. Probably my liking for track one will diminish somewhat, and my tolerance for track two will increase.

(You know, Jagger and Sinatra were never quite hitting the notes, either, but despite this they hit thought and emotion on the noggin - when they were at their best, anyway. I wonder why something works in one situation and not another.)

I wonder if fewer people voted for singles than albums in the Scene poll. This could explain why singles I like did better than albums I like; people with my taste have more of an impact.

(But I also usually prefer the singles to the albums that place in Pazz & Jop, and though there are fewer singles voters there, this is not enough to give people like me a special impact. Rather, people's taste gets better when they go for singles, and maybe the best singles artists clutter up their albums with ballads and stuff that drive away the album voters.)

Also, they seem to have truncated the section overall this year, used fewer comments, though I haven't compared the column inches.

Maybe the alt-country types are less likely to vote for singles? That would be my guess. (Also, wasn't there one guy who said he voted for alt-country albums, but let his 19 year old daughter pick her favorite pop country singles? Or did I just dream that one up?)

(But I don't see that preferences based on power-rotation airplay disallow critical latitude as to what counts as country.)

got several things to assess here, I've been playing catchup for the past week, just can't shake this flu. including the new Hank III, which came today, and the new Rhett Akins. but tonight, excited to be seeing Bettye LaVette!!

Hmmm...heard their new album a month or two ago and didn't think it was that good. Are these the same guys who put out an all bluegrass album of AC/DC covers a few years ago? Or was that somebody else? Either way, seems like a way too obvious shtick that wasn't funny in the first place, being the same kind of joke indie bands have worn into the ground since the Replacements two decades ago, plus like all joke-metal it's completely redundant, somehow missing the fact that you don't need to *make* hard rock funny, because it was funny on purpose in the first place. Anyway, grumpiness over with, I actually thought the two least annoying songs on the new Hayseed Dixie album were their version of Green Day's "Holiday" and an original called "Kirby Hill," mainly because their energy was better when I can't remember a version of the song that's way more energetic, and it's been a long time since I played that Green Day album. "Black Dog," "War Pigs," "Ace of Spades," and a couple other originals ("Mountain Man," "Marijuana") seemed tolerable (once), but the shtick wore out its welcome way too quick. On the other hand, I *can* kind of see how they'd be fun to be in a room with while drinking beer, especially if they cracked wise about *Deliverance* between songs.

Well, yes and no. Looking at the poll again, I see that seven of my albums made the list (which is way more than ever make the P&J list) while only four of the singles. But my four singles were all bunched at the top, in the top six, whereas my albums spread throughout the top 25. But given that I have heard most of the placing singles I didn't vote for, whereas I haven't heard most of the albums, I'm really not in the position to judge whether the singles list was better than the albums. I just normally assume that singles lists are better than album lists.

Got the in-print copy of the Scene; this year it came without a T-shirt, and none of our comments were in the print version. That and no numbers listed with the votes makes this the ever-shrinking critics poll. (And I'm damned if I can figure out why the Scene thinks a boot on the cover would be more enticing than Lee Ann's warm, engaging mug and upper torso.)

Also listening to a pile of Southern soul discovered via CD-baby channels. The album by a jowly guy named Jimmy Taylor leans toward the blues end of things (with lady backup vocals not far from the ones on last year's Bobby Bare album); the EP by the lady named Candis Palmer ("All Men Ain't Dawgs,* since some are electric boogie dawgs apparently) leans toward the disco end; the single by Harold, "Chill Step Party," is steppin' music. He mentions Milwaukee, Chitown, Harlem, and Atlanta in it. More fun than R. Kelly, as far as I'm concerned, but mainly all this stuff obviously has a connection to county music too.

candis palmer, as i said, gets even more disco, but her disco is maybe 1975 where taylor's is 1973. (i think i wrote on the '05 thread that shannon brown's disco sounded 1979, but maybe that was hyperbole; i'm not sure. these two soul singers FEEL more disco.) but even at her most disco, in a song called "don't let someone else come and jingle my bell" or something, palmer gets backed by HARD blues guitar riffs, so the music really rocks. if i had to compare her vocal style to anybody, it'd be the staple singers in "i'll take you there."

the esquire story i was talking about, about tim mcgraw, was mostly good ol boy wanking, but it said a couple of things, he said that he can sing the hell out of any shit, and the only way tht he can ever hit it out of the ball park is to chose decent writers, which is really obvious, but remains unstated, and this was said by an anon nashville exec. the other thing is that he not only outed himself as a centerleft democrat, and he wants to run for senator of tennessee--what do we think about tht, what are his chances?

has anyone heard the new roseanne cash, as well, can we talk about that

And in what may be a stunning upset at the Poptimists World Cup, Trinidad & Tobago are (is?) currently leading their group; if they hold on, this will mean that at least one of highly regarded Sweden and highly regarded England will not pass forward to round two. Paraguay, managed by our own Anthony Easton, may be overmatched, but gutty performances by a duo who seem to be Spanish-language equivalents of Glen Campbell and Bobby Goldsboro are keeping them still in contention.

And, right on cue, the day after I described the Paraguayans as like Campbell and Goldsboro, the Time-Life classic country Sweet Country Ballads CD arrived through the mail, featuring our heroes Glen ("By the Time I Get to Phoenix") and Bobby ("Honey"). This is appropriate in so many ways, especially given that my Pazz & Jop commentary was all about Pazz & Jop's - and my - inability to come to terms with ballads. The antho has also done me a service by reminding me that the first Top 40 I song I ever loved was Skeeter Davis's "The End of the World," and that one of the first 100 Top 40 songs I ever liked was George Hamilton IV's "Abilene." And that even after having listened to "Detroit City" 20 times in the last several months, I still love "Detroit City" the 21st time.

Also has Ray Price's "For the Good Times." What intrigues me is that this full-scale stringed-up and orchestrated sorrowful ballad doesn't remind me nearly as much of Johnny Ray as do the two old honky-tonk tracks of his I'd mentioned upthread. In the honky-tonkers he seems ready to ramp up into Johnny Ray–type blazing teardrops, whereas "For the Good Times" sounds more conversational and intimate, like Sinatra.

(Can teardrops blaze? I think Johnny Ray proves that indeed they can.)

What I know of Tennessee politics amounts to about zero, so I can't predict. What's McGraw's political organizing and experience been so far?

I think everyone who participated in the Country Critics poll is due a paper copy of the Scene, assuming they have your mailing addy.

Pazz & Jop gets posted online around midday (Rocky Mountain Time) this coming Tuesday, January 31.

I suspect most of the fireworks that my Angolan team will ignite in the Pop World Cup are in my banter with the hapless lunatic attempting to forge a talentless Iran squad into something that can avoid base humiliation (I refer to one Mark S). We go head to head week after next (ha, and I might easily think that something to do with football would be among the few areas where I wouldn't be laughably outmatched! Shame this actually has almost bugger all to do with football...).

For The Good Times has to stay conversational because it is so hard to wring a tune out of it. Even Al Green struggled.

I like the Rosanne Cash album. It's therapy, sure, but the songs feel necessary and the memories deeply recollected ala Wordsworth. I'll write about it more after I finish a review of the Amelia White album, Black Doves, which I also like, but not as much (the title track, though, is good anti-war imagism; someone tip off Christgau).

Roy, as our resident Ray Price expert, what would you say about "For the Good Times" in relation to whatever else he was doing around then?

i know this isn't the right thread to defend the replacements on, but i'm not sure what this means unless it's a reference to their kiss cover -- and i'm pretty sure they did the kiss cover because they were (like a huge percentage of the white male population of their age) big kiss fans. and i think their version rockx. you're most likely right about hayseed dixie, tho. i've never listened to them because i've been put off by their shtick. (but if alison krauss ever makes the '70s hard rock album she's threatened, i might bite.)

meanwhile, in case anyone's wondering, neko case's new album is a.) pretty good and b.) even less a country record than anything else she's done. and i think i like her better without the twang affectations. she's a torch singer, and she can do country torch as well as any other kind (and gospel too, there's a great gospel tune on there), but her natural affinity is for a kind of noirish pop that falls somewhere between owen bradley and david lynch. (and the album still has some duds, but i think maybe less than the last few.)

Brownsville and Cub Koda whether they know it or not. But only Teenage Head comes close to being as crunching while any style from the first five or so BS albums is in the same area. Standard but always astute observation in "Stone Cold Sober" that the object of assessment was more lively, intellectual and fun when a drunk, as opposed to a teetotaler. A band that could do justice to "The Martian Boogie."

"1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9" is also a fair Van Halen/DLR rip, only superior.

not just "black diamond". ever see them in the mid '80s, or hear that *when the shit hits the fans* tape? they used to drunkenly cover foreigner, BTO, you name it. which was vaguely cute, at the time, but it set up this "ha ha we're an indie band covering this stupid '70s song" routine that zillions of bands, from soul asylum on down, wound up taking up. the fact that none of them (sorry, including the replacements) wrote songs as smart as foreigner or bto apparently didn't make the joke any less funny for lots of people. i still consider it idiotic.

but anyways...

Price had been recording with orchestras since at least 1964, so the overall approach of "For the Good Times" was well established for him by 1970. It's the first track on side one of the album of the same name (Columbia 1970), I think the first Kristofferson song he recorded, with "Help Me Make It Through the Night" the first track on side two. In the late '60s, what really starts to change, at least to my ears, is his singing: He's in complete and total control of his voice, and so he's figuring out more and more about the kind of singer he can be, what country music means to him (turns out, it means more the bedrock rhythm and the melodic concision, as opposed to themes or twang or whatever), sculpting and caressing notes, drawing out phrases like the longest bow on the longest string, then seamlessly returning to the deep spoken lines. Throughout this period he's negotiating sonic country signifiers--some tracks have more pedal steel or fiddle or pronounced acoustic guitar (the track that follows FTGT, "Gonna Burn Some Bridges," opens with pedal steel lick and twin fiddles) others, like FTGT, have only that insistent, steady underlying Nashville Sound rhythm. But by 1970 country audiences were ready. "For the Good Times" went #1 Country and #11 Pop. The whole album is really good. He reinterprets "Crazy Arms" and "Heartaches By the Number" in full Sinatra mode. If you haven't heard his version of "Help Me Make It Through the Night," you'll be surprised at how fast it is. He doesn't get the song the way Sammi Smith did. But "Cold Day in July" is totally crushing.

"Country music is often called music for grown-ups, and no record better illustrates the point than Ray Price's 'For the Good Times'. The foundation is Kris Kristofferson's song, which is every bit as complex and conflicted as any real-life adult breakup.

'Don't look so sad,' Price begins. You figure he's comforting a woman to whom he's just delivered bad news. But as the scene unfolds, you learn that he's getting the bad news; she's leaving him, and the song is his attempt to get her to go to bed with him just once more. You know, 'for the good times.' Price could have delivered these lines in all sorts of ways. He could have sung as if the man were unable or unwilling to let go. He could leave the man wallowing in self-pity or nostalgia, or he could have let the man believe he just needs someone to help him make it through the night. It could have been a last ditch effort to get her to stay, or maybe he's just a creep who wants to get laid. The miracle of Price's delivery--he croons elegantly in one breath, all pathetic in the next--is that he never allows us to choose between these interpretations. Kristofferson's words and melody and Price's delivery combine to let the man be all these things at once. No wonder Price has frequently gone out of his way to identify 'For the Good Times' as among the best songs he's ever sung.

The reason he even has to point this out at all is the record's arrangement. Its clopping drum and tic-tac bass are unmistakably country in feel, but the problem for some listeners is the Cam Mullins string arrangement intertwined with that pulsing rhythm--as every purist knows by heart, string arrangements don't belong on country records. Whatever. There's really no accounting for such reactions, particularly to a record like 'For the Good Times', where the strings so clearly aid both the singer and the song. It's true that on some records strings are needlessly stitched onto perfectly serviceable country rhythm sections (think of those Frankenstein monster overdubs of Hank Williams's hits), but that's not the case here. 'For the Good Times' was clearly conceived with an orchestra at its center. As a result, the strings give the song its mournful tone and sonic thrust; they suggest, in their call-and-response with the singer, all the history that stands between this couple. Most of all, they assist Price in his seduction even as they point to the man's inevitably lonely future.

Because she's going to tell him no, right? 'Don't look so sad', he begins. Every time you hear Price sing those lines, you wonder anew just what it is he has done to make her give him that look. Has he moved to hold her in his arms as she was packing to leave? Touched his lips to her neck as she pulled away? 'Make believe you love me,' he purrs, then pauses ever so slightly before adding 'one more time'. And that's where you finally understand why her eyes have filled with tears--she's remembering all those nights when making believe was precisely what she had to do." -- David Cantwell

I must say this sounds like a good mix of self-congratulatory and wretched.

Not something I'll listen to a lot. It ain't party music but it's effective.

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/shawnmullins/albums/album/246377/rid/5941940

Don't own the album anymore, though. May listen to his new one; may not. (By the way, 9th Ward Picking Parlor in New Orleans is also where Jan Bell records sometimes, I think == can't remember whether that Maybelles album from last year was recorded there or not.)

the Maybelles did record their album at 9th Ward. I think if I remember right that Jan Bell mentioned to me that the owners of 9th Ward PP had moved operations to Kansas? Iowa? someplace like that. I like the Maybelles better than Mullins, altho I kinda keep playing it in the changer to see if I like it more than I do right now.

listened to the Hayseed Dixie records--yawn, not really all that much fun. they were fun live, not as fun as this Memphis Jug Band/blues-with-snare/acoustic geetar/standup-bass act I caught at Billy Block's Western Rodeo revue: many of their songs were about twelve-step programs and women who love you even when you drink too much, I think they were called something like Delta Southern. Gus Cannon becomes a Friend of Bill. and right, they did "Kirby Hill" which was the best thing I heard. just one of those things that don't translate onto record, and pretty one-joke.

Rhett Akins, "Kiss My Country Ass" begins well--great slide and acoustic guitar that's ominioso and pretty rockin'. but, "I ain't scared to grab my gun and fight for my land/If you don't love the American flag, you can..." basically, it puts me in mind of a band of total drunks going off to fight terrorism, which might not be a bad idea come to think of it. but, some fine slide/guitar solos, great Stonesy piano licks, some great post-Allmans flatted-fifth riffs snaking around. basically, the record really swings and rocks, and I actually quite like "I Love Women (My Mama Can't Stand" which mentions "Daytona tans" and "redneck women who ain't afraid of Jim Beam" and uses a modified chicka-boom two-beat structure. one thing about Nashville records, you generally get a lively rhythm-section dynamic, and here the steel/guitar combination is light and not overbearing. good 'un. and in general, almost every song has a really good riff, like "The Trouble with a Woman," except I am not sure if his out--the trouble with a woman is gen'l'y, usually, a man--means that he's just on the make or if he cedes power. and the rest of it talks about bird dogs and how playing sorority parties made him realize that he's not the kind of guy to take orders from suits, altho he's fine with taking orders from George W. Bush.

I'm not sure, I might find Rhett more authentic outlaw than Hank III, which I am still absorbing. but he's going for a thin sound, he has a thin and weird voice, and he uses a lotta echo and reverb to I guess cover up the fact it seems to have been recorded in a room with wooden floors and walls. starts out with a brief reprise of the Louvin Bros.' "Satan Is Real," and so far I find it a bit samey over the long haul. haven't yet listened to the second disc.

xps

the Maybelles did record their album at 9th Ward. I think if I remember right that Jan Bell mentioned to me that the owners of 9th Ward PP had moved operations to Kansas? Iowa? someplace like that. I like the Maybelles better than Mullins, altho I kinda keep playing it in the changer to see if I like it more than I do right now.

listened to the Hayseed Dixie records--yawn, not really all that much fun. they were fun live, not as fun as this Memphis Jug Band/blues-with-snare/acoustic geetar/standup-bass act I caught at Billy Block's Western Rodeo revue: many of their songs were about twelve-step programs and women who love you even when you drink too much, I think they were called something like Delta Southern. Gus Cannon becomes a Friend of Bill. and right, Hayseed/De-seed did "Kirby Hill" which was the best thing I heard. just one of those things that don't translate onto record, and pretty one-joke.

Rhett Akins, "Kiss My Country Ass" begins well--great slide and acoustic guitar that's ominioso and pretty rockin'. but, "I ain't scared to grab my gun and fight for my land/If you don't love the American flag, you can..." basically, it puts me in mind of a band of total drunks going off to fight terrorism, which might not be a bad idea come to think of it. but, some fine slide/guitar solos, great Stonesy piano licks, some great post-Allmans flatted-fifth riffs snaking around. basically, the record really swings and rocks, and I actually quite like "I Love Women (My Mama Can't Stand" which mentions "Daytona tans" and "redneck women who ain't afraid of Jim Beam" and uses a modified chicka-boom two-beat structure. one thing about Nashville records, you generally get a lively rhythm-section dynamic, and here the steel/guitar combination is light and not overbearing. good 'un. and in general, almost every song has a really good riff, like "The Trouble with a Woman," except I am not sure if his out--the trouble with a woman is gen'l'y, usually, a man--means that he's just on the make or if he cedes power. and the rest of it talks about bird dogs and how playing sorority parties made him realize that he's not the kind of guy to take orders from suits, altho he's fine with taking orders from George W. Bush.

I'm not sure, I might find Rhett more authentic outlaw than Hank III, which I am still absorbing. but he's going for a thin sound, he has a thin and weird voice, and he uses a lotta echo and reverb to I guess cover up the fact it seems to have been recorded in a room with wooden floors and walls. starts out with a brief reprise of the Louvin Bros.' "Satan Is Real," and so far I find it a bit samey over the long haul. haven't yet listened to the second disc.

xps

"1. Um. Pretty. But blah. Pretty blah. 'Underwater daydream, bone dry desert song.' There's a husky something at the end of his phrasing that is interesting. 'Interstellar rainbow on its cosmic whim'? 'I like my daylight to be silver, I like my night skies to be blue/Blue as you." Meaning what?

"2. And now some hard guitars. Which are a relief. 'I lost count of the times I've given up on you/But you make such a beautiful wreck, you do.' 'At the dark end of this bar, what a beautiful wreck you are."

A blue wreck, perhaps? I guess I'll get back to this alb at some point.

"they" = "the words" in above passage. (basically the words don't annoy me yet, but also don't reach out and grab me yet. now they're saying "they say if you love something, let it go" over and over.)

so I listened to the new Kristofferson record with Don Was, and Jim Keltner on drums on a couple. it's good-liberal codgerdom in an intimate setting! KK is concerned about the death of the environment, the way we hate our outlaws, girls who are older than their eyes or is it the other way around, freedom and the highway thereto...and he's maybe the worst singer in history. so, a success...actually, one kind of good track, "Chase the Feeling," which is sort of Sun rockabilly two-step with actual dynamics and so forth, and lyrics: "with a pretty piece of hunger/she was younger than her eyes/on a scale of cosmic thunder/it's a wonder you're alive." and a song about how seeing Willie Nelson onstage chokes him up and makes him glad to be a songwriter, and a human being.

"For me as a person, [The Incident has] completely altered the course I was on. For me to be in country music to begin with was not who I was. I liked Martie and Emily's playing, but I did not grow up liking country music. And I guess I was ignorant to the fact that the stereotypes behind country music were true — and it was disappointing. And so at this stage, I can never... I would be cheating myself and not setting a good example for my children to go back to something that I don't wholeheartedly believe in. So I'm pretty much done. They've shown their true colors. I like lots of country music, but as far as the industry and everything that happened... I couldn't want to be farther away from that. And it's easier when you're financially set, because you can be a little more ballsy, and just do what you want to do. I don't want people to think that me not wanting to be a part of country music is any sort of revenge. It is not. It is totally me being who I am, and not wanting to compromise myself and hate my life.

How do Emily and Martie feel about this?

Um... I don't know. We're all on the same page... professionally. And some of us like country music more than others [Laughs], but nobody's forcing anyone else not to... um... you know, go the direction that we're going. We're all on the same page."

Seems Americana heavy, judging from the names I recognize. I liked some songs on that Paul Kelly bluegrass album, though.

Exene Cervanka and the Original Sinners, *Sev7en*: There was a time, more than 20 years ago, that even her countryish stuff (the stuff with X anyway, not the Knitters crap) didn't strike me as totally mannered and ridiculous. That time is long gone, and I don't know if it's 'cause I got tired of her or 'cause her voice just kept getting flatter. Anyway, I got through about 4 songs this time, then gave up.

So, yeah, much ado about probably nothing, at least until it comes out. It'll be interesting to actually hear the damn thing.

>Also, good article in Sunday's Times about perennial polka grammy winner Jimmy Sturr. I kinda can't stand Sturr's slicked-up sound; haven't really been keeping up with polka lately (a few years ago I listened to all five polka grammy nominees and my favorite was Eddie Blacsconszyk of Chicago, shown flipping panckaes on that particularly CD cover and also quoted in the Times article, but I haven't kept up since - -just did a cdbaby.com search for polkas and mainly what seemed to come up was joke bands or bands for the triple A alt-country crowd, which i don't THINK is what I want but I may be wrong.) Anyway, the article talks about how Sturr's east coast style (he's from Jersey) is actually quite Vegasy and big-bandy (though he's also known to get guest appearances by lots of country stars), where the Chicago style is more trumpet heavy and the Cleveland Slovenian style is where the accordions get emphasized. So maybe I should search "Cleveland polka," I'm not sure...

actually, i just realized that something similar happens when I try to search there for "western swing." am i being deluded or romanticizing too much to wish that there were great bands playing this stuff, um, "for real" and not just ironic revivalists? are there? i'm sure there are (though I'm not sure how to define "real"); I'm just not sure how to find them.

i dont even know how they record them, frankly.

i also have no idea how a ukranian polka would differ from lets say a hungrian or polish or rommanion.

so where you might need to get polka, is the new york equivlaent of a good old fashioned prarie supper

(the same thing with western swing, sort of---we get an old school country crooner, or the like here once or twice a year, at the pioneer house mostly, and its all the seniors, and their kids, nostalgia circuit sure, but fantastic if you can get it)

i mean i guess with both western swing and polka i want it to be fast catchy good-humored complicated highly rhythmic rocking dance music that doesn't seem to constantly pat itself on the back for BEING fast catchy good-humored complicated highly rhythmic rocking dance music (like, you know, when punk bands all the way back to brave combo decide to play polkas), which usually means it ISN'T. In 2006. this may well be a pipe dream; but in both genres, it used to come completely naturally. (i have always thought hot club of cowtown had promise, i guess -- am even a fan of their slowed down version of aerosmith's "chip away at the stone" - but they're totally wimps compared to what milton brown or roy newman or adolph hofner used to be. those guys wouldn't have given a shit about getting a rounder records audience, i don't think.) (interesting, what i'm looking for -- see above - -DOES still exist in southern soul music, though, apparently.)

>where you might need to get polka, is the new york equivlaent of a good old fashioned prarie supper<

ha ha, well, i am walking distance from Greenpoint! So maybe I should just take a walk!

I used to have those 3 Epic LPs from late '70s, Chuck. she was briefly a big deal 'round here. always struck me as a more liberal Tanya Tucker, maybe, or like someone who shoulda been on Stiff. proto-Lucinda, I dunno about that, I'm never a fan of Lucinda all that much except for the occasional pretty fair song she writes (and as an aside, I heard this P.F. Sloan album Jon Tiven's finishing up in N-ville, and the best thing on it was a duet with P.F. and Lucinda, so go figure). but Marshall covered Seger (so you might track that one down if you can find it, Chuck, it's "Jaded Virgin," but I haven't any idea if they're in print somewhere, and I'm constantly combing Nashvile for old country vinyl and don't recall seeing any of them lately) and Cash, I think, maybe it was "I Walk the Line," and one of her records was produced by Al Kooper, and if I recall it seemed a bit over-refined. I think her first Epic one was the best, tho, "Me, I'm Feeling Free" was the title. her new 'un hasn't hit here either.

and yet both places still seem to have real cowboy music by real cowboys, hmmm...what a paradox!

http://www.westernmusic.org/performers.cfm?ID=18

has anyone attended to the Hank III second disc trainwreck enough to tell me what Wayne Hancock song (if it is a Wayne Hancock song, I dunno) Shelton Hank's doing in the midst of all that crap?

Doing a list of best pop/rock covers by country artists. Any suggestions?

"...track down one of these artists [or head to one of these bars] ... and listen for yourself. Then you'll hear a remarkable sound: Music made for music's sake.

The Cowboy Palace Saloon {in the San Fernando Valley]

"Bordered by Bully's Billiards, a strip club and a liquor store, the Cowboy Palace Saloon calls itself 'the last real Honky Tonk' and it's true to its word ... The Asian cowboy beside me played a harmonica softly to himself, and a man in Wrangler jeans and a 10-gallon hat strummed air guitar on his pool cue.'

Mo' Cowboy Hats

Bruce Burton with King Size

"Great music often sweeps in on the tails of reinvention. Enter Bruce Burchmore, who was born in Bangkok ... and landed at USC to study music history. He mastered the lute...A little more than a year ago, after a painful breakup, Burchmore took his guitar to Manhattan, where he holed up in a hotel for 10 days, writing music and wallowing in melancholy.

"When he emerged he was Bruce Burton, country singer, and he had in his hands the makings of a fine album. Back in LA, he assembled the skeleton of Uncle Cowboy, a band of uncanny talent, which has since been renamed King Size.

"But he isn't the only member of King Size who takes his sorrow straight up...Witness an early memory of Easy Pickens, the band's guitarist, who as a teenager lived in a basement in a bad Vancouver neighborhood. 'I'd just put on a Hank Williams record,' he says, 'skip all the happy songs and drink myself to sleep.'"

Awwww. The only thing missing is the tin of snuff in back pocket.

(P.S. I wrote Elizabeth McQueen telling her I liked the liner notes to Happy Doing What We're Doing a lot and that I wanted her to continue writing about music. The liner notes just made me want to smooch her. (I didn't say this in the email. And the cover photo also had something to do with the desire to smooch.) There's a brain in there, both in her singing and in her commentary. (A brain worth smooching.) Anyway, she was complimented that a writer would want her to write, but she felt she'd probably not want to be a critic while still putting her own music out there, that this would inhibit her. "It's fine to write about the good, but when you get down to the meat and potatoes of criticsm, which is being critical..." A brain, for sure. Maybe we could get her to write about electronica, which she says she's into.)

So, "Politcas Ratas" on the new El Tri album *Mas Alla Del Bien Y Del Mal* sounds like a nicely barbecued '70s ZZ Top rip, but I don't think there's much else on the CD. Lots of '50s rock'n'roll revival, one song that reminds me of "Rockin' in the Free World," I dunno what else. I think this is like their 50th album though, so maybe there's a kick-ass greatest hits album somewhere down in Mexico. Or maybe not.

I actually decided I don't hate the Bob Log III song, "Log Bomb". Not that it's really a song per se'; more like just a sound, this high-pitched attempt to recreate old-timey backwoods blues country as some kinda newfangled avant-garde slide shuffle -- reminds me of what the Hi Sheriffs of Blue were doing in NY a quarter-century ago, but not nearly as good. Still, not bad. Like, yeah, a log bobbing up and down in the water. (The Ani Difranco track is still unbearable, however.)

I actually thought that at one point I wrote up a Voice choice for Bob Log for the listings page that never got printed, but here's what I was thinking about instead (this thing may well be five years old):

"LONESOME BOB--Quite a buzz in alt-c&w circles for this balding bearded Jersey baritone, maybe because his CD's full of titles like ``He's Sober Now'' and ``I Get Smarter Every Drink'' and ``2 Drinks on an Empty Stomach.'' He mostly sings like a overboozed bull in a china shop, natch. But he can slip a pinch of David Allen Coe into his twang, and ``Heather's All Bummed Out,'' about a 35-year-old looking for love on all the wrong websites while her clock ticks away in her Harrison-Ford-postered cubicle, deserves a Christgau choice cut at very least."

In the cubicle, Harrison Ford's picture is next to her fiancé's. "Sometimes a girl gets bored." A good observation, but at the time (according to my notes) there seemed something condescending about Lonesome Bob's sympathy.

I've felt an affinity for the image I get of Moorer and her sister through their music, but I could rarely not be bored by the music itself. I always listen, feel the affinity, but end disappointed.

David Scott put Shelby Lynne's version of "Rainy Night in Georgia" on his annual best-of CD, which always contains a lot of stuff I seem to have missed. it's really good. and altho it's not country I really like the two songs by Devin Davis, who was unknown to me, he put on it--a really great one called "Transcendental Sports Anthem."

and I've been listening to some late-'50s Webb Pierce, too, which seems to handle its backup voices and so forth really well--great version of "Raunchy" called "The New Raunchy" and a great one called "Tupelo County Jail."

listened to the 4-song Redhill CD yesterday--thx Chuck. I got bored with it, but I think Julianne has real potential as a singer, and seemed to me they saved their best moves for, like, the codas or something. but there's something there, I just need to listen to it again.

and for those Gram Parsons fans out there, this site called youtube.com has a video of the Burritos doing "Older Guys" from '70 that's really cool, and lots of other video stuff as well--like the James Gang! seems like the site works better at night, during the day the vids seem to play pretty jerkily, and I can see it being a major time-waster, too. but worth checking out.

I've decided that I really like the Jamey Johnson record, "The Dollar." great baritone. "Rebelicious" is a good song about the ideal hard-bodied woman who can also bait her own hook. and I think "The Dollar" is excellent, altho "Flying Silver Eagle," about melting down wedding rings, is even better. I just wish it were more of a concept album about money, and funnier. but I'm impressed that he wrote most of the songs, and he seems sane, even-tempered. could be as good as John Conlee or Moe Bandy, maybe.

"by Tony Scherr at his house in Brooklyn"

I mean, Moranis may have talent -- he may even have potential to be Shel Silverstein or Bobby Braddock, for all I know. Maybe someday, in some context, I'll have the patience to listen closer to his demos.

Wait, is that what "Take Off (to the Great White North)" featuring Geddy Lee was from? Not to mention the 12 Canadian Days of Christmas single? Who were the artists on those? I am blanking out on them (even though I'm pretty sure I have the "Take Off" 45 at home).

The 20 stations* that are giving "Kerosene" the most spins:

KSKS-FM Fresno 55
S060-FM *SiriusSatellite 51
X016-FM *XM Radio 45
KKCS-FM Colo Springs 43
WUSN-FM Chicago 42
KSOP-FM Salt Lake City 39
KHKI-FM Des Moines 39
KTST-FM Oklahoma City 38
KYKR-FM Beaumont 38
WTQR-FM Greensboro 36
WXBQ-FM Johnson City 36
WIOV-FM Lancaster 36
WGNE-FM Jacksonville 36
WPUR-FM Atlantic City 36
WWYZ-FM Hartford 35
KBEQ-FM Kansas City 35
KUSS-FM San Diego 35
WQBE-FM Charleston WV 35
WPCV-FM Lakeland 34
KTOM-FM Monterey/Salinas 34

She's not even in the top 30 on KYGO in Denver, which means she's getting fewer than 11 spins, if any. Of course, the song has been around for a while, and may be having a different life cycle in different places.

*that are reporting to Mediabase, that is

The man deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

and thanks Roy, for alerting me to Ray Wylie Hubbard! just picked up his "Delirium Tremolos" yesterday. "Choctaw Bingo" is fantastic.

and for the record, for what it's worth, the Wayne Hancock song that Shelton Hank III does on his new one is "Take My Pain." exactly my feeling when I play the fookin' thing...

there's a nice little bit on Moranis in the current Paste magazine. xps

1 MIRANDA LAMBERT Kerosene 51
2 JOSH TURNER Your Man 49
3 TRACE ADKINS Honky Tonk Badonkadonk 47
4 MONTGOMERY GENTRY She Don't Tell Me To 47
5 RASCAL FLATTS What Hurts The Most 46
6 SUGARLAND Just Might (Make Me Believe) 46
7 TIM MCGRAW My Old Friend 43
8 KENNY CHESNEY Living In Fast Forward 30
9 SARA EVANS Cheatin' 30
10 JACK INGRAM Wherever You Are 30
11 TRENT TOMLINSON Drunker Than Me 29
12 VAN ZANT Nobody Gonna Tell Me What... 29
13 GARTH BROOKS/TRISHA YEARWOOD Love Will Always Win 28
14 TOBY KEITH Get Drunk And Be Somebody 28
15 ROCKIE LYNNE Lipstick 28
16 LEE ANN WOMACK 20 Years And Two Husbands Ago 26
17 JAMEY JOHNSON The Dollar 24
18 LEANN RIMES Something's Gotta Give 24
19 JASON ALDEAN Why 23
20 RODNEY ATKINS If You're Going Through Hell 23

"Results 1 - 10 of about 121 for "Rockie Lynn". (0.64 seconds)"

That's even fewer results than you get for "Frank Kogan."

I think Rockie is Canadian.

We're talking about "Because of You" (most of the discussion was on last year's thread), which I'm now trying to make sense of since it's only been on the charts for half a year and gone double platinum as a single (not to mention the 5 million the album has sold). When I first heard it I pretty much dismissed it as an OK adult-contemporary heartbreak song, suitably quiet and sad but not up to the Kelly's previous three singles. Now, having paid attention to the lyrics and thought hard about where its music is coming from and so forth (and finally doing what I can to study the video on the postage-stamp screen that Launch Yahoo gives you in dialup), I'm hearing a completely different song, something of intensity, something that feels loud even with the quiet accompaniment and the controlled singing. And I think it is out of bounds for country. Which is to say that though I can imagine Faith singing in this style she probably wouldn't go for this melody or these words; and though I can imagine LeAnn going for both the melody and these words and totally nailing it in performance, she'd probably decide that it would be bad for her career at this point to release it.

First the words: it isn't just that they're unremittingly despairing, since you could say the same about country classics like "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "The End of the World." But those don't feel like despair, or they take a different approach to despair, or something. (I've always considered "End of the World" a beautiful, sweet delight.) In general, country's "life falls apart" story belongs to its standard romance cycle: "My heart is broken, now I'm drunk, now I'm going to fuck up again and again," is mined for a lot of rue and a lot of comedy. It's something country is comfortable with. Whereas "the relationship was fundamentally pathological and has left me unfit to live" is not standard for country, even if it's fine on Oprah and adult contemporary and Radio Disney.

Also - and this is interesting - I'd never thought of it as a domestic drama until last night when I started examining the video: house in the suburban night, we're looking in through the window at a couple arguing, then we're in with them in the fight, a child watches glumly, a man upends a table in anger; then a different scene, the little girl shows daddy something she's made, daddy burns it on the stove; a woman leaves, a little girl leaves.

Before studying the video, I'd just naturally assumed this was a romance-and-dysfunction song like most of the ones that precede and follow it on the album, that the narrator was addressing a former boyfriend who'd left her devastated. In fact, that's a perfectly good way to read the song; the "you" is never identified. But if we factor in the video, the narrator has to be the little girl grown up, and she's addressing her parents: "I heard you cry every night in your sleep/I was so young/You should have known better than to lean on me/You never thought of anyone else/You just saw your pain/And now I cry in the middle of the night/For the same damn thing/Because of you/Because of you/Because of you I am afraid/Because of you I never stray too far from the sidewalk/Because of you I learned to play on the safe side so I don't get hurt/Because of you/I try my hardest just to forget everything/Because of you/I don't know how to let anyone else in/Because of you/I'm ashamed of my life because it's empty/Because of you I am afraid/Because of you."

Anyway, I don't know of anything like this in country, though that may not be because it's not there but just because I don't know the genre well enough. Haggard's "Hungry Eyes" suggests something difficult (like, maybe sometime mommas are too hurt to try); maybe there's more. (Subject for further research: Hank Snow.) But "Because of You" is more in the territory of Faster Pussycat's "House of Pain" and Everclear's "Father of Mine" and Pink's "Family Portrait" and Lindsay Lohan's "Confessions of a Broken Heart" and Ashlee Simpson's "Shadow." The country equivalent? Maybe LeAnn Rimes' album track "No Way Out" if you decide she's talking about her relationship to her dad. (But didn't the country audience make clear that they didn't consider that album country?)

I'll continue this thought later, but there's also something going on - though subtly - in the sound of "Because of You" that also isn't yet a part of country, and that's goth.

"A Boy Named Sue"? "Up Againt the Wall Redneck Mother"? ("he ain't responsible for what he's doing 'cause his mother made him what he is")

or okay, maybe not... this deserves much more thought, though.

(According to the article Kent's and Dee's background had been in pop songwriting, and I'm assuming Kent was basically marketing the thing pop, so it's interesting that country producer Chet Atkins was the guy who heard potential in the song.)

Also (again not knowing much about country videos especially, and I'm sure there's lots of precedent here) she's being the girl who walks in and causes T.R.O.U.B.L.E. in that Travis Tritt song.

I remember Eric Weisbard played Dolly's "Down from Dover" for me, and he told me as he cued it up, "When you get to the end, your hair will stand on end." When it got to the end my hair stood on end.

i'm going to call *Totally Country 5* (which contains the montgomery gentry song in question, not to mention kerosene, homewrecker, dierks's how am i doin', suds in the bucket, van zant's help somebody, i play chicken with the train, god's will (token shitty song from a good album) and blake shelton's goodbye time) a keeper, since it also has xxl and hicktown (which is a DANCE song by the way), and i've yet to see or hear a copy of the keith anderson and jason aldean albums, and it also has craig morgan's kenny-chesney-wannabe redneck yacht club, which i've decided i like despite its strange socioeconomic contradictions even though i forget who the hell craig morgan is otherwise. ray scott's my kind of music is okay, too, at least soundwise -- talking blues with annoying pandering lyrics about how she can't get enough of whitney but he prefers waylon so she's outta there, god what a dumbass. also rans: andy griggs's if heaven (was a town it'd be my town in the summer 1985 and if it was a beer it be my last one), yucko, though i'd still like to hear the album it's from someday since i'm a fan of the more cinderella-style hair-metallic stuff on his '02 *freedeom* album; brooks & dunn's useless it's getting better all the time (which rips off the same beatles song that modern english did once except not even a tenth as well); lonestar's you're like coming home, which i forget what it sounds like even while it's on. helpful CD (despiite its odd chronology -- i.e., nothing from the CURRENT dierks or sara evans albums), since i no longer have cable and live in country-station-less NYC, which means i am sad;y months behind on the current state of hit country singles.