Country Music needs love too!

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. List great country songs? Non-boneheads in C&W Music?

Much as I approve of the intent behind this thread, it's one of the disappointments of ILM for me, that any half-decent alternative rock band will get a thread for every other tune they put out, then we get the occasional thread for the whole of a great genre like country & western. I want multiple threads for the giants like Hank and Willie and Tammy and Merle and Dolly, and smaller but strong threads for wonderful minor figures like Carl & Pearl Butler or Jimmy Dale Gilmore. I feel much the same way about soul, reggae, blues and other areas too. I have tried starting some threads, but sadly there is only modest interest.

As for anti-rightist country search Bobby Bare, maybe starting with 'Up Against The Wall Redneck Mothers', and the country/rock 'n' roll (Jerry Lee style) of the Reverend Billy C. Wirtz, though that's more comical than political.

Admittedly the thread title is just making me think of Samantha Fox singing it.

Carl and Pearl Butler? Martin, I kiss you!

I second the motion!

And I listen to CONTEMPORARY country radio too, and I think we could have lovely conversations about it.

Here are some shortlived country threads I have started/posted on/killed:

Hank Williams, Jr.
TIM MCGRAWS LATEST SINGLE (gad, the unrealized possibilities of this thread! why won't y'all listen to country radio?)
Steve Earle's Jerusalem: Principled Stance, or Shit-disturbing?
TS: Dixie Chicks, SHeDAISY
Mark Wills - 19 Somethin'...Classic or Dud, y'all?

I confess that I will have little or nothing to contribute in conversations about current country.

I [heart] Alison Krauss.

Country music, or rather the music that gets played on top 40 style country stations is so foreign to me that it may as well be from another planet. Which, as I think about it, the states South of the Mason-Dixon line may as well be from another planet too.

I have no tolerance for places and people that proudly fly or display the Confederate flag; a flag that stands for racism, slavery and is also the flag of an enemy force that the free-thinking and progressive Northern states defeated. Country music seems to me like the soundtrack for illeteracy, red-necks, and bigotry. Sorry.

Note that I misspelled illiteracy. Fire away...

Delete the internet.

Search:

Hank Williams
Gillian Welch
Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music (does this qualify as country?)

Destroy:

Darryl Worley’s "Have You Forgotten?": "Some say this country’s just out looking for a fight/ Well, after 9.11 man, I’d have to say that’s right/ Have you forgotten how it felt that day?"

Martin's right - I'd certainly be interested in more country threads. (Funnily enough, I was thinking of starting another Cash one this morning, but haven't had time.)

'Lost Highway' has inspired me to check out a few country singers that I wasn't that familiar with (Jean Shepard, Loretta Lynn, Lefty Frizell, Buck Owens amongst others) as well as getting more stuff by people I already like (Hank, Merle Haggard, George Jones), so I'm on a bit of a country kick at the moment.

So I'll try and search out some of your country threads, Martin, and see if I can start a few more.

Davlo, you're making a few sweeping generalisations there about country music (and the south for that matter). Sure, country music's got its share of ignorant right wing shitkicking cretins (Toby Keith etc), but that's a tiny part of it (and every genre's got its fuckwits).

Country music to me is about great songs and great singers. It's earthier than rock or pop, more rooted in 'reality'. (Though there are obviously escapist elements to it - I don't tend to go riding on boxcars much myself). I guess using the word 'reality' strays into dodgy, rockist territory - I don't mean it's more valid than pop as a result, just that the subject matter tends to be about real desires, real actions, real consequences. About how marriage can be hard, about the grind of working life etc. And that has more relevance to me as a 35 year old parent than the music I listened to 20 years ago. (You could say the same thing about soul music, too.)

(BTW, you may need to read a little more about the Civil War and its aftermath. You're stretching the truth a little by describing the North as being "free-thinking and progressive".)

i agree with martin that there should be more threads covering genres such as country,reggae,classical,whatever
however,these are all genres i want to know more about,so i can't really contribute...
it would be good to see more wide ranging discussion,although having said that the topics discussed here are still far more wide ranging than any other music related site i have come across...

Well, when you come down to it though, this place is what it is and I love that it is. Part of the appeal of ILM for me, though, is that we discuss pop music seriously, and I guess I'm just stating for the record that mainstream country has these possibilities in it too. But I can't make you listen to country radio.

yeah, there's no reason why there can't be more country threads. it's not there's anything holding them back other probably lack of interest.

fave country album of the last little bit: Jon Rauhouse's Steel Guitar Air Show

One of my most favorite songs these days is Roger Miller's "Dang Me", it refuses to get out of my head!

ignore the title, it developed into a brief discussion about contemporary country. all too brief for me, because i like a bit of country,myself...

I can't remember if I've started any country threads. I start few threads generally, and I was meaning that I had started some on non-core genres here with little success. Probably more soul ones, I think.

As for the right wing stuff, well yeah, country is full of it, sadly, but it's not all like that, as the start of this thread points out. And as for realism, a lot of my favourites are hardly that - I'm a big fan of Dolly Parton's ludicrous kiddie death songs, the entertainment in which has nothing to do with realism. And a lot of the stuff I love is great for the extravagance of its figurative language - no genre is as good with ludicrous similes and metaphors.

"Ludicrous"? "Down from Dover" is a shade in that direction but not much worse that the sorts of Victoriana that has always been a part of country music.

Dolly Parton--have we had a thread on her? She's beyond great. There are so many Dolly albums that are near-perfect, and yet no one knows about them.

Roscoe Holcomb, in his 60s, was asked what he sounded like as a young man. "There's a girl that sings on the television, I sounded a lot like that." He was talking about DP.

Thank God there's no racism, illiteracy, or bigotry in the north! I think they got rid of all that stuff in 1859.

COuntry's relationship to the South is an interesting one. It's never (never) been an exclusively Southern phenomenon, and it's certainly not now--but it's going too far to say that the South doesn't figure largely into the genre anymore. I wonder whether it's the actual SOuth or the imagined South, and if the latter what appeal that holds for people who have been in the North for (at least) several generations.

Definitely not a fan of country, but there have been exceptions, even if I don't necessarily count the No Depression/Americana genre as country. More or less everything Gram Parsons was involved with was great, for instance. And The Eagles were actually better in their country phase than in their later AOR phase, "Desperado" being their best album by far.

[/lunkhead]

boy it's a good thing you turned that off...i was about to post

I picked up a super discount Loretta Lynn disc yesterday (partially recorded in Edmonton from the sounds of it). I saw her a couple of months ago and was just in awe the whole time.
I esp. love "Fist City".

That's a truly great cover Gareth. I've been listening to a lot of Whiskeytown recently, and re-discovering older stuff like Cash, Parsons and Willie Nelson. It's a genre i don't know a great deal about, i've basically skimmed the surface. Anything a bit more obscure that i should be searching?

Old stuff or new?

For old stuff, check your connotations at the door and really LISTEN to Kris Kristofersoon, Hank Jr and Waylon. Drunk if you can manage it. It's one of the few great joys in my life to settle into my listening chair with a bottle of Jim Beam and throw Jesus Was A Capricorn on the turntable. Oh, heaven.

The newer 'yallternative' stuff gets sticky (but some on here might say it's the other way around) - are you familiar with the Bloodshot label? Search Freakwater, Robbie Fulks, Richard Buckner's "Bloomed," Lucinda (duh), Alejandro Escovedo, Paul Burch...go nuts.

And you can't go wrong with the Merle Haggard box set, natch.

and I'd still rather listen to Strangers Alamanac than any Gram Parsons record, but in a lot of circles, them's fightin' words.

Jimmie Rogers!!

Ray Price's Night Life!!

I can go on for days about Willie, Waylon, Outlaws, etc (listening to Waylon's Dreaming My Dreams as I type.)

And I hate to say it but I also have a hard time sitting through an entire Gram album. Maybe it's his voice? His songs are great tho, as evidenced by that Return of the Grievous Angel tribute from a few years back- one of the only tribute albums that doesn't make me retch.

As for modern Nashville fare, I can't really offer anything. Most of it is grade A shit. I've know some trustworthy folks swear by Brooks & Dunn's latest, but I haven't heard a note of it.

y'allternative:

The Old 97's - [i]Hitchhike to Rhome[/i] and [i]Wreck Your Life[/i] (other albums also great, not so country)

Son Volt - [i]Trace[/i]

Theoretical shout out to the C&W output of Eugene Chadbourne...