who the hell likes both alt-country AND Nashville these days?

Yeah, the majority of mainstream country is awful. Awful.

I never got into the alt. that much; I've enjoyed a Jay Farrar solo album and live performance, and I really love Over the Rhine in both categories (they're almost a metal band live thanks to the new guitarist), but other than that I'm Nashville and Texas all the way. Probably more Texas, really, which gets a free pass always because its country tradition is all about rebellion from Nashville in very select and not-necessarily-all-that-rebellious ways (Willie, Lyle, Jerry Jeff, Waylon, Texas Tornadoes, Asleep at the Wheel, all the way back and all the way to now with the brothers Robisons and Pat Green and las Dixie Chicas and Los Lonely Boys etc.)

Turns out the best Nashville rebels are those who've actually tried to make it there: Allison Moorer and Shelby Lynne are making some of the most angry angsty country music ever RIGHT NOW, it's hardcore, the new Moorer is like Crazy Horse with a beautiful mad red-haired avenging angel singing against God and against blind patriotism, she says "the only thing I have in common with Nashville is that I live there," better that for me than another group trying to ape the Beatles and the Beach Boys but with a slide guitar

Marty Stuart, Patty Loveless, Sara Evans, Martina McBride, Anthony Hamilton, Bubba Sparxxx, Del McCoury, Pat Green, all put out amazing country records in the last year. If you all promise to not dismiss any of them out of hand without actually hearing them, I'll promise to try to enjoy Wilco or Killing Joke.* Otherwise, no deal.

*I have one album of each cued up to listen to today.

Well, I don't want to argue in favor of alt.country, because I don't think it's possible, but look at the top 20 country singles.

3 21 Watch The Wind Blow By, Tim McGraw
Curb | ALBUM CUT 1
2 1 18 American Soldier, Toby Keith
DreamWorks | 002046 1
3 2 29 Little Moments, Brad Paisley
Arista Nashville | ALBUM CUT 2
4 5 18 In My Daughter's Eyes, Martina McBride
RCA | ALBUM CUT 4
5 7 26 Hot Mama, Trace Adkins
Capitol | ALBUM CUT 5
6 8 27 Perfect, Sara Evans
RCA | ALBUM CUT 6
7 4 20 Remember When, Alan Jackson
Arista Nashville | ALBUM CUT 1
8 6 31 I Love You This Much, Jimmy Wayne
DreamWorks | 001239 6
9 11 7 When The Sun Goes Down, Kenny Chesney & Uncle Kracker
BNA | ALBUM CUT 9
10 10 21 Sweet Southern Comfort, Buddy Jewell
Columbia | ALBUM CUT 10
11 9 16 You'll Think Of Me, Keith Urban
Capitol | ALBUM CUT 9
12 13 12 Mayberry, Rascal Flatts
Lyric Street | ALBUM CUT 12
13 14 43 Long Black Train, Josh Turner
MCA Nashville | 000976 13
14 15 18 Songs About Rain, Gary Allan
MCA Nashville | ALBUM CUT 14
15 20 8 Letters From Home, John Michael Montgomery
Warner Bros. | ALBUM CUT | WRN 15
16 17 10 Desperately, George Strait
MCA Nashville | 001982 16
17 16 21 Spend My Time, Clint Black
Equity | 003 16
18 18 23 Good Little Girls, Blue County
Asylum-Curb | ALBUM CUT 18
19 21 17 Simple Life, Carolyn Dawn Johnson
Arista Nashville | ALBUM CUT 19
20 22 22
My Last Name, Dierks Bentley
Capitol | ALBUM CUT

Tim McGraw's boring generic shit is number one, more jingoisim from Toby Keith's moronic ass is number 2, and scrolling through the rest, I can't find a single song I care for (and I've heard at least half, just from flipping through GAC when nothing else is on.)

There are a few up there I haven't heard though.

"Little Moments" is SO condescending that it amuses me, though it's manipulations are still pretty strong.

Is being a songwriter in Nashville sort of like being an advertising exec?

(Though I still generally choose Nashville, unless alt-country means Bubba Sparxxx and the Drive-By Truckers)

By the way, I too think the Toby Keith and Tim McGraw songs are bullshit, and I have no time for Keith Urban or Rascal Flatts or Buddy Jewell. The great songs on that list are as follows: #6, #13, #14, #17, #19, #20. ("The gas face" to "Songs About Rain"? Ah, good Mr. Herrington, you are nice but you are HIGH ON DOPE.) The good songs on that list are as follows: #3, #4, #5, #8. (I agree about Brad Paisley's song, it's full of crap, but his guitar solo almost redeems the whole thing. It actually sounds better on the radio than it does when you watch the video with the horrible acting and the EXTREME condescension.)

I'm actually just furious at how MALE the charts have been in the last year and a half, all kinds of great female singles and albums that don't chart very high. But do you blame the song on the audience that doesn't embrace it?

Do the same for the pop charts this week, Mr. Allen, and see if you end up deciding the fate and worth of the entire genre of "pop."

I don't like alt-country, if it sounds like that's what it's trying to be. If it's called alt-country and actually is country (which is the case with Neko Case and others), then I don't care what it's called. When I think alt-country I just think of Jay Farrar immediately, someone who seems to like the idea of country to some degree, but would never give himself completely over to it.

yeah yeah I know Mutt Lange has been resisted, it was a joke.

haha like that's the only time

That Chris Gaines disc isn't bad. Neither are about half of Garth's actual singles.

I gave my dad that live Moorer album. he loved it.

and the new Moorer album is more like "Break Before I Bend" than any of her other stuff, really pissed off and bitter. in the last song, she asks us to sing her a song before she dies, and then the song is over and the album is over and her life presumably is over. it's SO BLEAK, so punk!

uk ilxors - do you think that glasgow and its music have a peculiar relationship to country?

I wouldn't say most current mainstream country acts take their inspiration from them at all. If that was true, I'd love it.

And in response to some previous posts-- I'm sure if I were to look at the top 20 pop this week, I know I would love a LOT more. And I do, actually.

So you like pop better than country. Cool. Doesn't mean country's crap though.

Teeny: no, I don't have access to your fancy industry magazines. I wrote something about this on my boring-ass blog though.

I sort of grew up on it (its ALL my mother listened to when I was a kid)and when I firsted started writing about music for money a significant portion of my writing was on mainstream country. I've sort of wandered away from the genre in the past few years, but I've come back to it in recent months, watching loads of CMT and playing catch-up. I find that even when I don't neccessarily like what I'm seeing/hearing, I'm ALWAYS interested in it, which I can't say about most other genres (esp. rock in any form).

The Gary Allan song was the only one I hesitated about including in that list, but the few times I've heard it, it seems really rote. I think with a lot of the uber-crafted Nashville stuff there's a thin line between responding positively or negatively to its manipulations. That Dirk Bently song is a turn off for me, but I suspect I might like it better divorced from the video (the only way I've heard it). Songs like "Little Moments" and "There Goes My Life" I veer between liking and disliking during the course of the song almost every time I hear them. "There Goes My Life" is one of those country songs that I CAN'T BELIEVE no-one has written yet, and though I find Chesney kind of creepy, it gets to me, even if it might also be a pro-life trojan horse.

viva la Nashville, warts and all.

(Begs2Differ -- bet the boring-ass blog I just started is even more boring than yours)

Nashville Types Who Don't Suck

Why I Love Country Music

I meant BIG & Rich, though maybe they are Bi and Rich as well (just like Brooks & Dunn have that great album called *Steers and Queers.*)

BEST COUNTRY ALBUMS 2003
1. Brooks & Dunn *Red Dirt Road* (Arista)
2. Kentucky Headhunters *Soul* (Audium)
3. Merle Haggard *Like Never Before* (Hag)
4. Dwight Yoakam *Population Me* (Audium)
5. Drive-By Truckers *Decoration Day* (New West)
6. Toby Keith *Shock'n Y'all* (DreamWorks)
7. Deana Carter *I'm Just a Girl* (Arista)
8. Terri Clark *Pain to Kill* (Mercury)
9. Cracker *Countrysides* (Cooking Vinyl import)
10. Alison Moorer *Show* (Universal)

BEST COUNTRY SINGLES 2003
1. Faith Hill "One" (Warner Bros.)
2. Toby Keith "I Love This Bar" (DreamWorks)
3. David Banner "Cadillacs on 22's" (Universal)
4. Brooks & Dunn "You Can't Take the Honky Tonk Out of the Girl" (Arista)
5. Merle Haggard "That's the News" (Hag)
6. Bubba Sparxxx featuring the Yonder Mountain String Band "Comin' Round"
(Interscope)
7. Kid Rock featuring Alison Moerer "Picture" (Universal)
8. Gary Allan "Songs About Rain" (MCA)
9. Martina McBride "This One's For the Girls" (RCA)
10. Kenny Chesney "Big Star" (BNA)

BEST COUNTRY REISSUES 2003
1. *Stomp and Swerve: American Music Gets Hot* (Archeophone)
2. *Down in the Basement: Joe Bussard's Treasure Trove of Vintage 78s,
1926-1937* (Old Hat)
3. Hoosier Hot Shots *The Definitive Hoosier Hot Shots Collection*
(Collector's Choice)
4. Terry Allen *Amerasia* (Fate/Sugar Hill)
5. Merle Haggard/Willie Nelson *Pancho & Lefty* (Sony)

BEST NEW ACTS
1. Dusty Drake
2. Rodney Atkins
3. Elizabeth McQueen and the Fire Brands

DU0/TRIO/GROUP
1. Brooks & Dunn
2. Kentucky Headhunters
3. Drive-By Truckers

MALE VOCALIST
1. Merle Haggard
2. Dwight Yoakam
3. Toby Keith

FEMALE VOCALIST
1. Deana Carter
2. Terri Clark
3. Alison Moorer

OVERALL ACT
1. Brooks & Dunn
2. Kentucky Headhunters
3. Merle Haggard

btw, I meant "over-argumentative" a couple posts above. And I didn't mean I apologize ON the thread, I meant I apologize FOR the thread. Or something like that. (I still stand by almost everything I SAID on said thread, in other words; just not the asshole way I said it...)

And yeah, that Johnny Cash album was tedium. (As was LOTS more Johnny Cash stuff than anybody will ever admit, thanks to the eternal leaden-ness of the man's voice, but I don't wanna get started.) Plus, a TRENT REZNOR cover??? Gimme a break. How cornball can you get???

I did like the title track of IV, which my neighbor played for me. Had a beat (my favorite Cash track ever is "Get Rhythm").

Chuck would you give a shit about Rock if his last album was his first? I'm surprised you like his country stuff so much. The lyrics are trite, songs are slow and boring - I mean "Lonely Road Of Faith"?

http://villagevoice.com/issues/0350/eddy.php

Re: Johnny. I love "Folsom Prison Blues," and both prison albums are fun. And "Boy Named Sue" is a pretty good country rap song. And so on. And, um, at least he was never as boring as Roy Orbison was.

http://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/

Alt-country, I could live without that shit. I mean, Gram Parsons and his progeny...Gram was one thing. But the Jayhawks and BR549 and all that, I find it very drugstore-cowboy. We like to joke that it's the Yankees who seem to find Lucinda Williams a significant talent; she's done a couple good songs, but really...

I sometimes attempt to listen to Nashville mainstream country. Undeniably some talented folks who sometimes hit it right. But for me, all those records sound just the same. No aural identity whatsoever, no meaningful idiosyncrasies, a very spurious "human" element...and nostalgia for small towns, dogs, bubbas and jukeboxes, sincere bearded middle-aged ass men talking trash to some young thing...and of course patriotism. Very amusing indeed.

Johnny Cash's finest moment is a thing called "The Chicken in Black." Johnny is depressed and on pills, and wants out of his current recording contract. Feeling hemmed in by Nashville, he decides to get a brain transplant in NYC. Turns out he got a bank robber's brain so he robs a bank or two. Plus, get this, Johnny's brain is now in a chicken, who's going around the country as "The Chicken in Black" making all this money. It's a bad scene all around, and this song is something everyone should hear.

...the thing is here that, unlike Memphis, this town is always behind the curve, afraid of anything even remotely controversial (never has there been one good rock band from Nashville, and don't give me Jason and the Scorchers, either) recycling something like power-pop that was done better years ago (as in the various, admittedly nice, Brad Jones productions, or The Shazam), and I just don't see the need to listen to alt-country when I can just listen to Faron Young or, for that matter, Nashville West, or Parsons...or, for that matter, to Lambchop when I can just listen to Jimmy Webb or Jackie DeShannon...

you may be giving Memphis too much credit... I can vouch for some of the local small/ indie/ whatever artists, but the only commercially viable product out of here in the last 25 years has been Three-Six and friggin' Saliva. (Chris Herrington to thread if I'm leaving anybody out). Of course, you may not be concerned with units moved... and I know zilch about the local bands there, except Lambchop and Bobby Bare, Jr. (which are both great imo)

I would imagine anything interesting coming out of Nashville cowers in the shadow of pop-country the way it does here with Sun, Stax, etc.

As far as Lambchop goes, I wish I did like them better, since I'm acquainted with a couple of bandmembers, who are such nice people with their hearts in the right place. But I can't get past Kurt Wagner's voice, I'm afraid, and despite everything these Nashville rock bands just seem so reverent and so aware of their "industry outsider" status in this town, which is all about that "songwriting" out of a book and so forth. But as a city to live in, in the American south, it's by far the best...