best insurgent hatred of nashville

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im talking of things like robbie fulks fuck this town of course but non song things as well.

― anthony, Tuesday, 3 August 2004 01:04 (twenty-one years ago)

The movie "Nashville" is a good starting point.

― Softly Weeping at the Oki Dog (Ben Boyer), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 01:07 (twenty-one years ago)

"Nashville" the movie doesn't hate Nashville, actually. It hates L.A.

― eddie hurt (ddduncan), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 02:26 (twenty-one years ago)

not to be all p.c. and everything, but this verse from "fuck this town"...

"i like old jim carroll and br5-49 / but nashville don't need that noise, no nashville'd do just fine / as long as there's a moron market and a faggot and a half to sign"

...makes me hate the song. otherwise, i like the album, "south mouth," quite a bit, in a rockpile-country sort of way.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 03:51 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm not familiar with the song, and don't want to become a homophobe-apologist, but is it possible he was using the term "faggot" in an ironic sense, like the way Mark Knopfler did in "Money for Nothing"?

― Huck, Tuesday, 3 August 2004 04:10 (twenty-one years ago)

you know, i ALMOST wanna listen to contemporary nashville country-western just so as to see if it's possible for me to like it AND piss off the country traditionalists.

(no offense meant, anthony ... it does seem that bashing nashville is kinda rockist. which doesn't necessarily mean that i WANNA plunk down money on shania twain or brooks and dunn cds, mind you.)

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 04:16 (twenty-one years ago)

(x-post)
there's nothing in the context that suggests irony, no. just a lot of bile. it comes from the mouth of the song's narrator -- who, as an educated and enlightened buyer of mr. fulks' album, you're supposed to be identifying with and rooting for.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 04:17 (twenty-one years ago)

That's too bad, I like Country Love Songs.

― Huck, Tuesday, 3 August 2004 04:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Chuck's REALLY going to love this thread, I can tell.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 04:57 (twenty-one years ago)

What's wrong with bemoaning that N'ville is run by accountants?

― Huck, Tuesday, 3 August 2004 04:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Big and Rich who are better than Merle Haggard by the way but not as good as Hank Williams who isn't as good as Kix Brooks (but better than Ronnie Dunn, who might be better than Garth Brooks, but I forget) yet all are better than Johnny Cash.

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 05:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Terri Clark! (i love her, if I was a drag performer, i would want to be either her or loretta lynn--who has better hair)

― Huck, Tuesday, 3 August 2004 05:03 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't think Big and Rich are better than Merle Haggard. To my ears B&R are just an example of what Nashville think is avant-garde or something but what in reality is just kinda stupid. Which has always been a problem here, actually. There are plenty of things to like about Nashville but the music business isn't one of them. The city makes good music in spite of itself. I don't get why people would want to listen to Montgomery Gentry or any number of these "acts" that come out of here. Or Garth Brooks for that matter. I like some of the outlaw shit that popped up in the '70s, but it's not something I really sit around and listen to. I like Dwight Yoakam in a limited way, but mainly that's about Pete Anderson.

That said, there's definitely something good about the town, musically, I won't deny it. But for my tastes, give me Memphis or New Orleans. It, to me, comes down to whether you want to hear 67 pickers emoting on the Carter Family's "Circle Be Unbroken" or someone with their guitar capoed up singin' their goddam songs at the Bluebird, or you wanna hear Alex Chilton taking apart the Carter Family's "No More the Moon Shines on Lorena." In Tennessee there's a lotta good stuff but Memphis is the place.

― eddie hurt (ddduncan), Tuesday, 3 August 2004 15:31 (twenty-one years ago)

i love most Altman but 'Nashville' bored me to tears. No problems with Nashvill music generallya nd my old roommate came from there so he's given me positive feelings about the place. (tho the fact that you can't take atrain there still astounds me)

― H (Heruy), Friday, 6 August 2004 22:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Bobby Bare, Jr.'s "Visit Me in Music City" -- not hatred explicitly, more a cynical tribute...

the hills are filled with naked Hee-Haw honeys
who all sing along in perfect harmony
the world's greatest guitar pickers
can deliver your pizza or sell you weed

― Will (will), Saturday, 7 August 2004 03:41 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't think Big & Rich are better than Merle, but their album is way better than his latest one, which was his best album since the early '80s. I can't imagine why anybody who loved life and voices and humor and rhythm and having a good time wouldn't love the Big & Rich album, not to mention why anybody would give a shit about all but two or three songs that Alex Chilton has done since the Boxtops broke up, but I always find Eddie Hurt's neurotic conflicted and completely believable (if frequently suggesting sour grapes of some sort) Nasvhille hate (on the Montgomery Gentry thread,too) entertaining regardless. I don't really give a flying fuck about anybody else on here wishing I didn't like some music more than other music, or wishing I didn't say so. I like some anti-Nasvhille songs, from Lubbock or Bakersfield or David Allen Coe or whoever, from back in the days when Nashville bashing wasn't the biggest cliche on earth (aimed at such a ridiculously easy target that frigging George Strait and Alan Jackson, or some intermittently talented antiseptic Nashville goody-goodies not unlike them, had a number-one country single with a lameass kneejerk anti-Nashvhlle tract a couple years ago), but I forget those songs' names. *Nasvhille* is a very good movie with an okay soundtrack, my scratched vinyl copy of which I have found it difficult to listen to more than a couple songs at a time in recent weeks.

― chuck, Sunday, 8 August 2004 12:18 (twenty-one years ago)

ps) The Strait/Jackson hit was "Murder on Music Row."
The early '80s Merle album to buy is *Big City* (*Pancho and Lefty*, with Merle and Willie Nelson, was also really good.)
The Chilton songs to care about are "September Girls" and (at least in its version by the Nomads) "Bangkok" and ???

― chuck, Sunday, 8 August 2004 12:49 (twenty-one years ago)

by the way, many good reasons not to hate Nasvhille (and a few reasons to hate it as well) can be found here:

rolling 2004 country thread

― chuck, Sunday, 8 August 2004 12:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Everyone should see the movie Payday starring Rip Torn. It's great.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 8 August 2004 13:04 (twenty-one years ago)

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Sunday, 8 August 2004 13:16 (twenty-one years ago)

and Songwriter starring Willie, Kristofferson and Rip Torn is a great fuck you to Nashville execs.

― Will (will), Sunday, 8 August 2004 15:33 (twenty-one years ago)

"You Must Be from Nashville" -- Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes, who earned their Nashville animus the old-fashioned way: by being from Knoxville. Knoxville's anti-Nashville stance has a long, complicated history going all the way back to when the state capital moved from the one to the other in the early 1800s. To be followed in due course by everyone from Chet Atkins to the Everly Brothers (from Kentucky originally, right, but they went to school and started their music career in Knoxville) to (of course) Dolly. Anyway, Knoxville's full of musicians who have done stints in Nashville and all come back embittered to one degree or another. And that Smokin' Dave song boils 150-odd years of inferiority complexes down to one three-minute shot. It's great.

― spittle (spittle), Sunday, 8 August 2004 16:49 (twenty-one years ago)

sample lyric:

Got a thing for celebrities
She knows a ton of these
She once went out with old Buck Owens
Her mom got rich through divorce, of course
Also got a thing for celebrities
She once went out with old Buck Owens
You must be, you must be
You must be from Nashville
You must be, you must be
Straight from that Cashville

― spittle (spittle), Sunday, 8 August 2004 16:51 (twenty-one years ago)

but, um, buck owens is from Bakersfield.

― drew, Sunday, 8 August 2004 17:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Homer & Jethro had some good songs where they made fun of the country scene. No hatred though.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 8 August 2004 17:04 (twenty-one years ago)

chilton is from memphis; why did you mention him chuck?

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Monday, 9 August 2004 01:47 (twenty-one years ago)

because eddie did so, first

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Monday, 9 August 2004 02:00 (twenty-one years ago)

ah ha!

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Monday, 9 August 2004 02:02 (twenty-one years ago)

It has nothing to do with neurosis, Chuck. I prefer what Memphis does to what Nashville does and always will. I grew up in Nashville and lived in Memphis for a decade. Nashville has produced lots of great music, that is undeniable. But Nashville has never produced one good rock and roll band in its entire history. I mean Bare Jr. and Montgomery Gentry are glosses on previous rock, not rock itself, in my opinion. I went to see the Shazam the other night here and they kinda exemplify what the diff is, in some ways. A lot of completely unconvinced, formalist putting-riffs-together stuff out of Cheap Trick and '70s rock, and the Beatles. Entertaining enough but so devoid of emotion. Whereas Memphis power-pop has something real about it--they want to fuck with the form and Nashville guys are all into "respecting" it and all that, which Nashville is so good at. Which is the opposite of what rock and roll is supposed to do.

I mean Chuck E., your big point is a valid one, that rock is supposed to rock, and I agree. But it's not a hard and fast rule. You mention Alex Chilton--I mean what about the third Big Star album? That's something I think one would care about in its taking apart of previous rock and roll. Does it "rock" in some overtly populist way? No. But is recognizing that kinda-rock, which they hardly invented, is valid just as is Montgomery Gentry rocking or whatever it is they do, "neurotic"? I hardly think so. And the problem I have with Nashville's music is that it's so about being an "insider" and "hip" in the worst possible way that there's no possibility of doing anything remotely as fucked-up as any number of weird things that Memphis has produced, and its mainstream "tradition" is all about perfect-sounding, in fact postmodernist reworkings of stuff done before, so that Nashville does neither thing well. It's basically far too nice a city full of people who are far too "normal" to really get out there, and I don't see how anyone could spend more than about half a day here and not feel that constraint.

― eddie hurt (ddduncan), Monday, 9 August 2004 18:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I agree with you where Nashville's puritan addiction to reverence is concerned, most of the time, Eddie (one of my problems with Strait and Jackson upthread), but powerpop and roots-rock of the Chilton variety are just about the most whitebread reverent musics EVER made, so I don't get that part of your spiel at all. (Big Star's third album was "emotionally intense" in just about the dullest way possible -- i.e, - let's get rid of all the hooks and energy and swing {even more than we got rid of when our first two albums paled next to Sweet or the Raspberries), and gullible people will believe this is "real emotion", as if there is any such thing as real emotion in music except when a singer is yelling at the soundman {or okay, maybe they're IS - how would either of know, Eddie??} but there's no reason to think real emotion wouldn't be duller than, um, the fake kind.) (And if Montgomery Gentry's neofascist Nugent shtick isn't at least a LITTLE bit fake, we're in trouble.) Regardless: Big & Rich fuck with form way more, and in way weirder and livelier and funnier ways, than Big Star or any other Chilton project -- What "stuff done before", in your mind, are they "reworking"?? (Well, yeah, they ARE reworking SOMETHING; so were Elvis and Black Sabbath and Donna Summer and Grandmaster Flash. But I sure can't think of an obvious Nashville precedent for them.) (And Big & Rich are not insiders or "normal" in any way I can think of, judging from their biographies, not that it would necessarily make their music worse -- or less applicable in my obviously non-Nashville insider life -- even if they were.)

― chuck, Monday, 9 August 2004 19:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I mean, I'm sure I like lots of music from Memphis, too! But where is all this stuff from there as fucked up as the Big and Rich album?? I want to hear it!! (unless being "fucked up" is its only point and only shtick, in which case to hell with it, you know?)

― chuck, Monday, 9 August 2004 19:20 (twenty-one years ago)

...i love her, if I was a drag performer, i would want to be either her or loretta lynn...
It's never too late to be a supastar. Go work it on that runway.

Anyhow:

Artist/Lyrics
Biafra Jello/Mojo Nixon
Album
Prarie Home Invasion
Title
Let's Go Burn Ole Nashville Down
Let's go burn ole Nashiville down
Set it all aflame
BBQ the greedheads
Made country weak and tameBurn burn Nash Vegas
Char it's rancid soul
Burn burn Branson too
Make a big black hole
Country music is killing itself
Tryin' to be what it ain't
Garth Brooks sells as many as Manilow
Lee Greenwood is a saint
Burn burn Jimmy Bowen
Damn your puny soul
Burn burn Jimmy Bowen
Country can't be sold
Any fool can wear a hat
ANd not move when they play
But the lonesome howl of the white trash wolf
Can't be heard today
Burn burn the fake cowboys
The Vegas showbiz shit
Burn burn Branson too
Sold your soul for a hit
Let's go burn ole Nashville down
Burn it to the ground
Let's go burn ole Nashville down
Save the country sound
Burn burn soulless swine
Crossover igit pukes
Burn burn lyin' cheaters
Country don't have flutes

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Monday, 9 August 2004 19:34 (twenty-one years ago)

(Wait, weren't the Oblivians from Memphis? Their fuckedupness, near as I can tell, was your usual indie-garbage-punk "let's sing through a outhouse full of feces so nobody can hear the words and so they can't tell whether our rhythm section sucks." WAY more cliched and devoid of previously uncharted sonic ideas than B&R {or Kenny Chesney or Toby Keith or Shania Twain or ?? for that matter}; not even close.)(If you're talking Three 6 Mafia, though -- or the Cash Money Millionaries or deep ghetto bounce music when you mention New Orleans above -- maybe you have a point, though.) (But if not, what *has* come out of New Orleans since, say, the Wild Tchoupitoulas album 30 years ago? A couple Professor Longhair records before he died, I guess. And Supagroup are cool. But when you take hip-hip out of the equation, anything half as forward-looking as what's from Nashville?)

― chuck, Monday, 9 August 2004 20:09 (twenty-one years ago)

The Oblivians were sloppy, messy, dirty garage rock and B&R can never hope to be as good.

― Gear! (Gear!), Monday, 9 August 2004 20:12 (twenty-one years ago)

I mean sure B&R might throwing a few more curveballs than the Oblivians, but the Oblivians were a goddamned exciting band, B&R bores me silly and I don't personally see that much innovation, not that it makes for good music anyway.

― Gear! (Gear!), Monday, 9 August 2004 20:22 (twenty-one years ago)

>The Oblivians were sloppy, messy, dirty garage rock <

That's what I said. (= a dime a dozen.)

― chuck, Monday, 9 August 2004 20:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Sure, they weren't innovators, but damn they were definitely better than B&R. And we can't even get into the Compulsive Gamblers, who were better than the Oblivians.

― Gear! (Gear!), Monday, 9 August 2004 20:28 (twenty-one years ago)

can we agree that the Gore Gore Girls are good at least?

― Gear! (Gear!), Monday, 9 August 2004 20:29 (twenty-one years ago)

You know, i've been waiting for a good garage rock-vs-country disco fight for a loooooong time! Thanks for pulling through, ILM!

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 9 August 2004 20:29 (twenty-one years ago)

did anyone ever do a country version of "the macarena"?

― gygax! (gygax!), Monday, 9 August 2004 20:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Now that I would like to hear.

― Gear! (Gear!), Monday, 9 August 2004 20:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I do love the disco version of "Man Of Constant Sorrow".

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 9 August 2004 20:35 (twenty-one years ago)

I might love the Gore Gore Girls (who have a new EP coming out, by the way) even more than Big and Rich. Close call -- the last two Gore Gore Girls shows I saw were great, but the Big and Rich show I saw even better. (I LIKE garage rock; it's probably my favorite musical genre ever. Especially when it has songs and an actual singer and a good rhythm section and a guitarist as great as Amy Surdu. I even like the Oblivians okay, to tell you the truth. But the best garage rock band ever to come out of Memphis were the HOMBRES, people. And the beginning of "Rollin {The Ballad of Big and Rich}" has the best preacher exhortation introducing a hick rap song WITH OR WITHOUT A PARENTHESES IN THE TITLE since "Let It Out {Let it All Hang Out}"!)

― chuck, Monday, 9 August 2004 20:39 (twenty-one years ago)

That Chuck Eddy's all right.

― Gear! (Gear!), Monday, 9 August 2004 20:45 (twenty-one years ago)

He's all something or other, that's for sure.

Anyway, in case anybody wonders what the hell I've been talking about:

Big & Rich: Album of the Decade?

― chuck, Monday, 9 August 2004 21:14 (twenty-one years ago)

>Nashville has never produced one good rock and roll band in its entire history. I mean Bare Jr. and Montgomery Gentry are glosses on previous rock, not rock itself, in my opinion.<

Actually, I skipped over this in Eddie's post (which post I liked a lot, by the way, even though I disagreed with most of it -- I like every post I've seen by him on here, actually.) So anyway, Eddie, now that I've (sincerely) buttered you up a bit, I'm really curious: What music out today DO you consider "rock itself" and not a mere "gloss on previous rock"? Anything at all? (Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz might qualify, but not with you, maybe.) Not the Oblivians or Gore Gore Gore Girls, I'm betting... I mean, almost ALL the rock I like now is a gloss on previous rock, in some way. (But when WASN'T rock a gloss on previous rock? 1954??? And maybe not even then, right?) (On the other hand, I kind of AGREE with you, which is why I'm asking. Montgomery Gentry aren't Skynyrd, and the Gore Gore Girls aren't the Stooges OR Suzi Quatro OR the Supremes. Yet the Gore Gore Girls and Montgomery Gentry have made possibly the best hard rock this decade.)

― chuck, Monday, 9 August 2004 22:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Gore Gore Girls and Montgomery Gentry double bill would be cool.

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 9 August 2004 22:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Actually, I haven't heard that much from The Gore Gore Girls. I wish The Dragons were more popular. And I wish they would play a show at my house. With Katatonia.

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 9 August 2004 22:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I guess I'm counting Scandinavian dark metal (which I often love) as "not hard rock," since it's all about the beauty and not really about the rocking (whereas the sometimes comparably gothic Lil Jon, say, is actually about both.) Still, that stuff might be the NEWEST sounding guitar music of the decade (or at least as new as stuff like Lightning Bolt, who don't exactly rock like the GGG's or MG, either.)

The Dragons are *definitely* a great hard rock band, though.

― chuck, Monday, 9 August 2004 22:24 (twenty-one years ago)

analogy, taxonomy...

― |a|m|t|r|s|t| (amateurist), Monday, 9 August 2004 22:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Oops!

1. Never compare music to any other music.
2. Never group it into categories of any sort.

I keep forgetting about these new rules of life (which clearly add nothing to the understanding of anything), and I hereby apologize.

― chuck, Monday, 9 August 2004 22:51 (twenty-one years ago)

chuck are you a*****y h**l from 5th grade? he who always retorted "it's a free country, you can't tell me what to do" when someone offered him a criticism? cos i'm not telling you you can't or even shouldn't do anything. it'd be nice if you did a bit more than (1) and (2) more often, that's all. but i did express it in an awfully shitty way, i'll admit that.

― |a|m|t|r|s|t| (amateurist), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 02:47 (twenty-one years ago)

it'd be nice if you'd actually contribute something at all amateurist! an opinion of something other than a fellow ilxor for instance! try it, 'snot hard!

― cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 08:34 (twenty-one years ago)

you mean to this thread? because i made a zillion posts to the springsteen and bonnie prince billy and charts threads last night that had nothing to do with other ilxors.

― |a|m|t|r|s|t| (amateurist), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 12:46 (twenty-one years ago)

as for this thread, i can't comment on big and rich etc. because i haven't heard them. but i'm generally in more sympathy with nashville than with "insurgent" country.

― |a|m|t|r|s|t| (amateurist), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 12:47 (twenty-one years ago)

turn on a radio or tv amateurist

― cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 12:49 (twenty-one years ago)

no tv. i'll try to find the c&w station.

― |a|m|t|r|s|t| (amateurist), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 12:52 (twenty-one years ago)

later, i mean. i'm at work.

― |a|m|t|r|s|t| (amateurist), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 12:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Every time Amateurist posts now it's like I'm looking through the reeds at him.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 12:58 (twenty-one years ago)

i don't even know who you are ned.

― cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 13:00 (twenty-one years ago)

"the reeds"? are you in a marsh ned?

― |a|m|t|r|s|t| (amateurist), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 13:12 (twenty-one years ago)

i don't even know who you are ned.

That's okay, I don't either.

are you in a marsh ned?

Well, no, but your address is.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 13:14 (twenty-one years ago)

now i'm in the underbrush.

― '''''''''''''''''''''''' (amateurist), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 13:15 (twenty-one years ago)

My new favorite Memphis band is Lost Sounds - well, at least I like their new *Future Touch* EP. Am't'st (who apparently reads my writing here and elsewhere very selectively) will be happy to note, however, that I'm too lazy to taxonomise or analogize about them at the moment.

― chuck, Tuesday, 10 August 2004 16:26 (twenty-one years ago)

hey there's nothing wrong with it. it's science

― danh (danh), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:02 (twenty-one years ago)

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