Rolling Country 2008 Thread

Billboard's Ken Tucker (not to be confused with NPR's Ken Tucker, incidentally)

I had confused them. The latter is an Aly & AJ fan.

Which one of them is the Entertainment Weekly and (a long time ago) rock-critic-occasionally-in-the-Village-Voice* Ken Tucker? Or is that yet a third Ken Tucker? (Or fourth? I'd always assumed the EW TV guy and the rock-critic guy were the same, but that was back when I naively believed that there was only one Ken Tucker. I have since become a polytheist.)

*Iirc wrote a piece about the L.A. scene at the time of Decline Of Western Civ.

Rosen about Shepherd:

at 22, she is the anti-Taylor Swift, singing wised-up songs about beer guzzling and bad marriages. She's already an assured country classicist, and I expect she'll only get better when she swaps some of the easy genre moves for something more peculiar and personal.

Whereas Taylor Swift is singing what? Songs that are about bad relationships and are way way way way more nuanced and wise than Shepherd's genre exercises. (This is not a criticism of Shepherd by the way, but of Rosen.) Taylor doesn't sing that much about beer, however. She has, however, covered Rehab. If Shepherd swaps the easy genre moves for something more peculiar and personal, this won't necessarily make her better, but it will likely make her more like Taylor Swift.

Which one of them is the Entertainment Weekly and (a long time ago) rock-critic-occasionally-in-the-Village-Voice* Ken Tucker?

That'd be the NPR one. Further confusing matters (since the other Ken Tucker is now Billboard's Nashville correspondent), the NPR Ken Tucker was also actually one of the first nationally published rock critics I know of to have taken modern Nashville commerical country music seriously -- around 1991, he even published a one-time-only country Consumer Guide in the Voice, which I think included Brooks & Dunn's debut album (making him also the first notable nationally published rock critic to write smart things about Brooks & Dunn.)

("Modern" meaning, uh, "90s and '00s," which admittedly would by definition have been difficult to do before 1991. But still, the NPR/EW/VV Ken was definitely one of the main guys who convinced me that I should be paying attention to commerical country music. Davitt Sigerson and James Hunter and Christgau and others -- even disco critic Michael Freedberg, a big Confederate Railroad fan as I recall -- also figured in there, even in the '80s.)

Too many howevers in my previous post.

xpost

I suppose some people are taking Shepherd to be the anti-Taylor (obviously at least one person is). It simply never occurred to me. The Shepherd album sounds like straight-up-the-middle contemporary pop country. It starts with three guitar rockers, has only one two-step ("The Bigger The Heart"), and only one other old-style number ("I Ain't Dead Yet"). That's about par for the country course these days. It's also got a couple of ballads which'd not be out of place on a Faith Hill album (though Ashton doesn't go all Whitney on 'em the way Faith could). Ashton eschews the soul and the funk that some other country stars don't eschew, but not the pop and the AOR. I'm not saying the distinction isn't real (though I still don't get Ashton as particularly trad), but I simply wonder how much the distinction matters. To some people a lot, I guess. But it's one I'm not bothering to hear until someone points it out to me. I remember that when I listened to the Jamie O'Neal and Lee Ann Womack albums at more or less the same time in 2005 I was taking them to be two fairly similar albums, and the latter's less orchestral arrangements didn't register on me until I read people talking about the alb as Womack's traditionalist move. My failure to register the distinction was due to my inattentiveness and ignorance, but it was also due to my not attending to what didn't seem a big deal to me. I remember hearing the Womack and that year's Gauthier album and thinking that as an experiment the two singers should trade songs and arrangements, to see if Gauthier's songs and trappings might unleash Womack from what was making her too-subdued on There's More Where That Came From and to see if Womack's more plain-speaking and disciplined songs might get Gauthier to stop treating every syllable as an opportunity for the rasp of existential death. I was thinking of what the material could do for their voices and vice versa, not that one should move more "alt" and the other should move more "trad."

It isn't that I think critics should ignore the subtleties and gradations of trad and alt and pop, since I'm perfectly happy to look at the possible subgenre maneuvering among Danish indie dance pop and Swedish quasi-boho-but-not-so-indie dance pop etc. etc. etc.; this sociomusical maneuvering is part of the story and part of what matters to people. It just seems to have gotten way way boring as the first and sometimes only point that critics will make about a country performer or album, that the alb is marginally more or less trad than this or that other alb.

Just looked at the vid for Ashton's "Sounds So Good" that Jody linked as an example of her being an "assured country classicist," and I notice that the beat is rock, the melody is more Dixie Chicks than Hank, and the vehicles and the outdoor decor are very similar to that of the video to the first Taylor Swift single. Of course, the Ashton track is basically ad copy for whatever said decor is supposed to represent, while for Taylor the decor is backdrop for a lie that's both pleasing and irretrievable and sad.

I think there was a fair amount of disappointment with how modern & pop country-ish the Ashton Sheppard debut sounded--and a lot of the hype surrounding her is still based on her live performances where she supposedly sings songs from the 40s-70s Country canon like an alcoholic veteran.

Some of the anti-Taylor Swift sentiment also seems based on her live performances, with her Grammy rendering of "I'm Sorry" often used as evidence of how she sucks at singing classic country or whatever.

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Btw, I doubt that I ever did or ever will be able to hear when someone uses Autotune except when that person wants me to hear it (i.e., uses it not just for pitch correction but to blatantly fuck with the timbre à la Cher or T-Pain). But as for its use eliminating vocal idiosyncrasy, well, either it's not actually getting used much or it doesn't eliminate vocal idiosyncrasy. I mean, I'm not having trouble telling the stars apart.

x-post: P&J ballot due in a day, so I have to go figure out if the Scooter alb belongs in my top five, but a final thought about Taylor live: general YouTube evidence shows her in tune some of the time but not all of the time. (Not getting through to your Grammy links, however, and "Should Have Said No" at the AMC (?) was definitely not in tune.) My guess is that in the studio she resings rather than using pitch correction, though I'm not basing this on an intent examination of her output but on the way she goes a bit flat and ragged on parts of "You're Not Sorry" - this seems like a deliberate decision to make you feel the song, make it sound extra ripe. The result is gorgeous but almost too rich.

OK, got to "I'm Sorry," and indeed Taylor sounds irrevocably like Taylor Swift rather than like an early '60s torch singer. She's not as versatile as Brenda Lee, who was as much pop and r&b and jazz as she was country, but I like it. When Brenda Lee sang "She Loves You" she didn't sound like the Beatles. I'd say Taylor is more immediately recognizable stylistically than Brenda Lee is, though that my be owing to Taylor's lack of versatility. Or it may be Taylor's choice, to always sound like Taylor.

Guys, send these last-minute blasts to Himes! Apparently a lack of comments this year, I don't remember him ever sending out a post-deadline solicitation before (maybe it's a lack of comments on big or plasible names, since mine for inst tended to go elsewhere)

thoughts on Paisley, Womack singles (etc):

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/12/so-if-youve-been-paying-attention-ive-spent-lots-of-time-in-the-pasttwo-monthslistening-to-singles-from-other-peoples-and-p.html

A disconnect re Ashton Shepherd comes from her image on the album and the video(s) from the same record. For the CD booklet, they've given her a makeover, airbrush, aspect elongation (or something) and put her in the poolroom as a vamp. In the videos, she's dumpy and sitting in the picking shed with her buddies and the lighting/framing are bad. Seems like two different people, although the songs are the same.

Shoulda been the other way around.

belated thoughts on the road hammers (many of which I've mulled over here before):

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/12/the-road-hammers-keep-on-truckin.html

Country songs in Jane Dark's Top 10 singles of the year (several others are in his Top 11- 40.)(And I am glad to learn I am not the only person to like "Rocks in Your Shoes"):

8) “Sounds So Good,” Ashton Shepherd. She keeps getting called a “classicist,” which is almost always a curious category, indicating an appeal to some canonical-but-lost value. But which one? The sound is scarcely a throwback to Lynn or Cline, Parton or Judd, or even Reba, for that matter. It’s probably closer to the truth to say that Shepherd is Gretchen Wilson if Gretchen Wilson could sing and wasn’t so proud of herself for her faux-militance and camouflage bikinis. It’s still hard to believe we had to take that humorlessly ludicrous shit seriously, but if Ashton Shepherd is the recompense, maybe it was worth it.
7) “That Song In My Head,” Julianne Hough. Apparently she is a very good dancer. She is not a remarkable singer, but this song is so well-written that even a mediocre dancer could have charted with it; Hough goes after it with her best Deana Carter circa “We Danced Anyway,” and it’s plenty good enough.
3) “Rocks In Your Shoes,” Emily West. Boy howdy did this song go nowhere. Thumbnail theory: it’s too well-written.
2) “Untouchable,” Taylor Swift. The original, by Luna Halo, is the kind of machinically angular mess that has one foot in jackass Red Hot Chili Peppers and another in the neo-new-wave dance rock that fell like a pestilence on the land shortly after the millennium. In short, "Untouchable" is in the first instance perhaps the most awful song one could imagine on short notice. This cover, conversely, is patient, delicate, and implacably beautiful, which gives one pause about what musical genius might be.

http://sugarhigh.abstractdynamics.org/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/26/AR2008122600358_pf.html

The Washington Post's reviewer selects Ashton Shepherd as his #1 cd,James McMurtry as his 2nd favorite, and Jamey Johnson 4th.

Yet another guy calling Ashton Shepherd a "traditionalist" (but not explaining what her tradition is).

...unless he's saying (as he seems to be) that she's in the tradition of Miranda Lambert (which is an even more recent tradition than the tradition of Gretchen Wilson.)

Not into this Zac Brown Band album at ALL.

I kinda like it, in a super-stodgy sub-Charlie Daniels fast-talk choogle cum knit-cap-wearing Deadhead sub-running-on-empty '70s soft-rock choogle (complete with lame-assed fake reggae) kinda way. TWO songs about chickens; how often does that happen? Plus a divorced-dad song, and one by Ray Lamontagne that rhymes cocaine with Spokane. Free klezmer lunch at the tail end of the album is neat, too. Totally understand why somebody would gag at it, though. Anyway, named it my 139th favorite album of the year. Could've done worse:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/12/best-albums-of-the-year-countdown-part-1-s-101-150.html

I think I was just disappointed after liking "Chicken Fried" so much - wasn't prepared for this bogus island rhythm Kenny Chesney shit. Even the sub-Charlie Daniels stuff is pretty stock. I do like that "Jolene" song though (and thank God it's not ANOTHER cover of the Dolly song)

Guess I thought "Chicken Fried" was pretty stock in the first place. (Chicken stock, to be exact. Still probably the album's best cut, but not by a mile or anything.) What I wrote about their "It's Not OK" a few weeks ago (though I left out the part about them still being asswipes for complaining about a poor guy who needs money):

http://new.ca.music.yahoo.com/blogs/rs_sotd/1052/song-of-the-day-zac-brown-band-its-not-ok/

Ashton Sheperd=Bon Iver on this year's lists (both in the tradition of: "THIS guy likes THIS shit THIS much?!")

ps: Chicken stock is good for what ails you, especially in this weather. Also, does Jane ever write about music professionally anymore?

Yeah, definitely something comfort-foody about that Zac Brown album (probably part of why I basically like the thing, despite my major misgivings.)

Haven't knowingly heard a note of Bon Iver's music; assume I'd want to strangle the guy if I did. But from what little I've read, much as I hate to admit it, I've been wondering if Jamey Johnson = Bon Iver makes more sense, at least backstory-myth-wise (i.e., super introspective Xgau-dud albums recorded in increasingly bearded seclusion after a life-changing breakup, right?)

And as far as I know, Jane/Joshua is not rock-criticking for $ these days, but I could be wrong.

"increadingly bearded" indeed, which is no prob in itself--increasingly bearded c'est moi--but Bon Iver's the slo-mo farmhand, loft in teh stars with frost-flowers in his whisker-curtains, which part only to emit vapors

Just when you think the GOP can't possibly get more neo-Nazi, white identity and "Turner Diaries-esque," reality surprises. In the Christmas season.

Make "Puff the Magic Dragon" into something Prussian Blue will wind up singing, "Barack the Magic Negro." What a brilliant idea! Such genius! Since it aired on Limbaugh, listenership must make it one of the top songs in the country.

In the Tennesseean

In an Iowa newspaper

It's kind of weird that everyone is mad about that song now, since it barely made a dent a year and a half ago when Limbaugh played it. Of course back then there was the context of it being a response song to an LA Times Op-Ed piece called "Obama the Magic Negro" that went into the Legend of Bagger Vance type relationship America seemed to be having with O. I never understood why it's supposed to be Al Sharpton singing though.

A candidate for Chairman of the Republican National Comittee sent it to his friends as a Christmas present.Alibi: an alleged parody of Al Sharpton allegedy saying Obama wasn't "black enough." Chairman of Virginia Republican Party was just now on MSNBC, criticizing candidate for sending out song, but also making a point of quote "defending Rush Limbaugh for playing it" unquote, as she summarized her own position.

The song is retarded, but it's amazing how many refractions are involved in the controversy--

1. The media (and Peter, Paul & Mary) are mad at
2. a GOP chairman candidate
3. for sending around a song parody by some doofus named Paul Shanklin
4. which was first played on the Rush Limbaugh show 21 months ago
5. the song is supposedly sung by Al Sharpton
6. Commenting on an LA Times op-ed by David Ehrenstein (this is pretty explicit in one of the verses, lyrics follow)
7. That comments on how the media presents
8. Barack Obama
8. as the sort of Black character that makes white people feel good about themselves
9. A character often played by Morgan Freeman
10. And who is contrasted in the song with Snoop Dogg and Louis Farrakhan.

"Barack the Magic Negro lives in D.C.

The L.A. Times, they called him that

'Cause he's not authentic like me.

Yeah, the guy from the L.A. paper

Said he makes guilty whites feel good

They'll vote for him, and not for me"

And the current coverage seems to miss that the song is an attack on Sharpton, not Obama.

Yeah, I'm sure Rush meant it that way and that way only, just like his defensers and the RNC candidate.

Hence my fascination with the refractions--as we're all becoming expert readers of the nodding and the winking.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm finding President Keyes's logic a bit disingenuous here, or maybe just gullible -- If you can't even figure out why the song is in Sharpton's voice, how effective a Sharpton parody can it be? (And even if it is in part a Sharpton parody, which I don't doubt, who says it can't walk and chew Obama at the same time?)

In other news, my 51st to 100th favorite albums of 2008 (many of them country, natch):

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/12/51-eddy-current-suppression-ring-primary-colours-goner--52-dolly-parton-backwoods-barbie-dolly--53-black.html

Of course back then there was the context of it being a response song to an LA Times Op-Ed piece called "Obama the Magic Negro" that went into the Legend of Bagger Vance type relationship America seemed to be having with O.

Yeah, context is everything. My initial readings of the story didn't register on how far back Limbaugh had played the think.

I don't even recall the LA Times Op-Ed piece. However, since then we've had the campaign and every newspaper in the US interviewing white male heevahavas saying they wouldn't vote for the Islamic n-----. 60 Minutes even dredged through their tapes last night to find some old footage of a crank going on about Obama being a muslim and not knowing the words to our patriotic song.

That and being passed around by the head of the Tennessee GOP makes a firm addition to the majority impression it's the party of mad as hell white racist cranks. Good found humor, every day.

This is another good example from soCal from the campaign timeline

This is unintentionally funny, in a Ted Nugent way, from something called the Dakota Voice

Excerpt from the Atlanta newspaper here.

It brings to mind the local Republican official here in Georgia who sent out an email to her fellow Republicans not so long ago with a doctored photo of Obama as a black lawn jockey, among others. She wasn’t a racist, she insisted, and neither were the 20 or so Georgia conservatives who had sent the photo to her.

One of the more curious responses came from Erick Erickson over at redstate.com. “”In any event, that Chip Saltsman did this shows poor judgment on his part,” Erickson writes. “He should have known this would happen. This is a distraction from the RNC Chairman’s race coming on the heels of revelations that South Carolina GOP Chairman, and fellow contender, Katon Dawson belonged to an all white country club shortly before he decided to run for RNC Chairman.”

In similarly amusing political matters.

Ted Nugent: I'm the Motor City Madman, but 'Fuck you, Detroit!

Oh, that wacky dude from near Waco

x-post The seeming disingenuousness of my logic might be because at first I was commenting on what I'd heard about the song, and later commenting after I'd read the lyrics--which cleared up for me why it was Sharpton singing. I haven't actually heard the song yet though.

Get all of this out of your systems or take it to ILE, because it'd be a shame if this off topic shit carried over to Rolling Country 2009...

It's more or less to the tune of "Puff The Magic Dragon." Not to change the subject or anything, but Nick Spitzer's radio show, "American Routes," if that's how he spells it, recently spent two hours on original and cover versions of Hank Williams songs. Amazing how flexible they can be, without losing any identity. Tuscaloosa's own Dinah Washington extended "Your Cheating Heart" through the backwoods to the nighttime skyline of post-WWII jazz, with proto-rhythm & blues rumbling through the implications; Bob Dylan & his road band of a few years ago chopped "I Can't Get You Off of My Mind" through some kind of riverboat rock without leaving the dock (chopping, rolling in place, cos he can't get you etc) None of it upstaged Hank of course. I liked what the host observed about Hank with his Drifting Cowboys, the mixture of austerity and swing--what Dylan still goes for sometimes, like he did on John Wesley Harding. Willie and Merle get it too. It's not for everybody (no dis on Bob Wills, cos he had something else).

Mike Barthel (from a rough draft he posted on livejournal of his P&J comments):

I love the Taylor Swift album because it sounded like my high school girlfriend: pumped full of hormones (so many walks taken, so many tension-filled car rides!), overqualified for its small hometown but immersed fully in its stunted possibilities for romance and sex, visibly smart but not as smart as it thinks it is.

("Barack the Magic Negro" is getting press now only because other candidates for RNC chair are attacking candidate Chip Saltsman for having distributed it on his Xmas CD.)

Obv my cultural sense of what sounds respectable and not respectable is getting ever worse. I mean, as a proud Ashton Shepherd voter I think she has about as much subtlety, integrity, and depth as Girlicious, and I assumed that critics would consider her too trashy to vote for. (I mean, the song about the terminally ill girl in the hospital, the one who wants to know if she's too small to fit into angel wings, is utter craven swill. And the lyrics to "Sound So Good" are ad copy.)(Which doesn't mean they can't be good, mind you, though I'm not impressed with those two.)

Oh, I'm repeating myself, called "Sounds So Good" ad copy in two separate posts and used "I mean" twice in one post.

So I must be a classicist myself.

Chuck, so your Rhapsody list means you like Jamey Johnson's new one and Rick Springfield's new one better than the Toby Keith greatest hits comp you listed (and better than the Kid Creole comp and numerous others farther down in your list)? Interesting.

Shepherd might become the honky tonk Cher, a paradigm for the Queen of the Silver Dollar costume contest/way of life, if she isn't already (what are you doing, this Neww Year's, Eeevvve?)

Chuck, so your Rhapsody list means you like Jamey Johnson's new one and Rick Springfield's new one better than the Toby Keith greatest hits comp you listed (and better than the Kid Creole comp and numerous others farther down in your list)?

Yeah, basically. Thing is, with best-ofs, you gotta take usefulness into account -- I already have all of Toby's '00s albums, and a few of his '90s ones, so the redundancy factor obviously figures in. (Same with August Darnell, in his own special way.) Plus there's the fact that I didn't want to put a Toby Keith best-of in my top 10. That'd be totally lame, right? So he gets the same coveted #11 spot that I'm pretty sure a Bob Wills box set occupied a few years ago. That make sense? (Most other box sets on this planet, which I have basically no use for at all, wouldn't even come close to making my top 150.) (And less redundant best-ofs further down the list were rated pretty much one-on-one with new albums, though. And you'll note that one sort-of-best-of -- by Ross Johnson -- did make my top 10. I'd never heard his stuff before, so that one just felt like a regular album to me.)

(Curmudgeon was referring to my top 50, which was not linked on this thread til now, and starts with...George Jones! Sort of):

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/12/george-jones-once-called-1970-a-good-year-for-the-roses-and-though-the-fellow-who-made-my-very-favorite-album-this-year-ac.html

(Or, another way to put my Toby explanation: "Telling me stuff I didn't already know" seems like at least one valid criterion for judging how good records are. And "having 35 tracks, which is way too many by definition, most of which were on my shelf already" seems like one valid negative criterion. When you think about the fact that it had that black mark against it going in, Toby's best-of actually did pretty well!)

(Yet more valid album criterions, if these help: "How much did I wind up playing it?" "How much pleasure did I get out of it in 2008"? Etc. Obviously, right?)

(There's the predictive factor, too: "How much do I expect to play it in the future, and how much will it hold my attention/entertain me/keep telling me new things/not make me want to do other things instead/etc. when I do"?)

Speaking of the future, not to jump the gun or anything, these are my favorite country albums of 2009 so far:

Megan Munroe – One More Broken String (Diamond)
Chuck Mead – Journeyman’s Wager [label tk]
Dierks Bentley – Feel The Fire (Capitol)

And speaking of the past, a couple questions I've always wondered about that came to mind again this morning while listening to The Stars Are Out In Texas. an eight-song 1986 vinyl compilation LP that I found free on the sidewalk in Manhattan while Christmas shopping last month:

1. In "If You're Gonna Play In Texas (You Gotta Have A Fiddle In The Band)" by Alabama, why do they say "That lead guitar is hot, but not for a Looziana man?" I thought they said we were in Texas! Or is the unstated assumption that, if you're in (presumably east) Texas, Looziana men will definitely be in the audience?

2. In "Luckenbach, Texas (Back To The Basics Of Love)," why does Waylon first say "Newbury's train songs," and then Willie sneakily changes it in his verse to "Jerry Jeff's train songs"? Did Willie not like Newbury? Also, whose train songs are better? I've never much listened to either contestant's train songs, though every time I hear this song, it reminds me that I probably should.