Rolling Country 2010

So....first off I should note that I am a late convert to David Nail's "Red Light." I really like the details about what's going on in all the other cars surrounding him in the sunny Sunday afternoon traffic jam, while his girl is dumping him before the light changes.

Found a copy of the Desert Rose Band's Curb/MCA debut from 1987 for $1, and have since absorbed it. Went #24 on the country chart, with singles going #1, #2, #6, and #26; they had a few more top tens over the next couple years, then did a slow radio fade through the early '90s. Chris Hillman, the Byrds/Burritos guy, is on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, along with two other main guys and assorted helper-outers. Longest liner notes I've ever seen on a non-reissue / regular-issue mainstream country album, I think, by one Paul Clois Stone, apparently a historian and musician from Texas; he devotes a whole paragraph, even, to analyzing the LP's cover artwork, "discerningly linked to contemporary Western art through the lens of noted landscape and portrait photgrapher Jay Dusard." Music is jangly non-hard country-rock with moments of light Nick Lowe (post-sense-of-humor era) powerpop ("One Step Forward," the #2 hit) and Ricky Skaggs crossover bluegrass ("Time Between," apparently re-recorded from the Byrds' Younger Than Yesterday.) "Glass Hearts" quotes Buddy Holly's "True Love Ways" and sounds very very slightly Tex-Mex maybe. A few pretty good broken heart songs ("He's Back And I'm Blue," the #1, and "One That Got Away," a cheating song I think, and "Leave This Town"); one sunny one about having fun in a bad economy ("Hard Times".") It all sounds nice enough, but it's not sung or played with tons of urgency or passion, so none of it totally kills me -- If you're talking '80s proto-alt-country guys reviving the Bakersfield sound, Dwight Yoakam probably did it better.

Some of it makes me think "the country side of pub-rock," but that might just be because Brinsley Schwarz wanted to be the Burrito Brothers themselves. I played Desert Rose back to back with ex-Schwarzer Ian Gomm's Gomm With The Wind from 1979, possibly the most easy listening notable pub-related album this side of Ace (of "How Long" fame), and Gomm actually sounded edgier to me (in "Chicken Run," especially, and maybe "24 Hour Service" and his cover of Chuck Berry's "Come On.") Also didn't think Desert Rose had any songs as memorable as Gomm's "Hold On," which went Top 20 pop in the U.S. in 1979 and tracked so close to "Baker Street" that I doubt anybody who didn't know Gomm used to Lowe's bandmate considered it new wave at all.

Country-rock album I've really been obsessing on in the past 24 hours though is a new one, albeit recorded in 2000 to 2001 -- Buried Behind the Barn by Slim Cessna's Auto Club on Alternative Tentacles, apparently early previously unreleased (except on CD-R) versions of eight songs (totaling a half hour, good length) they later released on subsequent albums, none of which I've ever heard. Sound is somewhere in the gothic uptempo rustic hoedown territory of Red Swan and Woodbox Gang, two bands I liked a lot in the '00s without anybody else paying attention to them. (Woodbox also on Alternative Tentacles, which makes Cessna etc. only the latest evidence of a disconcerning realization I've had in recent years that Jello Biafra and I apparently have really similar tastes -- weird.) Lyrics frequently concern ghosts and dead bodies and people getting shot in the head and alcoholic mineworking in-laws falling off the wagon, not necessarily in that order. "Angel" takes the melody of the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love," and my wife commented that another song sounded to her like something off of Hole's Celebrity Skin. In one of the catchiest songs (though they're almost all pretty catchy), somebody wants to blame something on the Port Authority Band, though I haven't figured out what yet, and I never knew the Port Authority had a band in the first place.

Here's how their Wiki page describes Slim Cessna et. al: "a country music band formed in 1993 in Denver, Colorado. The constant in the band has been Slim Cessna, formerly a member of The Denver Gentlemen along with David Eugene Edwards and Jeffery-Paul of 16 Horsepower. Their music includes elements of country blues, Southern gospel, gothabilly and other forms loosely grouped as Americana or alternative country. The Auto Club is sometimes labeled 'country gothic' due to the juxtaposition of apocalyptic religious imagery with stories of alcohol, violence, and relationships gone awry." (I also liked the 16 Horsepower archival set that Alternative Tentacles sent out last year, though not as much as I like this Slim Cessna one.) Here's their myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/slimcessnasautoclub

Playing Elizabeth Cook's new album (not due out til May, on 31 Tigers); sounding surprisingly good to me so far, considering her previous album really bored me. (Though I did like the album that her husband, Tim Carroll, formerly of Indiana punk band the Gizmos, put out last year. And he's credited with guitar, slide, bango, harmonica, etc., here.)

http://www.myspace.com/elizabethcook

Speaking of the Belmonts (whom Xhuxk alluded to upthread), any thoughts about B.J. Thomas, who did the original - or at least the hit version of - "Rock And Roll Lullaby" which made it a year later onto the Belmonts Cigars, Acapella, Candy? Don't know much about Thomas, except that in its day "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" was the sort of thing that would make me throw bricks at people's heads. I'm sure I'd have a more benign attitude now. I'm streaming one of his hits collections <a href="http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music.artistalbums&artistid=17988937&ap=0&albumid=10416969";>on MySpace</a> right now, though haven't gotten to "Raindrops" - I started in the middle with "Rock And Roll Lullaby." His version isn't as exquisite as the Belmonts' but it's just as good: starts with guitar twang, rolls along as a deep AC track but gets ever more doo-wop as it continues. The song was written by Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, and not surprisingly there's a bit of class awareness in it: the woman who's singing the rock and roll lullabies to the narrator back when he was a tyke is a struggling, unwed teen mother.

Thomas started with one foot in country, his first hit being "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." Then he veered adult contemporary. A couple more strong, rich songs follow "Rock And Roll Lullaby" ("Back Against The Wall," "No Other Baby") then we're stuck with treacle like "You Can Call That A Mountain" and "What's Forever For." But the man's got a nice MOR voice, a lot less pushy than Neil Diamond's, say, and more flexible than Gordon Lightfoot's. "Ballyhoo Days" is a gentle track where he's a former star ("Once my name had swept the nation/Now my job is sweeping cafes").

Hadn't realized he'd done the original "Hooked On A Feeling," though I realize I've heard his version plenty, thought I'd forgotten the totally incongruous sitar. The track is built on soul, for all the weirdness, could be the Four Tops bass player. "Raindrops" is inoffensive, not bad. (Fast Forward.) "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" has a rigidly clipped rhythm, very strange, and an organ halfway between church and skating rink. He's smoother than the percussion, that's for sure.

Anyway, in the '80s he ends up back in country, according to Wikipedia, though I don't know that period of his at all.

Grumble grumble format conversion grumble grumble Hooked On A Feeling um um etc.

I do have some thoughts about B.J. Thomas (or I have before, anyway, possibly even on some previous Rolling Country thread), but I'm not sure I can precisely conjure them from memory, beyond the fact that his adult-contemporary clearly had both country and soul in it. (I also have two LPs by him on my shelf, purchased cheaply of course in recent years, both released in 1970: Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head and Everybody's Out Of Town. Not to mention his own "Rock And Roll Lullaby" 45 from 1972, which Joel Whitburn informs me has Dave Somerville from doo-wop strollers the Diamonds singing backup and Duane Eddy playing guitar on it, which might partly explain why Greil Marcus listed it in the discography in the back of Stranded. Anyway, I will hereby move the two LPs back into the waiting-to-be-played pile.)

Also. "Today" by Gary Allan (#18 country hit now) = Girl-who-got-away-married-somebody-else-today country, like Toby Keith's "She Never Cried In Front Of Me" or Billy Ray Cyrus's "Could've Been Me" (or Brooklyn Bridge's "Worst Thing That Could Happen" or Nick Lowe's "I Knew The Bride When She Used To Rock'n'Roll" or the Fools' "Dressed In White," minus the "country" part.) Except it's way less good than any of those.

Rest of Gary Allan's new album isn't killing me either. I like the two tough rockers near the beginning, "Get Off On The Pain" and "That Ain't Gonna Fly." "Kiss Me When I'm Down" has some clever lyrics (which I quoted up above), and beyond that there's some high lonesome singing and high lonesome guitar parts now and then. Closer "No Regrets" is a longish waltzy thing about how Gary wouldn't trade away the past he had with his ex, and sounds like something that might eventually kick in, though probably not. But little of the set is grabbing me now.

Speaking of currently charting singles, anybody know if any of these are any good (or bad)?

47 52 56 4 Free, Jack Ingram
J.Joyce (J.Knowles,T.Summar ) Big Machine DIGITAL | 47
48 53 2 Blue Sky, Emily West Featuring Keith Urban
M.Bright (E.West,G.Burr ) Capitol Nashville DIGITAL | 48
52 59 2 Bring On The Love, Coldwater Jane
W.Kirkpatrick,K.Kadish (K.Kadish,B.Jane,L.Crutchfield,W.Kirkpatrick ) Mercury DIGITAL | 52
53 60 2 Giddy On Up, Laura Bell Bundy
M.Shimshack (L.B.Bundy,J. Cohen,M.Shimshack ) Mercury DIGITAL | 53
55 58 59 10 Over The Next Hill, Brooks & Dunn & Mac Powell
T.Brown,J.Carter Cash (J.R.Cash ) Essential DIGITAL | Arista Nashville | 55
57 NEW 1 Kiss Me Now, Katie Armiger
B.Daly (K.Armiger,S.Buxton,B.Daly ) Cold River DIGITAL | 57
58 NEW 1 A Woman Needs, Jessica Harp
J.Flowers (J.Harp,J.Flowers,J.Mowery ) Warner Bros. DIGITAL | WRN | 58

Fast, or what?

BJ Thomas, "Little Green Apples": White soul-country guy deftly covers huge hit by black soul-country guy, making what I assume must be the most minstrel-music-worthy line in any chart-topping hit in the past several decades ("when myself iz feelin low") seem even more blackface. Still sounds great regardless, of course. (He also does "This Guy's in Love With You," "Suspicious Minds," "Guess I'll Pack My Things" [who made that one famous? I was thinking it must be Charlie Rich; it's somebody I was listening to recently, but it's not on Rich's reissue CD, hmmm..], assorted Jimmy Webb and Joe South numbers whose titles don't look familiar, and of course "Raindrops Keep Fallin On My Head," which is pretty great even though as a kid I may well have hated it as much as "Candy Man" by Sammy Davis Jr [which may have had minstrel leanings of its own, come to think of it.]) (And I just now realized that I don't know if I've ever heard BJ's "Rock and Roll Lullabye," which critics have forever sworn is genius. Is that possible? Or maybe I've heard it and I just forget what it's like?)
― xhuxk, Sunday, April 8, 2007

listened to a five-song sampler from the new BJ Thomas album. Best song is a hard rockabilly cover of Travis Tritt's cover of Elvis's (apparently, though I can't remember ever actually hearing Elvis's version) "Trouble" (you know: "There goes T-R-O-U-B-L-E"), but the rest is a lot schlockier, theoretically interesting when BJ goes into Luther Vandross mode, less so when he goes into Tom Jones mode, but not enough to hold my attention either way.
― xhuxk, Saturday, September 8, 2007

bj thomas - everybody's out of town LP - 75 cents

the bj thomas album has a bacharach-david number called "send my picture to scranton, PA"! best song, though, is the title track, about gentrification. cool LP cover. he covers nillson and simon and garfunkel and soul songs, and bacharach/david also produced it. better than the used raindrops keep fallin' on my head i bought by him last year.
-- xhuxk, Sunday, April 27, 2008

Now I think BJ Thomas's "Everybody's Out Of Town" is neither about gentrification nor suburbanization, but more about everybody leaving the city for the weekend, like a long holiday weekend in the summer. Still a good song, though. And the Scranton, PA, song is sung from the point of view of somebody who grew up an outcast there and wants everybody back home to know he's made it big elsewhere. They really should play it on The Office sometime I think.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, April 29, 2008

new Chely Wright...has a song or two that might conceivably kick in, but I'm not gonna hold my breath

Maybe I should have. Couple listens in, a few tracks started to kick in bigtime, turns out: "Notes To The Coroner" (most hookful song about imagining one's one death I've heard in a while); "Snowglobe" and maybe "Heavenly Days" ('60s pop meets modern country confections Deana Carter might approve of, the latter with a sweet windmills-of-your-mind swirl); "That Train" (acclerating train song with train rhythm since said train is what Chely says she wants to be, with cascading acoustic guitar parts); "Damn Liar" and "Object Of Your Rejection" (revenge songs seemingly directed at the same guy who maybe dumped her and she sounds very pissed about it, the former a simple primal perhaps Miranda Lambert-inspired stomp, the latter more shimmering Suzanne Vega/Amy Grant '90s pop sung in a little voice since Chely's "that little voice inside your head" reminding you "you can get away with treating people like shit" -- direct and unguarded emotion, these two); maybe "Shadows Of Your Doubt" (soft-spoken six-minute closer, pretty gondola lullaby possibly addressed to same guy she still wants back --actually not sure I'm following that one yet, so don't quote me on it.) The press release says Chely wrote all the songs, except one Rodney Crowell co-write.

Actually, "Snowglobe" is the windmill-swirl one, not so much "Heavenly Days." And Crowell also produced the album, fwiw. And I'm pretty sure I heard at least one other rare-for-country swear word (besides "shit") on the record; just didn't take note of where. (Release date is May 4.)

Okay, found it -- toward the tail end of "Damn Liar" (which actually starts out more a drone before evolving into a stomp while building in intensity) she switches to "fucking liar" once. So much for radio play.

imagining one's one death

One's own death: "I hope I haven't been lying here long/I'd say I told you so but I'm long gone." Hopes it wasn't her sister who found the corpse. If you start reading the details of her demise she wrote back in December, you'll learn the cause of death. Which turns out to be variations on a broken heart, but still -- Kind of morbid and funny.

"Giddy On Up" by Laura Bell Bundy = modern-day jig-pop with soul horns and Rednexy fiddle breaks and a readymade silly title chorus and a cowboy whorehouse saloon floor-show video, plus cute drawling turning into deep growling and spoken verses that flirt with rapping. Recalls Dolly Parton in dance mode. Thumbs up.

"Bring On The Love" by Coldwater Jane = One each long-haired blonde and brunette Sheryl Crow impersonator drive from California to Virginia, assisted by Petty/Adams powerchords, and apparently experience some car troubles which aren't terribly hard to fix. Another thumbs up, I think, though needs more hearing to figure out what's going on in the lyrics.

Getting the idea that the best (or least worst?) songs on that ambitious, interminable, completely ridiculous new Shooter Jennings album are toward the end: "Summer Of Rage" (1990 collage-metal-style political centerpiece about wearing gas masks in a police state -- only song that explicitly coincides with all of Stephen King's silly apocalpyse rant interludes, as far as I can tell); "California Vs. Tennessee" (probably the most pumping and melodic hard rock on the album, about traveling cross country to get away from some girl); "The Illumninated" (thickest nuclear winter Sabbath doomsday trudge attempt on the thing); "When The Radio Goes Dead" (okay that goes along with King's concept too obviously, but mainly it just has a pleasant guitar cascade to it.) Whole record's a mess, but I'm starting to feel a small affection for it -- As conceptual age-of-darkness bullshit goes, it's certainly no less coherent than, say, the new Gil Scott-Heron. (Though that one's about half as long as this, which does work in its favor.)

Also should mention that that Slim Cessna's Auto Show CD I mentioned above does have a couple fairly depressive, downtempo tracks -- maybe three or so, out of eight. (For goth-country, not a bad percentage!)

Actually, I'm guessing that some of Jennings's other songs on the album are maybe meant to deal with the apocalypse concept; but if so, I'm just not picking up on their words through all of the grunge murk.

Because there was a discussion about him, here's some Don Williams news regarding him being a new member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Other 2010 inductees: Jimmy Dean, Ferlin Husky and Billy Sherrill.

http://www.pollstar.com/blogs/news/archive/2010/02/23/710775.aspx

"Snowglobe" is the windmill-swirl one

And the psychedelic pop one, apparently. Chely takes a pill she shouldn't have but says she doesn't regret it; talks to her mom about the planets; watches circles and squares fade in and out; floats in a snowglobe and watches apostrophes and commas in space; wonders if it's a dream. Or at least that's what it sounds like she's saying.

The next song “Like Me”, is sung to someone who likes the color green, but doesn't like tomatoes, and is close to his or her maternal grandma, and can count all the time he or she's lied on one hand, and drinks beer after gardening, and isn't sure whether he or she will end up holding the hand of a tall handsome man or a beautiful woman. Thought it might be Chely herself, but she says the person's closet is filled with Levi's and dress pants, so conceivably it's a guy, maybe the same guy she’s split up with in other songs. Unless it isn't.

Starting to think she's a pretty interesting songwriter – or at least she seems willing to take some risks not many other country-pop songwriters are taking. (She also apparently has a biography coming out, for what that’s worth.) The only other album I have by her, Single White Female from 1999, which I mainly kept for its excellent title track, credits only one and a half songs to her. ("Single White Female" itself was written by Carolyn Dawn Johnson and Shaye Smith. But she did apparently write “The Bumper Of My S.U.V.,” her song that pissed me off in 2005 where a liberal soccer mom in a mini-van flips the bird at her for her U.S. Marines bumper sticker.)

Singles Jukeboxers consider Trace Adkins' "Ala-Freakin'-Bama":

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=1974

Heard Josh Turner's "Me And God" from a couple years back on the radio this afternoon, and remembered one reason he used to bug me so much. I swear, every time I hear that, here's what it sounds like he's singing:

There ain't nothing that can't be done
By Mean God
Ain't nobody gonna come in between Mean God
One day we'll live together
Where the angels trod
Mean God...

He rules the world
With a staff and rod
We're a team
Mean God

So hey, where'd everybody go?? This place was totally hopping just a few weeks ago. Weird.

Anyway, heard an amazing song from I don't think I ever heard before on the radio over the weekend -- "Kay" by John Wesley Ryles, which is sung from the point of view of a guy who sells all his stuff so his girlfriend can try to make it in Music City, and she becomes a big star and tours the country and (I think) dumps him, and he winds up driving a Nashville cab. Apparently went #83 on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1968, then #50 in a different version on the country chart 10 years later. Not sure which version I heard; in fact, since the DJ didn't announce it and I had to Google it when I got home, it's also possible I heard Daryl Singletary's 2002 cover. (I heard an all-covers album by him a couple years ago; "Kay" wasn't on it, though it did apparently have a version of Don Williams's "Some Broken Hearts Never Mend.") Anyway, Joel Whitburn says John Ryles came from Lousiana and later worked in Dallas and Fort Worth. And Wiki lists him as having lots of mostly low-level country hits between 1968 and 1988 (including one that went #14 in 1979 called "Liberated Woman"), but his name is completely new to me.

Jon Caramanica on Danny Gokey (who I'm clueless about) and Ben Ratliff on new Shooter Jennings album, in the NY Times. Latter review made me chuckle. Ratliff compares the music to Ministry and Pink Floyd. Also says Shooter samples conspiracy theorist Myron Fagan, which I wasn't aware of (uh, maybe I should've read the press release.) I also hadn't connected "The Illuminated" with The Illuminati til now, duh...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/arts/music/01choice.html?sq=&st=cse&%2334;shooter%20jennings=&%2334;=&scp=1&pagewanted=all

Legendary Shack Shakers actually have more Ministry-reminiscent clanking on Agridustrial, if you ask me, and at least they go Shooter one better by trying to cross Ministry with ZZ Top, in "Sin Eater" for instance. Definitely a few good hearty backwoods-barbecue slide-boogie riffs on the record -- "Greasy Creek" might be the thickest. Favorite track so far, though, is "Dump Road Yodel," which is also as close as they get to Woodbox Gang or Red Swan (see Slim Cessna notes above), with old timey banjo-jig picking and yodelling parts -- probably the least ugly thing on the album, too. Wish I could hear its words better though; seems to have a intriguing yarn about what happens down said road attached, but the singer's murk forces you to strain to hear the words, and that's the biggest barrier to the album as a whole in fact. His spoken part at the beginning of "The Hills Of Hell" about women being crucified in Kentucky in the late 1800s connects better than most of his singing. They do a right sprightly version of "Sugar Baby" by Dock Boggs, though. (The only cover song on it, far as I know.)

"Sin Eater" is probably a ZZ Top tune. At least my memory says ZZ renamed "Pin Cushion" as that.

"Kiss Me Now" by Katie Armiger = More Bryan Adams/Tommy Tutone-style-powerchord country powerpop, from a girl begging for affection. Probably just generic, but too catchy to hold that against it too much.

"Over The Next Hill" by Brooks & Dunn & Mac Powell = Ronnie Dunn end-times-are-near country gospel duet with the apparent lead singer of apparent Christian fake grunge act Third Day, though actually at least a little more uplifting and less dreary than that description implies.

Now on Billboard's country singles chart (though from '09 albums):

39 51 2 The House That Built Me, Miranda Lambert
F.Liddell,M.Wrucke (T.Douglas,A.Shamblin ) Columbia DIGITAL | 39
47 RE-ENTRY 3 Every Dog Has Its Day, Toby Keith
T.Keith (T.Keith,B.Pinson,J.Waples ) Show Dog-Universal DIGITAL | 47

Haven't heard these (which may or may not be worth hearing):

50 54 2 Chillin', Blaine Larsen
J.Ritchey (B.Larsen,E.M.Hill,P.O'Donnell ) Treehouse PROMO SINGLE | 50
51 1
Tell Your Sister I'm Single, Tyler Dickerson
J.Rich,C. Pennachio (J.I. Rich,A.Williams,T. Rosen ) Lyric Street PROMO SINGLE | 51
52 53 2 Ain't No Stopping Her Now, Ash Bowers
New Voice Entertainment (A.Bowers,K.Jacobs ) Stoney Creek PROMO SINGLE | 52
59 NEW 1 Just Knowing You Love Me, Jimmy Wayne With Whitney Ducan
D.Huff (J.Wayne,B.Beavers,T.Martin ) Valory DIGITAL | 59
60 NEW 1 Blossom In The Dust, Mallary Hope
D.Bason,M.Bright (M.Hope,J.Henderson,J.Doyle ) MCA Nashville DIGITAL

"Blossom In The Dust" by Mallary Hope = Girl named Rose in tattered dress born in weed-strewn trailer park to teenage Mom with a presumably drug-related "habit", winds up with a "real nice" and presumably higher class couple "across the county line" who haven't had much luck coming up with offspring of their own; blossoms like a rose growing through the concrete in Spanish Harlem except this is the white trash version, not to mention a do-gooder adoption (hence implicitly anti-abortion) P.S.A. that Martina McBride could be proud of. Given all that, I like it - has a pretty upswoop; one of 2010's better country singles so far.

"Tell Your Sister I'm Single" by Tyler Dickerson = John Rich writing in man-slut mode. Girl tells boyfriend she wants to see other people; guy says "I'll trade you tit for tat, I like the sound of that," tells her he's open to her Mama too. "Let's keep it in the family, yeah you can call me Daddy" -- huh?? Yuck. Sounds like: John Rich in hackwork mode.

"Chillin'" by Blaine Larsen = Hazy lazy summer cliches, lazily sung, but Blaine's pretty decent at that; makes a halfway decent surrogate Kenny Chesney. He's out by the lake, I think, "singing Seger, Cash, Bo Diddley, and Bob Dylan." Interesting list. Kinda boring song regardless.

Okay so the funniest thing about the new Rosanne Cash is that when Rufus Wainwright starts up his backing vocals on Silver Wings, I totally thought it was Michael Mcdonald.

Singles Jukebox jury on:

Brad Paisley "American Saturday Night"

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=1990

Josh Turner, "Why Don't We Just Dance"

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=1995

Martina McBride, "Wrong Baby Wrong"

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=2018

10 '80s Country hit artists who fell through the cracks, from the 9513 blog (including sometime disco singer Deborah Allen, Baille And The Boys, blind country blues woman Terri Gibbs, Becky Hobbs who sounds interesting, and Barbara Mandrell's younger sister Louise):

http://www.the9513.com/forgotten-artists-ten-from-the-80s-pt-1/

Also, a 9513 discussion on whether EPs (like the new one Blake Shelton just put out last week) are a good idea. (I think they're cute, myself):

http://www.the9513.com/your-take-to-ep-or-not-to-ep/

Roughstock blog on University of Rochester a capella group making a same-sex crush Taylor Swift parody video:

http://www.roughstock.com/blog/a-cappella-group-from-university-of-rochester-parody-taylor-swift

Kevin Coyne* from Country Universe on Little Big Town's "Little White Church," which I haven't heard yet ("A few more records like Laura Bell Bundy’s and this one, and country radio just might get interesting again.") He also has a piece on there called "The Success of Taylor Swift is Not a Moral Issue," which isn't as entertaining as its title:

http://www.countryuniverse.net/2010/02/25/single-review-little-big-town-little-white-church/

* -- Not to be confused with eccentric British singer Kevin Coyne, recently discussed on the Rolling Hard Rock Thread

Okay, no idea why I'm even still bothering with this thread anymore (just obsessive compulsive I guess), but Frank asked about B.J. Thomas up above, so I pulled out Everybody's Out Of Town again, and B.J.'s still standing all alone on the cover like me on this thread most of the time, and by far the most uncompromised soul track is his cover of Jr. Walker and the All Stars' "What Does It Take." Don't hear any tracks having more than a tinge of country; you'd think that might not've mattered in the age of Glen Campbell, but apparently B.J. didn't chart country until 1975, when "(Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song" went #1. This album was just '70. Fave tracks are "What Does It Take," and the first two, Nilsson's (actually Fred Neil's) "Everybody's Talkin'" and the comparably existential Bacharach-David title cut. He also does one Mann-Weil (plus "Bridge Over Troubled Water," who cares.) Best song title is "Send My Picture To Scranton, PA," another Bacharach/David, which is really ornate and almost show-tuney -- seemingly with some fancy time signatures that'd put over the revenge of the former class geek returning to Scranton to show all his old classmates he's a big deal now story better if they were less fancy.

Okay, no idea why I'm even still bothering with this thread anymore

Don't give up! I'm still enjoying reading your posts, though I haven't had the time to offer any thoughts of my own lately.

ditto.

At any rate, don't give up while you're talking about B.J. Thomas, because I'm kind of interested in B.J. Thomas talk and you have me curious about "Send My Picture to Scranton, PA" now; plus I didn't know specifically that he was the one who did some of those songs. I can be very hazy about 70s pop artist IDs since it was all just a transistor radio blur at the time.

maybe everyone else already knows this, but i just learned today that ke$ha's mom, pebe sebert, is a nashville songwriter of some renown (and an ex-punk singer). her biggest claim to fame, besides the three songs she co-wrote on her daughter's album, is "old flames can't hold a candle to you," a kinda sorta country version of "in my life" that dolly parton took to #1 country in 1980 and that has also been done by johnny and june carter cash and merle haggard among many others. i'm liking it quite a bit, particularly the johnny & june version.

Re: Brooks & Dunn collabo w/ Third Day

I'm not surprised at this, something like "I Believe" by B & D could easily be played on christian hit radio, I think, and a lot of christian rock bands seem to play a mix of 80's AOR & post-grunge

And judging by a performance by some american idol finalist I heard on the last Grand Ole Opry show, Creed is being metastasized into the country sound

Also related: Emerson Drive & Wynona covering the christian power ballad "I Can Only Imagine"

My short Rhapsody review of the new Drive-By Truckers album:

http://www.rhapsody.com/thedrivebytruckers/the-big-to-do#albumreview

Some other points of interest about the record: (1) Patterson's "The Fourth Night of My Drinking" is partially similar to America's "Horse With No Name" (the line "first night of my drinking" sounds like "first part of the journey"); (2) second DBTs album in a row with a sad Cooley song about a birthday; (3) Patterson's song about a guy with a shitty job is followed immediately by Cooley's song about a guy with no job; (4) Patterson has called it the band's most rocking album since the second disc of Southern Rock Opera, which I'm not sure I agree with for reasons explained in that review, but I like it more than any album they've done in a long while regardless; (5) still wish their definition of "rocking" hadn't shifted so decisively from "Skynyrd" to "Crazy Horse" along the way; (6) Shonna's two songs -- a draggy Lucinda-style codeine-country lament and a way lighter thing possibly aiming for Motown pop -- are easily the two least lyrically specific and most expendable tracks; (7) I didn't mention "After The Scene Dies" in that review partly because I couldn't think of a word or two that means "the time of the night when the club shuts down and everybody goes home and the equipment gets packed up and the lights get turned off." Best I could come up with was "loudout," like in the Jackson Browne song. But does anybody ever actually call it that in real life?

No idea why I just called Patterson and Shonna by first names and Cooley (who I actually did a short interview with yesterday) by his last.

In other country news, Blaine Larsen's "Chillin'" sounded better over the car radio (just felt basically...very chill) on a lovely spring Austin SXSW evening than I'd have guessed. (Probably helps that country radio sounds so bleh lately, which makes it stick out more.)

And I noticed a song or two on the Dropkick Murphys' latest live St. Patrick's Day album where the guitars almost actually struck me as more "American country" than "Irish folk," if that interests anybody.

I just listened to my old man's copy of "Flowers On the Wall: The Essential Statler Brothers"

They've always been his favorite group, I've always dismissed them as cornpone & maudlin

but, I gotta say I'm been pleasantly surprised. The arrangement of "I Still Miss Someone" is better than Johnny's, "Shenandoah" is really pretty, "Flowers on the Wall" is a classic country tune

Good harmonies too, I think they must have really changed after the 60's when their lead singer died of Crohn's disease & they sang corny songs about 50's nostalgia

Cum On Feel The Texas Two-Step

Found this from Marcello Carlin on a Popular thread from '07:

Noddy talked about the rhythmic "innovations" on the Radcliffe show a while back; he ascribed Slade's "shuffle" to blurred childhood memories of Bob Wills' Texas two-step, halved in speed and right-angled in pronunciation (or something like that; basically Slade's beats are accentuated differently – I think on every third bar as opposed to to the 1-3 of reggae or the 2-4 of rock – and the triplets themselves are divided up erratically JUST LIKE TONY OXLEY), and the Military Two-Step.

First charting version of "Old Flames Can't Hold A Candle To You," by Joe Sun. According to BMI it's been done by the Staples Singers, but in a quick Websearch I couldn't find a stream. Also couldn't find a stream of the version by Hugh Moffat, co-writer, formerly married to Pebe. (According to Wikip he's co-written an opera.) Good song, anyway. Here's a live version by Brenda Doiron, whom I've never heard of, done as an old-style wailer.

John Morthland, in his essential Best of Country Music, mentions a Joe Sun Best of on Warner Brothers. Gives it a good nod, but I've never been able to find much of his stuff. Used to have the 45 of "Old Flames" but can't seem to find it.

Statlers are pretty dope.

Have myself barely even dabbled in Joe South (who I suspect I'd like, given his soul-country reputation) or the Statler Brothers (have a best-of LP around here somewhere -- almost definitely purchased after loving "Flowers On The Wall" on 1994's Pulp Fiction soundtrack.) I'll shift the latter to the play pile, and it'll come up eventually.

Did put on B.J. Thomas's Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head today, though, and I'd say it has an even more pronounced soul vocal influence than Everybody's Out Of Town, which charted just four months later (May to January 1970) but 60 spaces lower (#72 to #12) on Billboard's pop album chart. I'd say Raindrops is at least the marginally more consistently playable of the two albums, too, and maybe shows slightly more country influence as well, though only at the point (i.e., opener "Little Green Apples" and closer "Suspicious Minds") where country and soul merge. Still didn't hit the country chart, though; seems odd they wouldn't at least attempt to market him that way, given that Glen Campbell had had seven #1 country albums in the previous three years, and B.J. doesn't sound all that far from him to me. Maybe he just didn't have the right look. (The LP cover photos, all three of which of which picture him with some long-haired brunette, almost look like a kind of ironic bohemian nostalgia for the Gay '90s or thereabouts. Which I gather may have been a popular look for hipster college boys at the time, at least in popular culture if not on actual campuses; '60s pop-rock bands frequently did something similar right?)

Playing Barbara Mandrell's 1977 Best Of on Columbia right now; earlier and maybe less r&b-infused stuff than on the later best-of LP I talked about upthread, though she does cover "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" on it. Also Roy Head's 1965 Texas boogie-woogie rock smash "Treat Her Right," redone as "Treat Him Right," which makes less sense addressed to a woman (as Mandrell does) than to a man. You can hear why hip people probably thought of Mandrell's covers as square variety-show-type whitewashes; she definitely Pat Boones them, to a certain extent.

LP still has a few great cuts, though -- "The Midnight Oil" is even kind of filthy: She stays after work at the office to give the boss "a helping hand," and later she'll feel "kinda dirty 'cause I'll have that midnight oil all over me," wtf? If Peter Garrett knew what the midnight oil was, would he have named his band that? Anyway, that's the start of Side Two; Side One starts with a great doomed end-of-the-affair cheating song called "Scarlet Water," where they're gonna "sip the scarlet water one more time." Which water may be midnight oil, too.

Hank Thompson Smoky The Bar from 1969 -- okay, this is a great album. Mostly honky tonk more than the after-the-fact Western Swing/ boogie-woogie people say he was known for, though there are definitely more than hints of the latter (especially in "Let's Get Drunk And Be Somebody," which title he beat Toby Keith to by several decades and which has a nifty alliterative part about "a gushing goblet goads my ghostly gloom", and "Cocaine Blues," where he shoots his philandering woman down then goes fugitive after snorting some snow). Some of the drinking songs -- "Pop A Top," "What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made A Loser Out Of Me)," "Bright Lights And Blonde Haired Women," Jimmie Rodgers's "My Rough And Rowdy Ways" -- are probably more famous by other people, though I'm usually not sure who; "Drunkard's Blues" updates (and quotes) "St . James' Infirmary" and sounds like a goth jazz dirge. "Smoky The Bar" is a joke pun about smokey bars; "I See Them Everywhere" is a joke about seeing pink elephants and other crazy creatures crawling up the walls; "Girl In The Night" is about a sad beauty who soaks in the nightlife every night to kill some past pain the singer hasn't yet figured out (popular theme in glam rock songs a few years later seems to me); "New Records On The Jukebox" hopes somebody will play them because all the old ones choke him up too much.

Weirdest (and maybe the dumbest) song is probably "Ace In The Hole," which is done as a corny showtune cabaret music-hallish number (if that's not a contradiction) and concerns how hippies are lazy and unclean and have friends on the welfare line. (Maybe it's a parody? I get the idea there's some older "Ace In The Hole" song it's based on, but not sure I've ever heard the original tune.) Most of the songs are tragic, but hardly any of them are slow, and most have a beat. Also, Hank's voice sounds surprisingly gentle, somehow, even when he's rowdy.

Followed it up with Buck Owens and the Buckaroos' I've Got A Tiger By The Tail from 1965, which might have as much energy, at least when the tempos pick up, and definitely has a sense of humor (it's right there in Buck's chuckle and drawl obviously, but also all through songs like the title track and "Wham Bam," where he promises not to stick around and get sucked in by some girl -- wish he was comical more and sappy less, actually.) Plus he covers "Streets Of Laredo" and Chuck Berry's "Memphis." But I think Hank Thompson still puts over way more personality, somehow, and I like his album a lot more. The Buck is still real good, though. A dozen songs, all but one under 3 minutes, and two under two, like a hardcore punk LP; might actually qualify as an EP, Pazz-and-Jop-wise. (Question for future research: What was the relationship between the Bakersfield sound and rockabilly, exactly?)

Both albums have long liner notes, too; when did that tradition end, anyway? (Thompson's call him "the Poet Laurette of Beer Drinkers"!)

Actually I think Thompson's gentleness amid the rowdiness might be part of his Western Swing legacy -- I've often found the sweetness of Tommy Duncan's vocals on Bob Wills & Texas Playboys records disconcerting, since it seems to cut into the energy, somehow; it's blasphemy, but I think they might have been even better with somebody rougher sounding on the mic. But Thompson somehow manages to sound sweet and rowdy at the same time, which is a neat trick. (Actually, a trick that Toby Keith can pull off himself pretty well at times; maybe he's a fan.) Or at least Thompson does it on this LP; by the one I got from just five years later, Movin' On, he seems to have lost a lot of his oomph.

Gotta say though, between the two albums I mention above, Thompson is way funnier than Buck Owens, too. But I got three mid '60s Buck LPs for 25 cents each at a garage sale last month, so maybe listening to the other two will change my mind. (Btw, was Buck the first current country guy it was considered cool for hip rock kids to like? Evidence being: the Beatles covering his song and Creedence dropping his name.)

Speaking of the Statlers--there's a new Dailey & Vincent album of Statler Brothers covers.

Got Ricky Skaggs's Don't Cheat In Our Hometown, from 1983, in that same batch of 25-cent garage sale country LPs. Supposed to be one of Skaggs's worthy albums of his post-indie-folk-label-purist '80s Nashville sellout period (or at least one of four Christgau gave a B+ too); doesn't have anything that grabs me as immediately as "Highway 40 Blues" or "Heatbroke" from '82's Highways And Heartaches, but it's still solid. Favorite track might be "She's More To Be Pitied," another one of those sad women wasting her life away in beer halls songs (see Hank Thompson's "Girl In The Night"), except Skaggs makes it more like a church sermon than Thompson would. He's pretty much a goody-goody in general -- doesn't do his women wrong, but they do him wrong, and when they do he just begs that they don't do it in his hometown, apparently since then his neighbors will realize he's a cuckold. That's actually a really good song, too. He's not raunchy enough for Mel Tillis's "Honey (Open That Door)" (which I think was a hit), but it's catchy. Best other stuff is reborn old songs -- traditional gospel bible-story-counting hymn "Children Go"; Bill Monroe's "Uncle Pen"; Stanley Brothers' "Vision of Mother," gloom about Mama's ghost sung as a duet with Dolly Parton. She's on another track, too; Albert Lee plays guitar on a bunch; and Skaggs knows how to shape his own acoustic and fiddle and mandolin chops into hooky hitbound tunes in general, which as far as I can tell is an extreme rarity for a bluegrass guy -- in fact, give or take the Dixie Chicks if they count, has anybody done it better over the past three decades? This album and Highways And Heartaches never stumble into mere show-off crap. But there's still a bluegrassish squeaky-clean-ness that I have trouble getting behind.

saw jamey johnson last night, it was an interesting show. he's weird onstage, sort of diffident except that he's the guy with the microphone. played 2 1/2 hours straight, no breaks or encores. his choice of covers was reverential (jennings and jones, obv, along with keith whitley) and a little combative ("long-haired country boy," hank jr's "dinosaur"). like he's not quite sure what ground there is for outlaw country these days. there were lots of cheers and yee-haws whenever he mentioned pot (or "cocaine and a whore"), but i had the feeling he could've gotten the same response if he'd decided to call obama a socialist or something. not that i think he wants to do that, i sort of doubt it, but that was definitely the crowd.

(it was a sold-out show, fwiw. the men were all bald pates, buzzcuts or ballcaps. women were suburban shag-cut and corn-fed.)

Over on poptimists I'm talking to Jeff about Lady Antebellum if anyone wants to join in and speak more knowledgeably than I can of the last forty years of country-MOR-AC interplay. (I tap Air Supply as a Lady Antebellum touchstone, but no doubt there are country bands that are at least as relevant.)

I said this on my own lj about my disappointment with "American Honey":

Lady Antebellum "American Honey": Nostalgia for childhood, lost promise, a lost country, a lost world. Should be better (Miranda Lambert would give this bite, and smarter words), but is passable; I'd like it more if it didn't shrink next to the great Antebellum weeper that's still riding high. BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Xhuxk, Gretchen Wilson's version of "The Midnight Oil" was easily my favorite thing on the Mandrell tribute LP from a couple of years ago. I like that Gretchen did it without bawling or wailing, is matter of fact and lets words and steel guitars do the crying. I was dumb not to hunt down the Mandrell version, so maybe I'll try.

You've definitely got me interested in Hank Thompson.

And this is what I said about "Hillbilly Bone":

Blake Shelton ft. Trace Adkins "Hillbilly Bone": The rhythm section gives us good bubbling soul-funk, with Blake and Trace up top with a deep reduced drawl that highlights the groove but is a waste of two fine singers, and of the groove. NO TICK.

Definitely meant to blurb it (and Love And Theft's "Dancing In Circles" and Gary Allan's "Today") for the Singles Jukebox, which included it today in its country Monday, but I fell asleep last night instead. I'd have brought down the average; I like Xhuxk pointing out the Bubbah buh-buh-buh stuff, and I hear how they're having fun, but it's tired fun by the time it hits my ears (and though I was just as pissed with "Ala-Freakin-Bama," it grabbed me and tickled me despite my pissy mood).

Here's an alternate take of Elvis's "T.R.O.U.B.L.E.," which is the only stream of it I could quickly find online (Google unfortunately isn't distinguishing between this and the Lieber-Stoller "Trouble" that Elvis did in '58 and then again in '68 for his comeback special).