Actually, just replayed the '09 George Strait album for the first time in several months. Has some surprises (the Spanish cut, for instance), and "Livin' For The Night" is truly a beauty. But I can't imagine ever playing the album again. Would definitely rank it well below the McBride, the Sugarland Xmas, and the Vassar (just because I love "Bobbi With An I" so much in his case.) Don't much care about the Kracker.
― xhuxk, Monday, 14 December 2009 18:48 (fourteen years ago) link
Ha, I'm going to vote for the Robison without having really taken in its lyrics or their bearing on the former Mrs. Robison.
Never did get to the Eric Church; rather hated the single, and it wasn't getting much enthusiasm on this thread.
― Frank Kogan, Monday, 14 December 2009 22:39 (fourteen years ago) link
I like the Otis Gibbs album more than Chuck does; is relentlessly gruff, but there's beauty in the gruffness, and good-sounding songs. Probably won't make my ballot, which I have to finish in the next half hour, before I go out.
― Frank Kogan, Monday, 14 December 2009 22:52 (fourteen years ago) link
The Gibbs album was released in October 2008, but got re-released in Jan. '09. It ended up at #7 on my ballot, but early on I knew it would end up somewhere in my Top 10. Among other names mentioned lately the Eric Church was a disappointment coming off his debut. Charlie Robison's was okay but just that. Strait was as usual good for a few songs, but got filed quickly. I've heard the Megan Munroe but didn't think much of it at the time (will have to go back someday), and I liked Sarah Borges' better. I had a chance at the Collin Raye via a Promo, but the company never sent it. Patty Loveless' album was a good followup. And what about the Tanya Tucker covers album? Not bad and where's she been? Also worthy are albums by Holly Williams, Levon Helm, Keith Urban and Todd Snider. I'd lump Snider's and Robison's album in the same category. Competent but missing something. Oh, and the Sugarland Christmas album is worth a Holiday spin.
― jetfan, Monday, 14 December 2009 23:17 (fourteen years ago) link
Fwiw, in the past week or two I've heard "Feelin' Good" from Robison's album a couple times on the car radio here -- presumably on whatever station focuses on Texas country rather than whatever station focuses on commercial country (though I don't pay much attention to button-punch specifics when driving, since it'd take my eyes off the road.)
Curious what other people wound up voting for. (I.e.: Post yr lists!)
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 15 December 2009 14:13 (fourteen years ago) link
Okay (comments to follow Don Allred’s CMCP Ballotintro: whatever other genres it may pass through and vice versa, country has to have a certain feel, but the main thing is a certain obsessiveness (no matter how cheerfully, how brightly presented) “Beat” as in “Man I’m beat” and “beatitude” too: blues and blue sky. Paul Goodman observed, “William Faulkner is Beat too, in a complicated way.” Nik Cohn’s mid-60s mention of country’s “elaborate sentimentality” also still applies, despite the no-b.s. inspections and reports delivered tolerably often these days.Top Ten Albums(just in the order they come to mind)1. David Hidalgo & Los Cenzontles (with Taj Mahal): Songs of Wood & Steel2. Carrie Rodriguez: Live in Louisville3. Hot Club of Cowtown: Wishful Thinking4. The Flatlanders: Hills and Valleys5. Patterson Hood: Murdering Oscar (and Other Love Songs)6.Willem Maker: New Moon Hand7. Tim Easton: Porcupine8. John Doe and the Sadies: Country Club9. Ha Ha Tonka: Nouveau Sounds of the New South10. Deer Tick: Born on Flag DaySingles:1. Gary Allan “Today”2. Toby Keith “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song)”3. Jamey Johnson “High Cost of Livin’”Top Reissues:1. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys: The Tiffany TranscriptionsBest Male Vocalists:1. Willie Nelson2. John C. McCauley (Deer Tick)Best Female Vocalists1. Emmylou Harris2. Dolly Parton3. Elana James (Hot Club of Cowtown)Top Live Acts1. Willie Nelson with Asleep At The Wheel (Austin City Limits concert)2. Taylor Swift (CMT Crossroads with Def Leppard and other TV performances)Best New Acts:1. Sarah JaroszMost Pathetic (song and video)1. Toby Keith "American Ride"2. John Rich "Shutting Detroit Down"
― dow, Tuesday, 15 December 2009 15:52 (fourteen years ago) link
Ballot comments (and some on albums not listed)mostly thumbnail sketches for show previewsJustin Townes EarleSo far, singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle's post-rehab albumsdon't have the range (or ranginess) of his father Steve's own prodigalpeaks. No problem: the reflective alertness and hopeful smoothness ofMidnight At The Movies strongly suggest that the younger Earle is hisown kind of escape artist, thankful for the breathing room he'searned, and the floor plans he's committed to memory. He’s learned notto get too crazy, and thus distract himself from the female spirit whoalways shows up to hold his hand, then “leaves before the creditsroll”, on Midnight...'s title track. More expansively, on 2008's TheGood Life Earle is striding through honky-tonk neon shadows,thoughtfully singing to passing lovers and friends, while exercisinghis still-young lungs with that bracing night-life air.PhosphorescentPhosphorescent’s Matthew Houck loves his rolling psych-countryimagery, while he and the band also know their way to and through theend of a line, adding beats and syllables, even to a monosyllable, asneeded. Such sure footing on a cloudy staircase helps Phosphorescent’salbum of Willie Nelson songs, To Willie, find another mellow mentalghost town, in the dusty sunshine of lost love. And why not? As withHouck’s more complicated compositions, Nelson’s songs hum like oldhouses, still ready to be slipped into, as Phosphorescent investigateboth sources on tour. Tim Easton"Woke up this mornin' with a sranger in your bed/Those boots were haunted/The sheets were burgundy red." For Porcupine, current Joshua Tree CA chrocnicler Tim Easton re-enlisted early Columbus OH cohorts like New Bomb Turks drummer Sam Brown, who does extreme housecleaning on "Burguny Red", Porcupine's opener. Meanwhile, Marty Stuart/Lucinda Williams' touring guitarist Kenny Vaughn's deepening twang keeps echoing through discreet conversation with "The Young Girls."Tim Easton can get pretty denin-jacket folkie on some sets, but here be pacemakers and jumper cables for hiscompulsively mobile characters, who mostly fear getting "too cold tosweat the dark out", as Easton says of himself. Mainly, you don't needto catch all the sly-to-wise-to-blunt words to get the points ofPorcupine (cute little critter)Willem MakerWillem Maker's not much for burying meanings. They might poison himlike the dioxin dump did in Georgia, before he reached his Alabamamountainside trailer. He's got one song specifically about that, butit's as short as the others. Bare facts have to be quicklyre-gathered, re-twisted up the neck of his guitar, peeled by his slideinto images flying by, all around the rising gravity of Maker's "NewMoon Hand." He's also gnarling sonic sense through charredimpressions, somwwhere between Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison,backcountry Kevin Coybe and young Gregg Allman (more lockjawedeloquence than moan) Chewing the juice loose again, cryptically vs,the crypt, "Saints drink wine" and other info. He's singing his truththrough bad and good dreams: learning to "leave the fever in thepast," starting at the end of the line. Jason Isbell and the 440The Drive-By Truckers’ Jason Isbell went solo with Sirens of theDitch, where poignant, sometimes tragicomic situations rolled theirow gravelly grooves. On Jason Isbell and the 440, Isbell’s road-testedband drives further into the cloudy electric horizons of “Sirens”,still piloting by the lights of homely detail. Isbell’s restlesspeople are even more souled on stoneful memories (“She’s down deep inme still/Rolled up like a 20 dollar bill”), but the music knows theway. “Maybe I’ll flag down a car/I’m not going too far/And I’ve gotcash.” Good plan!Deer Tick (this is before Born On Flag Day came out)(see followupemail for that)Deer Tick is the tag applied by John McCauley to himself and hisband—appropriately so, judging by the tenacious midnight bite of hisrecently reissued 2007 debut, War Elephant” Points of disorder sparkthe leather-lunged lyricism that can harsh his mellow campfirestrumming into toasted constellations. Buckskin-fringed flurries offury keep the dust flying, no matter how persistent it it is (damnpersistent) Mr. Tick also knows how and when to propose that you“Spend The Night”: “I know you’ve heard it all before/But not from me”rings and rasps gently true. Ditto the Vegas anthem, “What Kind OfFool Am I?” It’s no longer a rhetorical question.Joan Baez“Every day that passes/I’m sure about a little less/Even my moneykeeps tellin’ me/It’s God I need to trust/And I believe in God/But Godain’t us.” “God Is God” sets the unsettled tone of Joan Baez’s latestalbum, “The Day After Tomorrow”. Producer Steve Earle seeks to keepthe Queen of 60s Folk Music’s quest on a solid spirit level, withcompact cadences and carefully selected songs. Further along, PattyGriffin’s “Mary” is “covered in roses…covered in slashes”, finding her(and/or Her) way through the story’s edits, somewhat like everybodyelse.Gypsy Dave and the StumpjumpersStumpjumpers are what some residents of far northwestern Pennsylvaniacall each other. On A Bucketful of Ghosts, David Washousky takes hispensive Pennsy roots and their distance along, while sharing his namein art (and "wandering faith") with an archetypal folk figure. Hesometimes gets a little too fascinated with old people, but his voiceand guitar, times the Stumpjumpers' fiddle and bass, slip tunefullyand thoughtfully through all weather, as "The right slips by, in themoving light/Of paintings and suppertimes." Is that political? Eitherway, "A black 'n' white/Violet summer sky" gently/boldly follows,bonding differences sensuously. (Stumpjumping indeed, by cracky!)Ha Ha TonkaHa Ha Tonka takes its name, and some of its duties, from a MissouriState Park in the Ozarks. Listeners get strange tours. "Buckle In TheBible Belt" bounces taut and twangy, through twists of fate andchoice. The drawl of "Up Nights" shadows a tired parent beating hiskid; the "Falling In" falsetto traces a lovelorn, low-gravity moodswing (at least). Their new "Novel Sounds Of The Nouveau South" upsthe ante and the amperage, wiring the weather vane into a lightingrod: "Violence in the crowd/We bled it out!"The Devil Makes ThreeThe Devil Makes Three make the kind of pre-bluegrass, mountain-bredmusic that traveled through vaudeville halls, carnivals, radios,alleys and less hygienic vantage points. On DM3's Do WrongRight,ragtime bounce and contemporary commentary ride boxcars with theeerie likes of "Working Man's Blues." The workingman's steadfast, evenmilitant, though subterranean musical undercurrents may be undermining(and/or guiding) this miner. Even on less inspired tracks, preachinessalways arrives with some generation of devilishness, often ramblin''round leader Pete Bernhard's sense of moral and verbal limits.Carrie RodriguezOn young singer-songwriter Carrie Rodriguez's new "Live inLouisville," atmospherically detailed stories are told boldly, asvariations of key phrases veer through the resolutely shivery deliveryof her violin and other instruments, including the evocative electricguitar of current accompanist Hans Holzen. Rodriguez also steps up tothe Loretta Lynn-worthy "I Don't Wanna Play House," and brisklyuncovers sexy subtext in Bill Monroe's magisterial "You Won't BeSatisfied That Way." Micro-epic outbursts and mercurial ballads neverchase the nice clouds away, or the slow male she's usually addressing.The Flatlanders"With a backpack full of yesterdays/On a freeway full of smoke andhaze/Where the power lines and fault lines double cross." From countrycliché, to California evening news, to righteous wordplay thateventually slips deeper, the dustbowl soul of the Flatlanders' Hillsand Valleys rolls on, through all zones. Alternative country iconsJimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock, mostly writingtogether, are philosophical scavengers, poised and antsy. Years andmiles definitely (sometimes densely) add up, but meanwhile, "If timeis money/Space is credit/They're talkin' 'bout it all over town!"
― dow, Tuesday, 15 December 2009 16:09 (fourteen years ago) link
xp Speaking of those last two pathetic songs on Don's ballot, here's something I wrote about backlash/tea-party country in the '00s:
http://blog.rhapsody.com/2009/11/countryteaparty.html?pcode=RN&rsrc=null.null&cpath=CNT
Also want to mention that, despite keying my emusic Charlie Robison review around his Dixie Chick divorce, that autobiographical theme really does not figure much, if at all, into my own liking the record either. (And I've yet to hear a better album by the guy, though I'm not sure how many I've even tried. Liked Good Times from '04 okay.)
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 15 December 2009 16:15 (fourteen years ago) link
more of Don Allred's Country 2009 comments:Deer Tick, Born On Flag Day:Great title, because Mr. Tick does have some of that ravaged bravura of book and movie of Born On The Fourth of July, but his testimony and attitude and cadence and imagery are closer to young Bobby D.s "Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped a bedroll/Tuba players now rehearse around the flagpole, " the combination of youth and what Virginia's Tom Wolfe ID'd as "those old jack-legged chants" from the mountains-but Deer Tick (John C. McCauley III x his band) are already way into Dylan's later and recurrent romantic obsessions, in a Southwestern Gothic way, also reminding me of Townes Van Zandt, who (as with Dylan) and McC's only namecheck, Hank Williams (McC studied the singles) had the tunes and catchiness as spry, watchful little beasts of burden for his words; plus, Tick's got this voice that's always waiting to squeeze through and erupt from his old man shit: it's the musical equivalent of the incandescent mcguffin found when the funky old trunk gets prised open in Repo Man and Pulp Fiction-we just see/feel the effects, as even Tarentino's scuzzers are awestruck by its beauty, and Repo Man's rats are beamed up through the smog into sweet nothin', by its mighty light. It's articulate, and when it does devour the form always belches the spirit of his words, but as a force of nature as much or more than poetic justice (which is why maybe it isn't catharsis for him, except maybe for the moment, but his shadows come creeping back, either way).So if I let myself get much into comparisons as high-concept formula in print, I'd say something like "Roky meets Townes," and indeed Tick might've also studied that two-disc Roky comp that from a few years back, with so much of Roky's folk-rock side. But "Flag Day, " his second album, departs from Roky re less grotesque and otherwise reflexive/refracted imagery, and his tendencies in that direction never did seem as compulsive as Roky's.Otis Taylor, Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs Otis Taylor is one of the most (one of the few) creatively distinctive blues singer-songwriters today. He adapts country blues, with a more regular beat than Delta blues, but it's an adjustment of that, more than a John Lee Hooker boogie drive. His phrases are repeated, seeming fragments of memory that gradually meet up and accrue, sometimes skewed or elliptical narrative, but the ear has to spot the spaces as well as the connections, just has to do that, when it works out right, as words and his shifting tone and volume move around his driving (sometimes shifting) picked and strummed rhythm guitar. This is the basis of the new album, his first collection of love songs (with some wars back in there, like the title also says), which, like P.Hood's new set, develop through implication of detail and atmosphere, and both sets can come to seem like developed photographs, more than movies. But the figure is the ground, at times, as Otis further develops deep focus via his own voice being joined by his daughter Cassie's younger and even more flexible, looping through the jazz of Jason Moran whose piano knows how hip-hop accents blues and jazz, here, as on his own great Same Mothers set) and cornet player Jason Miles; while the drum kit of Nasheet Waits is ground for African percussion figures, or sometimes vice versa (plus, occasional passing cello, violin, whatever fits the view). Even without Jason's surname and horn, I'd be thinking "Miles," not that Jason imitates him, but just this whole approach (which is also a less wordy version of Dylan's and Deer Tick's deep co-ordination of elements and functions: ensembles, yo, not entourage.) Can travel way into those musical snapshots, way into the travelling itself, but it's a train, not a showboat. On Patterson Hood's Murdering Oscar, the narrator of the first and title song celebrates his victory over Oscar and those who proffered/remonstrated re salvation, "I saved me, and life forgave me." He may be on Death Row or wherever, but he still insists, a little too insistently somehow. Ah yes, the well worn Unreliable Narrator device, but it works here.Notes stretch and trail and hold. He can't let it go, can't let cruel Oscar go, and vice versa. It' an Oscar-winning performance. Clear enough, but more subtle/subject to interp than expected, and the dramatic stasis that Hood evidently tends (so often) to go for on Truckers albums works here, the sense of somebody rattling his chains and shivering his freezeframe, as we're kept watching the figure's deep focus/fixation. Which is overtly the point of the next track, "Pollyanna", and Hood (with another surprise move, making seemingly unprecedented use of his voice's high end, by simply chirping) goes from rolling Neil Truckers doom of "Oscar" to Who Sell Out pop scenario over expansive, open-G-sounding Stonesiness, as Pollyanna rolls on(or has rolled on, since all of these songs are aftermath, ho get it Stones/Aftermath), having gathered his mossy heart. "It's a little sticky,she's a little sticky, I'm a little sticky too, I was just something stuck to her shoe, now I'll have to find something else to stick to." His characters are always doing or getting themselves ready or not to do the aftermath, and "Pride of The Yankees" in a third stylistic change, starts as a ballad raising a mug to Lou Gehrig, then without a blink to King Kong falling off the building, to passing mention of 9/11, and wishes he could go hide in the mall, and indeed he sounds like he's swaying along in an echoing mall with a hole (and a nice breeze) in it, talking to his little daughter about carrying, clutching "packages so shiny, and you're so tiny," and it's all the tenderness and fuckedness of and in the world, in him as he's somehow unsurprised(it fits with the fuckedness previously experienced, after all or a while) if in a bit of aftershock, afterglow, afterlife, half-life; the next sudden transition being the next song o course."I Understand Now" is shorts-deep in the midst of domestic battlegrounds, old and moldy and comfortable for the moment anyway, as the narrator gets some kind of 40 watt insight, and really the cumulative thing in just these first four songs also has me thinking of foo like "9/11 changed everything" and "All is fair in love and war" and how they're part of the wadding of changes and transitions, not that all his situations x moments shown don't have their own internal detail and framing distinctions/lifespans, as characters try to get creative in doing the aftermath on the train or frame or sidewalk crack, or playing in bedhead traffic etc It's all about their and their creator's wise use of familiar and strange elements, reshuffling or ripping or lurching or padding or jangling along.(Those last two just listed: "She's a Little Randy" is the stealthy passage of a cougar and the male person studying her, getting her number sympathetically and then some, as Hood makes good use of the high voice again, not chirping this time but like a little tight, mostly dry smoker's voice, with some rheum around the corners, emph by guitar, as he squints over his cig, and maybe drops it to approach her after that last line (steps out of his frame, as can be tricky/lacking in Hood songs) "Foolish Young Bastard" ruefully/hopefully jangles along with a banjo almost hitting him in the nuts, empty canteen percussion def tapping his butt (a bit envied perhaps, by the somewhat exasperated but unsurprised, family-type person watching him go) then "Heavy and Hanging" and "Walking Around Sense" are expressive but stuck inside a way too familiar Neil Truckers doom (which the title song redeemed and "Range War" took to maybe non-doom,[as expressed in playing]more about rich shifting currrents of tenderness/fuckedness and war again) Like "Heavy and Hanging" and "Walking Around Sense" heavy up because he thought he needed something between "Foolish Young Bastard" and the young heart who sings about writing you a love song in the "Back of a Bible" (not to be eveel, but cos "there were some blank pages") A shuffle mainly suggesting white boys of 50s til builds seamlessly to a solo that obliterates the pro forma of the past two tracks, and in call and response with other instruments. This final passage is brief but deep, like the best bits of most of the other songs ("Screwtopia" trails the afterglow through basically obvious faster/softer recurrences, and makes it work; makes me think of the traces of "Grandaddy" 's innocently plotted future and "Belvedere" 's twisted past, and the other character's traces, notions, smoke) Didn't think he'd carry a whole album without other writers, but he does, given that it's also got a couple of duds like Truckers albums, and most of the Truckers are here, and that certainly helps, and he's seamlessly joining a set of songs from 1994 to much more recent ones (each set or subset benefitting from proximity to the others, for the most part) with accumulated experience as writer, player etc as well as other aspects of life, and that comes across in the adjustments, inclu disruptive moves, within the plot lines and performances of songs (Oh yeah, this album also features really apt and startling use of piano which he says startled him too)
― dow, Tuesday, 15 December 2009 16:18 (fourteen years ago) link
TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift - Fearless (Platinum Edition)2. Ashley Monroe - Satisfied3. Martina McBride - Shine4. Pat Green - What I'm For5. Brad Paisley - American Saturday Night6. Miranda Lambert - Revolution7. Collin Raye - Never Going Back8. Holly Williams - Here With Me9. Willie Nelson - American Classic10. Charlie Robison - Beautiful Day
TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2009:
1. Love And Theft "Runaway"2. Jamey Johnson "High Cost Of Living"3. Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me"4. Sarah Buxton "Space"5. Lady Antebellum "Need You Now"6. Caitlin & Will "Even Now"7. Sarah Borges And The Broken Singles "Do It For Free"8. Taylor Swift "White Horse"9. Brooks & Dunn f. Reba McEntire "Cowgirls Don't Cry"10. Jack Ingram "Barefoot & Crazy (Double Dog Dare Ya Mix)"
TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2009:
--
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:
1. Ronnie Dunn2. Toby Keith3. Jamey Johnson
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift2. Miranda Lambert3. Jamie O'Neal
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2009:
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift2. Ashley Monroe3. Brad Paisley
COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2009:
1. Brooks & Dunn2. Caitlin & Will3. --
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2009:
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift2. Ashley Monroe3. --
― Frank Kogan, Wednesday, 16 December 2009 18:42 (fourteen years ago) link
I don't stand by my albums list, since most everything after the McBride has only four or five tracks I like more than a little. Might possibly have rated Collin Raye as high as three, for being the most interesting, but then my ballot would have looked too much like Xhuxk's. And I wouldn't normally have rated something so non-audacious as the McBride as high as three, except I was fed up with everyone else's inconsistency. Wish I'd gotten around to listening to more of what the rest of you recommended.
― Frank Kogan, Wednesday, 16 December 2009 18:47 (fourteen years ago) link
Actually, the Pat Green album is pretty good from start to finish. I never got around to the Dierks Bentley album, but Green did well in the congenial rocker category. Has more sociological restlessness than Dierks.
― Frank Kogan, Wednesday, 16 December 2009 18:55 (fourteen years ago) link
My ballot ended up looking like this. Skipped a few categories that I just couldn't decide on an answer for -
1. Brad Paisley, American Saturday Night2. Those Darlins, Those Darlins3. Keith Urban, Defying Gravity4. Miranda Lambert, Revolution5. Carolyn Mark and NQ Arbuckle, Let's Just Stay Here6. Ashley Monroe, Satisfied7. Luke Bryan, Doin My Thing8. Eric Church, Carolina9. George Strait, Twang10. Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel, Willie and the Wheel
1. Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me"2. Living For The Night - George Strait3. Jamey Johnson, "High Cost Of Living 4. Brad Paisley "Welcome To The Future"5. Keith Urban, "Sweet Thing"6. Love And Theft "Runaway"7. Kenny Chesney "Out Last Night"8. Do I - Luke Bryan 9. Caitlin & Will "Even Now"10. Toby Keith, "Lost You Anyway"
COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:
1. Brad Paisley2. Jamey Johnson3. Keith Urban
COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift2. Miranda Lambert3. Ashley Monroe
COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift2. Brad Paisley3. Jamey Johnson
― erasingclouds, Thursday, 17 December 2009 13:00 (fourteen years ago) link
o god should i get the taylor swift album?
― Do you love me now? (surm), Tuesday, 22 December 2009 15:20 (fourteen years ago) link
Yes.
Judging from Frank's comments, I probably used his all-albums-are-EPs rule on my Nashville Scene list more than he did this year.
Jon Caramanica put Justin Moore's debut album in his '09 top 10 in the NY Times. That's the guy who did the country back-that-thing-up song (with country back-that-azz-up video) last year, if nobody remembers. The single or two by him I heard since went in one ear and out the other, but I'm curious now if anybody else heard the album. (I didn't.)
Caramanica's writeup:
9. JUSTIN MOORE (The Valory Music Company) Modest but by no means dull, the debut album by the Arkansas country singer Justin Moore has traditionalist bones holding together bursts of wry cowboy humor and eyebrow-raising salaciousness. Mr. Moore isn’t winking while playing to type; rather he realizes that there were always winks to begin with, and everyone else has forgotten.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/arts/music/20caramanica.html
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 22 December 2009 22:51 (fourteen years ago) link
He also calls San Fran indie band Girls' album "country rock," which makes no sense judging from the song or two I've heard (neither did the comparisons people make to Elvis Costello and Graham Parker), but maybe it still excuses linking to the Singles Jukebox review of "Laura" here:
http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=1506
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 22 December 2009 22:58 (fourteen years ago) link
He also calls San Fran indie band Girls' album "country rock," which makes no sense judging from the song or two I've heard (neither did the comparisons people make to Elvis Costello and Graham Parker), but maybe it still excuses linking to the Singles Jukebox review of "Laura" here
I like that band a lot, and I like country music a lot, and I hear no connection. For what it's worh I hear no Costello or Parker in them either. It's more dream-pop/JAMC/shoegaze from people who also listen to a lot of '50s vocal pop, teen idol ballads, Beach Boys, etc
― erasingclouds, Tuesday, 22 December 2009 23:41 (fourteen years ago) link
A poll:
2009 country #1's
On which thread an interesting question is raised:
is the co-ed country band (sugarland, lady antebellum) a relatively new phenomenon? i'm trying to think of precedents. i guess it's an outgrowth of the long history of duets, but in terms of an act that has both men and women i can't think of many.
― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 22 December 2009 20:23
xp Well, Trick Pony was one. And now there's also Little Big Town, and Gloriana, and Jypsi. (Probably plenty of others, if I give it a little more thought.) But yeah, there do seem to be more out there lately.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 22 December 2009 20:30
And actually, obviously, the co-ed country band is a tradition dating back to the Carter Family, and there have definitely been family acts in recent decades (for instance, The Whites). Curious whether anybody else has opinions on whether it's a legit trend or not now in Nashville.
― xhuxk, Wednesday, 23 December 2009 01:13 (fourteen years ago) link
I finally tracked down a copy of Bobbie Cryner today in a second-hand store, an album I haven't heard in 15 years. Holy...if there was a better trad country record made in the 90s, I'm unaware of it. "He Feels Guilty" and "I Think It's Over Now" are devastating, and the Buck Owens cover with Dwight beats the original.
― ρεμπετις, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 05:01 (fourteen years ago) link
I've never heard it, but Xgau was a big fan:
http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=bobbie+cryner
Speaking of '90s country, I killed that country #1s thread last week with the following spiel, which will probably prove just as un-fruitful here, but then again maybe somebody'll have thoughts on it, who knows:
I honestly think what's missing in most discussions of the evolution of Nashville country (and this goes for me too) is that there's this huge historical gap where almost nobody who writes about rock and pop music was keeping tabs on the stuff. Outside of Garth and Shania and a couple others, I'm still fairly clueless about most pop-country from the mid '80s to early '00s -- when, I assume, lotsa evolving was going on.
― xhuxk, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:07 AM
I sort of have this theory that Garth and Shania figured out how to make real consistent and varied country albums, like rock bands had been making for years (and had pretty much stopped making my the mid '90s to my ears), and once they did it the rest of Nashville caught on. Which would explain why so many of my favorite '00s albums were country. But it might be just as likely that great pop-country albums were being made in the late '80s and '90s, and I just wasn't hearing them. Not that I've had much luck trying to figure out what they were.
― xhuxk, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:17 AM
I mean, obviously there were great country albums before Garth and Shania, going back to the neo-trad and outlaw eras and way beyond. But I definitely got the idea in the '90s (or maybe at least starting back with the urban cowboys in the early '80s?) that even most albums with a catchy single or two on them just tossed in nine perfunctory filler tracks and got it over with. But somehow, for me anyway, that changed. (One change may have been that country started sounding more like the hard rock I grew up with, but going back now and listening to say the Kentucky Headhunters, I'm wondering if that was new in the '00s at all.)
― xhuxk, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:23 AM
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 05:09 (fourteen years ago) link
I'd pretty much concur with your theory; I'm having a tough time thinking of 90s pop-country albums where any artist's personality was allowed to shine beyond a couple of tracks. Terri Clark, Martina McBride maybe. A lot of that had to do with the more restrictive (i.e. "uplifting") lyrical themes that radio was demanding.
― ρεμπετις, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 05:29 (fourteen years ago) link
Justin Moore self titled album reminds me of Gary Allen or Jason Aldean in many ways, except for the lack of any ballads. Almost every song is an assertion of County livin'. Not enough songs about broken hearts for me.
― Jacob Sanders, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 06:19 (fourteen years ago) link
County=country
― Jacob Sanders, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 06:20 (fourteen years ago) link
Not that affriming ones country roots and way of life in music is a bad thing, but a whole album gets tiring.
― Jacob Sanders, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 06:32 (fourteen years ago) link
Speaking of '90s country, I killed that country #1s thread last week with the following spiel, which will probably prove just as un-fruitful here
Yes, I predict that this thread has but a few days to live.
there's this huge historical gap where almost nobody who writes about rock and pop music was keeping tabs on the stuff. Outside of Garth and Shania and a couple others, I'm still fairly clueless about most pop-country from the mid '80s to early '00s -- when, I assume, lotsa evolving was going on.
Yes. John Morthland's Best of Country Music Guide came out in 1984, and I don't know if any other rock critic tried anything like it subsequently, or what or where Morthland's been writing since then. His book is very good, but on the evidence of it he's probably not the one to appreciate current Nashville trends.
There's a Rough Guide to Country Music that was published in 2000, according to Amazon, and the All Music Guide to Country was in 2003. I've never looked at them. You might want to ask Doug Simmons or Eric Weisbard, since they'd have been keeping their eye out for people to potentially write for the Voice about country in the late '80s and late '90s, respectively. One of the first things Doug asked me when I started submitting stuff to him in 1987 was whether I listened to country.
My source in the '90s for what was happening in country was you, basically, since I wasn't spending much time listen to country radio.
― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 07:21 (fourteen years ago) link
wasn't spending much time listening to country radio, that is
― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 07:23 (fourteen years ago) link
Anthony Easton posted his overall ten bests on my livejournal, included only two country items, Lyle Lovett's Natural Forces album and Corb Lund's "Losin' Lately Gambler" single, which I assume is an alternate title for "A Game In Town Like This," which looks like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITyn99Oa3u4
Seems more bohemian folkie than actual country, which is to say that its aural mannerisms peg it as literary even before I pay attention to the words. Of course, some of my favorite Bob Dylans and Holy Modal Rounders were bohemian folkies at some point in their careers, but it's not a style that's held on for me, even if a Charlie Robison or a James McMurtry makes my country ballot every now and then. Here's what Anthony wrote about the Lund song:
Corb continues to add to the narratives of classic country--as the last album worked through new soldier songs and new horse songs, this one has farm songs and card songs. This is the card song, and it is about betting on home and therefore need to bet from going away. Aside from the world weariness, the sadness of the vocals, the perfect guitar work, there is a processing of the domestic and local over the international. He lives in Alberta, which is losing money and people, and where the money is disappearing, and where the recession is hard. Best song about the disaster of imminent poverty.
― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 07:44 (fourteen years ago) link
Anthony had talked a little bit about Corb Lund a few months back, in the comments section of some folkie's Singles Jukebox review (actually, one wherein Frank had inquired of Anthony about current folk music, but the singer's name slips my mind.) I got the Lund album in the mail, and really wanted to like it -- the idea of some guy (allegedly, anyway) detailing the minutiae of hardscrabble Alberta and Saskatchewan life in his songs really appeals to, uh, the Northern Exposure fan in me I guess. Problem is, as far as I can tell, like so many recent alt-country folkies who may well me good songwriters in recent years before him, Lund sings with no expression whatsoever. He just sounds really wooden and dry -- to my ears, anyway. And like so many good alt-country folkie songwriters with bored demo-singer voices before him, maybe I should have given him more of a chance. I liked a Si Kahn album once, after all. (At least for a year or two, anyway -- Home, from 1979; Doing My Job from 1982 also said to be worthwhile.) But more likely, I'll never latch onto a Corb Lund song until somebody from Nashville covers one. Which may be a doggone shame.
I'm having a tough time thinking of 90s pop-country albums where any artist's personality was allowed to shine beyond a couple of tracks.
I can think of a handful, beyond the obvious Shania and Garth: Mindy McCready If I Stay The Night (1997); Tim McGraw A Place To Land (his best album, 1999); Collin Raye Extremes (1994, just heard it this year); Kentucky Headhunters Electric Barnyard (1991); maybe Joe Dee Messina Joe Dee Messina (1996) and I'm Alright (1998); maybe Brooks & Dunn Hard Workin' Man (1992). Toby Keith Dream Walkin' (1997) is pretty good, if not close to many of the '00s albums. Probably a couple others I'm not thinking of.
Just got into Aaron Tippin (who is basically a honky-tonking hard-country neo-traditionalist I guess, but still) this year, and wrote about him upthread somewhere; his Greatest Hits...And Then Some is really good. But I've never heard any of his regular issue albums.
My favorite country album from the '90s is probably K.T. Oslin's Songs From An Aging Sex Bomb (1993), another best-of. But most if not all of its tracks date from the late '80s, so it shouldn't count.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 15:14 (fourteen years ago) link
One guy who wrote pretty well about country in the early '90s, fwiw, was Ken Tucker (the future Entertainment Weekly/NPR Ken Tucker, not the future Billboard Ken Tucker); he did a one-time country-only Consumer Guide in the Voice that I really liked, and wish I still had a copy of. (He was the first critic I read who actually wrote interesting things about Brooks & Dunn.) Also wrote a very entertaining lead Voice review called Country's Sophomore Class: Flex Them Neck Muscles, Boys, rounding up Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle -- but that was 1987, a little early, and those dudes aren't exactly "pop"-country.
Suspect James Hunter wrote some smart things about country back then, too. And in the early/mid '80s, at least, maybe also Davitt Sigerson, when not recording great Xmas songs for Ze. ("It's a Big Country" on the Ze Christmas Record, 1981 -- if you haven't heard it, you should. I play it several times every year around this time, and it always choke me up. Never heard his album, which came out in 1984.)
But it wasn't until Metal Mike Saunders did a roundup of CMT videos for me (around 2000, I guess) that I obsessively started paying attention.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 15:32 (fourteen years ago) link
And uh...how good were Leann Rimes's '90s albums (and does her personality shine through those?) I've always assumed that her albums improved drastically when she sold out to dancier pop structures in the '90s, but I'd be willing to hear somebody try to convince otherwise.
Also, Dixie Chicks' Wide Open Spaces was 1998 and Fly was 1999. so those count. (Have never heard their earlier bluegrass albums.)
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 15:43 (fourteen years ago) link
"...sold out to dancier pop structures in the '00s," I meant. (Albeit very early '00s, apparently -- Coyote Ugly soundtrack, with "Can't Fight The Moonlight", came out in 2000.)
Really like Confederate Railroad's 2000 best-of Rockin Country Party Pack too, fwiw; they had a bunch of ace hits in the '90s for sure. But don't think I've ever heard any of their regular albums from then.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 15:46 (fourteen years ago) link
x-post Speaking of Travis, Yoakam, etc. Those neo-trad guys may not have been pop-country, but they--along with Clint Black, George Strait and others--sold a ton of albums in the late 80s. I'm not positive, but I think Storms of Life might have been the all time biggest selling Country (non-greatest hits) album at one point. Perhaps when Nashville saw that they could make as much money off of albums as they did from singles or compilations they started taking the LP more seriously. And Garth definitely started out in the neo-trad vein.
I suppose the idea of having artists put out an album packed with five or more potential singles became popular in the 90s because some of the artists were becoming international superstars and needed more time to tour the world before they could go back to the studio. The record companies could keep releasing single after single to radio in the year or two it took for a new album to be readied. It seems the norm today, but I don't know how many artists got that luxury in the 90s.
― President Keyes, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 15:48 (fourteen years ago) link
xp McGraw's 1999 album was actually A Place In The Sun, duh. (Title I listed above belongs to Little Big Town, eight years later.)
Also like The Tractors' debut album, from 1994. (Not sure where they fit into this. Seems like there might've been some kinda mini/semi/lite-Western-swing-rock revival on the country charts in the early/mid '90s. Which reminds me I also don't know the Mavericks' individual albums, but their Super Colossal Smash Hits Of The '90s best-of is good.)
In pre-'90s news, here is the very approximate order of how much I've (so far) liked a bunch of old vinyl country LPs I bought for $1 each in the past six months or so:
1. (Various) Motels And Memories (Warner Special Products 1981) (100% country cheating songs, from the mid '70s to early '80s)2. The Delmore Brothers - The Best Of (Starday 1975)3. Charlie Rich - I Do My Swingin' At Home (Epic 1973)4. O.C. Smith - Hickory Holler Revisited (Columbia LP, 1968)5. David Allan Coe - Longhaired Redneck (Columbia 1976)6. George Strait - Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind (MCA LP, 1984)7. The Forester Sisters - Perfume, Ribbons & Pearls (Warner Bros. 1986)8. Georgia Satellites - Georgia Satellites (Elektra/Asylum, 1986)9. Gene Watson - The Best Of (Capitol 1978)10. Jason & the Scorchers - Lost And Found (EMI 1985)11. Billie Joe Spears - Blanket On The Ground (United Artists 1975)12. Billy Swan - Rock N Roll Moon (Monument 1975)13. Merle Haggard and the Strangers - I Love Dixie Blues (Capitol 1973)14. Bobby Bland - Get On Down With (Dunhill LP, 1974) (w/ covers of Merle Haggard and Charlie Rich songs)15. Keith Sykes - I'm Not Strange I'm Just Like You (Backstreet 1980)16. Rattlesnake Annie - Rattlesnake Annie (Columbia 1987)17. Gary Stewart - Your Place Or Mine (RCA LP, 1977)18. Dobie Gray - From Where I Stand (Capitol 1986)19. Hank Thompson - Movin' On (ABC 1974)20. Gary Stewart & Dean Dillon - Brotherly Love (RCA 1982)21. Marshall Chapman - Marshall Chapman (Epic 1978)
Marshall Chapman and Stewart/Dillon went right into the "sell" pile; still on fence about the (presumably way past his prime, and not nearly Western Swingy enough) Hank Thompson. The rest appear to be keepers.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 16:20 (fourteen years ago) link
Oops (again), actually that Chapman LP (on which she lifelessly interprets both "I Walk The Line" and Bob Seger's "Turn The Page") is called Jaded Virgin; just hard to tell by looking at the cover.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 16:25 (fourteen years ago) link
And Stewart's Your Place Or Mine might objectively deserve to be higher on that list, except that I've owned its two best songs (title track and especially "Ten Years Of This") on his 1981 Greatest Hits (one of my favorite country albums of all time) for decades, and most of the rest doesn't leave as much of an impression as I wish.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 16:35 (fourteen years ago) link
I'm almost positive Marshall Chapman was marketed primarily to mainstream pop and rock. I remember seeing that LP cover in ads in many places.
Produced by Al KooperAlbum of the Year - Stereo Review
It sez on her website. Not much kindness meted out by Christgau, even on the follow-up in 1979. Course that means they might actually, in fact, rock.
― Gorge, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 16:36 (fourteen years ago) link
The one I bought sure doesn't. (Interesting, though, who Xgau compares her too: "a lot more confident, clever, and animated than such Northern counterparts as Ellen Foley and Ellen Shipley, but she's a fairly one-dimensional conservative compared to Pearl E. Gates or Chrissie Hynde." But apparently she was based in Nashville, and I'd say she sounds more country than rock -- though I'm saying that with 2009 ears, of course.)
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 16:45 (fourteen years ago) link
One guy who wrote pretty well about country in the early '90s, fwiw, was Ken Tucker (the future Entertainment Weekly/NPR Ken Tucker, not the future Billboard Ken Tucker); he did a one-time country-only Consumer Guide in the Voice that I really liked, and wish I still had a copy of.
I lurk/skim this thread and I was thinking of mentioning that Ken Tucker was writing about country back in that period you mentioned, but then I thought, nah, they probably don't like the way he covered it or something.
I'm confused by your comment though in regard to whether or not he is still active. I thought he was, but maybe I've been seeing this other Ken Tucker? There are two? I remember Ken Tucker from way back when Fresh Air first started up. I used to listen to it after school, in high school. (Thank god I was doing something intelligent instead of wasting my time feeling up high school girls or going down on them in their parents' garage!)
Sorry to burst in as a "country hater" and everything (although one who will be voting for Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift in this year's ILM poll, which is more than I can say for any rock acts).
― _Rudipherous_, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 17:07 (fourteen years ago) link
Yep, definitely two Ken Tuckers out there -- (maybe even three or four!) And as far as I know, they're both still active (don't think I ever said otherwise, though maybe something I said was ambiguous.) I'm not sure whether the EW/NPR Ken still writes about country, though.
Trisha Yearwood and Lorrie Morgan a couple more '90s country stars who compiled best-of CDs worth keeping in the '00s. (Trisha's is more consistent than Lorrie's, but I was a big fan of Lorrie's '90s "Send In The Clowns"-bombastic marriage-on-skids cabaret-country wardrobe-closet ballad "Something In Red", and also her cover of Journey's "Faithfully" and her new wavey Roxette haircut. Didn't hate the albums I heard at the time, but also didn't like them near enough to hang on to them. But even more than Trisha she was clearly going for the desperate exurban housewife demographic, whose tastes I should probably bend to more.)
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 17:13 (fourteen years ago) link
John Morthland's Best of Country Music Guide came out in 1984, and I don't know if any other rock critic tried anything like it subsequently
David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren put out Heartaches By The Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles in 2003. It's a good book, and definitely includes assorted late '80s and '90s records, and they make good cases for pop crossover throughout (though they have a definite grudge, it seems, against the Urban Cowboy era.) So there's that. I'd also be surprised if there weren't certain country critics writing intelligently about country; more like, I just wasn't following them. And country records -- especially the more pop kind -- certainly weren't doing very well in, say, the Pazz & Jop poll at the time. (They're still not, but they do better than they used to.)
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 18:09 (fourteen years ago) link
Relistening to that Corb Lund gambling song from the video that Frank linked, I'm thinking his singing is not as incompetent and wooden as I implied above. It's...functional. But plain, kind of lazy, and not exceptional in any way. He sounds more or less in the same category as any of the (right, mostly folkie/bohemian) "red dirt" guys that I hear on the more alternative-leaning country stations in and around Austin --Jason Boland, Robert Earl Keen, Randy Rogers, Ryan Bingham, those sorts of cowpokes. If I heard that song on the car radio (and around here, if he was from Texas, that'd be possible), I might be less bored by it.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 December 2009 18:24 (fourteen years ago) link
Only '90s LeAnn material I've heard is the stuff on her Greatest Hits, which, to my surprise - it being a hits record - isn't as good as her regular '00s albums. I do like "Blue" and "How Do I Live" and "Can't Fight The Moonlight (dance mix)," which are the first three tracks on Greatest Hits. And as you say, "Moonlight" is 2000, and maybe even 2001 for the dance mix.
― Frank Kogan, Wednesday, 30 December 2009 06:08 (fourteen years ago) link
Amazingly (to me anyway), Billboard says that Taylor Swift being 2009's Billboard artist of the year (based on cumulative success on chart positions throughout the year) makes her "the first solo female or country act to earn the honor since 1997. That was when Leann Rimes, then herself a young country crossover star, took the honor home."
What's amazing about it is that I feel like I was more or less oblivious to Leann Rimes -- and definitely to how huge a crossover star she allegedly was -- in 1997. (This goes along with something Frank wrote this week on his blog, about how, even with really popular music, you can miss it if you don't make an effort to keep up with it.)
Btw, another '90s country star who put out a solid best-of CD in the '00s is Travis Tritt. I suspect he may have made solid albums in the '90s (and ones that presaged this decade's country-rock crossover), but if so, I don't know that I've ever actually sat through any of them.
I still have Billy Ray Cyrus's Some Gave All (1992) on my shelf, though. As I recall, it's not bad. I should put it back on sometime.
― xhuxk, Wednesday, 30 December 2009 16:25 (fourteen years ago) link
Think I still have Kenny Chensney's 2000 Greatest Hits CD around here somewhere, too; he'd apparently put out five albums by then, none of which I've heard. I get the idea that Chesney and McGraw and Keith didn't really evolve their personalities on record until at least the tail-end of the '90s, but they were around for a while before then. So maybe the country audience detected personalities I didn't.
― xhuxk, Wednesday, 30 December 2009 16:43 (fourteen years ago) link
I was oblivious to Leeann back in the 90s too. It looks like in 1997 she had 2 #1 albums of cover songs, one "pop" and the other "inspirational"--so perhaps she was that era's Groban or Buble (or Streisand.)
― President Keyes, Wednesday, 30 December 2009 16:46 (fourteen years ago) link
Also, Montgomery Gentry's debut Tattoos And Scars was 1999. And though they made albums I loved more later, this is still a real good one, and seems like their personalities were in place from the git-go. (First rock critic I know who noticed them was Joshua Clover, who did a short single review of "Daddy Won't Sell The Farm" for me at the Voice.)
― xhuxk, Wednesday, 30 December 2009 16:47 (fourteen years ago) link
And duh, they just keep coming -- Speaking of Leeanns, Lee Ann Womack's Some Things I Know was 1998. Possibly my favorite album by her, though she got way more acclaim and respect later; definitely has my favorite song she ever did, namely "I'll Think Of A Reason Later."
― xhuxk, Wednesday, 30 December 2009 16:51 (fourteen years ago) link
I still pull down the John Morthland book whenever I come across some artist that I'm not familiar with. But even he dismisses the Urban Cowboy era (and that era was still ongoing when his book came out in 1984)and/or Country Pop crossover one. In a section called Countrypolitan, he says not to look for any info on Kenny Rogers, Alabama, Oak Ridge Boys, John Denver, etc. There is a review in his book of Ronnie Milsap and Eddie Rabbitt, mostly praising their early stuff but looking down on the Pop hits. BTW- the Countrypolitan artists he does like: Crystal Gayle, Anne Murray and Glen Campbell. But that section of the book is very brief.
― jetfan, Wednesday, 30 December 2009 16:58 (fourteen years ago) link
There's also The Blackwell Guide To Country Music, edited by Bob Allen, from 1994. I use it as a reference on occasion, but keep it on a secondary shelf in another room for good reason. Anyway, I should re-read Allen's "The 1980s And Beyond" chapter (which does seem to include writeups of several recommended albums toward the end) in the next couple days, but to give you a clue, here's how it starts: "The very early 1980s were, at least from a creative standpoint, a period of relative bleakness in country music." Later; this is awesome: "An even more disturbing barometer of how dismal and directionless country's commercial mainstream had become by the early 1980s was the LA-to-Nashville 'bimbo' invasion. During those years, any number of modestly talented but nubile Southern California pop songstresses recorded half-baked 'country' records which, remarkably, made minor dents in the country record charts. (A California singer named Carole Chase even had evanescent success with a Los Angeles-produced LP of 'country-disco' dubiously entitled Sexy Songs)." Ha -- dollar bins, here I come!
― xhuxk, Wednesday, 30 December 2009 17:17 (fourteen years ago) link
hey chuck this isn't country related, but i asked my parents/friends for stairway to hell for christmas, and they couldn't find it. is it out of print or something? i'm just curious, so as to see if i could find it somewhere else
― subversive time travel (FACK), Wednesday, 30 December 2009 18:30 (fourteen years ago) link