Rolling country 2007 thread

will BE the rage in his fist.

Okay, we're going to go find an Irish bar with a Latin DJ, so I can stop anal-compulsively correcting myself every two seconds. But first I want to quote my favorite lines from the new Luke Bryan album:

"Your little ipod loaded up with Hoobastank/Don't be a tapeplayer hater honey, we're groovin to Hank."

(I may be wrong about the "honey" part, but who cares. It still made me laugh out loud.)

I haven't heard the Bellamy Brothers album--though I'm completely intrigued now--but are you sure Jesus is a liberal on it?

I'm thinking of this press release from a couple years back:

NO LOVE FLOWING HERE:
THE BELLAMY BROTHERS ARE MIFFED BY THE USE OF A RE-RECORDED VERSION OF THEIR CLASSIC 1976 HIT “LET YOUR LOVE FLOW” ON TV ADS RUN BY CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE PHIL ANGELIDES
* * *
The Florida Based Legendary Country Duo, Loyal Republicans Who Have Performed The Song Numerous Times In Support Of President Bush, Have Offered To Perform It Live For Angelides' Opponent, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

Legendary country duo The Bellamy Brothers may be registered to vote in Florida, but they've offered to perform their classic 1976 pop hit “Let Your Love Flow” for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in response to its unauthorized use in TV ads for Scharzenegger's opponent Phil Angelides.

David and Howard Bellamy are lifelong Republicans who performed the song for President Bush in support of his campaigns in 2000 and 2004 and at other times for Vice President Dick Cheney and Florida Governor Jeb Bush. The siblings are upset that Angelides, California's Democratic nominee for governor, is using an unauthorized, re-recorded version of the song in an ad that takes the state's voters through the highlights of his life and career.

“We don't mind our song being used for political ads,” says Howard. “We just wish it was by our own party's candidate. A real winner would have used the original version.”

David adds, “We're not California voters, but since we have been associated with the race with our song, we'd have to say we throw our support behind the Terminator.”

In response to Angelides' commercial, The Bellamy Brothers emailed Governor Schwarzenegger's office on Wednesday to inform him that the ad was a re-recorded version of “Let Your Love Flow” using different singers. They made clear that they do not endorse Angelides for governor, and have offered to perform the song live for Schwarzenegger at any time during his campaign—“the original version by the original artist.”

Although The Bellamy Brothers song makes the TV ad shine, Angelides couldn't have picked a bigger supporter of President George W. Bush to highlight his campaign. The band performed at multiple rallies for Bush in 2000 and 2004, and sang the National Anthem at the Liberty Ball during Bush's 2005 inaugural. The Republican Party of Florida honored the band for supporting Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Interesting. I had no idea about the Bellamys' party leanings til now, but yeah, their Jesus (at least relatively, compared to the sort of Jesus I've tended to detect in country songs over the past few years) sure seems liberal (not that that's a prerequisite for me liking songs about him, but it still strikes me as refreshing). He's not even complaining about, say, being left out of public school curriculums, for instance. There are of course all sorts of possible explanations for the seeming discrepancy (maybe the Bellamys' party allegiances have shifted like lots of other Republicans recently, since that article was written; maybe they're smartly bending over backwards to present a Jesus who might reel people to the left of them in instead of repelling those people away -- though I don't hear "being over backwards" in the music, that's for sure, even if there's nothing especially perceptive or risky about saying that homelessness or the trashing of the earth or lying politicians are bad things; maybe they're just really really moderate Republicans; maybe something else.) But it is interesting, yeah.

And actually, the current country current-events song that's been pissing me off for its wishy-washiness is "What Happened," on the imminent Merle Haggard album The Bluegrass Sessions -- as in "what happened to America?", as in the country doesn't really exist anymore, and the best reasons Merle can come up with are that gas prices and taxes have gone up and there's "crap" (he uses that word) like Howard Stern on the radio and Wal-Marts have replaced five-and-dimes. I dunno, I have no idea what party Merle votes for these days, but he's done a couple smart songs about the war and the Patriot Act in the past couple years; you'd think he would have mentioned Guantanamo or something, but he just sounds to me like he didn't want to offend anybody. (I do kind of like the line about waking about that morning to see the towers fall then going back to bed and dreaming of hell, though -- not easy to do any song remotely about 9-11 these days that doesn't make me wince, and he did okay there -- so I may be underrating the rest of the song so far, I suppose.)

But even then, it seems to be one of the better tracks on what's hitting me as a fairly dull album.
A couple blues, a couple redone old songs of his ("Mama's Hungry Eyes" -- what period of Merle is that from anyway? I barely remember it -- and "Big City" from the early '80s, which I'd forgotten how much I love, though maybe it's just that right at this moment it mirrors how I feel about wanting to get out of the big city myself, though this still isn't the version I'd prefer to hear), a lot of lackadaisical sounding stuff where you have to sit through boring Marty Stuart mandolin breaks or whatever. Maybe the problem is that I just don't like bluegrass much, but if anything, it's because the noodling keeps me from hearing enough Merle on the record, and he just doesn't sound like he's on the top of his game anyway. Not nearly as songful as, say, the new Tom T Hall bluegrass record (which seems a fairly comparable item to set it up against). I do kind of like "I Wonder Where To Find You," though, where Merle's trying to stalk some woman he's no longer with, checking every honky tonk in town at closing time, then switching to Joe's coffee shop when the last honky tonk closes. Maybe some other songs will click too, but I doubt I'll have the energy to give them much more of a chance.

I'm liking the basically pro-forma dumbass Nashville hackwork of that Luke Bryan album (coming out on Capitol) a lot more, actually. Just a lot of songs where fairly hard, fairly funky beats give a kick to the lies about how everybody in small towns lives on dirt roads and rides in trucks and carries around grandpa's tacklebox and gets muscular arms while working on the farm, if you don't live on the farm you wish you did. (How come there's never any country songs about growing up in a small town and hating to go fishing and hunting, or thinking grandpa's boring to spend time with? Because country songwriters are chickenshits, probably.) Anyway, these are all fun tracks: "Country Man" (the one I quoted about with the funny "tape player hater" line -- then a couple songs later he says "don't believe the hype": finally, country acknowledges Public Enemy), "We Rode In Trucks", "I'll Stay Me" (I think that's the one with the real cool Dixieland skiffle funk beat), "All My Friends Say" (trying to get home at night from the club where you say her with some other guy), "Over The River" (and through woods etc.) And there's an okay slow one where the girl you like is in the car in front of you, and another one about how you've only liked "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Tuesday's Gone" and "Working Man's Blues" before until she plays you your first love song (but wait, isn't "Tuesday's Gone" already a love song, sort of, or at least a song about loved somebody once? That doesn't really make sense.) I'm not sure if this is Luke Bryan's first album or not -- if he's existed before now, I never even noticed.

fascinating, fascinating. I totally agree about Big & Rich's record, except for me it's the sonics and the arrangements I admire, at a distance. My favorite song is definitely "High Five." I think the wedding song Xgau and others have mentioned is "Lost in the Moment." And I still think the John Anderson record is the best thing John Rich has put his name on, to date. And sure, I could hear Big & doing the Bellamy's "Let Your Love Flow." As for Merle, recall that Chicago Wind had a fair amount of filler, even notebook-page stuff he just throws out there, but that I also admire Merle's plain old ornery casualness. But that was also his studio-country move with Reggie Young and others on expert backup, pretty slick.

Mike Farris' Salvation in Lights overdoes the white-boy gospel shit but isn't bad, altho I never want to hear again already his "Oh! Mary Don't You Weep."

As for my country record of the year so far, it might just be the Sarah Borges thing, which really does what Elizabeth McQueen nearly did a while back, but with more muscle tone. Not that McQueen's pub rockery wasn't wonderful, but that Borges just outsings about anybody I can name at the moment, and she makes her own the old Dolly Parton album track--from Parton's first RCA sessions in late '67--"False Eyelashes." Completely takes over X's great "Come Back to Me" and the blues, which I think Canned Heat did a version of, "Open Up Your Back Door." Comparisons to Wanda Jackson and rockabilly in general are on the money but inadequate; there's a depth to what she's doing that's way beyond revivalism of any kind, and her band suggests a mythical house band at Stiff Records, with Attractions-style pumping bass and guitar that makes Dave Edmunds' rockabilly shit sound a bit anemic. And writes great stuff on her own that makes this a concept record about a reformed party girl smart enough to mock herself but not too smarty-pants to reveal some of her soul, all that.

Arthur Alexander's Lonely Just Like Me: The Final Chapter fits here, country-soul done in Nashville shortly before Alexander died in town after a performance in the summertime. How to describe his voice? It's resigned, ghostly, beyond tired and cynical into that zone where all ambitions are thrown out like yesterday's beer bottles. It seems effortless but it's big and just shaky enough, the sound of a big man (he was tall) who's been cut down to size, a very mannerly voice that hides some anger in there but never cuts loose. My favorite is "Mr. John," where Arthur goes to meet the man in the title, who greets Arthur with a gun, and who would not let Arthur's war buddy, who didn't make it home alive, marry his daughter. Of course, Arthur wants to see the daughter to determine just how beautiful she was and is, but that doesn't seem to happen. So, Arthur's doing his bit for Memory but can't resist the desire to peek beneath the Muse's skirt. This is the original Nonesuch record released in the '90s with, apparently, the restored track order.

I guess this kinda belongs here, too: Turbonegro's "Hell Toupée." on Retox. A sort of Quiet Riot/Molly Hatchet rocker, and a song about touring and the coming apocalypse and how rockers hate to go bald!! "I spent my life fighting off the pigs/Drinking beer and smoking cigs/Stealing riffs and blowing gigs/But now I'm stuck googling for wigs," and, "The other night I was doing a bump/Then I found myself taking a dump/It gave me time to contemplate/The state of my hair and its terrible fate." And, "My bio-clock is ticking away." Touring=expending all your testosterone=alopecia="night is falling, heads are rolling" and "the genocide of my hair today." Incredible, and the music's just as great.

xp, starting with corrections of my Luke Bryan post:

where you SAW her with some other guy.
HAVING loved somebody once.
etc.

a couple other things about past folks:

COLLIN RAYE -- Never paid attention to him before; he was on the country chart a lot in the '90s, apparently. New 6-song Selected Hits EP (two new songs and four older hits played live) suggests why I never paid much attention; i.e., he seems to do a lot of ballads with watery melodies that remind me of either Mike and the Mechanics or Peter Cetera or some sapmongers from the '80s like that. Which is potentially interesting, but I don't have time now to work up an interest. There's something mid-60s Dylan-dream-like about the cadence of "That's My Story (And I'm Sticking To It)" (the one hit by him on here I actually remember) though. It's not bad.

RODNEY CROWELL - Gave the American Beat Records reissue of his self-titled (debut I guess) album (from the '80s I guess, too lazy to check) a chance. It's pretty boring, just like pretty much every other Rodney Crowell album I've ever given a chance to. Theory: people who overrate Vice Gill (who helps out on guitar apparently) overrate Rodney Crowell equally; am I wrong? Anyway, the opening cut "Stars On Water" is okay -- some Ronnie Milsap or whoever type r&b smokiness in that one. Then a bunch of nothing songs I had trouble even sitting through once, including "Blame On The Moon," which Bob Seger wound up covering only slightly less boringly a few years later. But then it ends with "Old Pipeliner," which I always seem to like no matter who does it (favorite version I've heard might be the one I used to own on LP by forgotten '80s country family band the Whites), though I don't think I've ever heard the original, if there is one. (Written by Ray King and Tommy Hill; who are they again? Is the song from the actual rockabilly era, or earlier, or later?) Anyway, that "one eyed cat peeping in a sea food store" line sure is raunchy, isn't it? Filthy. Like something Harmonica Frank Floyd would have come up with. But that line is in other songs too, right?

LOU ANN BARTON -- Old Enough, another reissue on American Beat, also from the '80s. CD cover says she was was in the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughan's Double Trouble and Roomful of Blues, and Rolling Stone gave this album, which was produced by Jerry Wexler and Glen Frey, four stars. I sort of remember that review, and I remember the LP cover, on which Lou Ann looks pretty enough, but I don't remember the music. She's got a fairly rich, husky voice that she doesn't do anything partiularly interesting with. There's lots of bluesish songs of various tempos which I assume had been done by other people years before Lou Ann. "The Sudden Stop" seems like an okay ballad with a musical onomatopoeia in it where Lou Ann suddenly stops singing whilst talking about somebody suddenly stopping caring about her after she cheats on him. Or something. One of the other songs has a hint of synthesized percussion; more of that would have helped. It's not clear to me what people heard in this LP otherwise. (Christgau gave it a C+, which sounds about right):

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=lou+ann+barton

Just posted this on the chitlin circuit thread:

Pretty good EP from a lady from Tennessee, though the best part of it might be the Bohannon/DJ Hollywood style proto-raps done by some guy at the start and end of her "Southern Soul Picnic," which is my favorite of the three songs even if "bring your own BYOB" is a redundant line (sort of like "ATM machine"). "Telling It Like It Is" has a decent proto-disco groove to it under Miz B saying the other woman might get his honey but Miz B will still get his money. Actually found the warning song "Jody's 1st Cousin" somewhat disappointing, but that may just be because Jody songs get my hopes up:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/mizbtunes

Went and bought B&R's Comin' To Your City to A/B with Between Raising Hell etc and found I still like the new one more. Not coming to B&R first from the so-called "rap," crippled midget as prop fetish and novelty aspects of the act, the second didn't sound radical in terms of anything -- TO ME --per se. Found the freak parade bouncing-ball routine whimsical, always have liked the title tune, Soul Shaker, the ragtime Filthy Rich (a lot) and almost everything else at least a bit, though.

The new one isn't mastered as loud. Didn't put it in my louderizer measurer but it isn't as hard limited, which befits the first few tunes.

I thought B&R could have easily tossed the John Legend intro to Eternity which is a pussy-footing waste of time before getting to the actual number. That's minor, though. I take the CD out when it gets to the AC/DC cover.

When "Lost in the Moment" and the title tune or stripped of the production for the short live DVD that comes with the retail piece, they still sound great.

I just loved that Lee Ann Barton album when it first came out. But I think you're probably right that she doesn't do that much, as a stylist, with the attractive voice she has. I was possibly just deeply in lust at the time. She and Martha Davis were my two early-'80s femme fatale crushes.

On "one eyed cat peeping in a sea food store": I didn't even remember that that appeared on a Rodney Crowell album--I have to pick up that reissue. But it comes from "Shake, Rattle and Roll." Some Googling produced this amusing aside about the filth:

"'"Shake, Rattle and Roll' was a big R&B hit and was covered by the then-country group Bill Haley and the Comets. The suggestive lyrics of the song were changed by Haley for the white market, although the most risque line in the song, 'I'm like a one-eyed cat peeping in a sea food store,' wasn't changed because Haley didn't know what the line meant."

"Old Pipeliner," which I always seem to like no matter who does it (favorite version I've heard might be the one I used to own on LP by forgotten '80s country family band the Whites), though I don't think I've ever heard the original, if there is one. (Written by Ray King and Tommy Hill; who are they again? Is the song from the actual rockabilly era, or earlier, or later?)

It was a hit for Red Sovine around the time of the Beatles' first US hits, probably mid-'64. I believe, on Starday or Starday/King or King. That's the version I know. There's Moon Mullican's "Pipleliner Blues," which is from the '50s. Your theory, Xxk, about Crowell and Gill: I would think Rodney is taken more seriously by people, as he's made various political statements and did that one, The Outsider, where he goes after Mammon pretty smartly I suppose. Whereas, Vince Gill seems more like he just likes to play golf and look at dirty pictures. about the same level of being overrated but different levels of pretension. they're both pretty overrated. Lou Ann Barton, you know I always kind of got her confused with Marcia Ball; the Lou Ann record, was that some kind of notoriously underwhelming Jerry Wexler pet project of making another great smoky soul record by a woman? She was all right looking, pretty sexy if I remember; but I remember I had friends who said the exact same thing about Marcia Ball, who I think has the better name.

plus, Marcia played the piano, too.

Tommy Hill, who co-wrote "Old Pipeliner," was sort of a Nashville rockabilly guy, a songwriter who worked for Starday Records in Madison, Tenn. He recorded with Elvis and he wrote "Teddy Bear" for Red Sovine. I think he was originally from Texas. Came up to Nashville and worked with Ray Price for a while, in the '50s, and toured with Buddy Holly. He also helped start Stop Records, for whom Johnny Bush recorded his best stuff. (By the way, finally tracked down and got a CD copy of the pretty hard-to-find Johnny Bush Stop record, Sound of a Heartache, '67 featuring Jerry Reed on guitar and Buddy Emmons on steel, one of the classic great country albums of all time.)

Yeah, Lou Ann looks sexy on the CD cover, at least. Not sure about otherwise. Best track, I just remembered, is probably her cover of "Brand New Lover" -- Marshall Crenshaw's, unfortunately, not Dead Or Alive's, which didn't exist yet, but she does Crenshaw's fine, maybe even better than he did, for all I know. Still not as good as Pat Benatar covering John Cougar's "I Need a Lover" on her own way more entertaining (and way more sexy) debut LP.

Thanks for all that historical context, Chris and Edd; I've definitely heard that Bill Haley story before. And I think "Old Pipeliner" and "Pipeliner Blues" may well be basically the same song under two different titles -- with slight variations, no doubt.

So Edd, who put out that Sarah Borges record? I want to hear it now. Peeped her myspace page, and the cover looked familiar, though, so maybe I got sent one, gave it a cursory listen, was less than impressed (vaguely remember thinking more "NPR folk" than "pub-rockabilly"), and it's out in a box in my hallway already. I'll have to go out there and hunt.

Still don't know if I've ever heard Area Code 215 (not even "Stone Fox Chase"), but this has always made me wanna (and it might not be a complete list):

http://www.the-breaks.com/search.php?term=area+code+615&type=0

And Don, I got the Jason Isbel you sent; thanks! (Already had a copy of Schultze Gets The Blues -- posted about it upthread, in fact -- but I'll pass the burn onto somebody who might like it.)

To wit:

And also also listening to the newly released soundtrack to the apparent circa 2003 German movie Schulze Gets The Blues, which compiles all kinds oof apparently unknown acts (Bobby Jones Czech Band! Jackie Callier & the Cajun Cousins! Brachstedter Musikanten! Zydeco Force! Chorgenmeinschaft 'Sang & Klang' Angerdorf! and draws the most explicit connections between
polkas-and-oompahs and zydecos-and-cajuns of any album I'm aware of; I can't find a track listing on line, but these pictures describe the mood nicely:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=schultze+gets+the+blues&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

-- xhuxk, Sunday, March 25, 2007 2:04 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

Plot summary:

"Schultze is a retired lignite miner living in an East German village and a passionate Polka musician on his accordion. One night he listens to a Zydeco tune in the radio, which changes his taste of music radically. Notwithstanding his complete ignorance of the English language he starts a trip into the heart of the Zydeco; to Louisana"
-- xhuxk, Sunday, March 25, 2007 2:33 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

Oops, Area Code 615 I meant. (215 is Pennsylvania!)

I haven't played it in a couple of months, but the Sarah Borges album struck me as fun, if ultimately underwhelming. It's almost as much the kind of female-fronted power-pop band I might have seen and enjoyed at the Whisky in 1981 as it is a roots-rock thing. I do remember one song that really annoyed me, though--a lament where she sings a chorus that goes something like "I'm the one they want to dance with but never the one they want to take home." As if she were singing about being somebody guys will sleep with but not marry--but instead, she really seems to be saying she looks good enough to dance with but not good enough to sleep with. And I'm thinking, Sarah, sweetheart, that bar has got to be lower than you think it is. Maybe I was misunderstanding it somehow?

All right, here is my choice for the most annoying commercial country single of the year so far. It's Halfway to Hazard's "Daisy," coproduced by Tim McGraw. The lyrical hook of the song is that the title woman "must bean angel, because she loves the hell out of me." First that phrase is used in the sexual sense, then in the religious sense, and finally in the literal sense. You see, the narrator's wife actually dies in childbirth, and then he names their daughter "Daisy," as well. If this were some gothic period piece, okay. But is it at all common for women to die in childbirth in 21st century America, other than to fulfill the mawkish needs of a shitty country song? Perhaps it is. But if my wife dies in childbirth, please remind me not to name our daughter after her, especially if I'm still busy having erotic reveries about her late mother.

These are my Song Complaints for the day.

A guy I know who runs a used record store in Philly where a few copies of the Borges album have shown up says only its first song struck him as rockabilly per se', though he liked the rest of it too. Said its music reminded him of NRBQ. I still want to hear it, though I'll be surprised if I wind up loving it.

Meanwhile, am not loving the Jason Isbell album so far. Man, the guy just sounds dreary and comatose to me -- and I know, I know, he lost his wife and his band; I should feel sorry for him, and I do I guess, but that doesn't make me want to hear him mumble. I get the idea he's going for a Neil Young thing, but he doesn't seem to have either a singing voice or melodies beautiful enough to pull it off, and so far the rest seems quiet and bleh. How many times, and how close, do I have to listen to "Dress Blues" before its supposedly genius lyric grabs me (when Tom T Hall's new "A Hero In Harlan," which I gather has a similar plotline, grabbed me the first time out)? I do like how the guitars in "Brand New Kind Of Actress" build up in a way that reminds me of the band Television, but other than that I'm actively disliking this thing. But I'll keep trying; maybe after a few listens under my belt, it'll sink in.

Hmm..."Shotgun Wedding" is a bit more upbeat, I guess, in a late Replacements/solo Westerberg semi-powerpop way. I tend to find late Replacements/solo Westerberg irritating, in general, but this is okay. Can't stand "The Devil Is My Running Mate" though.

As for Merle, recall that Chicago Wind had a fair amount of filler, even notebook-page stuff he just throws out there, but that I also admire Merle's plain old ornery casualness.

Actually, the only album of Merle's '00s comeback that I've thought was really worth playing all the way through was Like Never Before, from 2003. The one before that -- If I Could Only Fly in 2000, the one that scored in the Pazz & Jop poll -- tuckered out pretty quickly after "Wishing All These Old Things Were New," the song about "doing a line" that it opened with, as I recall. So my copy of that's already in the storage bin. Chicago Wind never really clicked for me in the first place.

yeah, we've batted this one back and forth before, Xhuxk, on Merle. I dunno, I find If I Could excessively listenable, myself, really even-handed, just right.

I'm a fan of the Sarah Borges record. Partly because she does Wanda Jackson-style slightly aggrieved "rockabilly" and "blues" better than anyone I've heard do it in a long time, partly because she, is my opinion, a really fine singer who shows just as much vulnerability as required, and partly because I think the band really does it up, esp. the guitarist, Mike Castellana; there's an energy to this record that doesn't let up, and I think it just sounds fresh, no NRBQ boppin-mama bullshit or fake-country or retro. And sure, she has great taste, picks good songs, too, which doesn't hurt. To me, she sounds like a person with an actual sense of humor and of, yeah, rock history or something, but way juicier than Dave Edmunds, you know, or even Elizabeth McQueen (whose record I loved). It's on Sugar Hill, by the way; she apparently came to Nashville to play at the Americana Festival and then came back and impressed the folks at the label enough to sign her; she's got a CD out on a small label, I think it's called Blue Corn, that I haven't heard yet.

the plot summary--Those Ol' Lignite Miner Blues, perhaps done Moon Mullican-style--sounds fantastic! I haven't heard the Isbell. But the various Truckers who back up Bettye LaVette on her new one, they did a good thing: by far, her best record ever, no blues-journeywoman shit here, just about like hearing some (admittedly) sorta second-tier jazz singer making an Unadorned Statement, but the record's clichés sit there proud to be clichés, and they do achieve real flow with simple materials, so I like it very much.

I'm also not much liking the new Isbell--serious case of the mid-tempo blues and, with the exception of the terrific "Brand New Kind of Actress" ("put the piece away, put the piece away, put the piece away" is nearly as great as JB's "please, please, please"), very unhooky. The two, I think it's two, anti-war tunes have some force, but they're light years from "Decoration Day." C+ (docked a grade for bad drum sound).

Aren't country songwriters aware of the multiplicity of fine pre-prepared foods available to the recently kicked-out bachelor on the prowl, as described in Sarah Johns' "The One in the Middle"? The song mentions "TV dinners," but what about that Zatarains' pre-packaged, microwaveable (in a minute flat) Jambalaya With Sausage? They also have a blackened chicken one but not enough chicken. The varieties of frozen pizza are endless; those complete meals you heat up, with some water, in a big pan, usually pasta dishes, are also good. There are a million of them and I don't know how "TV dinners" is still allowed in a popular song of this era; I mean everyone I know is eating, like, New York-style Pita Chips (Sea Salt) and artichoke-garlic hummous. The bachelors I know, that is, some of whom are sulking away sans chick.

Anyway, "One in the Middle" is pretty cool, on Johns' Big Love in a Small Town. She used to clean tour buses--says you found the damndest things on them. She has a high, clean and somewhat hysterical voice. But "Middle" starts out with a real glam, Marc Bolan-style riff and these great "ba do do dow, da-dow, da dow-dow" vocals that remind me of those cat choruses, on garbage cans, in old cartoons, pining away for a thrown-out TV dinner, no doubt. The song mentions "skank" and rocks out, sorta. The vocals dip in and out, and it's a pretty convincing song about hand gestures. Good. The other interesting one is the last song, "It's Hard to Be a Girl (In a Young Man's World)," which finds Sarah so horny that she can't even leave a message. Big strings, lush chord changes, stiff upper lip. "I don't want to appear too forward," she begins, and she seems overly concerned with her own identity as a woman throughout, as on "When Do I Get to Be a Woman" and the next one, "If You Could Hold Your Woman" (not in subtitle: like you hold your whiskey).

Yeah, that Sarah Johns looked intriguing. I need to get to that, Travis Tritt, Terri Clark which I guess isn't coming out, Stephen Cochran whoever he is...

As for Jason Isbell, I'm not even sure what its second war song is ("Down in the Hole" or "In A Razor Town," which just sound dead in the water? The lounge schmaltz Muscle Shoals attempt "Hurricanes and Handgrenades"?). "Dress Blues" has okay lyrics if you concentrate really hard on them, but Tom T Hall and Richard Thompson have both written and recorded way more compelling songs about boys in the war this year, and their war songs don't waltz at such funereal tempos that they seem to last eight minutes when they really only last four; anyway, if a livelier singer with an actual rhythm section covered "Dress Blues" and made it sound like something more than a demo, I might even like it. As is, the only track I'm really enjoying on the Isbell album, I think, is "Try," with its Crazy Horse guitars (and a lyric asking men how they deal with women that connects right away); even "Brand New Kind of Actress" is no great shakes until the very end. The prefab purism pop of "Shotgun Wedding" -- as much Ryan Adams or Matthew Sweet as late Westerberg, probably -- wound up getting on my nerves. Beyond that, the set strikes me as even more uneven and less fun than the last couple DBTs.

Terri Clark isn't coming out until next year.

Spencer Moore's Spencer Moore arrived yesterday. On the same label--Tompkins Square--that released Charlie Louvin. Moore is 8 years older than Louvin, from northwestern North Carolina, and apparently performed some with the Carter Family in the late '30s. Alan Lomax recorded a few songs of Moore's in the '50s, but this is Moore's first record. He sounds pretty spry on guitar and does stuff like "Cumberland Gap" which actually sounds pretty weird, weird guitar stuff happening that I like. Rough-voiced but charming and some really harsh material from god knows where like "The Lawson Family Murder."

the relentlessly logical "I Drink"

Is this the Mary Gauthier song (also covered by Blake Shelton, though I'm still waiting for Lindsay Lohan to do it justice)? If so, is indeed relentlessly logical and is the best song on the two Gauthier albums I've heard. I think upthread I said that Gauthier oversings ridiculously, doing the abyss-is-in-my-throat thing, Vincent Price parodying Patti Smith, but that now on the new album where she soft-pedals the anguish I discover I miss it, want her to chomp down harder on the scenery.

Listening to Sarah Borges on her MySpace. I think I agree with Chris, has the feel of early '80s power pop w/ trad-grit leanings. On "The Day We Met" she seems to be pushing hard through the nasal passages in a way that sounds searing rather than snotty - reminds me of Rihanna a bit, though not nearly as powerful. Like a lot of early '80s power pop the music is lacking a killer instinct, too happy in its home in the pleasant bar light - but that vocal pressure promises something stronger, and I wonder what she'd be like with a band that gave her more than an amiable clatter. I do like this, and I understand Edd's comparing her to Elizabeth McQueen: they both have a touching "nice girl who wishes she were wilder" feel. 'Cept it'd be even more touching if the music had more propulsion. I'm thinking of two nice girls Aly & A.J. and the force they get out of their studio slickness: they've got their gloss and still manage to run roughshod across the beats.

On her MySpace Borges describes the music as "Cambridge no-wave hard-honk. Yeah!" I don't know what she thinks is no wave about this - I hear how her nasal passages could lend themselves to skronk, but these tracks sound skronk free.

My guess is she's someone who could really rip it live, and I see she's playing tonight here in Denver. But I've already got plans.

Jack Ingram "This Is It:" If Bryan Adams isn't making records I like anymore, I might as well do one. Not a bad ambition to have.

"Love You," written by a Jay Knowles and a Trent Summer sounds like it was written by a Jim Vallence. Good way to sneak a curse into play although they ought to play it more on GAC and CMT. As it is, "Measure of a Man," which is fine if lachrymose and not grinding or rollicking like the former, gets a bit more time.

Actually, this album only seems mildly country as compared to true blue singer/songwriter and pop rock. "Great Divide" is paean to Texas flatland, friday night football, the land of his people, real people just like you and I, everybody's dirty, the Mexicans work the fields and the sky goes on forever. Wave the flag to the arching slide and lap steel solos. Wow, sounds nice enough but really piles it high.

Needs a summer blockbuster to attach "Love You" or "Measure of a Man" starring Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher in a buddy pic where Kutcher is becoming the man Costner used to be. This was done, but in Alaska, so it tanked whereas if it had been set in Texas, it might have flown.

Believe it or not, I like this record.

Store bought copy of Keith Urban's Love, Pain etc tried to kill my CD/DVD drive. It contains some manner of actively or passively malicious copyright defending technology that made the drive do things it wasn't supposed to. While not having time or inclination to inspect it at length, if let in a drive like mine, it would damage it, which is something of a personal first. I don't expect my CDs to try and bite me.

Worked fine in the car stereo so it's obviously aimed at stuff which can connect to the Internet.

Probably doesn't misbehave obviously for everyone, but it will on certain equipment. If you have a copy and it works in your PC, I still wouldn't trust it. That just possibly means something was put into your system maliciously without your hardware making groaning sufficiently for you to notice it.

From the metal thread; I'm sure these guys have crossed over to a few Montgomery Gentry fans by now (plus, I think they drive a pickup truck in some video I saw once):

And yeah, I mentioned Nickelback. Somehow a copy of All The Right Reasons mysteriously fell into my lap this week -- an album which I believe has sold something like 5.9 million copies so far and is at something like #12 on Billboard's album chart after something like 93 weeks, and which an Internet search suggests has spawned something like seven hit singles (or "airplay tracks", or whatever -- "Photograph," "Animal," "Far Away," "Savin' Me," "If Everyone Cared," "Rockstar," "Side Of a Bullet" -- only a couple if which I remotely recognized, but then again I almost never listen to the radio these days, and even if I did I seriously doubt I'd ever brave putting on a commercial "active rock" station.) Anyway, out of curiosity and/or professional responsibilty, I decided to play the darn thing, having never consciously listened to Nickelback before in my life. And my verdict is: I don't totally hate it. Just most of it. Favorite cut is undoubtedly "Photograph," the power ballad, which is no Def Leppard but which is still about yearning for the small town arcade and high school the singer (whose old self would hate him now) says he never graduated from and wonders if they'd let him back in; really, a country-rock guy like Jack Ingram (who redid Hinder's "Lips Of An Angel" and made me like it) should cover this in a less plodding way, and it might sound really good. I also don't hate "Animals," which is probably the least plodding song on the album (actually kind of speedy), and also turns out to be about, uh, getting a blowjob while driving a car fast ("Got your head between your knees/Got both hands on the wheel," jeesh). And "Next Contestant," which I'm kind of surprised isn't a "hit" since it's pretty catchy in a Stabbing Westward bubblegum-Nine Inch Nails way, has the singer daring guys to hit on his girlfriend again so he can beat them up, what an asshole. "Rockstar," a very vaguely Southern rock midetempo, actually tries to have a sense of humor about wanting to be a rock star (with, you know, drug dealers on speed dail, getting washed up singers to write all the songs, staying skinny because you never eat) but of course Chad Kroeger moans it with no sense of humor at all -- maybe I'd like it okay if Joe Walsh sang it. (He could even get the Shop Boys to back him up, maybe). And "Someone That You're With" is clearly about being jealous of the guy she's with, duh. Honestly, in total, the topics of the songs are pretty easy to figure out most of the time, which does count for something. But most of the rest is the expected constipated bleh -- "loud mush," as Chris Cook once called Pearl Jam, but in a fifth or sixth generation version. (I was surprised to note on AMG that Nickelback have a bunch of albums, too -- Shows how much I've paid attention to them over the years; for all I knew, this could've been their debut record. As is, though, it almost counts as a Greatest Hits.)

Actually, her head is between Chad's knees, not her own.

And speaking of Jack Ingram, I went back to his album after George mentioned it, and yeah, this hadn't occured to me myself, but his '80s Bryan Adams analogy is dead on -- Jack even kind of looks like '80s Bryan on the album cover (which, as George suggested in an email, along with Keith Urban's CD cover are clearly pinup posters meant for the ladies. Showed both CD covers to Lalena, and she said yeah, their disheveled rugged handsome five-o'clock-shadow faces are shown really close up, teen-magazine style, so you can kiss them if said urge might arise. Now I'm wondering if my youngest sister Emily the high school math teacher, who totally loved Adams/Cougar rock growing up in Michigan in the '80s, would like Ingram or Urban if she heard them, or maybe if she already does; she seems like she's basically the target audience for such stuff. Maybe I'll give her copies for Christmas.) Anyway, I'm now loving a whole bunch of cuts on the Ingram in an Adams Reckless meets early Tom Petty kind of way: "Measure Of A Man," "Love You," "Easy as 1,2,3 (Part II)," "Great Divide," the Hinder cover. Album's way uneven beyond those, but the more midtempo semi-ballads aren't bad, and I like the horn parts in "All I Can Do," and consistency is overrated anyway -- This is one of the most playable country albums I've heard this year, no question.

I definitely believe majors would benefit from two-pronged art for Urban and Igram, etc. One cover for guys, with dudes holding guitars or maybe just a photo of Jack or Keith in a superpickup truck. (Igram obviously has product placement for one in the video for "Love You.") The cover they usually go with, the face shot for the ladies to get twisted up over, for girls. I bet they'd squeeze more walk-in sales out the stuff, guys being sometimes put off imagining they'll be thought of as sissies or poofs if seen reaching for it. Urban tries to throw in a few cues with photo of him with old Marshall amp and his favorite geetar inside, but still.

Jason Aldean skirts this by just being slightly pug-ugly and born with a naturally belligerent-looking visage. 'Course, he's a lot more boring, too. Doesn't seem to vary from the legs akimbo, shove the big acoustic guitar out in the air stance for his video singles, which always sound cut from the same rhythm tracks to me.

The guy whose imminent album I'm surprised to determine is geared largely to women (though he probably always had a certain beefcake appeal about him, and I can see why he might decide to emphasize that in the Trace Adkins era) is Travis Tritt. Most audacious cut on The Storm (an album which by the way I believe Randy Jackson is said to have played a major role on) is "Rub Off On Me," borderline porn-for-housewives that I swear might as well really be called "Rub One Out On Me," since that's what it seems to me about; that parody boy band from a few years ago 2Gether would be very impressed. It's this sort of slow funk bump-and-grinder (funkier than the also soul-sistered funk-flirting single "You Never Take Me Dancing," to my ears) where Travis tells this woman to get it off her chest, and at the end the music just drops out for a while to a spare beat and r&b singers repeatedly chanting the title over and over again -- takes its time finishing, in other words. The other songs I really like on the album are the Skynyrd/CDB-style swing-funk two-step (which namedrops "Gimme Three Steps") "High Time For Gettin' Down," plus somewhere between two and four slow intense Southern rock bluesers: cheating in the next room song "The Pressure Is On" (which opens with a pastoral Led Zeppelin lick); kicked out of the house song (his clothes are thrown all over the room and his credit cards are gone and so is she and his wallet's in the yard) "Should've Listened" (but instead like he learned from his Daddy everything she said went in one ear and out the other and now he's paying for it), and maybe "The Storm" and "Somehow, Somewhere, Someway." "Something Stronger Than Me" (= Jesus or liquor) is an okay gospely thing; "Doesn't The Good Outweight The Bad" is a boogie kept fairly light with some tra-la-las, and most of the rest (the stuff that doesn't grab me) is sentimental stuff for the ladies. But all in all, better than I expected.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure that my favorite track on recent Nashville residents the White Stripes' dullest album Icky Thump is the lovely fake Scottish highland folk with bagpipes thing "Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn." Also kind of like the fake Spanish bullfight folk with horns thing "Conquest," plus "Icky Thump," "Rag And Bone," the Leo Sayer tribute "Effect And Cause," plus assorted riffs here and there remiscent of Led Zeppelin. So now I can file it, and I will probably never put it on again.

Hey, where did everybody go? (Including me, for the most part?) Anyway, my favorite track by far on Sarah Johns's Big Love In A Small Town is "He Hates Me," where she meets a perfect guy and stalks him because his big brown eyes drive her crazy and he winds up getting a restraining order. Hilarious, and super catchy. Second favorite, surprise surprise, is a slow one -- "It's Hard To Be A Girl (In A Young Man's World)," mentioned by Edd above, though Edd says she's too horny to leave a message and I thought what happened is she does leave a message so if he hasn't got her message by now (note double meaning) he's not calling back. "The One In The Middle" is about flipping some deserving person the bird, but mainly about the acapella twangbar imitations repeatedly done by a male voice who sounds like he should be in an '80s L.A. glam-sleaze-metal band. (Edd hears T. Rex in its opening part, which I don't really but who I'm sure many glam-sleazers were familiar with). And "When Do I Get To Be A Woman" is her working-woman song, and in "Touch Me" (in which she requests kissing upon every inch of her body, not that she names said inches per se') she's horny for sure, and in "That's Just Me Getting Over You" (another fave) she's on the rebound from you and hence leading on other guysbut not following through, and "Big Love in A Small Town" which is not about polygamy with John Cougar in Utah but rather about raising beans and babies in the boonies where you can see the city lights in the distance (so they must not be too far out in exurbia, right?) is a likeable if generic sounding two-beat, and "Muddy Water" is what Kentucky daughters get baptized in, if I'm recalling the words right. (Could be Tennessee.) Also, in the great tradition of Kellie Pickler (and Shania Twain I bet), I'm pretty sure a couple lines show up somewhere about shopping for shoes. So: good album.

And meanwhile, Mindy McCready's having a bad week:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070726/ap_en_ce/people_mindy_mccready

Haven't posted here in a while, but have been continuing to absorb country music lately. I'll post brief thoughts below:

Charlie Rich - Behind Closed Doors a classic, of course, and really deserved. What a great album, I feel like a chump for not listening to it earlier. What's worth checking out beyond this album?

Blake Shelton - 2nd best country album of the year, after Miranda, and I do even like the ballads. "The More I Drink" is probably my favorite track.

Sara Evans - "As If". No discussion of this here? I've always really enjoyed Sara Evans' singles (and "Suds in a Bucket" is a classic), so I'm really looking forward to the greatest hits collection. I enjoy this song, but it's below her best work. Very sunny and fun. Still one of my 10 or so favorite country singles of the year to this point.

Keith Urban - Really great! I really enjoy his latest album, and he's been a pretty solid singles artist all along, apparently.

hey, I've been catching up on work and doing some last-minute things that ought to turn out pretty interesting. I'll have to listen to Johns again but I thought she couldn't bring herself to leave a message. she does sound horny, of which I approve. as for Tritt, I think he's kind of actually underrated, for his '90s stuff. listening to Jim Dickinson's latest, Killers from Space, which is good; great version of Doug Sahm's "Texas Me" leading off, Chris Scruggs guesting on guitar, and many country-flavored, hoarse moments...

Greg, I've heard a little of the Charlie Rich catalog and I want to hear a lot more. I highly recommend the two albums he did in the early '60s for Smash/Mercury, which I'd basically call "white soul" (well, that's what John Morthland called them).

Keith Urban - What I've heard of his stuff up to last year's album (which I've not heard, but the word on these threads is that it's real good throughout) has been hit or miss, with his guitar playing usually having more bite than his singing. The playing reminds me a bit of Lindsey Buckingham on Urban's breakout hit, "Somebody Like You," which topped the country charts for eight weeks in 2002 (and which I'm listening to right now). A piece of info that will interest you about that song: the songwriting credits are Keith Urban, John Shanks.

I think there was discussion here earlier in the year of a new Charlie Rich comp, but I haven't seen it in the stores yet. I recently picked up his "Complete Singles Plus, The Sun Years 1958-1963" which is pretty great, though doesn't sound anything like "Behind Closed Doors."

I guess the comp I'm talking about is the two disc The Essential Charlie Rich though I can't figure out if its a re-release of the 1997 album of the same name, or when or if it was released this year.

Lots and lots about Charlie Rich upthread, and on last year's thread too I believe. And yeah, judging from the track listing, the new Essentials appears to be a repackage of a previous reissue (mentioned by Roy below) that I've never seen.

Anyway, here's just a little of what's up there; if you do a search, you'll find plenty more:

CHUCK:
"Since I Fell For You" by Charlie Rich on now: soul music. Third to last track on new two-CD *Essential* set, which is the best album I've heard in 2007 by far if reissues count. This is going to sound completely nuts, but I actually think the opener "Lonely Weekends" is one of my *least* favorite songs on this thing; it's totally great, but strikes me (is this idiotic?) as a fairly blatant Elvis rip, where Charlie doesn't really seem to develop his own real vocal personality until a few songs in. I guess what I'm saying is that, judging from this collection, I prefer him doing soul, blues, jazz (even "Pictures and Paintings," on now, which people on the ILM thread seemed to have mixed feelings about), countrypolitan, maybe even gospel, than rockabilly. In general anyway. Or maybe I just like him doing grown-up music more than teen music. Not that "Lonely Weekends" is (obviously) necessarily a teen song. Anyway, I could go on and on. Didn't notice til today that "I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water" is about breaking out of prison. Wonder what is wrong with Charlie's baby (and in turn Charlie) in "When Something's Is Wrong With My Baby" (am I confusing things, or did Marsh or Marcus or somebody say this was a sexual dysfunction song once? Could be.) Wonder if anybody put "River, Stay Away From My Door" on any Katrina playlists. Wonder if there are countrypolitan-hating purists stupid enough to hate "Behind Closed Doors" and "The Most Beautiful Girl." Etc. But the song that really gave me a quiet storm's worth of chills today was "Nice 'N' Easy." which I seemed to recall somewhere deep in my subconscious hearing ages ago, but I'm not sure where (okay, it was on a Charlie CD than Edd burned for me last year, but why do I feel it was something more than that? Like I heard it as a kid or something? Whitburn tells me it did not cross over pop.) Anyway, even more than lots of stuff here, it is what Alan Jackson and Toby Keith want to be, I think.

ROY:
Is this Charlie Rich Essential different from the 2 disc on Columbia/Legacy: Feel Like Going Home which came out in 97? Amazon and Allmusic don't list any new Essentials... Also, you're not completely nuts about "Lonely Weekend" sounding like Elvis; he was tagged with the Elvis soundalike thing for a very little
while. Didn't take long to leave that in the dust. You gotta get the Complete Smash Sessions, which documents how he did that most awesomely.

Anyway, my copy of The Essential clearly says copyright 2007 Sony BMG Entertainment on the back, though that doesn't mean it ever actually wound up in retail outlets I guess. Follows that with "Compilation 1997," more evidence that it repackages an earlier catalog title. Label is Epic/Legacy now, though.

I'm in Houston this weekend, by the way, for the better half's high school reunion. "Happy hour" last night was at a joint called the Firehouse Saloon, where an okay country-rock band (didn't catch their name; they weren't that good) started playing toward the end. On the way out the door I picked up a couple free newsprint publications -- really like the fanzine-sized (23 pages, including eight or so pages of surprisingly coherent 250-to-300-word album reviews) Country Standard Time; they really tear into the Bon Jovi album, like the first half but not the seocond of the Big N Rich (though they overrate the AC/DC cover); like the Cowboy Troy okay but say it's not really country; include the new Graham Parker album among their reviews; etc. Things I learned: (1) Gary Allan has a greatest hits CD out (I should hear that, since I don't really know his first few albums, before the last three or so, very well); (2) Dale Watson has an apparent outtakes-covers collection called The Little Darlin Sessions out on Koch; (3) Merle Haggard has a different new album (six new songs and six rerecordings of old ones) out through Cracker Barrel as well as his bluegrass thing; (4) The Greencards consist of two Australians and one Brit. So here's the website:

http://www.countrystandardtime.com/countrymusic.asp

Also picked up Best In Texas Music Magazine: Way less coherent, especially the useless and barely literate (sub-publicity-release) review page, but there's an intriguing two-page feature about Stillwater, Oklahoma's "Red Dirt music" scene, which I'd never heard of before. Draws a trajectory from Bob Wills in Tulsa through a self-released 1972 album called Moses Live by future Tractors lead guy Steve Ripley through the Great Divide (who I don't remember, but who apparently charted with a couple country-rock tunes in the mid '90s) and Garth Brooks and on through to Cross Canadian Ragweed (who have have never sounded as good as I wish they did.) The article is by one John Wooley, who writes that "Red Dirt Music is a little like Darwinian evolution or the Epstein-Barr virus -- some poeple simply refuse to believe it exists." Interesting, huh?

Their website, but I'm not seeing that Red Dirt piece:

http://bestintexasonline.com/

this afternoon, on the dread NPR (All Things Considered the program), heard Smokey Hormel's big plain plains voice delivering the Brazilian chesnut "Asa Branca," in English. He didn't sound anything but country, and that fit perfectly. He was with this group, Forro After Dark, who I didn't hear much of otherwise (see 'em in New Yorker listings sometimes). But that reminded me of a great comp, Forro Etc., one of the best in the Brazil Classics series. Forro, from "For All," apparently, is one of the most cosmopolitan Brazilian styles, but it's also mainstream country, mainstream-with-a-regional-identity, as Bob Wills, Carter Family etc. once were,starting about the same time as forro pioneers (although they may well have a more Burbtown variant now)Sounds "Latin," meaning Spanish as well as Portuguese, but also African, French, English. Easy to visualize well-fed couples, married and single, dancing at harvest and in spring; sun, moon, birds, clouds, trees, horsies, cows, tractors, crops dancing too (kids and other critters running though, as the percussion gets more impulsive at times)Translated lyrics read great, though not nec. to enjoy. Somewhere I've got a tape from an Afropop Worldwide broadcast (more Public Radio, look out!), with Ned Sublette and Brazilain musos talking and playing records, telling the Forro story up to that point (it gets a bit techno about then, at least some artists do)( this episode is prob archived on the site, or somewhere else online)

yeah, "regional identity," not just "image," from when the performers and their audiences mostly lived and worked in the areas they were associated with, but "a little travelin' music," as Bob Wills would call it, was part of the appeal too (Nobody's stuck out here, could head out if we wanted to, and maybe we will sometime; meanwhile we got radios, with dials on 'em, for mixing and drinking and thinking a bit, for dancing around, anyway)

Totally maudlin song that seems to get played as much as every other song put together on the country radio station (or at least one of the country radio stations, if there's more than one) in Houston right now: "Tough" by Craig Morgan. I'm already sick of it, but then again maybe I haven't been listening to it very closely; just checked its lyrics on line, and had no idea it was a husband singing about his wife's bout with breast cancer.

Second to last song (and only recent song) played at Lalena's high school reunion in Houston last night (right before the closing "Rio" by Duran Duran): "Cupid Shuffle" by Cupid. Interesting. I had no idea that it was a line dance; shows what I know. Turns out it's the new "Electric Boogie," judging from all the people who got up there for it. Is that happening nationwide? (Also weird: Music played at the happy hour Friday night was all country, but at the reunion itself, not a single country song was played. Lots of new wavish '80s MTV videos at first, and then when the DJ came on, lots of mostly '80s funk and r&b and pop hip-hop (Michael Jackson, Salt N Pepa, Beastie Boys, Digital Underground, Wild Cherry, Prince, the Time, etc. Also "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and Love Shack" and "You Shook Me All Night Long," and "Yeah!" by Lil Jon and Usher.)

But in the reunion directory, where alumni talk about their "favorite 1987 performer and song" then "favorite 2007 performer and song," lots of their tastes clearly turned in a more country direction in the past 20 years.

I'd say that's because they perceive it to be where mainstream classic rock went, particularly if they watch any of the county music video channels on cable. Twentysome years ago the Keith Urban and Jack Ingram CDs would have been in the undifferentiated rock section in record stores.

I saw the Hinder record with Lips Of an Angel on it in BestBuy and it was in the rock section. But I was suspicious from the pic that they weren't as good as Jack Ingram or as efficiently rocking and globally tuneful and passed on the spec buy. Are they any good beside the one song?

Bon Jovi's record company, incidentally, bought a full page ad for the album in the LA Times about a month ago. Which is about when I stopped listening to it. Kept subdividing it into tunes I liked, coming up with less and less. And I don't like the Make a Memory thing at all. Mystifyingly, it is lways on the music vid channels

I'm getting thru the 4 discs of Vee-Jay: The Definitive Collection before turning to the new Van Zant and this Tracy Nelson record. The blues stuff I mostly knew on the Vee-Jay is great, Jimmy Reed and Elmore James and Snooky Pryor, but the revelation is how detailed, crazy and just plain experimental many of the doo-wop songs are.

As for the Koch Dale Watson record, Chuck, Watson has pretty much disowned the record, saying he was rushed and he didn't get to pick the material. I interviewed Dale when I was doing my Johnny Bush piece a while back. Apparently, Watson's recording with Lloyd Green (pedal-steel player) and says the result will be what Little Darlin' set out to be.

Country blues: the Moaners' Mississippi-recorded Blackwing Yalobusha, which has its moments of effective post-blues splay, lotsa slide guitars keening over energized bits of slightly dissonant guitar trickery. Not bad, and one song is about Pam Grier as Foxy Brown and another has leader Melissa Swingle extricating the Moaners from a bad gig in a biker bar by "calling up a fake boyfriend."

George, I've only heard one track from the Bon Jovi; I'm wondering how you think the following tracks stack up against the album as a whole: "Lost Highway," "Summertime," "Whole Lot Of Leavin'," "The Last Night," "One Step Closer." Those are the ones co-written by producer John Shanks. I've fingered him as the best melodist of the '00s but that's pretty much for his work with Michelle and Hilary and Ashlee, while his stuff with Bon Jovi and SheDaisy (not to mention Sheryl and Alanis) has generally made me shrug [though I did think the tracks he cowrote on Have A Nice Day were generally better than the others].

Favorite album of the year so far is Aly & A.J.'s Insomniatic, which I'm not claiming is remotely country, but it does have one track (a bonus track, available only if you buy from the right store), "Tears," which sounds very Renaissance Faire - I'm sure I'm using the term inaccurately, but what I mean is that it's got folky droniness (like 2005's great "Rush") but with vocal interaction that frequently makes me think "madrigal" (another word I'm sure I'm using inaccurately).

My top two albs - the Aly & A.J. and the Miranda Lambert - both manage to disappoint me: each is way more consistently good than its predecessor but each seems more generic, somehow. By "generic" I don't mean "ordinary" so much as "uses stock characters and stock situations" - which can be fine, 'cept the earlier albums seemed more touching the more personal they were. This isn't a general rule of course, either that personal is more touching than generic or that the generic can't be made personal (and there's a genre called "singer-songwriter" where you're required to appear personal). But "Charlie" in "Me and Charlie Talking" seemed more real, like someone you might know. Of course I'd say he's a type too, a stock figure, the kid with wanderlust, but Miranda made the relationship between narrator and Charlie feel real, whereas on the new one she seems to be happy to have the roles feel like roles, maybe so that she can go over the top with them. Aly & A.J. seem to go stock so that they can enjoy their own wordplay - like they've decided to be Ira Gershwin, suddenly. Nothing wrong with that, and I'd say that for the Gershwins (not to mention Astaire and Sinatra) their character revealed itself in the execution not the romantic stereotypes they took as a given. But when Aly & A.J. and Miranda go personal (what appears to be personal), the stakes seem higher, and the emotions rise with them.