Rolling country 2007 thread

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.

Tracklist for the 1997 Charlie Rich compilation Feel Like Going Home: The Essential Charlie Rich on Columbia/Legacy:

1 Lonely Weekends Rich 2:07
2 Break Up Rich 2:32
3 Who Will the Next Fool Be? Rich 2:23
4 Sittin' and Thinkin' Rich 3:07
5 There's Another Place I Can't Go Pockriss, Tobias 2:38
6 Let Me Go My Merry Way Rich 2:26
7 River, Stay 'Way from My Door Dixon, Woods 2:45
8 There Won't Be Anymore Rich 2:22
9 Big Boss Man Dixon, Smith 2:33
10 Mohair Sam Frazier 2:06
11 I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water Babcock 2:39
12 A Field of Yellow Daisies Rich 3:04
13 Down and Out Rich 2:15
14 You Can Have Her Cook 2:53
15 No Home Rich 2:34
16 When Something Is Wrong With My Baby Hayes, Porter 2:45
17 The Milky White Way Rich, Sherrill 3:50
18 Feel Like Going Home [demo version] Rich 3:43
19 Set Me Free Putman 2:31
20 Stay Rich 2:15
21 I Almost Lost My Mind Hunter 2:34
22 I Miss You So Henderson, Robin, Scott 2:41
23 Your Place Is Here With Me Rich 3:04
24 Nice 'N' Easy Bergman, Bergman, Spence 3:00
25 Why Oh Why Rich 2:31
26 Don't Put No Headstone on My Grave Rich 2:09
27 Have a Heart Rich 3:05
28 Peace on You Rich 3:57
29 You Never Really Wanted Me Rich, Rich 2:24
30 A Woman Left Lonely Oldham, Penn 3:12
31 Life's Little Ups and Downs Rich 3:36
32 Behind Closed Doors ODell 2:54
33 The Most Beautiful Girl Bourke, Sherrill, Wilson 2:42
34 Since I Fell for You Johnson 3:03
35 Pictures and Paintings Pomus, Rebennack 4:22
36 Feel Like Going Home Rich 4:46

(And the most personal and haunting - and one of the best - on the new Aly & A.J., "Blush," seems to have been removed from the official release, though apparently versions containing "Blush" have made it into stores, so I don't know.)

Jeff W. says "Blush" is on the store versions of Insomniatic but not the iTunes version. He also said that the first thing he thought when he heard "Tears" was of Brit-folk group Prelude.

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.

Of course, in that sentence I'm using the word "personal" generically, in that the personal-seeming lyrics could have been based on experiences and attitudes that the songwriters made up, while the stock characters and stock situations could have been drawn from life.

Back in Queens now, sigh. And the biggest surprise about listening to country radio in the car in Houston over the weekend is that I was liking Houston r&b radio more. Best song on I heard on the country stations (I was listening to two of those) was...I forget. Or I never knew in the first place, since songs never get back-announced these days, but it was a woman singing a bunch of verses in rhythm (almost "rapping" them), and I'm pretty sure "Got" or "Get" or both was in the title, maybe both words. Figured I'd get back here and check the Billboard country singles chart and the airplay chart on Mediabase and the title would jump right out to me, but I'm not finding it; think I've heard it before, though, so maybe it's not new? I realize I'm not giving much to go on. Also heard Sammy Kershaw's calypsofied (mid '90s?) version of the Amazing Rhythm Aces' "Third Rate Romance," and just wanted to note what a awesome song that is -- just really mocking about the sleazy middle-aged one-night-stand it chronicles, but in a really empathetic, non-moralistic way, somehow. Realized I don't know a whole lot about either Kershaw or the Amazing Rhythm Aces (though I think I have some CD collection by the latter in storage), so if anybody wants to school me about either artist, for sure feel free.

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."

the (great) rockabilly-ish stuff for sun in the '50s also doesn't sound anything like the (great) "white soul" (phrase borrowed from john morthland via frank k, above) he cut for smash in the '60s, which doesn't sound anything like the (great) smooth countrypolitan classics he cut for epic in the late '60s and early '70s, which don't sound anything like the (not nearly as great) jazz vocals he cut just before he died.

xp Beyond those songs, though, the country stations were kind of drag. I heard Paisley's silly Weird Al imitation "Online" a few times, and it was okay. Aldean's "Johnny Cash" kicked hard; "Teardrops on My Guitar" never sounded as good as folks on the teen-pop thread, especially Frank, say it is. The new-(ish?) Trisha Yearwood single about "Heaven Something" has a decent gospel element to it. But mostly the stations were playing mushy stuff by guys.

(Wait, Mediabase says "Different World" is by Bucky Covington? Is that the cornball nostalgia one about how there used to be only three TV stations and you had to get up to turn the channel and you just had your friends and they were outside and when the word "satellite" comes in the voice saying it has some kind of cool Telstar sound effect, like something ELO would do? I thought that was Tim McGraw! Or did Bucky cover it? Or is this a different "Different World" Or am I wrong about Tim doing it? Anyway, I like the one I'm thinking of.)

Meanwhile, the r&b station had "A Bay Bay" and "Party Like A Rockstar" and "Same Girl" and "Pop Lock and Drop It" and "Beautiful Girls" and that one about "your weave ain't like your hair" (is the Nina a/k/a P by the Pound? whoever, it cracked me up) and the one I LOVE that starts out like Trouble Funk doing this super-propulsive D.C. go-go chant that goes something like "got my ring on bitches I be wrestlin'" (though I'm probably totally getting the words wrong) and that that girl rapper comes in and starts saying "get up get up pick up pick up" with a slightly dancehall-inspired cadence though I'm pretty sure she's not Jamaican. Who does that one? Gorilla Zoe, maybe? Lil Boosie?? Hell if I know. Either way, I was cranking it loud every time.

Yeah, google says this is Bucky. He sure does sing like Tim though (which is a compilment, by the way):

We were born to mothers who smoked and drank
Our cribs were covered in lead-based paint
No childproof lids
No seatbelts in cars
Rode bikes with no helmets
and still here we are
Still here we are

We got daddy's belt when we misbehaved
Had three TV channels you got up to change
No video games and no satellite
All we had were friends and they were outside
Playing outside

I don't think that go-go-into-girl-rap song is Lil Boosie or Gorilla Zoe, though, judging from google searches. Maybe it's some local Houston hit? Hmmm. But I'm fairly clueless about r&b hits these days, so it could just as well be huge and national. (Not that it has anything to do with country either way.)

(It should also be noted here that I don't have the foggiest idea who either Gorilla Zoe or Lil Boosie are, or what they sound like. I mainly just looked at the r&b chart, and liked their names. As for the song that probably isn't them, the Trouble Funk song its obsessively repeated-several-times deep voice chant reminds me of is "Hey Fellas," if that helps.)

Meanwhile, back in country album land, I've been enjoying the Halfway to Hazard album (due out soon on Mercury}. Favorite track so far is "Die By My Own Hand," which has a dark but uplifting melody and pick-up to it that reminds me of some early '70s AM radio soft-rock hit that I can't yet pinpoint, but that probably rocked despite its soft-rockingness. (The mushy single, "Daisy," is one of the cuts I like least so far. "Cold," "Country Til the Day We Die," "Burn It Down," "Welcome To Nashville" have been sounding good. The latter's a novelty tune, with Eddie Rabbit via Big N Rich-style talk parts about how Nashville is bad for music and forces everything into a three-minute single--you know the drill. "Cold" is gloomy and concerns arson, albeit metaphorically. "Country Til the Day We Die" has big powerchords slightly reminiscent of "My Sharona.")

(Er, "Burn It Down," not "Cold," is actually the gloomy arson one. Which could perhaps have been easily inferred from their respective titles, duh.)

Actually (not sure if I got this point across), there's something smug about "Welcome to Nashville" that bugs me -- it's not half as funny or edgy as it pretends to be, and it feels like they're patting themselves on the back. Seems like the kind of complaint that could have come from by some semi- energetic alt-country band who'd never get played on country stations -- Bottle Rockets fans might like it, but the Rockets might be less hacklike about it.

On the other hand, the adjectives I'm using to describe "Die By My Own Hand" aren't doing it justice. Doesn't seem to deal with suicide, per se', despite the title's implication, but the undercurrent's there, more in the world-weary sound than in the lyrics. Right now I'd slot it somewhere in the general neighborhood of Glen Campbell or Gordon Lightfoot, but there are certainly more fleeting early '70s antecedents its melody mirrors -- Vanity Fare? Five-Man Electrical Band? Nah, not them, but somebody who got played around when they did, maybe.

And oh yeah, Halfway to Hazard (who may or may not do a song actually about Hazard -- they should have covered the great Richard Marx one, they'd have done a good job!) are a duo not a self-contained band, by the way, and they're clearly shooting for a Montgomery Gentry real-men-standing-our-ground 'tude and crowd, and they pull it off really well. The single "Daisy" actually sounds better the more I hear it: good Southern rock buildup to an implied gospel climax where everything but the singing and drumming falls out. And the lady background vocals at the end of "Burn it Down" make the gospel/soul climax stuff explicit, which is very MG too. "I'm Tired" is about this old heart of the singer having seen better days, and has some Black Crowes in its chug. "Got Back Up" -- which has a bar fight with somebody who's bullying a woman in the first verse, a coal miner whose back gives out and he winds up in a wheelchair in the second verse, and the singer talking about when he's dead and buried in the final verse, where the musical atmospherics get twinkly and almost prog-rockish -- is macho winners-never-quit stuff, stodgy and proud. I like these guys.

Influences listed on their myspace page: "Bad Co., The Eagles, Hank Williams Jr., Garth Brooks, Foreigner, Dwight Yoakam, Travis Tritt, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Stone Temple Pilots, Aerosmith, ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin, The Black Crowes, George Jones, Live, Jude Cole, Ozzy, Charlie Daniels, Merle Haggard, Foo Fighters, Steve Earl, Lenny Kravitz, Cash, GNR, Soundgarden, Keith Whitley, Little River Band, Alabama, Pink Floyd, Kris Kristofferson, Whitesnake, SRV, George Strait, Poison, Brooks and Dunn, and Bryan Adams."

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=31252798

I finally got the forthcoming Bettye Lavette w/ DBTs album. First listen = Holy shit this is good.

Yeah, Edd was telling me how good that is, and the Truckers turned out to be a good backing band on Jason's album too. Heard an interview with her on American Routes, I think it was, several months ago, and she made a point (no brag, just fact) of establishing that she is one blues(in the Post-WWII Southern sense, which includes Southern and downhome-sounding R&B)singer who never did sing gospel. Her parents' living room sometimes paid rent as a club, licensed or otherwise, and maybe have been certain other social activities; anyway, when she customizes her covers, she's coming from pretty much the opposite direction of Blind Boys Of Alabama (when they discreetly sanctify Dylan, Stones, Waits etc) Haven't heard the whole Aly & AJ,though I like what I've heard but although the Gershwins weren't mainly performers (not that George's restored piano rolls and rediscovered live radio shows aren't frequently amazing), even their midlevel stuff tend to leave Aly & AJ behind (unless, say, Fred Astaire is trying to sing their stuff, or a bunch of retro-come-latelys--but even so, Gershwin songs often seem performer-proof, basically, long as the notes are basically, you know,hit). But George prob shouldn't've bothered with Rhapsody In Blue etc, especially since he ran out of time, so I hope Aly & AJ will wait til they're rich old farts like Paul McCartney before they go so "legitimate." (That track list pretty much is The Essential Charlie Rich indeed! Wonder if Margaret Rich is still around? She co-wrote many of his best.)

xpost Chuck
I wrote on here a while back about how much I hate that Bucky Covington single. The rockers on his album are good though, and "American Friday Night" is one of my favorite songs of the year.

Also, re:"Tough" by Craig Morgan. Salon.com had a story a month or so back about the trend of "Cancer Country." Kind of interesting though the writer seemed to prefer "Tough" to "Live Like You Were Dying" purely on the grounds that the McGraw song might make a sick person who isn't up to go blah blah point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu feel like a loser.

Other than some decorative twangy guitar on "Who Says," I've not heard anything close to country out of Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana - that is until "See You Again," which is head, shoulders, and torso above anything else she's ever recorded. A disco-ball arrangement of rockabilly menace music* (that is, closer to Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Chris Isaak than to Elvis and Jerry Lee), doomy reverb, except the lyrics are all sweet girl crush, Miley anxiously but optimistically falling in love! And there's this great bright thwomp-thwomp-thwomp disco pop chorus about being shy and tongue-tied, though with a promise of better things to come: "The next time we hang out/I will redeem myself."

*The tune reminds me of "Bad Things" from last year's Jace Everett alb, though the style is standard enough that I should be able to think of fifty better-known examples, 'cept my memory is Swiss cheese today.

The site's probably a fake, but right now "See You Again" is the second song posted on this MySpace.

More Halfway to Hazard notes (partly clearing up some misconceptions I conveyed earlier):

1. They actually do mention Hazard (and being halfway to there), in the first line of "Cold."
2. The climax of "Daisy" is not just vocals and vocals; sounds like there's light guitar strumming and an organ in there, too. It's soulful.
3. "Welcome To Nashville" is better than I said above, and probably also better than most songs that I've heard by the Bottle Rockets, even if parts of it do make me wince. Really, what it is, is funny/cynical warning about the music industry, in the tradition of "Don't Call Us We'll Call You" by Sugarloaf (though not nearly that good, or funny, admittedly.) Has an excellent list of cities and Canadian provinces that they suggest you stay in and play your local bar because you'll make more money there than if you transfer to Nasvhille, which is a city full of soft-rock wannabees, they say, not to mention a city where the suits will dress you up in panty hose and force you to play free shows. Etc.
4. "Devil and the Cross" is their obligatory between raising hell and amazing grace themed number.
5. First line of the great "Die By My Own Hand" refers to sex in the city; rest of the song has the singer taking responsibility for his own fuckups.
6. "Countrified" is a good, kicking, funky Southen rock opener, with some pretty decent howling in it.

(not just vocals and drums in the start of "Cold," I meant.) (Though yeah, not just vocals and vocals either, I guess.)

Also, fwiw, the label their album is being released on is not Mercury, per se', but rather Stylesonic, which is Tim McGraw's new imprint, on which the new Lori McKenna album is also being released.

(not just vocals and drums in the start of "Cold," I meant.)

No, I meant at the start of "Daisy." Guess I hadn't woken up yet.

(hey xhuxx,Frank did those re-sent Lady Tigra links work?) Listening to Peggy Young on Fresh Air now, anybody heard her album? Without knowing who she was, saw and fairly well liked her on TV recently (thinking she sounded and looked like Gayle Garnett, whose finally-legit-reissued Sausolito Helioport Edd and I were discussing on here). Got that mid-60s somewhut dreamy country-folk-pop thing going on (comparableto the Gayle I've heard, which doesn't incl Sausolito), like a Glenn Campbell times Jimmy Webb thing too, and the song, which I think is called "That's How Much I'll Be Loving You," is by Spooner Oldham, she's saying now, and I think he was involved in production--which also may be why it seems a little too reverent re its own sensitivity (background singers come in, overselling): one of his lesser-known, and deservedly so, but basically she pulls it off, which is impressive, and now she's singing another that adds country sitar to a boxcar snare, "Who hasn't felt 'You'll come back to me'.."

(Don, got the Tigra links [got the original PR email] but haven't followed 'em yet. Was disappointed by her single from several months back - Lil Mama's "Lip Gloss" totally crushes it as a novelty hip-hop track - though recall liking stuff on her MySpace a bit more.)

Continuing to listen to Peggy Young on Fresh Air, while Terry Gross adeptly led the show between music and conversation about family medical problems, and dealing with them: Ben's cerebral palsy, the rise of The Bridge School; Neil's aneuryism and the album he made, while waiting for the operation that might repair it, impair or kill him--was glad that non-tearjerky narrative was unfolding when I got the call that my aunt had just died. She was a hell of a musician, much-honored teacher too.

"aneurysm." A good book about that experience (and the way all sorts of wild journalistic and off-screen experiences lead up to and away from the present waiting room) is Jimmy Breslin's I Want To Thank My Brain For Remembering Me.

Re to Frank upstream: "Lost Highway" is the only song that still sticks in my head of the Shanks contributions. Some line about "...plastic dashboard jesus, hey, hey!" Then the fiddles come in. "Summertime" was just annoying. "Sum-sum-summertime!" You go, guy!

Don, sorry to hear about your aunt.

Anyone know anything about Candie Payne? Young singer from Liverpool. I've heard one song, "By Tomorrow," which is a song with great heart. It could be 1967, white soul going psychedelic while still having that sweet '60s pop pang, "The Beat Goes On" by someone with a nicer voice than Cher's. But of course in 1967 no one was creating this particular combination, and the drums wouldn't have been so prominent. Not that this song is as good as "The Beat Goes On." But I'm impressed how Payne carries a track loaded with a whole lot of stuff. Also, "Candie Payne" is a great soul name.

OK, I'm now listening to the tracks on her MySpace, and I recognize "I Wish," and on that one and on the other three MySpace tracks her singing is as winsome as on "By Tomorrow," but now I'm getting really irritated by the arrangements, all the sound her voice has to compete with. It's a great voice; thin, actually, but the thinness helps it to cut through. I think the "neo"-ness is a trap for her, as it is for lots of people. She sounds a bit lost in the overall sound. Lost in the world. Worth paying attention to, however.

Got ahold of the Confederate Railroad all-covers album from earlier this year (on once-upon-a-time reggae/world/roots label Shanachie, just like Daryl Singletary's almost-all-covers-album from earlier this year), and a few cuts seem like your usual fulfilling-the-label-mandate-so-we-can-make-mortgage-payments slackadaisical perfunction, but I wound up liking a surprising amount of a lot of it, esp. when the band lets themselves gets jazzy, in the ragtime minstrelled Billy Joe Shaver song "Honky Tonk Heroes" (better than CRR's version of his oft-covered "Georgia On A Fast Train") and in Lynyrd Skynyrd's "I Know A Little," which in this rendition anyway (I need to go back and check the original) starts out sounding like Glen Miller just like Charlie Daniels's "The South's Gonna Do It Again" does. But the CDB song Confederate RR do instead is "Trudy," which is also really jazzy, but more in a funk way. Also really like "Hard Livin" (by D. Halley, it says, but didn't Joe Ely do a version of this once?), "Whiskey On Ice" (by Hank Jr -- goes with women on fire by the way), and Dave Loggin's eternal "Please Come To Boston," which always knocks me out no matter who does it, though I guess I never really got before (since maybe I never really paid close attention before) that the ramblin' boy who won't settle down in the song keeps moving around (to Boston, Denver, L.A.), and his number one fan gal is back in Tennesse, begging him to return there, instead -- right? But how is there gold in Tennesee? (As in "there ain't no gold and there ain't nobody like me"?) Not sure I get that part. (Er...gold for country singers in Nashville??) Also, did Dave Loggins ever write any other songs anywhere near that good? I've got his 1972 LP Personal Belongings on vinyl, and it's fairly moving in a sensitive lonesome '70s post-hippie beautiful loser bachelor moved to the mountains and living off the land and feeling sorry for himself singer-songwriter kind of way (not remotely country, I wouldn't say), but there's nothing else on "Boston"'s level on it.

Also spent lots of time the past couple weeks with Tommy Conwell's 2-albums-on-one-CD reissue Rumble/Guitar Trouble on American Beat, and if Jack Ingram can count as country now by sounding like Bryan Adams, then I guess Tommy Conwell can count as country by now too, right? I'm pretty sure George has plugged Philly guy Tommy's Guitar Trouble before; I might be wrong, though, and I'd say Rumble (with "Half A Heart," hard rockabillified "Workout," very Bryan-like "Everything They Say Is True", "Tell Me What You Want Me To Be," maybe "Walk on Water") has more songs on it that I really like a lot than GT (with the sorta rockabillified "Nice N Naughty," Good Love Gone Bad" which sounds like Bryan Adams trying to be Bad Company, plus the great "I'm Seventeen," which I put on my Pazz & Jop singles ballot the year it came out and could still count as my favorite Replacements song since 1985 if you want to count it as one). No songs about Hazard, but Robert Hazard (wasn't he connected with the Hooters in some way?) has two partial songwriting credits on the CD, as does Jules Shear, who some powerpop nuts mysteriously consider a great songwriter (wait, did both he and Hazard also write early Cyndi Lauper hits maybe? Or am I totally confused?), but I've never really understood Jules's appeal after the second Jules and the Polar Bears album in 1979 or so (which probably wasn't as good as their debut LP).

(ps: I'm pretty sure that Robert Sheffield once pointed out in print that, while Richard Marx once wrote a song about Hazard, Robert Hazard never wrote a song about Marx.)

(And actually, maybe Dave Loggins's LP and his one huge hit were sort of sonically country. What I meant was that I don't imagine anybody considered them country at the time, though I could be wrong.)

So at my aunt's funeral, an African-American-sounding (words maybe filtered through the 18th/early 19th Centuries hymnists? but "arr. Alice Parker")"Come Away To The Skies: "Come away to the skies, my beloved arise, and rejoice in the day thou wast born." "Wast"? Never heard that , or any of it before, amazing (and graceful, yes). She, once called "the Dolly Parton of classical and Baptist music," in B'ham, anyway, was remembered by the preacher, who's also a musician: "She played forte. One member complained, and she asked what she should do. I said, 'TURN IT UP.'"

as does Jules Shear, who some powerpop nuts mysteriously consider a great songwriter (wait, did both he and Hazard also write early Cyndi Lauper hits maybe? Or am I totally confused?), but I've never really understood Jules's appeal after the second Jules and the Polar Bears album in 1979 or so (which probably wasn't as good as their debut LP).

i've never liked any of jules' albums, with the possible exception of an acoustic disc he did with marty willson-piper, and it's been decades since he had even an ounce of power-pop in him, if he ever did, but he has written a handful of great songs, almost all of which sounded better in other people's hands tommy conwell was the first to record his "if we never meet again," i believe, and cyndi lauper made way more of a song out of his "all through the night" than jules himself ever did.

Conwell was hot stuff in southeastern PA when I was there. Saw him quite a few times promoting Rumble which was essentially a major label redo of an independent LP put out by his management a couple years earlier. Same songs, produced by Robert Hazard and Fran Smith of the Hooters. Conwell's management hoped the same thing would happen for him but it never quite happened.

The album did OK. "Half a Heart" was my favorite from it. "Everything They Say is True," maybe second. Hazard, the Hooters and Conwell were all managed by Steve Mountain. He ran the three Cabarets in the Philly burbs. Are they still in existence?

As for the more frenetic songs on the LP, like "Workout" and "Walking on Water," they never did as much for me as the ones mentioned earlier, which were cowritten by either Hazard, one of the Hooters, or someone named Marcy Rauer.

Columbia kind of silly-fied his and the band's image. Last time I saw Tommy Conwell was as an opener for George Thorogood at the Spectrum. He was wearing a raccoon or fox tail, ala Ted Nugent ca. Tooth, Fang & Claw.

CMT had three hours of concert from Summerfest in Minneapolis. Rather, they had one hour of commercials, and two hours of show from Sara Evans, Sugarland and Big & Rich. On balance, I'd have to say Sugarland was the best. Jennifer Nettles just has THE voice. She has a powerful notch she works relentlessly off all the lyrical ahs and I's (which turn into ahs). I liked the current single more watching them do it than attached to the fruity video of her and Christian riding carts in the supermarket.

Big & Rich didn't devote any time to country, except for the wedding song, which I thought was pretty amusing for CMT. They even did "Loud." It made them come off like a heavier version of the Steve Miller Band, that is if Steve had something like "Rollin'" to close the show, as opposed to "Jet Airliner." Rich loves to riff on his Flying V.

CMT must be the most annoying network on cable. Not only do they sometimes do almost as commercial time as actual broadcast, the reality shows are the worst. One had this 400 lb. truck driver set up on a blind date with a 250-lb. matron. Fifteen minutes of them loathing each other, riding in his semi, eating at the local diner and then going to the pool hall, a true spoiler of your mood. Yesterday, a home video of a fat guy playing hoops with a bowling ball. I'd make foreign students watch it if they wanted to get an idea about why it was so easy for the US to charge into Iraq and blow the war on terror, only it makes us look even worse than things actually are. Outside of the music, it's easily the most disgraceful TV I've seen this year, insulting to a lot of the artists they play, if only by association.

Summerfest is Milwaukee, not Minneapolis. Just so you know.

Robert Hazard wrote "Girls Just Want To Have Fun." Saw him prancing around the stage, singing it in a Robert Goulet baritone, on that mid- 80s show, The Hot Spot (The USA Network, looking to go prime time, past their late night success with New Wave Theatre, Snub, etc--younger people think I'm hallucinating when I say the USA Network used to flaunt such, but they did, before they went to an all-shit-movies format; they've had a few good country concert specials in relatively recent years, like the stage version of the ZZ Top trib album I reviewed in Voice, and Willie& his armies of Friends) Anyway, The Hot Spot just set up shop in various cities for a week at a time, filmed the hottest local acts, mostly (guess Hazard was hot hypewise, and Gorge indicates). The Hooters, at that point(at least on that night), were this awesomely, offhandedly perfect mod-pubrock-reggae act, melodicas, fake Small Faces accents, rooster haircuts and all. Also the band Dick Tracy, which Maria Tessa finally got me some info, via one of her friends; they were hot New Wave, as much as that's possible, but no other Philadelphian has ever known who I was talking about.(They didn't record much.)

Ha, I remember Dick Tracy -- they really blew.

A guy who was a grad student in chemistry at Lehigh while I was there managed a bunch of Philly bands on the side. Dick Tracy was one of them. He also did Quincy -- a band in the same vein who had one major label record, also awful. And Johnny's Dance Band, who were good but essentially over by the time Hazard and the Hooters established themseles although both had been around for years.

I used to have a tape of a Hooters concert at Stabler Arena. My ex-wife recorded it with a lecture cassette recorder hidden in a pocket. It was good a laugh or two because for a short period of time the Hooters had a kind of Beatlemania-esque fanbase of thirteen year old girls. They sold out venues and drowned out the band with their uncontrollable mass shrieking and that's all about you could hear on the cassette made at Stabler.

There was a type of Philly bar band sound and style which I only liked intermittently. It was changeable and trendy. Part of it was you had to write songs which appealed to the girls who came out to the Cabarets. The Hooters and Hazard were a big part of it. The A's were also big locally. Saw them quite a few times and they recorded two decent LPs and one not-so-decent EP, I think. Never caught on outside the southern PA/New Jersey shore circuit.

One you might like: Handful, by Betty. 1971, from Sierre Madre ("Lee Marks appears courtesy the U.S. Forest Service") Forced Ex/Shadoks press sheet calls it "hard psychedelic boogie biker rock," but seems like, with crusty vocals and frequently fuzzy guitars *plus* bouncey bass, drums, guesting keybs (fuzz with organ is good), it's--biker pop? was there such a thing? Reminds me of Ronnie Van Zant saying "We're more commercial than the Allmans," and these guys are like second- or third-tier in that direction, also maybe (more)like when the Doobies were reportedly biker mascots early on. Fairly uneven, esp. considering the whole thing's only 34 minutes, but I especially like "Good mornin', how do you do, I'm lookin for a man runs a sawmill, name of Harley Perdoo." The victim of bill collectors turns the tables: "He's gonna know how it feels to get paid." But what could really make this a forerunner of current old-rock-as-mainstream-country is the last track, "Lights Gonna Shine," where they finally let guitarist Mike McMahon sing ("Everything is cyclin'"), in the kind of baritone that's usually over- and underdone simultaneously. (His name seems familiar...)

Lots of records to hear, not enough money or inclination. Chris Goes immediately ripped it off onto the Internet which must bug Shadoks mightily. I'm surprised even bother's to rerelease these LPs on their own dime, things being what they are. There can't be much of a following for the Betty's of the world and when someone immediately puts the entire LP up for download....eesh.