Rolling Country 2006 Thread

(I'm not even tired; don't know why I'm fucking up all my posts.)

I'll have a longish thing on Blaine Larsen's two records up on Nashville Scene this Wednesday.

Anyone heard Ronnie Milsap's Keith Stegall-produced new one, "My Life"?

I am thinking this Dixie Chick album is very very good--despite being too long, with at least three tracks of blatant filler. What Jeff Lynne song or Tom Petty song or Traveling Wilburys song is the rhythm part for Voices In My Head? And I love the sitarified 12 string or whatever it is. A radio edit--half the songs flirt with the 5 minute mark, more FU to country radio--and pre-incident time travel and it would be one of the best things on Clear Channel.

The banjo on "Lubbuck or Leave It" freaks me out--I swear, Rubin went over every arpeggiated note and cut out anything that didn't work in a modal, Celtic way. It end up sounding like tiny ballpeen hammers dancing angrily, but also teasingly.

or just read the paste peice

longer but also more consitent than the becky hobbs CD i linked to up above:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/beckyhobbs4

which is her best-of.
best song on it: "mama was a working man."

also listening to:

lucky 7, *one way track* (parts of which remind of the blasters, joe king carrasco and the crowns, dave edmunds)

marshall tucker band, *we're going to be here for a while!: live on long island, 4-18-80* (shout! factory)

have not been motivated to listen to these much:
new blaine larsen CD
new trent willmon CD

okay, back to hiding in my cave now.

also, i like the bop-bop-bop pop backing voices in "i like it," and "voice inside my head" sugguests sheryl crow plus tom petty's guitar player (rather than the funkiest song the police ever did.)

(i never got a promo, but when i sold my other promos to my promo-buying guy, he traded me a copy. copies of damone and wolfmother too. damone is real good, especially "out here all night" and "outta my way," the latter of which sounds a lot like "nothing but a good time" by poison except maybe better. wolfmother have been annoying the hell out of me. sometimes their riffs are catchy, but the singer sounds even more like jack white with anorexia than i'd remembered.)

also, bob dylan is a lot better than anthony thinks.

Notify the Pulitzer committees.

xpost

You have a fine fellow in that promo-buying guy. At Amoeba, you just get sneered at which makes the stuff like that latest Spencer Dickinson, which I'm assuming it going to be, useless. Actually, everything I get is useless. I think they plan it that way. The only two things that weren't were bought. The Crash Kelly promo was a beaut, too. In a Radio Shack paper sleeve with their name in magic marker on the CD-R.

You have no idea. He makes HOUSE CALLS. And I get FINDER'S FEES. Now if I only I got more than a fraction of the promos that I was getting in the mail two months ago. (Or even if I got as many as I was getting in the mail eight years ago, before I had a job in the first place.) (But for whatever it's worth, my copy of the Crash Kelly CD was a markered CD-R too. Either way, it's a great album.)

> nothing I'd read about Oakley Hall really gave me the impression I got from listening:"country rock,"<

Yeah, Don, I agree. As much country rock as "freak folk". But do you like anything else on the CD as much as the admittedly Fairported "House Carpenter"? I don't think I do. Maybe the "me and my baby in a knock-down drag" one--I guess that would be "Living In Sin in the USA," maybe? Whatever track #4 is called. And a couple other cuts have a bit of stomp and psych to them, but most of them don't leave much of a lasting impression. I definitely prefer when the girl's singing to when the guy is. What am I missing here?

So that would be the single and "Lubbock or Leave It", right? Or am I missing one?

Is "I Like It" maybe the other rocker? "Lubbock" is really the only one with a faster tempo so I'm not sure (thrilled that it mentions Athens, GA even if it's indirectly dismissive).

I hear a good bit of alt-country throughout, "Not Ready" and "Everybody Knows" both remind me at times of the Jayhawks, not surprising when Louris co-wrote the latter. "I Hope" sounds like something from one of Shelby Lynne's last couple of records, so I imagine Chuck hates it (fwiw, I don't care for it too much either though).

haven't heard the watson yet, though.

So okay, Dixie Chicks. Good album, it turns out. Almost every song (give or take the two dogs to my ears, "Lullaby" and "Easy Silence") kicks in within a couple listens; not very many albums this year (in any genre) you can say that about. My favorites are "The Long Way Around" (not about high school, but life *after* high school) and "I Like It" (Motowny pop-r&b about getting so high ON LIFE you don't ever wanna come down, take that, Axl; also the closest thing to a funky song on the album), followed I guess (though not necessarily in this order) by "Not Ready to Make Nice" (not all THAT angry or THAT much a rocker), "Lubbock or Leav It" (ditto, and inasmuch as it's a rocker it's a genre-piece rocker in the tradition of plenty of lady-sung country rock hits of recent years, with fiddles, and yeah I guess the layered vocals are kinda Fleetwood Mac), "Voice Inside My Head" (aka "The Sheryl Crow Song"), "Baby Hold On" (starts kinda so-what -- and more Shelby-like than the gospel song at the end, I'd say -- but I love the buildup to the climactic complex mesh of vocals). Beyond that (kinda like the latest Pink album, come to think of it; the best songs on that one by the way are easily "Leave Me Alone [I'm Lonely]" and "U + Ur Hand", the latter of which has Pink's most rock *and* most rap vocal; most country song on Pink's album is her sorta Janis-voiced "The One That Got Away," which is nice but'd be better if it had a hook or two), lots of completely pleasant though somewhat forgettable and often wishy-washy midtempo power ballads: "Everybody Knows" has an extremely catchy chorus, it turns out, but fairly boring verses; "Bitter End" should be called "Farewell to Old Friends" and it's just okay; "Silent House" I'm stumped by since Frank seemed intrigued by it above -- more bluegrassy, gets powerchordy, fine, but so?; "Favorite Year," not bad but so?; "So Hard," nice power-ballad buildup I guess; "I Hope," not great but also not horrible as gospel-pop goes, I honestly don't hate it as much as Josh Love predicted I would above, basically it hits me as corny and unconvincing but still lively enough, not just going through the tasteful motions of blowing smoke in the air in a cocktail bar like most recent Shelby does, but again so what? Still, a really listenable album. And mostly not a fuck you to anything.

Overall, I think it's better than Jamey Johnson's record, which I still like a lot--shit, both guys are really fine singers, where they comin' from? Larsen looks too young to be so savvy, and to be flyin' around in a plane...but like I say, I think he's great, smart, and he's doing well, moving to Nashville and building a recording studio in his house, he says. And he's a good guy, put his mom thru school with his advance...

And, Chuck--I got a spare copy of Larsen's first CD that I'd be more than glad to send to ya. E-mail me your address, if you want it...

Yeah, but I wasn't talking about the relative minor. But then again, I have no fucking idea what I was talking about since looking back I don't see where I'm making any sense. Did I mean to write that the key was C-minor (not C-sharp, which it most certainly isn't)? I don't know if it is C-minor though; seems to be one of the things where initially they're suppressing the "mi" not altogether. But they do pass through E-flat (which is the C-minor's relative major, assuming the key is C-minor, which... oh I don't know, this is one reason I gave up as a musician; maybe Ian will return and set me straight), and the quiet pang comes from that E-flat. They also do some nice stuff in sometimes giving you an F and sometimes giving you an F-minor (it that is what they're doing); maybe the word "modulate" is relevant. Damned if I know.

Yeah, I was considering "Not Ready to Make Nice" as the other angry rocker; I'll concede it's something of a slow rocker, but it's a rocker nonetheless, emotionally; ironically enough, it's the sort of slow burner that Trivis Tritt would totally nail. (Wasn't Tritt one of the guys who piled on the Dixie Chicks?)

You guys' referring to the Dixie Chicks as DC always confuses me, since over at Poptimists and related LJ sites DC means one and only one thing, not Dixie Chicks and not District of Columbia but Destiny's Child.

Merle Haggard: There's a lot of difference between the Dixie Chicks and me.

But then, what's new about momma and grandma not liking war? I'll criticize the country audience and say it to them. Grandma didn't like war when Bob Wills was alive. I don't see the shock factor in what the Dixie Chicks did, and it makes me afraid that America thinks that way. You can't even criticize the United States without ruining your credibility. Haven't we gone too far? Doesn't that make you afraid?

They want to wiretap us. They want to listen to all our conversations. How can you find that good? Are we happy to give up these freedoms? Are we happy for people that have to fight all over the world?

The counter decisions that are being made don't seem to be lining up with each other.

Boyd: I want to give you a chance to talk about your new album. There's a lot of duality to "Chicago Wind." You've got this very political side that we've talked about, and then you've also got the side that is just classic Merle - the sweeping ballads, and the barroom singalongs.

Haggard: That's probably what I should do - just sing my songs and not speak my mind.

Boyd: Now why do you say that?

Merle Haggard: I don't feel safe to make my opinions known. I fear of somebody bombing my house.