Rolling Country 2006 Thread

watching young by chesney on cmt this morning, i figured out chesneys sexuality, its entirely about himself, and nostalgia. i dont know the word for it, but im pretty sure kennys now ideal sexual partner is kenny at 18.

onanopostpedo? Has he ever sung about actually being horny, though? "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy," but what does he think? Great great video, but the girl's doing all the w-o-r-k, slinking down the cabbage rows climbing up to git him, grabbing, twisting,unbuckling, starting to unzip him. He's exultant, but is it just the attention? Anyway, he doesn't touch her, or look like he wants to. Maybe he'll do dairy when the camera stops, but meanwhile, total boytoy bottom! (If Mary Gaitskill can tell the convincing story of a femme top,they is *he* macho enough to be a butch bottom? Would you please ask her, Frank?) Also, I really like "Anything But Mine," cos finally his nostalgia is for something recent, and for something more interesting than standing around in his high school parking lot etc. But the song, though done cool, is really more bout he's satisfied cos he put his mark/logo(not brand, that would be too hotte) on her, not that he had such a great time doing it.

thats what im saying, his work really is this obsessive, preening, masculinity, that seems to be above sex, or at least sex with the past...not quite safe but that whole point, of pleasure adn desire, being not connected to bodies but some arcadian construction of space adn time strikes me as the key to his success...

or to put it another way, people want to fuck him but he doesnt want to fuck anyone, (but his desire not to fuck anyone isnt that elegant glacial, refusal, because that being in sixth gear schitck is, in addition to homosocalism, drinking, etc)

there was always a sublimated homoeroticism to the frat boy nonesense, but i never got anything sublimated in chesney...

that said every major male country performer has more of that beatlemania, audience/performer sexual frisson then chesney.

i dont think hes a bottom boy, and i dont think hes butch, i think that he is a really slippery sexual signifer, the binaries we use to talk about people (audience/performer, gay/straight, butch/femme, top/bottom) all fall down around kenny boy.

(how would he be in bed?)

and where would i send this essay if i was to write it

Maybe The Essay section of Village Voice? Yeah, I guess plenty of performers are basically collections of sexual signifiers, real museum pieces and piece museums (mooseyummms), but you could say that about any sex symbol who doesn't happen to turn you on, but he doesn't even pretend to have the hots. (Does he? I know he's done love songs, and maybe there's songs about his desire on the albums, but can't think of any singles, which are his main thing). And doing a convincing job of being horny usually seems a wise policy if you're a sex symbol (unless your charisma comes from not coming, from being the ICE QUEEN, but can't think of any examples.) Prince and Madonna were (still are, maybe?)usually good examples of balancing the Apollonian and Dionysian, or however you want to put that.

New Times killed The Essay at the Voice. It don't exist. Alles kaput. Gone. They came, they saw, they conquered.

My friend Cat says that Buffett's image is not Bohemia but rather Drunken Lout.

(Not that the two need be mutually exclusive.)

see jack kerouac

In the 70s, he could be a pretty good singer-songwriter,and xpost journalistic training may've helped, with the introspective-to-observational ballads x cute 'n' clever party singalongs ("Margaritaville" pretty good observational singalong, "old men in tanktops, bermudas and black socks" and all). Like for instance Jerry Jeff Walker, who says he introduced JB to Key West. Nowadays also writes fiction, I think it's supposed to be like that of his friend Tom Robbins, of Even Cowgirls etc (also a 70s thing, mainly)

those links are the best, xhuxk. if you read this after elope-ment, my best wishes; and I wish I could think of a great present to send; I hope my good thoughts are worth something...

I'm doing stuff on Trent Willmon and the Duhks for the Scene, so I hope I'm getting their back catalog, which I gave away to a friend who's way into them and the Mammals and that sort of neograss.

I've talked to Friskics-Warren about the country singles book, and I think he'd admit that those '80s acts are problematic, in there. And Bill's a socially relevant kind of writer; it's not my take on country in some ways, but it's a really useful book. The thing is, there are probably 1000 country singles that are pretty great and essential.

hey Anthony, I got some tomatoes came in, want me to mail you a box of 'em? I am contemplating a crisp, tart BLT today. seriously, Anthony, ain't got the Bennett yet; seems like it takes a while thru customs and so forth.

and got the Rhino Willie Atlantic set; that is music I'm barely familiar with. Xgau rates "Phases and Stages" and "Shotgun" pretty high; so I guess I'll delve into it. I'm a nominal Willie Nelson fan; when he's on, he's on; I like what he tries to do; and even when I saw him as a guest star on "Monk," one of the few TV shows I really try to watch (still trying to decide if I think Traylor Howard is a better sidekick than Bitty Schram, the latter I found kinda sexy, OK, but Traylor has really grown on me), his offhand timing seems to me the whole point, the way his guitar phrases in between his vocals. I guess I wish it were more defined, a bit crazier, or something.

But I am a sucker for singers going to Alabama and sharing a joint with Jerry Wexler in the Tuscumbia Holiday Inn, so I got it up to play.

And I got the new Howard Tate record--his takes on Newman's "Louisiana 1927" and "I'll Be Home" are amazing. We'll see if he actually finds a label or if it's totally self-released. But it's a remarkable piece of work, and actually a song suite, and takes some work to listen to--more work than Joe Henry generally requires, and to my ears far more sophisticated.

can you mail a box of tomatos, without brusing and the like?

and i ahe no idea where the bennett went, i ahve had so much trouble with the post, i sent something to brooklyn a month ago, and it was sent back, though the address was correct. apparently the building didnt exist according to canada post. i wonder if i am on some government watch lsit. (i feel bad, but scouts honour, i sent that cd)

edd otm about bitty schram; traylor howard's hot too, but BITTY SCHRAM

also has everyone given up on los lonely boys? new album dont seem too horrible

Haiku, try to find Los Lonely Boys with Ronnie Milsap on CNT's "Crossroads," it may not be on youtube, since they've gotten wussier about copyright, but should be around somewhere, or check the series listings on cmt.com, they'll re-run it sometime, maybe soon, with the new LLB album. I never would've thought of putting those artists together, or of the connections that were in fact made.They weren't so hot on "Austin City Limits," a bad sign, since that's an artist/music-hospitable show, but were good with Willie (who introduced them as "The Los Lonely Boys," unless it was "The Lost Lonely Boys, " but he should know better, since he met 'em a long time ago, and provided free studio time), on his "Outlaws And Angels" USA Network special (they also did a concert version of the ZZ Top trib lineup, the orig studio CD of which I reviewed in the Voice, one of my best ever,"Sharp Blessed Men": title re it was also a Charlie Daniels roundup, with a contrast in artist's POVs I should've made a little more explicit, and will, someday)(orig point of paren: USA does like this and they do xpost "Monk," and that's it, quality-wise! Although they had "New Wave Theatre" and "Snub" and Lower East Side local access cable shows like "American Dancestand," back in the early 80s) Willie and the Boys did "Cisco Kid," he played this brittle single-sing solo, good contrast is his thing in guest shots, and some of his own tracks, where the seemingly off-hand thing can signify pretty effectively, at times (of course, he can be pretty uneven,recording alll those albums). My CharLoaf feature about him will be up Wednesday, hopefully not much different than the dutifully revised version (but what the hell, the blogvaganza will unroll some day, probably). Didn't get the Complete Atlantic (which is mistitled, because The Troublemaker was also recorded for Atlantic, but their country section folded, and it came out on Columbia; his daughter Susie Nelson's Heartworn Memories tells like that, anyway). Also most of that live disc already came out on a previous Rhino Willie. But I did say some stuff about Phases And Stages, which is still one of his best.

so don, charloaf is about willie? but not about the atlantic sessions?

and anthony, you know I'm pullin' your leg. about the tomatoes. man, this guy hit me in the head with some tomatoes! it hurt! shit, that don't sound like it would hurt so much. yeah, but them tomatoes was in a can.

and the bennett, anthony, it'll arrive; gotta go thru customs. no sweat.

man, just tired, kinda seeing everything thru a haze of exhaustion, as my mother enters into what are probably her final weeks if not days. gotta recharge, but it's gonna take awhile. i'm so behind on what I want and need to listen to, not behind on work, and it's real hard to concentrate. tomorrow I'm taking the time to make real good notes on Trent Willmon--doesn't he have a previous record, has anyone heard it?

and yeah, Bitty Schram--she looked like she had a past, one sexy woman. I was kinda hoping Monk and Traylor might, eh, make it, but that's too much to ask in that or any world. Sex is so dirty.

Revising earlier opinion about Chris Knight record: it's really great, actually, just handicapped by two of the worst songs being in the first five. Good detail writing, angry eco-populism, Mellencamp spunk with a Springsteen voice, all-around goodness.

Also this Los Lonely Boys album is pretty countrified in many places and (despite the fact that they cannot write any kind of lyrics really) I like it. Nice vocal cameos from father Enrique Sr. and Willie on "Outlaws".

re xpost Uncle Willie introducing them onstage as "The Los Lonely Boys," CNN newscrawl ditto this weekend,reporting that bass player got busted for pot, and some kind of rowdiness, in Texas, so uh-oh. Speaking of the Mammals and Duhks (whose first album has been reissued), anybody who likes any of that might also like Solas' Reunion Live (members of all lineups ever, grooving seamlessly, and not just jamming).Closer to Bo Diddley, or at least Moe Tucker (vocals too, frequently enough), than to Riverdance. Although they are Irish folkies, and no mistake. I be writing a preview, re their appearance at Dublin OH's Irish Music Festival, for Columbus OH's Independent UWeekly (ILM's own Brian O'Neill is arts editor). Hang in there, Edd.

I was sparked by Fred’s VV piece about “Taking the Long Way Home” to consider the Chicks’ positioning within their genre and with their audience.

Which--at first weirdly--led me to think of the story of Dr. Winifred ‘Fred’ Burkle, the cute/brilliant physicist of Tim Minear and Joss Whedon’s ANGEL.

When we meet her, Fred, the daughter of a stable, middle class Texas family, has been trapped in a ‘demon dimension’ for five years, basically living as a slave to some horrid creatures. Angel aka The Heroic Vampire with a Soul, saves her from this nasty fate, and takes her back to LA, where she joins his investigative squad--which is also benefitting from/being corrupted by a transdimensional Evil Corporate Law Firm.

Anyway--Fred gets home. The firs thing she does?

Puts up a Dixie Chicks poster, which clearly gives her great pleasure.

When Fred thumb-tacked that poster of the Chicks on the wall as a way to imprint her identity on this blank new space, I went “Yes!” instinctively. It was such a great meta moment, was true to Fred the character and illuminating about both the Chicks and their fans.

Fred’s a little ‘country’ (the Texas accent, ‘good’ manners, etc.) and more than a little urban (her exemplary professionalism and don’t-fuck-with-me asskickiness when pushed) and because she’s both, she’d kind of neither--which is where the Dixie Chicks themselves find themselves on this CD--and hence Fred fitting both in metaphorical and dramaturgical terms in into an absurdist milieu that includes such other square pegs as a good-demon karaoke telepath, vampire-with-a-soul, both IS the Dixie Chicks--the cute/non-submissive sexuality

There’s a series of identity negations in Fred and the Dixie Chicks and their fans that creates a kind of amazing and delightful sense of being--like Fred--’outsiders’ deep inside a multimillion-dollar mass enterprise. But that this negation informs all of this is also kind of depressing and kind of accurate. That to be Fred/The Dixie Chicks, that is, to import all the humane stuff of country--the tales of suffering and (usually too neat) triumph, the super-pretty harmonies, the sense of smart and kindness--which runs against the Toby Keith-ian vein of ego-drunk bellicosity--you end up in this new nowhere land populated by tons of people.

And so it makes poetic sense that, as Frank pointed out, the new Chicks CD is both terrific and a bit of a letdown--because, in my take, it IS a letdown that these things can’t as yet be fused into one coherent whole.

decided on the road last week that trent willmon's new album is pretty great after all, a lot better than ronnie milsap's new album, which isn't nearly as great as i thought it was (though its best track "somewhere dry" still is.) outside of "surprise" (which i love for the wife-swapping at least as much as for the bondage), my favorites on the trent LP turn out to probably be "on again tonight" (that's the single, right?), which is basically about breakup sex, and "ropin' pen," which i don't totally follow but appears to be about a place where there's horses and all the men hang out there on friday after work as if were a bar. weirdest song on the willmon might be "a night in the ground," which recommends that everybody gets buried alive at least once. also i noticed that, in "good one comin' on," trent listens to ray willie hubbard, who i don't know if i've ever heard; (so wait, did he have the HIT with "redneck mother"? did anybody else? if not, I MUST have heard him...) anyway, right now i think i'd take the willmon album over either jake owen or randy rogers, both of which i still like a lot, but not over the new rodney atkins, best song on which (possibly the REAL country song of the year) is "cleaning this gun (come on in boy)," about waiting for a boy to bring your teenage daughter back from a date at 10 pm nope 9:30 pm like you told him he better (best song ever about being the dad of a dating teenage daughter, probably), followed i think by "these are my people" (which has great small-town-loser specifics), "in the middle" (as in the middle of tennessee and the middle of nowhere, with tons of names of small towns on the signs on the way home to prove it), and the surprsingly great divorce-with-kids-involved song "angel's hands" (surprising at least in part because of its icky title), with "a man on the tractor" and "if you're going through hell (before the devil even knows)" (and maybe even the uncharacteristically quiet and possibly eerie "invisibly shaken") possibly in the on-deck circle, and the obligatory pandering "about the south" song and the mawkish one about how your four-year-old learns to say "shit" (which o'course isn't said, rodney ain't the president after all) and learns to pray because he wants to be a buckaroo like you at least somewhat bearable. only ten songs, so not much opportunity to go wrong, and lots that goes right, even if rodney does pretend people in small towns leave their doors unlocked. he picks good skynyrd songs to namedrop (hint: not all hits), which somewhat makes up for the more predictable bullshit.

and oh yeah, my album of the year now (passing up victory brothers) is kentucky headhunters' *flying under the radar*, which cheats by taking the best songs from each of their previous three albums (only two of which i heard), but what the hell, they've never made my top ten before (my REAL not just country top ten i mean), and this year maybe they deserve to. victory brothers are missing *something*; lalena insists they're closer to the barenaked ladies or ween than to big 'n' rich, which i don't buy, but they do come up a little thin, somehow. (though then again, compared to b'n'r's first album, who doesn't?) i don't find them mere cynical hee-hawing wearers of lampshade farmer's hats at parties, though, not even close. and i expect they'll finish toward the top of my top ten. might help if other people would check them out and offer their opinions, though...

and oh yeah oh yeah, most entertaining (and silliest, and most rockingly big n rich like) country song i heard on the radio on the road was the (new, i assume?) trace adkins one about "hey batter batter hey batter batter swing." 100 % baseball metaphors, and way better than the phil rizzuto part of "paradise by the dashboard light," how can i NOT love it? so what's the deal, did "honkytonk badonkadonk" turn him into a novelty artist for good? i think he's helped by it, even if he'll never do another "i'm tryin'" again...

what do you think of the bocephus/big and rich crib of badonkadonk

still haven't heard it. (and by the way, by "rockingly big n rich like," i think i just mean something like "hard rock powerchords plus fiddles used in a way that dances like funk". which may or may not be fully accurate for the baseball hit, which i only heard once.)

>even if rodney does pretend people in small towns leave their doors unlocked<

or even if i pretend that they don't (because, uh, sometimes they DO, you know.)

incidentally when i got home home to queens monday night our front door had the extension cord for the landlord's son's big ass power generator running through it. power had been out here in sunnyside since wednesday, so we took an extra night before coming back; it got turned back on only two and a half hours after we got back in, which meant that all the emergency supplies we'd picked up in bucks county monday morning (battery-run fans and lanterns, candles, a stovetop coffee percolator, lots of backup batteries) will have to go into storage until the next con-ed fuckup. too bad the dry ice won't keep that long. but we only had maybe $50 of rotten groceries in the fridge when we got back, and we obviously picked the right week to out of the burough, even if we missed all the excitement.

anthony, edd, etc, thanks for the well wishes by the way. and edd, thanks again for the charlie rich burn, which came while i was gone, and which is in my CD changer now. (i also found a used copy of a 1974 comp of '60s charlie called *fully realized* for 50 cents in an antique barn in jeffersonville -- well, the second disc of the double LP anyway -- and brought that back with me. so these should at least help me start getting up to speed. inscription on the back of the comp says it was originally released in 1965 and 1966 as *the many new sides of charlie rich* and *fast talkin' slow walkin' good lookin' charlie rich,* both of which titles sound quite promising.)

also edd, keep your chin up. my thoughts are still with you.

and what the heck, already posted the entire list on the recent purchases thread, but here are all the country-associated records I bought 50 cents to $1 each, at three antique/junque barns (north side of Route 28 around Arkville, north side of Route 44/55 around Gardiner, just off north side of Route 52 in Jeffersonville) and one used store (Rhino Records in New Paltz) upstate last week; if anybody has any opinions on any of these in any way, please say so:

brewer & shipley - the best of - double LP
dr hook - pleasure & pain LP (not disco-country enough, sounds like)
freddy fender - the best of LP
ian gomm - gomm with the wind LP (pub rock was kind of country, right? so maybe i should list the bram tchaicovsky album here too, but i won't...also won't list gap band's 1976 indie-label self-titled album despite their wearing of cowboy hats or bighorn despite bighorn sheep being rural beasts beloved by southern rockers)
charly mcclain - greatest hits LP (sounds surprsingly good so far)
charlie rich - fully realized LP (second disc only of two-disc set)
t.g. sheppard - i love 'em all LP (also not disco-country enough)
hank snow - the wreck on the old 97 double LP (badass train wreck on cover)
steeleye span - the steeleye span story: original masters double LP (somebody compared a montgomery gentry song to them once)
hank williams jr - whiskey bent and hellbound LP
*viennese waltzes* 10-inch compilation EP (probably influenced country dance music somehow, right?)

congrats chuck by the way! also continued best wishes to edd, we're all here for you brother.

thanks, haiku...

i'm also wondering if it's about time somebody came up with a theory about how country's current shoutout thing (trent willmon putting on some ray willie hubbard, jake owen putting on some hank jr, rodney atkins putting on lots of skynyrd in one song and some milsap in another song) should be considered a trend for the post--hop-hop age, but that's just silly since david allen coe and everybody like that did it all the time years ago, right? (but maybe the specific names dropped are getting more interesting? it's so fucking boring when eveybody's always listening to hank and merle all the time. though shooter replacing nugent with george jones was okay, i guess.)

Contemporary shoutouts in country music go back at least as far as Tex Ritter's 1961 "I Dreamed of a Hillbilly Heaven," a dream about dead country singers except that Tex ends up reading The Big Tallybook shouting out Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry, Roy Acuff, Eddy Arnold, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Marty Robbins, Minnie Pearl, Tex Ritter...TEX RITTER?

that hank snow album is one of my favourites, there is a good peice of writing on snow in the heart aches by the numbers book--i wonder why he doesnt get as much lvoe as like acuff?

haiku
you are also forgetting the faboulous chick version of hillbilly by reba/dolly/loretta--much better then the original

anthony i am not forgetting it but rather answering xxxxx's question about history, plus i didn't really know they did a version of it if i'm being honest but i don't care, reba mcintyre IS DEAD TO ME NOW

Yeah, gongrats again, xxhuxx, and sorry for spilling the beans, but I didn't know (so maybe I was the chosen White House leaker-pawn). When I get a little more time, I'll dig up Disc 1 of Fully Realized and tape it for you, it's cool. Whiskey Bent And Hell Bound is one of Bosyphilis's better oldies, and Curb has kept that, as well as a lot of his other (remastered) 70s goodies, listed for $9.99, last time I looked. The Solas was a little girlier than I first thought (but in good as well as unmanly ways), should be on UWeekly next week (Particle's on there today, but not country o course). Also today, the Willie feature is on CharLoaf (a tad fardled at one point in the middle, because I was supposed to "clarify"), but mainly okay: http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/content?oid=56647/

reba is awesome, she is better then almost anyone working today, or was until that stupid sitcom.

xxhuxx you might want to check out aaron pritchett in general and hold my beer as a single--its pretty awesome.

http://www.aaronpritchett.com/downloads.php
video here

xpost Sorry, this is more direct:
http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/content?oid=oid.566647/

sorry (4 hrs. sleep)http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/content?oid=oid:56647/

might be the last / that's doing it, but seemed like I needed it for the linking, anyway you'll see the title,"I Let My Mind Wander," in the lower left margin; click on that pls, and you'll be there, whoopee. Anyway xpost Ian thanks for your thoughts, I'm sure they pertain, but a lot of people, performers and others, are urban *and* country (esp. as processed in city of Nashville), and also what you describe doesn't nec lead to depressing albums, so if (I still haven't heard) new Chicks is a drag, it's their fault, at least as much as the Situation, etc. (not that there aren't plenty of reasons to be depressed)xxhux, the only time us small town folk don't lock our doors is when we're addled and/or hoping for some compny. One mo time:
http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/content?oid=oid:56647

That's the one, without the slash on the end! Also, anybody got a new release date for (the reworked) Ashley Monroe?

I think everyone in small towns locks their doors now but maybe didn't use to and that's why all the nostalgia for it. (We never did, which was good because when I came home from cruising 82nd in Portland I could just walk right in, and I probably would have lost my keys all the time.) But that whole necrophiliac 'oh the good ol times is gone woe is us' stuff is boring me right now, maybe later.

And Anthony I am referring specifically to Reba getting kuntry kudos for dissing the Dixie Chicks behind their backs. Always a great voice and an appealing personality which doesn't come thru on the show. But she is now part of the Axis of Evil, eff her.

line dancing to alan jackson is more fun then it sounds

matt reba didn't dis the dixie chix behind their backs until after the dixie chix dissed her behind her back!

they didnt though, not really, they were talking about peoples tastes in music, and although it was a dumb statement it wasnt personal the way hers was, and you know all this already

what was the anti reba statement?

Martie McGuire, in Time Magazine: "I'd rather have a smaller following of really cool people who get it, who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith. We don't want those kinds of fans. They limit what you can do."

This is being taken out of context by a lot of people who have only read part of the quote, or interpreted as "CHIX DISS KUNTRY STARZ CUZ THEY HATE BLU COLLAR TV AND 'PUBLICANZ" but I don't think she meant it like that. Still kind of a dumb thing to admit out loud though.

I'm not sure I agree with Haiku that the Chicks' clunkily worded Reba diss wasn't "personal" (if you don't want to share space in a CD changer with somebody, or be listened to by "those kinds of fans," whatever the heck that's supposed to mean, how is that not personal, whether Martie meant for it to be taken that way or not? Toby's been in my five-disc changer more than the Chicks this year since he made a better album, so does that mean they don't want me as a fan?), but the claim here is that Reba threw the first stone:

http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/dixie_chicks/message_board.jhtml?c=v&t=727264&m=5543246&o=0&i=4

By the way, that 1970 Charlie Rich album that Edd burned for me, Big Boss Man, is great; my favorite songs on it are "Nice 'n' Easy," "I Can't Even Drink It Away," "Big Boss Man," "Golden Slipper Rose," and the excellently titled "I Do My Swingin' at Home," with probably "Memphis and Arkansas Bridge" next, and the two early '60s singles he added at the end, "Lonely Weekends" and "Who Will the Next Fool Be," at least as good. But I might like the second disc of that Fully Realized twofer LP I bought (aka either Fast Talkin Slow Walkin Good Lookin Charlie Rich or The Best Years, from 1966 on Smash -- Peter Guralnik's liner notes seem confusingly to contradict the note on the back of the album) even more; I'm kinda blown away by how funky the guy could be.

(Martie also severely underrates the extent to which having "a smaller following of really cool people" as fans can limit artists too, obviously.)

so yall really think reba's soft enough for her sitcom cracks that 1) the dixie chicks don't like the bushes (HOW DARE REBA INSINUATE THIS) and 2) the dixie chicks stick their foot in their mouth are really way harsher totally crossing the line more than the dixie chick's 'reba and her fans are garbage and beneath us'???

I don't think that at all, James. That was sort of my (muddled) point.

Bram Tchaicovsky Strange Man Changed Man (post-Brinsley Schwarz soft Brit country Byrds-jangle powerpop rock pretending to be pub-rock new wave in 1979, just like the Ian Gomm LP I bought but even duller) on now. I think I buy a copy of this album for $1 or less every 15 years or so, and I discover the same thing every time --- namely, that "Girl of My Dreams" (#37 pop in the USA in the late summer of '79, where Gomm's "Hold On" went to #18 a couple months later; "Girl of My Dreams" is better thanks to its "Born to Run" opening and the fact that it's as great a blow-up sex-doll song as any by Roxy Music) is the only non-mushy thing on it. (Okay, "Nobody Knows" churns a little at the beginning in an early Tom Petty kinda way maybe, before it softens up; I dunno, I'll give the LP a couple chances, but I'm really not expecting much.) It's sort of like how every few years I'll order chicken livers in a restaurant and then remember why I haven't ordered them for a few years. Or something.

I like the Rich Smash material the best; I think "Big Boss Man" is a good Billy Sherrill record (BS did good stuff with Jones, too). To my ears, it gives the best-rounded picture of what Rich did. The companion disc to that one, made around the same time and also by Sherrill, I think, is "The Fabulous Charlie Rich," another real good one.

That Trent Willmon record is a great concept album about upward mobility in the class sense, seems like, with a real undercurrent of that desire to make your woman happy while having the real fear underneath it, like she's gonna leave any minute because you don't have enough money, and maybe she's sick of your Ray Wylie Hubbard all the time on the stereo, plus your knuckles, Trent, are a mess from all that tinkering around with that piece of shit truck in the driveway. Perhaps the emblematic line is the one that goes "You can't blame a country boy for tryin'/And I did the best I could." Trent seems to realize his hard-shell redneck tendencies and wants to pull back, like when he realizes he's looking right through his woman (seen that look myself from good ol' boys down here, and probably guilty of giving it myself from time to time), and then he gets her coffee the Way She Likes It, probably with those little individual Kreamers you get at the convenience store (bait is available too, and WD-40 for that fucking bolt that's stuck on that goddam truck), the ones that have International Flavors, Irish Setter Mist. "Baby, is the Irish Cream your favorite, or how 'bout this Amaretto Splash...? More sugar...?" But he maybe gets the coffee thrown in his face, that'll wipe that thousand-yard stare off your face. And of course, "Surprise" is excellent, and this is where his sensitivity and receptivity to new modes of coffee enhancement and perhaps male enhancement (when is a country star gonna make one of those commercials, I mean Trace Adkins in a bar and so drunk he forgets to tuck his johnson back in, so everyone is transfixed by his enhancement), and certainly to some specific wishes on the part of his partner, really pay off--he ends up in a high-rise with a jacuzzi, and Ray Wylie sure sounds good there too. "Baby, lemme play one for ya that's for the con-ess-yours, 'Choctaw Bingo.' Ever watch the History Channel...?" Like Tony Soprano, a little afraid of Kulture but when it comes attached to a pretty ass or face, open as all hell. In short, one savvy guy who plays off the competent-plus that is self-effacing, can change a tire quick or tighten up that squealing belt (hey, this spray I got here will get that squeal out, baby, until we can git this ol' belt replaced, let me take you down to Auto Zone, yeah, this ol' truck's a little dirty but it runs real well...you like Willie, ever *really listened to* 'Red-Headed Stranger'?"

And in "Good Horses to Ride" he learns from the best bullshitter, Tut, still dreams of "Conquistador Gold" (like Tony Soprano in the episode where he dreams he's a Roman emperor...hey, ever watch the History Channel?), and gets off an eloquent line about "concrete and steel they spread like the plague/Consuming the rivers,, the mountains and the plains." In short, a great line of bullshit and one designed to help him get that classy, elusive woman he's always wanted, a real evolutionary step or two up in this hat-act thing. And I think the music's pretty great, really cool choruses that manage to play off the rockin' verses, the usual excellent guitar...good album, and the only one I can't stand is "Night in the Ground," yet another live-like-you're-dying song, pretty lame for what seems to be an imaginative guy who can see Comanches "in them breaks to the south." But, an interesting contrast to what Toby wants to do, wall 'em up and play with 'em? Women just want to be kept at home, eh, guys? Trent knows better.

xp (Actually, Bram's 2nd best track is probably his "I'm a Believer" cover. Which may or may not be better than Smashmouth's, who knows.)

But mainly his album just reminds me once again that British people can't sing (though pub-rock did seem to produce a whole bunch of exceptions, and in 1979 they were all over the place).

"Turn on the Light/We gonna wreck the place tonight"--man this Bram T. track would totally put a foot in your ass (it's the British way) and spill some blood on the dancefloor if the Count Bishops or even Eddie & the Hot Rods or Ducks Deluxe or the Motors was doing it, but Tchaicovsky's band (who had some connection to the Motors, I think, but I'm not exactly sure what) are just way too polite about the thing. They also don't have the prettiness of, say, the Records (whose "Starry Eyes," bizarrely, did not go Top 40 in the US)

(Sorry about the tangent folks, but it is country, sort of.)

haha: james b. intentionally seeing only one side of dixie chick comment so he can work up indignant anger on the part of good-ol-salt-of-the-earth supermultimillionaire reba

i already said it was a dumb comment, because mm left herself wide open for that interpretation. but there's no 'reba's garbage' there at all unless you're desperate to see that. if anything it's misguided rockism. (and no i don't think it started with the bush family reunion thing, that was just kind of a lame sitcom line and not malicious at all and I don't think they were reacting to it.)

You don't have to stretch too far to see "Reba's fans are garbage" in there, Haiku; in fact, you have to stretch pretty far not to see it. I could give a flying fuck for Reba myself; when was her last good album, Whoever's in New England 20 year ago? Or For My Broken Heart in 1991, maybe? Never heard it, but that one had a couple good singles I guess. Either way, it's been a while; can't remember the last thing she did I cared about). But most of her fans aren't supermultimillionaires, I don't think. And I bet most of them had no reason to hate the Chicks, until now.