Rolling Country 2006 Thread

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

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.)

Although, y'know, fuck it, if she meant "fans of Toby Keith and Reba McIntyre are stupid assholes who don't understand how awesome we are because they are hayseed buttmunchers," then I can't think of another American musical group that would have more of a reason to feel that way based on recent history.

In other news, Chip Taylor's two-disc album, Unglorious Hallelujah / Red Red Rose is still awesome.

I've heard a song by Josh Gracin (early American Idol finalist working with Rascal Flatts) a few times now--"My Favorite State of Mind" I think its called. I was kinda suprised at how much I liked it considering what a wet bag of salt he was on the TV show. Anyone with an opinion?

http://www.standarddeluxe.com/store_c.php?pageNum_s_c_simg=0&portid=158

My first instinct was to be anoyed by it: I take it to mean that country music is a thing of the past. It's a dodgy critical trick: don't get involved in an argument about whether a genre's currently good or bad, try to claim it's dead, imply that what's using the name at the moment's a fraud. (Philip Larkin pulled the same trick with regard to modern jazz, btw.)

Possibly I'm displaying the heightened sensitivity of the recent convert.

In other news, I am hatching a plan to visit Nashville, finally. I very much hope this plan comes off.

I am in the middle of doing my Trent Willmon opus; the post on TW above was an attempt to get loosened up to do it. Musically, I think Trent's record is pretty bleh; but any record that has, what, two or three songs about "changeable" women, two songs that mention "bobbers," and two in a row that extol the virtues of skinnydipping...conceptual: he's, in my estimation, *easy with unease*. I find his vocals corny and overly professional, but I still think this is one fascinating and kind of important country record.

and it's not country, but I think Andy Fairweather Low's new one, "Sweet Soulful Music," is superb; and yeah, Brits can't sing, but can we make an exception for the Welsh? (and there is a sort of Nashville connection with Low; some of his '70s records were partially done here, and he used many great Nashville session guys on some of them.)

it's not pubrock, it's more focused, seems to me; but damned if I don't halfway think the new one is even better than his stuff from thirty years ago, he sings better. he's 58 years old today.

my mother died this morning. I was there when she died, along with my sister and my father. She was bedridden the last week, and stopped eating and drinking last Thursday. Funeral Friday. She was 71, born near Savannah, grew up there and in Statesboro, Ga., and in and around Augusta/N. Augusta/Aiken, S.C. Lived in Tennessee since about '55.

These things, you think you're ready for them, but you never are, and as I sit down for the first time today and think, it's hitting me.

Finally watched Toby's "A Little Too Late" video on cmt.com loaded (where I am getting really sick of the Prilosec commercial about the Big N Rich groupies or BnR deadheads or whatever they are), and I found it quite successful. Only part that strikes me as remotely questionable is the shot where it looks like he misses hitting this wife with the shovel and digs it in the cement bag instead; the rest is self-deprecating enough and just convinces me that people are too frigging senstive these days, even if it reiterates that Toby might have some women issues almost as conflicted as, say, the ones Dennis Leary exhibits on Rescue Me. Also: Jeez, what a great song.

Don: let's not tar the Queen's Welsh-Scots-Irish captives: heh, this'll be British history as learned from "Braveheart", I'm assuming. I was much happier when you were writing off all the Britishes, it seems a bit harsh just singling out the Englishes. (Seems to me the English have as many honourable exceptions as the Scots at least: I'll take the English Dusty Springfield over the Scottish Bobby Gillespie if you know what I mean.)

Anthony: I was all ready to order that CD until your final paragraph! Perhaps I should learn to download stuff, like everybody else.

filed my trent willmon scene piece. during all this, working has been my salvation. never missed a deadline yet and figured I'd keep that up; my mother would've wanted it that way, a scrupulous person. doing a shortie on wanda jackson's upcoming nashville show w/ amy lavere--talked to wanda on the phone! and she was sexy as hell even at 70, what a burr and a purr in her voice, and she said something to me about how male writers typecast women but never do the same for "some hairy-legged boy" that floored me. now to listen to her (most likely awful_ "I Remember Elvis" CD, which has a pic of the young, sexy(er) Wanda on the cover...

I think that's the right word--I am a bit fried, finally had to calm down with a valium. I ran 5 miles in the dusk last night, just to get back to semi-normal. good to be alive, all that.

anyway, I think Trent's record--having now listened to it maybe 4 times all the way thru, and in my usual method, taking notes on it twice, once for music, once for lyrics--is uneven. but "surprise" seems like a minor masterpiece, and for once his telegraphing the lyrics feels like the right thing to do instead of just cheesy as on the song about "good horses to ride," which I find insufferable. as I do the otherwise quite pleasantly performed "ropin' pen." but his songs about women and their changeable ways are really good...and as I might've said above, this is a good record about skinny-dippin' and fuckin', I guess, but I wish he'd come out and say it. I don't hear much too exciting in the music itself, and the singing can be overripe. but he's onto something here and god only knows, he could turn out to be a menace or even better, a good novelty-song artist. so I rate the record a solid B, but "surprise" gets an A+.

i said the rosary today edd, and am going to mass on monday

The Chicks' albums have always been spotty, impinged by hokiness on one side and gentility on the other. Their leaving country killed the hokiness, and they've found a way to find intensity within their soft rock. This album may be their best. Still, an opportunity feels lost. At this point, there's no way for them to communicate with their detractors, but I wish they'd felt their way into their detractors' innards. "Goodbye Earl," their murder song from two albums back, is about the glee of a liberating killing rather than about the rage and desperation that caused it. Now, being subjected to the rage itself, they could have learned from it, used it to deepen their music.

the todd snider album is the devil you know, and i dont know if its a 90s comp but i foudn east nashville skyline a week ago or so, and i love the raw scraggliness of hsi voice, and his wit...so i dont know to go new or go old wrt him

i liked the dylan article, i still dont get the connection to/love for ashlee, and the general article sort of disappointed me, for its lack of soul, hip hop, etc and its general indie tendecies, but i wonder if we can talk about songwriters if we are talkign about production by comittee...(so anything britney sang from Oops, to Toxic, for example are amongst the best writing of the 90s but are rarely acknowldeged; or sexyback the new justin timberlake song, is an almsot perfect peice of writing in how it fits words into rthyms, but no ones mentioning he writing (or Missy, where was Missy on the list?)

landslide is actually a really good example. the last time i heard it was in a wal mart in central bc, in prince george, picking up film. it should fit into such a place, a lower, softer, cover of a song that was low and soft to begin with. but waiting to buy my goods, i kept listening to it, and its not my favourite dixie chicks song, but it has a intesity of feeling and devotion, a permeant kidn of sadness, that i haev a really hard time talking about. the idea that understantement can be as emotionally/musically evocotive as overstatement is something that i have been thinking al ot about lately, and the dixie chicks embody it perfectly. landslide sounds worn, broken, devoid of content, aird, exhausted in a way that is rare in country.

other examples:
on travelin' soilder, the slight emphasis on vietnam, or the almsot whisper of conversation in the first verse, or how the correspondance is mentioned--think of it in other veitnam songs, like dear john or vietnam by porter wagner--and see what seems like rhetoric, and what seems like a confused narrative, from someone who doesnt know exactlty how they feel...

(also, similar feelings on If I Fall You’re Going Down With Me,Cowboy Take Me Away Ready to Run Tonight The Heartache’s On Me Wide Open Spaces There's Your Trouble I Can Love You Better, etc)

the feeling i think, is taking the domestic, and not feeling good about it, and not feeling bad about it, but feeling profoundly unsettled...

i think that the trouble w. the whole london mess, was that they became settled, and though i like this last album, the sadness has disappeared, andthe fuck you has come, and well they cant do fuck you, they arent good at fuck you.

toby, toby is good at fuck you, but then you cant really imagine him sad (big blue note is a failure for that reason) (and he is the only male country singer right now who isnt perpertually down)

really good paste on dylan, frank.

lambchop: I have a really good one-disc comp my buddy david scott put together for me; beyond that, I find them a one-joke band. I'm all for the bobby womack-isms of their production style combined with that pedal steel, and in theory I like kurt wagner's determination to expose his lower-middle-class angst in that diaristic, laconic, evasive fashion; and above all I like the way the records sound. I had a discussion with some Music Critics here about who is really responsible for lambchop's sound; I think it's mark nevers; others think it's wagner; on the evidence of the pre-nevers stuff, the (to my ears) amazing sound nevers gets on lone official and other bands, it's obviously nevers. in other words, this is insular formalism of the kind that nashville never grows out of. and that's why I like lone official so much, because they seem more willing to enter into the world, and don't seem resentful toward the bigger world of pop music, and I find them generous in spirit, as don says, "amelia earhart" is pretty fine, and while I won't disagree with the many folks who find them (and it) the best pavement record pavement never made, my buddy blair who's a pavement fan, went with me to see them and declared that they have far more musical savvy than pavement. so maybe the clintonian '90s are finally resurfacing in Music City, maybe there's some kind of pocket of optimism in this boomtown. or maybe lone official finds some kind of hope in the compulsive betting, and the beauty of horse racing, that they can't stop writing about.

anthony, i just generally presume you have a higher tolerance for lower-energy singers than i do; that's all...

I summarize this a bit on my MySpace blog, for anyone who's interested and doesn't have the time for an Ashlee search on the teenpop thread.

stars go blue is closest to that low meloncholy of the dixie chix that i was mentioning early

i will end up buying those albums

Well, the language of romanticism saturates pop as well as rock, and as a lot of you know, I think the word "rockist" explains nothing, is just a buzzword, laziness. But Ashlee's romantic questing "I" (as opposed to various blues "I"s), as well as the linking of angry vocals to that quest (anger a ripping away from normality), tends to enter pop music w/ Dylan.

I don't know what you mean by "politics." To notice that pop lyrics mean something is to challenge people who don't notice it, but those people don't show up on ilX a lot (and get their ass handed to them when they do). I suppose there are people here who think that you should listen to rock only in rock ways and should listen to pop only in pop ways, and that pop is supposed to be "artificial" and "superficial" and should be celebrated as such. But I don't know if there's a particular politics involved in telling these people that their head is up their ass.

Ashlee tends towards reconciliation rather than counterculture (even if her videos show revelers partying beyond cop control), which makes her a "political" challenge to those who insist that it's the job of rock to unsettle the status quo. Conversely, if she fails to reconcile, this may end up being more of a genuine critique of the mainstream (though not intended as such) than the bohemian posturing that aspires to such a critique. But it doesn't have to be such a critique to be great rock.

"I was trapped inside someone else's life and always second best" is as eloquent a description of oppression as one could wish for, but Ashlee doesn't portray it as oppression but rather just the condition of her childhood, a condition that it's her own responsiblity to abandon (the reward being that she gets to re-approach her family as an equal, and therefore gets to love them, finally). Whereas Dylan in his early work would only write equivalent lyrics - "she never sat once at the head of the table" - about someone else's being oppressed. It wasn't until his mid twenties that Dylan gave us anything that might actually be the conditions of his own childhood ("look out, kid, you're gonna get hit," "don't wanna be a bum, you'd better chew gum," etc.). Think of Dylan being like Ashlee rather than vice versa. Dylan the brat, the glamworder. Not Dylan the celebrated "poet."

Anthony, you're not being insulting, but the problem is that you're not saying anything. E.g., if you don't think that, as I claim, Ashlee's using anger cadences in the chorus of "Shadow" that were brought to pop music in the mid '60s by Jagger and Dylan, then just what is it that you think she's doing instead in that chorus? Or if you don't see any resemblance between "I was trapped inside someone else's life" and "she never sat once at the head of the table," then what do you see? If you don't think when Ashlee says she'll walk a million miles to find out what this shit means that she's declaring a romantic and moral quest, then what do you think she's declaring?

Maybe there's an incipient politics in Ashlee's being a glamour puss rather than being a ragged troubadour or a good little punkette, and being a rocker in pop clothing.

You could say that, like Ashlee and Dylan and Elvis, I don't know my place; which is to say that rather than merely serve music or critique it, I use my writing to participate in the music and compete with it, to preen and dazzle and sing. And that's a long-running power struggle too, so you can call it "politics" if you want to, the war between writing and journalism.