Rolling Country 2009 Thread

Jessica Andrews "Everything" -- Big bland devoid-of-personality adult-contemporary ballad about how some guy Jessica broke up with (and should therefore GET OVER ALREADY) is her everything. Also it's too long.

Steve Azar "You're My Life" (another "you're my" song just like Jessica's apparently) doesn't seem to be on youtube. But it was indeed on Indianola last year, and I didn't like it then. Songs on there I did like somewhat were "Crowded," "Flatlands," especially "The Coach," and maybe one or two others.

Speaking of sell-by dates, I finally figured out what I like best/basically about Jamey Johnson, in the following show preview:
After eight years in the Marines, Jamey Johnson won and lost in Nashville, then wrote clean-and-sober hits (plus "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk") for others. He's learning to see and get through the old dualities. So, on Johnson's current album, "That Lonesome Song," his band bounces the sardonic daydream of "Mowin' Down The Roses" and brushes by the testimonal "High Cost of Livin' ", sweetly tempting each. Also, black-and-white images (mere evidence) lead straight up through a World War II veteran's history, always lived "In Color", and still in the present tense.

Actually, it was "see (and get) through the old dualities" and I think I got all the commas AP-right in the sent/published version, this is typed from handwritten original

So, question of the day: When exactly did John Doe (the ex X guy) start to suck? I was actually a pretty huge fan of those first four X albums (stuck with the band longer than some punk fans I know), including the third and fourth ones where they started to work in country/roots-type influences. More Fun In the New World was even my #1 album in 1983, the first year my Pazz & Jop ballot got printed in the Voice. Only liked a couple things they did after that, though (especially "4th of July"), and thought Doe and Exene's proto-alt-country Knitters were just bad cornball kitsch, and have never paid much attention to Doe's solo stuff. Now he's got one of the dullest tracks on that Chris Gaffney tribute album, and he's got an album of country covers coming out on Yep Roc this spring which I played a couple times yesterday, and man, the guy has no capability for expression left in his singing at all. He used to, even doing music not too far from this. Anyway, he cardboard-voices his way through "Detroit City," which is well-timed, but he does nothing with it, plus "Help Me Make It Through the Night" (the Mekons did that one better as I recall), "The Cold Hard Facts Of Life," "Stop The World And Let Me Off" (some of the same chord changes as Merle Haggard's "If We Make It Through December," I just realized, not to mention some song the Boxmasters did last year), etc. (I'm not even sure off hand which old country acts those last couple are most associated with, so maybe Edd should school us.) Closest song Doe comes to pulling off is probably "Are The Good Times Really Over For Good," early '80s Merle about how Ford and Chevy don't make cars as good as they used to and stuff like that, but maybe I was just happy to hear the song. (Didn't some alt-country type cover "Big City" recently too? If so, seems like the Hag LP of that name is maybe belatedly being acknowledged as the classic album it had always sounded like to me in the first place.)

(Also "Are The Good Times Really Over For Good" clearly counts as '80s recession country, even though one of the main things Hag laments in it is how girls have forgotten how to cook properly ever since the microwave oven was introduced. That "back before Nixon lied to us all on TV" line really hits me now, though, since I've been reading and loving Rick Perlstein's Nixonland this week.)

(Didn't some alt-country type cover "Big City" recently too? If so, seems like the Hag LP of that name is maybe belatedly being acknowledged as the classic album it had always sounded like to me in the first place.)

I thought Peter Guralnick's discog in the back of Lost Highway was the reason why I bought a copy of Big City. But now that I'm looking at it I don't see the record mentioned. Strange. Anyways, I think it's a great record, and at some point in my life I remembering reading a review that inspired me to pick up a copy.

Big City probably fell victim to the hipster idea that no good country was made after Urban Cowboy was released. But maybe the '80s is being reevaluated. John Anderson and Randy Travis could become the next names for Americanians to start dropping.

Just picked up a vinyl copy of "Big City" for 5 bucks at a record store in Louisville. It really is great. That late 70's, early 80's period of his produced some of my favorite songs (Footlights, The Way I Am), but most of the albums are fairly inconsistent. "Big City" is the best of the bunch.

Also nabbed a copy of Waylon's "Are you Ready for the Country" which wasn't as satisfying, though the NY cover is pretty great.

Early '60s folk revival sort of counts as country, right? A lot of overlap over the years, probably. Anyway, I got sent this vinyl LP two days ago called Songs Of Leaving on a Chicago label called Numerophon by this girl folk singer named Niela Miller, recorded in 1962 in NYC -- or really, by 2009 (even 1981, if not 1962) standards more like a vinyl EP, since it seems to clock in around 20 minutes for about 10 songs. The thing is on 150-gram vinyl, really thick and heavy; label looks like it would have been plastered on some old 78. Record cover cardboard is also super thick, made to look like some Folkways album from the '50s. Clever (and actually quite beautiful) marketing concept, I gotta admit -- maybe even smart, on an extremely small scale, since the idea I guess is to make physical product collectible in the age of mp3s. (Apparently this album is the first of a series on the label.)

Thing is, there's also music on the thing, and it's just....okay. Niela sings her (apparently mostly if not all original) blues-folk in a tone that strikes me as really proper and cautious, maybe a precursor of Joan Baez-type singing (never listened to enough Baez to know for sure) (maybe proto Janis Ian too?) -- basically, it's how you'd expect those iron-haired private-girls-school rich chicks in Animal House (also set in 1962) to sing. Played it back-to- back this morning with a couple of New Christy Minstrels LPs from around the same period (sent to me by Metal Mike a couple years ago), and Miller sounded completely strained and constrained and unenergetic and humorless in comparison (and the New Chistry Minstels didn't seem as good as the Kingston Trio or Limeliters, all of whom I'm guessing Miller's milieu would have dismissed as phonies and sellouts, though somebody correct me if I'm wrong.)

Still, I like the record okay -- especially "Goodbye New York," which has a tune and some bite to it plus a lyric I identify with right now, as my apartment fills up with boxes packed for my move. And (apparently the main justification for the reissue), there's also this song called "Baby Don't Go To Town" which the (Folkways-like) liner notes peg as a prototype of "Hey Joe" -- or, at least the song that was allegedly combined with Carl Smith's 1953 country hit "Hey Joe" to get the song that Hendrix and the Byrds and Leaves and Deep Purple and Cher later did. (Aside: Back at University of Missouri in the early '80s, I knew a guy -- otherwise a major fan of the Jam -- who collected on cassette tapes all the versions of "Hey Joe" he could get ahold of.) Supposedly Neila Miller's "unstable boyfriend" Billy Roberts stole her version, had it copywritten, and the rest is history. I'm skeptical about all of this, but it's a good story, either way. And there is a certain proto-garage-punk (post-blues) punch to the guitars in Miller's song. Or at least I imagine there is, so I can keep her cool looking record.

(Though when I say the novel marketing concept is potentially smart, I'm leaving out that I have no idea what it would cost to put out a record that looks like this one in 2009, with vinyl pressing plants supposedly shutting down and all. Looks expensive to my eyes, but what do I know? Also leaving out that, though the thing looks real classy on one hand, it's also obviously kind of ridiculous, which may or may not be part of the point.)

And probably the proto-garage part of how "Baby Don't Go To Town" sounds is just its guitar progression, which the liner notes identify as AMAJ (not that I'd know). And Niela might be as proto-"freak-folk" (or proto- the tuneless kind of '60s folkies that freak folkers gravitate toward now) as proto-Baez. And by "Miller's milieu," I guess I basically mean Dylan's -- she supposedly attended his West Village debut. But her backstory doesn't make her sound "authentic" at all: learned about folk music at summer camp in the Catskills while on vacation from the High School Of Music And Art in '48, became the promoter of folk music at "liberal Antioch College" in '52, dated a "black, Jewish and Communist folk singer," wrote "Too Long Blues" after an early boyfriend snubbed her for another gal at a Weavers gig in '53. I swear, the whole plot reads like a parody to me. I half expect the Beastie Boys to come out and start rapping about beatnik chicks just wearing their smocks.

But though I never thought of the folk revival this way before, it also all means that she was learning about the blues around the same time that all the (white) early rock'n'rollers were. Which is kind of cool, even if she wasn't nearly as good at it (and if ignoring rock'n'roll then makes her a total geek.)

(Also makes me wonder how much audience crossover there was between early '60s rock'n'roll and early '60s folk -- There must have been frat bros who bought both Beach Boys and Kingston Trio LPs at least, right? Both groups even kinda dressed alike.)

Have always loved Iris Dement's version of Big City that she did for a Hag covers album called Tulare Dust. AMG tells me it came out in 1994. John Doe was on that one, too. And he was boring as I recall. But Tom Russell's version of Tulare Dust / Tearing the Labor Camps Down was fantastic. Sadly this type of Depression-inspired lyrics might get more real again.

Early '60s folk revival sort of counts as country, right? A lot of overlap over the years

I'm guessing Johnny Cash might count as the biggest overlap; he definitely had at least half a foot in folk (and not just because he did Dylan covers.) And now I find out that both Kenny Rogers and Kim Carnes (though not on the group's earliest LPs I have) were members of the New Christy Minstrels. And the better of their two albums I've got, Ramblin' Featuring Green Green (which charted #15 in Billboard in 1963) is all traveling and rambling songs, more country than I would have guessed though I have no idea whether country fans cared. That one has only two ballads or so out of a dozen mostly sprightly and catchy tracks; their debut Presenting the New Christy Minstrels from a year (and three albums) earlier feels a lot slower and less raucous, but does have their versions of "This Land Is Your Land" (apparently the highest charting version of the rock era at #93) and "Springfield Fair" (which Simon & Garfunkel later made much prettier and more exotic as "Scarborough Fair.") It's also got liner notes talking about how Edwin P. Christy founded his first group of traveling Minstrels way back in 1842, but these New ones don't wear blackface anymore. Randy Sparks, the leader, says too many folk groups from the time "sing too prettily and too delicately to transmit the message of folk music," so apparently he thought the New Christies were more raw and real compared to those groups. But they don't seem to have nearly as much tongue-in-cheek self-knowledge as did the Kingston Trio or Limeliters (both of whom first charted earlier -- Kingstons way back '58.) And they look totally square on the cover -- ten members, all really young and cleancut and maybe like they're part of a small-town theatre troupe. There was definitely at least one copy of one of their albums in my house growing up, though I have no idea whether it belonged to my mom or my dad.
Still think Ramblin' is a good album, though.

I'm also gonna guess that most fans of both "real" folk-revival folk and fake commercial folk-revival folk at the time would've tended to vote for JFK. (Though who knows, maybe more radical real ones held their nose, wishing they could get away with voting Commie instead.) Not sure who my parents voted for.

Hey xhuxk, I wonder if you could address something that's been bothering me recently about folk. On one hand there's this 1960's-folk inspired contemporary folk (some of which you're mentioning here) and on the other there's freak-folk, or indie-folk, or whatever. And I tend to like a broad swath that cuts across both these groups, but I don't necessarily see huge differences between them. A lot of times the aesthetic difference is pretty superficial, and sometimes it's just a difference of community (if you live in NYC, maybe you're freak-folk, if you live in... I don't know... Nashville? Newport? you're "real folk"). So how do you distinguish this? And is it even worth wasting time on? Like Kathleen Edwards could easily be Joan Boaz/Neil Young inspired. And isn't she just a jump away from, say, Laura Marling? (Or Neko Case who, despite playing with New Pornographers, has a lot of solo music that sounds kin to the Newport folk movement?)

There must have been frat bros who bought both Beach Boys and Kingston Trio LPs at least, right?

My dad had albums by both groups--though he never went to college.

xp Wow, Mordy, I swear you are the first person in history who has ever taken me to be a folk music expert. Not complaining -- I'm kind of flattered. But to be honest, I pay so little attention to current stuff (and despite my posts here yesterday and today, I've barely dabbled in the '60s stuff) to feel I can make useful distinctions. I had a hard enough to time making sense out of how "freak folk" mysteriously seemed to replace "anti folk" in New York a few years ago, and I've been bored by almost everything I've heard in both supposed genres. I've never heard a note by Laura Marling, and (like I said upthread), I've never given much attention to Neko Case, either. I guess I've always assumed the "freak folk" stuff is supposed to be somehow influenced by more acid-damaged music, psychedelia or noise or whatever? Which would theoretically make it weirder and more formless. (And old singers like Vashti Bunyan embraced by freak folk fans maybe sounded that way by accident?) Not sure how that holds up in reality, though. ("Anti-folk" was more NYC than "freak folk" though, wasn't it? I mean, doesn't the latter often have pretensions of being made by communal extended families in abandoned Vermont farm houses? Or did I just imagine that?)

Do think the music called "alt-country" as often as not has more in common with what I consider folk (or singer songwriters or whoever) than what I consider country, though. (But like I said, lots of overlap.)

And I do get the idea that Kathleen Edwards is less hookaphobic than, say, Joanna Newsom or whoever.

Hookaphobic?

As in "afraid of hooks." (Just made it up. Don't know what took me so long.)

the Numerophon thing is an imprint of Numero Group, the Chicago reissue label. (As I've mentioned earlier, they've reissued Caroline Peyton's fairly classic [and proto-"freak-folk"]) Mock Up on their Asterisk imprint, as well as the more dispersed Intuition [which contains one actual country tune, "Still with You," that falls in nicely with the eclecticism of the thing in gen'l]. And what about "Long Black Veil" and maybe even Roger Miller as sorta bridge between "folk" and "country" way before zillions of folkies did it in the wake of the Band after '68...?

I also figured out that Neko Case is basically K.D. Lang for a new generation, gets over on her Byootiful Voice and Ambiguo-Sex Appeal and that's cool, I guess I like Neko far better than I ever have Lang; both are undeniably first-rate singers.

I dunno about that, Edd; I've been denying Lang's ice-cold affectations for years. (Frank has too. Don't have the old issue of Radio On in front of me, but I think his line about k.d. went something like: "If this is torch, Sophie B. Hawkins is a conflagration, and Teena Marie is a holocaust.")

which old country acts those last couple are most associated with

"Cold Hard Facts Of Life" = Porter Wagoner; "Stop The World And Let Me Off" = Patsy Cline? Waylon Jennings? Dwight Yoakam? (Still not sure who had the biggest hit with it, though I guess they all did it.)

xp Also get the idea it's possible (in response to Mordy) that, if Baez was obscure instead of famous, she could be an old freak-folk cult heroine.

I don't think Baez ever had enough of the "freak" in her. The freak folk heroine seems to be more of a cross between NorCal Joni knock offs and Brit folk ladies like Bunyan and Bridget St. John.

The aspect to Baez's career that I think gets overlooked is her country-folk phase in the late '60s and early '70s. She did a string of records with the same band that Dylan used during for John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. Norm Blake is on guitar. I recently made a compilation CD-R of this stuff for a friend, who was skeptical that Baez could make anything other than terrible music. It's about 25 songs: Steve Young covers, "Long Black Veil," Gram Parsons tunes, The Band, some Stones, old Appalachian folk stuff with more twang than her early Newport stuff, and so on. It's not bad.

Another decent country/folk revival hybrid is the Great Speckled Bird LP from '68(?). That's Ian & Sylvia along with a bunch of stoner cowboys. The record features pedal steel player Buddy Cage, who is really quite good for a "longhair." Ian & Sylvia's previous records found them doing more and more country. Then again, maybe it's more of a Canadian prairie cowboy shtick.

well, Buffy Saint-Marie did records in Nashville on Vanguard, I think. I mean Ian and Sylvia did too, on Bearsville.

I wasn't saying I necessarily liked or even thought about K.D. Lang that much--my point was that she's a good singer and that's her claim to fame, her "great voice," just like Neko. and that there's a segment of the country audience--the NPR side--who might groove to Lang, Case or even that Bradley's Barn Mandy Barnett late-moment-of-countrypolitan record from '99, in terms of sheer aural quality and all that shit. But yeah, as Frank says, it's sort of a faltering-torch torch-music move, I mean bloodless, but I think you have to ask yourself if that kind of dryness and formalist western-mythos-swing shit isn't a part of country too.

Otis Gibbs' new one displays his ugly voice on songs that producer Chris Stamey turns into the veriest processed-mush country music--the steel says nothing, the strums received wisdom, the occasional pop move (major seventh chords on one that is sorta like "Everybody's Talkin'," another unacknowledged pop-folk dude wrote that, Fred Neil. Gibbs sounds honest, he's asleep in a truck stop, longs for his grandmamma's quilt and his baby's arms, sleeps on a rolled-up jacket. I don't really know why this supposed quality item was even made but it's relevant to our discussion of folk music, maybe he spent time writing these songs but the classiness of Stamey's production is sawdust-on-the-floor in every way and has zilch to do with anything I love about either folk or country music.

and yeah, the new Dierks ended up boring me; likely "Lot of Leavin' Left" will be the template for the kind of truckin' pothead music he's good at and everything else is more or less useless, unless you wanna hear about his Lady. I still like the idea of Dierks and am trying to think of folks who do the bluegrass-jam-rock move better. Well I mean the Byrds invented this shit on Untitled which is a shitty Byrds record even with Clarence White, whose licks can't even save a lot of that later Byrd-shit (the live Albert Hall reissue a case in point).

Been able to peek into the forthcoming Those Darlins record. Not what I woulda expected, more pop and abstract ('60s Beatles and '70s Nick Lowe moments), pretty good. Anyone else hear or see this group of young girls from Alabama, the Bridges, last time out? (Opened some shows for Matthew Sweet late last yr.) They yell out some stuff in unison and smell like apricot face scrub, real cute.

Last Sunday the NYT did a long piece on whatshername and The Heartless Bastards' new record. So the LA Times assigned someone to imitate it and that ran wednesday or thursday. So what does what'shername and the Heartless Bastards sound like? Because I can't trust either newspaper's entertainment writing, particularly the latter's because it was doing kneejerk us-too-ism.

In theory, it sounded almost like something worth investigating. But the quacking about country and roots for indie rock fans and what'shername (Erika Wennerstrom) admitting she might not be such a good guitar player raised two stop signs.

Here's the NYT copy:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/02/arts/heartless.1-417498.php

Frank on Whatshername and the Heartless Bastards (plus another rootsty Ohio rock band, the Tough & Lovely) in 2005, back when there was a Village Voice. (Of the two bands, he liked the Bastards more at the time; I preferred the Tough & Lovely myself, though I might reconsider if I relistened now):

http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-08-23/music/can-t-buy-a-frill/

I heard one track off the new Bastards album late last year -- called "The Mountain" or something -- and thought it had a decent Crazy Horse style guitar climb to it, but that they still lacked something in the rhythm and singing departments. Not bad for an indie-rock band; not great for a blues-rock band.

(Though, right, it's not like Wennerstrom's guitaring is going to blow you away, either. Or her tunes, from my experience. Or her live show, judging from the just-okay one I say in Manhattan a few years back. Though apparently she's got a new rhythm section since then, and since Frank's review; guess it's possible that the new album's a leap forward.)

"...tries to make a virtue of sartorial paralysis..." Hmmm, perfect for NPR, though, right?

The descriptions remind of the other What'shername (Jesse Sykes?) & the Sweet Hereafter who kind of sounded like Crazy Horse, too. But someone paid me fifty dollars (or maybe more, I forget) to say that and it's not like anyone really wanted to hear something that accurately sounded like classic rock.

Anyway, the LAT article made out that production on the Heartless Bastards had gone through an upgrade with people adding shit that normally the band wouldn't have been able to play, which was what Frank seemed to be driving at.

Neila Miller's "Mean World Blues" is a song that been rotating on my headbox for nigh on twenty year, or however long it's been since I started listening to Dave Van Ronk's No Dirty Names. Somebody gets up and leaves, at their own chosen speed, balancing on an implied bass line, rope ladder, "Well, I'm goin', goin' away baby, and don't, you follow me," words about the mean world curl around before she disappears, "You're blind now, baby you can't see." Some kind of very quiet implosion in somebody's life, in the fog around Van Ronk's searchlight melisma. Could well imagine Mingus playing this (and for a while, he billed himself as folk), the wispy melody evaporating in some waterfront tenor sax. As it is, we just get Dave's limited but evocative voice and guitar, as on the rest of this LP, and what a resource he was, a gateway drug, for those (incl Bobby Z., future D., and AKA Elston Gunn, with the Golden Chords and Shadow Blasters in Hibbing High, before he lifted Paul Nelson's record collection and played piano for Bobby Vee)finding their way past genteel purists and bland hitseekers alike. Anyway, that's the only way I know, Neila, always wondered about her, and requested the promo a while back; if it's bad, too bad. Even putting "authenticity" in quotes, though, I don't get then making fun of her for not being born in the blues under a cabbage leaf at the end of Tobacco Road. Anti-folk seemed more polemical, incl sexual politics of a night flashingly hinted at; freak folk is like paisley cottage/college industry, working from Donovan and Fahey and getting better sometimes when it twines around ye olde bass trombone etc from high school. Doe's made some good solo albums, once he figured out how to sing in a way that didn't make it all too concise and too clear that Exene ain't hear--although sometimes she does turn up on his albums (as do other duet partners, like his daughter), and some of the X live reunion tapes I've heard ain't bad. Haven't heard the tracks mentioned recently, so dunno. K.D. and Neko sound pretty warm to me, "sheer aural quality and all that shit" aside. They're not as deep as they'd like to be, but it's just as well.

Don's correct of course when he says my guffawing at Neila Miller's upper-end Liberal Arts inauthenticity is totally unfair (and also that it has nothing to do with how good or bad her music was -- and as I said, her music doesn't seem that bad); just me being kneejerk, I guess. And I may be setting up a strawman in assuming that folkies "like" Miller (whatever that means) would have in turn looked down their noses at the inauthenticity of Kingston Trio/New Christys etc. Maybe they wouldn't have. If anybody knows the truth, I'd be curious what it is.

Speaking of Donovan, I posted what's below on an old thread about him a couple days ago, but either nobody noticed or nobody cared. Here 'tis again:

Okay, this is going to sound retarded, but I've been hearing the song "Sunshine Superman" all my life and I never realized what it was until this morning. (A next-door neighboor had given me the album with that title in a pile of other used LPs two years ago, and I never got around to listening to it til now. I always knew Donovan did a song with that name; just never associated it with the song that goes "when I make my mind up you're going to be mine" and "Superman and Green Lantern ain't got nothin on me" etc. Not sure who else I thought did it; guess I never wondered one way or the other. And never really checked out Donovan much at all, even though the person I'm married to is named after one of his songs. Anyway, the album -- which also has "Season of the Witch," which I've always loved -- is good. A lot better than the *Wear Your Love Like Heaven* LP, which the same neighbor gave me, but which I thought was boring since Donovan's voice didn't seem pretty enough to support its tweeness, even though he's quite possibly inventing the genre.)

Husker Du covered "Sunshine Superman" once, right? Don't think I've ever actually heard that, either.

Not that there isn't some good comedy in a mighty windy and pretty fly for a blue kid playin the whites, to approximate a Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee title, and Jules Feiffer and Lenny Bruce made something of that whole strange era (per yout mini-history of Neila, let's put it between Democrats vs.Dixeicrats re the Civil Rights plank of '48, and Civil Rights Act of '64). And Bobby D. made something of it too, of his and Mr. Jones' ("Everytime I say 'you' I mean 'I'") inauthenticity/culture trek. He's also made something valid of reversing that course in the last twenty-five years or so, getting back into the Heritage of folk-blues-country-jazz, crucially personalized of course, and he's earned his place next to Jimmie Rodgers etc, if that's where he wants to settle in (still with some funky zingers at his old lady and "mind of a DJ," to cop Frank's apt phrase; whether lifting the needle from Thought Two to Four, or adapting lines from a Confederate laureate, etc, before becoming an actual radio DJ--will he end up doing that in clubs?)

Oh yeah, and Butthole Surfers did a good version of "Hurdy Gurdy Man"--was it Page on the original, or Beck? I gotta get some more Donovan from that era--seems like he actually briefly formed (? there were publicity pix, anyway) a proto-psych-folk-rock combo, the Open Road...? Always liked the waltz and first verse of "Sunny Goodge Street": On the firefly platform of sunny Goodge Street/A violent hash eater shakes a chocolate machine/Involved in an eating scene..." Although his observations could slide into unedited bliss, like the bit later in there about the magician (Spoiler Alert! "His name is Love, Love Love") Nice jazzy flow though ("Mingus mellow fantastic" though Mingus was famous for being pretty violent too, at least insofar as he had to shake your bourgie machine)("had" re artistic frustrations and some, incl. Mingus, judging by quotes in Priestley's bio) came to expect it as part of his show). Also good tourism in "Mexico", incl watching the sun go down while "the simple act of an oar's stroke put diamonds in the sea" and "Microscopic circles in the fluid of my sight" and "Watching the black-eyed native girl/Cut and trim the lamp/Valentino vamp/In Mexico." But "Young Girl Blues" scared me in high school--he knew a lot more about girls in that song than I ever would (but also I could relate to what his subject was privately going through, and those two impressions made a very unsettling combination)

xhuxk, you're probably keying in on the Micky Most-produced Donovan. "Hurdy Gurdy Man" was, indeed, Page on guitar and probably the rest of Led Zep (sans Plant) backing. Hurdy Gurdy Man -- the album -- is patchy, some of it way twee. Barabajagal had Jeff Beck on it but you don't see that so much in stores, anymore. "Atlantis" has always been a fave among hard rockers and psychedelic types.

Haven't made it to the early '60s folkie discussion Xhuxk promises is at the end of this thread, but I just watched the video for Jamie O'Neal's "Like A Woman" that Xhuxk recommends above and I swear in the middle of it I kept thinking of Shontelle's "T-Shirt" - an r&b song that isn't as good as its premise, which is that she's lonely without him and she can't get herself to get dressed up and go out so she's lying around wearing nothing but his T-shirt, hence a song that can be simultaneously wistful and salacious - so I keep expecting the women in the Jamie O'Neal vid (middle of the day, their respective men are off at work, they wishing the men back) to start changing into his clothes...

Agree that Sarah Buxton's "Space" is excellent; the best song I've heard of hers is "Stupid Boy," which Keith Urban turned into a hit but her version is as good as his. Her rasp can be alternately - or simultaneously - cute and cutting. Likable, though not quite as good, is "That Kind Of Day," where all these little things go wrong so she grabs her credit card: "When times are tough it's time to shop."

Xhuxk, I didn't have any Chad Mitchell Trio records to tape when I was putting all those old Kingston Trio songs on cassette for you back in the '90s, but the Chad Mitchell Trio were definitely getting a lot of play on the Frank & Richard Kogan record player 1963-1964. Here's a clip from the Bell Telephone Hour with them accompanied by an instrumentalist who went onto greater fame. They also did a lot of political satire that was no doubt considered unsafe for television:

The only version of "Baby Don't Go To Town" I can find on YouTube is this one by Doc Pitman and son, who say that they've inserted their own lyrics. I like it, though its chord pattern and some of its lyrics are basically "I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground" rather than "Hey Joe." Does anyone know who first recorded a song with the "Hey Joe" chord pattern, since I haven't heard any records made previous to whatever the first recorded version of "Hey Joe" is (Love? The Byrds? The Seeds? all of whose recorded versions predate Tim Rose's or Jimi Hendrix's recorded versions, the latter two following the "Billy Roberts" template, the former three the "Dino Valenti," who probably taught it to the Byrds). I have of course heard the chord pattern subsequently, Deep Purple's "Hush," for instance.

But her backstory doesn't make her sound "authentic" at all: learned about folk music at summer camp in the Catskills while on vacation from the High School Of Music And Art in '48, became the promoter of folk music at "liberal Antioch College" in '52, dated a "black, Jewish and Communist folk singer," wrote "Too Long Blues" after an early boyfriend snubbed her for another gal at a Weavers gig in '53. I swear, the whole plot reads like a parody to me.

Well, the plot is dead-on accurate for the milieu that propelled the "folk" craze in the '50s and early '60s, so in that sense it's very authentic, the very kids who glommed onto the music of a couple of decades back from Appalachia and the Southeast.

I'd say, though, that the music they fixed on doesn't altogether match up with the country music of the '20s and '30s, or the blues; I don't know enough music theory to identify the difference, exactly, but the "folk" music tended more towards the minor key (or suppressing the "mi" note of the chord altogether) and the black-derived music tended more to sound like what I'd vaguely call "spirituals." Someone like Edd could probably be more accurate and articulate as to what I'm trying to say, that is if he's clairvoyant enough to know what I'm trying to put into words.

I know Love did "Hey Joe" at around the exact same time the Byrds did it. A lot of early Love is "Hey Joe" anyway. I think what Frank's getting at is the whole sadness trip of the blues as "folk expression" of good liberal blacks for good liberal blacks, and occasionally a criminal like Leadbelly sneaked in there. They had a hard time telling apart commercial and "folk-expression" African-American music--nothing was more money-oriented than gospel music, because look at the great tightwad soul men if you don't believe me. James Brown, the Womack Brothers, Sam Cooke, Aretha herself. The big-time world of gospel music.
I haven't heard Neila yet. I understand it's from an acetate that was warped and the sound quality isn't great. I'd have to hear the "Hey Joe" template to make a judgment on that, but it sounds just like the "Louie Louie" template. "Hey Joe"'s definitive version is Hendrix', because he had the best rearranged folk thing happening.

So I have an important question. Is there actually any "rockabilly" on that Plant/Krauss album that won all those Grammys last night (the parts of which I've heard were reverent to the point of drabness, with not even enough oomph to be called bluegrass), or was the NY Times headline writer this morning lying? (Hell, "Hot Dog" by Zeppelin sounds more rockabilly than anything I've heard off that album. Not to mention that Honeydrippers EP, maybe. How come the Grammy jokers never gave that one an award? Wasn't it like the biggest selling EP ever?)

Pretty good country performances on the show: Carrie Underwood and (separately) Kid Rock (the beginning of whose medley I missed -- need to check it out on youtube) were so country that they were hard rock. And I swear Miley outsang (outdrawled, whatever) Taylor on their nice "Fifteen" duet. (Loved Lil Wayne w/ the Dirty Dozen Brass Band + Alan Toussaint and M.I.A. with lots of less pregnant rappers, too. And thought Katy Perry's fruit suit and Thom Yorke dancing wackily to the U.S.C. "Tusk" band were a whole lot more entertaining than Kenny Chesney's and Sugarland's boring ballads, the latter of which actually improved but not by that much when Lisa Stansfield I mean Adele came out to help. Did think Jennifer Nettles' award acceptance speech was adorable, however. And while like everybody else I feel sorry for Jennifer Hudson's family tragedy -- and my wife liked her outfit -- I'll be damned if I can understand how anybody can not find her singing a perfect time to take a bathroom break. Thought that during the Super Bowl too, for what it's worth.)

the tapes Frank mentions above also schooled me on the Limeliters, and Kingston Trio's "C.T.A," in which the narrator seems to be singing this little song to himself he sings every morning while commuting, kidding the folk-saga-for/of-white-dayjob-folkies or fans of folkies, deflating himself just a little for perspective's sake (can't go postal when he gets to the jobsite, miles to go and promises to keep), but also sounds kinda proud of himself--it's his own saga after all! And his workadaddy comrades' too.

And if it's more folkies ye be wantin', here they (don't)blow (judging by the music I was sent, but they do have a shipload):
Great Big Sea hail from Newfoundland, with full-sail harmonies that don't obscure the gnarlier details of their traditional and original ballads. On GBS's latest album, "Fortune's Favor," Alan Doyle and co-writer Russell Crowe raise their tankards to the iconoclastic comedy icon Bill Hicks, celebrating "A Company of Fools." In "Hard Case," a siren gets a booty call: "Hold me down/Under the sea/Drag me back to where we used to be." Folkwise, especially live, they can lead us through the hungry shadows, reeling around those old choruses.

More country-folk vinyl fetishism, from the buy-that-for-a-dollar thread. The band in question covers George and Tammy's "The Grand Tour" as well as "Jolene," but on first lesson, I'm liking their restrained and way too quiet attempt at an old-timey backporch drone even less than the Neila Miller EP. I want to like them, though (at least enough to justify keeping this nifty disc), so somebody please explain them to me. (They had something of a rock critic following at one point, as I recall; think they even finished Top 40 Pazz & Jop once):

$2, thrift store, 46th and Queens Blvd, Sunnyside, today:

The Geraldine Fibbers Get Thee Gone (Sympathy For The Record Industry 10-inch EP, c. '90s I guess)

An extravagance, since I am a total fetishizing sucker when it comes to 10-inch EPs (even though it is impossible to find inner sleeves). Plus I've never liked anything by these '90s indie art roots nerds before (not that I've listened much), and why would this be any different? But I used to be (very) mildly curious about the Fibbers, and I figure, if I'm ever going to like anything by them, this'd be about the correct amount of songs. Plus they cover Dolly's "Jolene" on it; how bad could that be? (Pretty bad, but I'll probably keep it anyway.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 9 February 2009 19:19

This record sounds like a frog being choked while someone laboriously puts a guitar out of tune, but I love it; only thing I ever liked by them. Bought it when it came out & would buy a nearly infinite number for $2 each, or half of infinity for $4/ea. It was around the time of Uncle Tupelo's breakup and we were all looking for a new hip alternative country act. Didn't find it; found a choking frog. Still!

― staggerlee, Tuesday, 10 February 2009 01:54

I just have to put in a good word here for the Fibbers' two proper albums, the 1st of which is a favorite of mine.

― sleeve, Tuesday, 10 February 2009 02:14

Posters on that thread also offered helpful advice about inner and outer sleeves for 10-inches, but I'll leave that stuff there.

so I kinda dig old Marianne Faithfull covering Dolly's great "Down from Dover," even tho she sing like a frog--a once-beautiful frog but a frog and who say older wimmen don't still have it? The sonics are VERY good, and you know, I decry sonics and all that shit but of course, I am that sucker, totally.

Dug Carrie U. on Grammys--very sexy and good. Keith backin' up Al Green was interesting, but Al still cuts all those kind of singers, even Timberlake who is actually from (east) Memphis. The Toussaint thing--was that "Whirlaway" or what he played, gotta look it up--was amazing. I really like Lil' Wayne.

Raising Sand has always underwhelmed me; as Caroline points out, Alison outsings Plant by a mile and she wondered if they were playing hide-the-salami on tour? they seem close. anyway, I thought that their take on the Everlys' great "Gone Gone Gone" was underwhelming. I mean OK, folk minimalism and great song choices; but the Everlys' own version of "Gone Gone Gone" is heartbroke, brilliant super-pop of a level unimaginable today and so Raising Sand is just this year's Quality Item that has bored more than a few of the folks who took it home, unless you know the originals then seems to me that frission dissapates. Robert Plant would like to be a combination of Gene Clark and Arthur Lee but instead it just turned out to be another duets thing and exercise in good taste. But for the Grammys, it was pretty stripped-down and that was the point of it I guess, the contrast.

Ah, Marianne--was worried when I heard she had breast cancer and then no more news for the past year, so even if the new album ain't so hot, glad she's still at it. transition: Shel Silverstein's "Ballad of Lucy Jordan" was a highlight of her great Broken English, and: Just finished Lisa Rogak's epic (but not too long) Silverstein bio, A Boy Named Shel. From working class Chicago in the 30s, to Korean War Asia (already peripetatic cartooning chronicler for Pacific Stars & Stripes)back to Chicago and dropping cartoons off at the probably gone-tomorrow office of young Playboy, which soon took off and sent him globetrotting again, when he wasn't hitting the beatnik folkie scenes in Old Town and Greenwich Village; later adding his pads and milieu in Sausilito's houseboat community, Martha's Vineyard, Nashville and Key West (but he could show up anywhere anytime, on yout doorstep, corner cafe or used bookstore, to work and/or play together--and when he was bored, he was gone in a flash). It's all about working and playing hard, cos that's what he was all about, and creatively as possible, in his own sometimes irasible (or axiomatically challenging) way. Lots of great comments from friends and collaborators (Bobby Bare, David Mamet, etc, etc)Some intriguing mentions on robertchristgau.com, but the only albums I've got are the collaborations with Pat Dailey in that Daily show preview I posted, and one with Fred Koller, and an expanded reissue of Where The Sidewalk Ends, which I haven't listened to yet. Any other recommendations,as far as his own albums, songs for/with others,the books?

"Ballad of Lucy" shows up on Bare's neo-politan The Moon Was Blue. dunno a lot about him otherwise, should check out the bio. His country cousin has to be, though, John D. Loudermilk...

The author describes a lot of albums (and books and plays and a screenplay collab with Mamet). But she doesn't really evaluate them, other than how he perceived/presented 'em and reviewers and others reacted, and how they figured in his career, incl his and his team's experience during the projects--without getting endlessly detailed. A couple of sites she lists, that I need to check: (she doesn't list the whole URL, so possible might not be a www. in one or both of these) Carol's Banned Width banned-width.com and Sarah Weinman's Shel Silverstein Archive shelsilverstein.tripod.com