Rolling Country 2009 Thread

But izzit exactly the same style and tone?

Yep. I dunno, possibly less off-hand "incidental music" between songs, but same voice, same sound, same middle-aged fuckup who drinks too much persona. I'm realizing now that, while Billy Bob is just adequate as a singer (which I'm fine with), he is probably one of my favorite country songwriters (in terms of lyrics and melodies) at the moment. And one of the funniest songwriters working now, period. (Should've voted for him in the songwriter category in last year's Nashville Scene poll.)

CMT has a video up for "Shuttin' Detroit Down"-- with Kris Kristofferson as a laid off auto worker and Mickey Rourke as his buddy.

http://www.cmt.com/videos/john-rich-country/367274/shuttin-detroit-down.jhtml?

Wow -- Right wing populist rage; sabotage on the deadend streets, police cars overturned. Can't think of another country video that's ever bleeped out the word "fuck," either. It occurs to me that the "they" shutting Detroit down in Rich's song is as undefined as the "they" in any old hardcore song. (Guess it's "Congress," or "rich assholes who own banks" or just "people who live in New York City and Washington D.C. and aren't like us here in the real world"; how long til the New Depression gets its own Father Coughlin? Not that I'm, uh, implying anything.) So who's the congressman who makes the split-second cameo appearance on the TV news in that video, anyway? On first viewing I was thinking Kucinich -- can't get more lefty than him, right? But I'm probably wrong. Anyway. Great song, great vid. But that doesn't mean it doesn't make me uneasy.

By the way, if anybody missed it, Jon Caramanica ran an interview of John Rich in the Socialist NY Times a couple days ago, and called "Shuttin' Detroit Down" "the first great song of the bailout era." Judging from the sparse quotes, it didn't look like Rich gave Caramanica a whole lot of his time, though he did mention that Merle Haggard had compared the song to "Okee From Muskogee" (which it isn't nearly as good as, but still.) And when Caramanica asked him about another song on his new album where he says "we'd all be speaking German, living under the flag of Japan" if it wasn't for our WWII vets, John told Jon "I mean it completely literally." (Which leads me to wonder whether the Japs would be speaking German too, but never mind.)
Anyway, here it is. (I haven't heard the whole album myself; got sent a download link, but I'm lazy when it comes to the evils of modern technology. And I still wonder where Big Kenny stands on all this):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/arts/music/31rich.html

(By the way, my use of "right wing" is pretty amorphous, too. Obama and Democratic Congresspeople supporting a bailout of course make for easy right wing targets, but the video and song are explicitly critical of big business and at least implicitly pro-union. So Rich is obviously walking a fine line. And if the song had come from somebody who wasn't so vocal in his support of McCain last year, I'm not sure I'd be saying which wing he was flying with.)

Also wonder whether the ultimatums Obama gave auto companies this week makes the song more or less relevant; not bailing them out could shut Detroit down, too, right? If me and you run to the rescue, isn't there a chance that might save Kristofferson's job? So the message is confused, too. (Rich only explicitly mentions bailing out bankers, but he also talks about bossmen jetting out of town, which clearly refers to the auto execs -- who most Michiganders I know seem apologetic for.)

You're correct--that was Kucinich. A big WTF moment for me. But Kristofferson is such a well-known lefty I guess the video was meant to be bi-partisan.

So what do people here know/think about O.B. McClinton? Unsuccesssful soul singer/semi-successful soul songwriter from Mississippi, crossed over to country (sometime calling himself "The Chocolate Cowboy") in the early '70s and had a passel of not-very-high-charting hits between 1972 and 1987 (most promising title: "Honky Tonk Tan," 1984), the not-so-big biggest of them coming at the very beginning -- "Don't the Green Grass Fool You" (#37) and "My Whole World Is Falling Down" (#36) in '72. Apparently recorded three country albums for Stax subsidiary Enterprise, and a few later ones for a few other labels. Died of cancer at age 47 in 1987.

Got his 1974 If You Loved Her That Way for my usual going price of $1 at a flea market last month, and it's good. Two songs about good wanton women, though in one of them ("Clean Your Own Tables") she's just called a barmaid instead, but that's okay because (I'm paraphasing from memory) "She' not what you'd call an All-American girl" and "I'm not what you call an All-American Boy, I've done time in San Francisco and L.A."; in the one where the woman is actually called wanton, her name is Dixie, and she was like a Mama to O.B., so he's not going to stand for anybody running down Dixie -- a pretty twisted metaphor, somehow, coming from a black country singer, not unlike the minstrely blackface phrasing ("when my self is feelin' low") in "Little Green Apples" by O.C. Smith, another early '70s black country singer I often confuse O.B. with (and you can throw Southern soul guy O.V. Wright in there too.) There's also "If You Loved Her That Way" (where O.B. blames the infidelity of a friend's wife on the friend's inattention to her), a decent cover of "Lean On Me" that reminds me that Bill Withers had country leanings as well, and a great cut called "Hallelujah" that seems like an example of its own unnamed genre -- spoken more like a sermon than a gospel song; a few verses detailing bad stuff going on in the congregation (a marriage splitting up, a man looking down on the neighbors in his new neighborhood), separated by a recurring chorus about "hallelujah -- save us again" (the chorus of which reminds me of "Hallelujah I'm a Bum," but I have a feeling it might be related to some other template I've just never noticed before). And O.B. has more soul music in his singing, overall, than Darius Rucker or Cleve Francis (maybe even Charlie Pride) if not Lionel Richie or Ray Charles or Dobie Gray or Big Al Downing when they made country moves.

Also been listening to the car radio a lot in the past few days. Love Kenny Chesney's "Out Last Night" -- seems like the most fun thing he's done in years, after he starting getting a little depressing and rolling up in an acoustic ball in his blue chair and I stopped paying attention so much (which means I may have missed something, but this is still good.)

Have come to truly hate the ubiquitous George Strait hit about "rolling down the river of love," but I've come to like Montgomery Gentry's unusually laid-back, somehow almost early '70s Grateful Dead-feeling (though melodically partly Counting Crows reminscent) "Roll With Me" a lot, which proves I have nothing against rolling per se'. And I also have nothing against George Strait per se' -- I've come to like his hit "Troubador," too (even though K'Naaan has a way better Troubador album.)

Then there are songs they probably only play on the radio here and not anywhere else. Jason Boland and the Stragglers' '08 album track "Comal County Blues" is on the air enough to count as a legit hit in my mind (seems to be about an Austinite who moves south to the Texas country but comes back into town at night to drive the streets and relive old good times when he feels depressed), and I like it, though I've never heard Boland otherwise. Heard a song on the Triple A station the other day that sounded kind of like James McMurtry and had the guy talking in a gruff voice over a killer "Symphathy For The Devil" groove (with rock guitars building like a coastal storm) about how much he liked the bayou, but they didn't back-announce it, and I'm not even sure what title to google to find out. Also don't think I ever heard this great old honky-tonk song "Bloody Mary Morning" before -- Google says Willie Nelson has the most famous version, but I'm fairly positive the rendition I heard on the air last week wasn't him.

Also heard an awesome, apparently '80s local late-new-wave bar-band dance-craze hit "Earthquake Shake" last night by a band I never heard of before called the Skunks (link below.) Shades of, I dunno, "The Meltdown" by Root Boy Slim and His Sex Change Band" or something dumb like that. Plus they apparently cover "Sister Ray" on the MySpace, it looks like:

http://www.myspace.com/theskunkstx

Not to mention the fact that the public station at 88.7 that sometimes plays Southern Soul also has other shows where they play '80s old-school r&b (yesterday: Cameo's "Single Life," Maze featuring Frankie Beverly's "Happy Feelin's," Slave's "Slide," One Way's immortal "Cutie Pie"), and still other shows where they play presumably current gospel songs that try to sound like old-school rap and funk music, and sometimes do it pretty well (one I heard yesterday had Taana Gardner's "Heartbeat" bassline.)

Also my excellent mailman Daniel Patrick O'Flannagan McGee (not his real name, but it's not far off) is a huge Hal Ketchum fan who back in college was a huge It's A Beautiful Day fan -- two artists I know almost nothing about, though maybe I should find out. (Apparently Hal put a new album out lately.)

Most of the time, John Rich is as politically nuts as Ted Nugent, only he's not 60 yet. Being on Beck and Hannity makes one officially part of the tribe of Turner heevahavas -- people who don't realize they appear like peripheral characters from "The Turner Diaries" but who have never seen the book or know what it is. T-shirts that say "America -- love or leave it." Eesh, yeah, so many of us anarchists and haters want it burned down.

Making "Shuttin' Down Detroit" would seem to be more proof of a busted watch being right twice a day. I haven't been watching CMT lately but I'll definitely be tuning in this week to see the video in top rotation.

I heard the John Rich album today-- needs fewer ballads and more batshit. The standout songs (besides "Detroit") are the one mentioned earlier about how if not for the Greatest Generation we'd be living in The Man in the High Castle--speaking German under the flag of Japan. John is mad at unspecified people on his TV "taking shots at Uncle Sam" who presumably think that fighting the Nazis was a bad idea. In the title track "Son of a Preacher Man" he figures he can still get into heaven because "Jesus ran with a party crowd." In another song he becomes Eminem and complains that everyone wants to be him--that is to have his money and fame, but they don't want to pay the dues he paid, nor do they want to put up with having cameras in their faces everyday or having their "country boy views" blown up into "big city news."

as politically nuts as Ted Nugent

Speaking of which (and the shuttering of Detroit):

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090404/ap_en_mo/final_four_detroit_spotlight

"Left to their own accord and entrepreneurial enterprise, I am confident the U.S. auto industry would have outperformed all others. ... Now that Fedzilla has had the audacity to turn up the havoc-wreaking, criminally violating the U.S. Constitution and all parameters of logic and decency, it appears the death knell has sounded. It breaks my Motor City heart," he said.

So government intervention in the auto industry caused Detroit to fail? And it was fine before?

And speaking of Michigan and country, this is from a pretty good (if seemingly over-edited at points) piece by my old Farmington, Michican middle-school pal R.J. Smith on Ron Asheton's final days, in what turned out to be Blender's final issue:

"Ann Arbor in the mid-1960s was shaped by freak culture. This wasn't the peace-and-love scene of San Francisco. It was scrappy, built on hustles. Michigan hippies had hillbilly ancestry: Their parents had come from the Deep South in World War II to work in defense plants. They brought a don't tread on me rebel vibe."

They may or may not be some leaps of analysis in that passage (and the first couple sentences say nothing that hasn't been said thousands of times before), but I'm interested in the demographic geographic shift R.J.'s talking about -- obviously lots of Detroit's black population came from the South to work in factories, but it never really occurred to me that a good portion of Detroit's white population did as well. I'd like to read more on it. Either way, it kind of explains Kid Rock.

I had a discussion about this general topic with friends in Kalamazoo last year. They were wondering why so many poor whites in Michigan talk like they're from the South. I said this probably has to do with the fact that a huge influx of Appalachian folk moved north to work in factories (in southwest Michigan they came for the paper mills). When my wife and lived in Cleveland for a year she worked with poor people and nearly all the whites had roots in Appalachia. This is partly why places like Detroit and Chicago had fairly thriving bluegrass and country scenes. The Osbornes and Mac Wiseman -- as well as Jimmy Martin, I believe -- all had radio spots in Detroit in the 1950s and early '60s.

Neil V. Rosenberg does a great job charting this migration in his book Bluegrass.

Almost forgot: The Monroe Brothers were formed while Bill and his brother Charlie were working in an oil refinery in northern Indiana, near Gary. They frequently appeared on WLS in Chicago, which, if I'm remembering correctly, had America's no. 1 barn dance/variety show before the rise of WMS. But I'm not toally sure about that.

Left to their own accord and entrepreneurial enterprise, I am confident the U.S. auto industry would have outperformed all others

Four months ago the Nuge was blaming it all on the UAW and insisting the government had to force contractual "restructuring" on the blue collar workers. No one can accuse him of logic. Most of Ted's stuff reads like he's dictating it in a stream of rant to a stenographer, which is proably exactly how it's made.

on his TV "taking shots at Uncle Sam" who presumably think that fighting the Nazis was
a bad idea

Re Rich, this is so fucked-up, it's difficult to know where to start. I'd think that the those who thought fighting the Nazis was a poor idea prior to the declaration of war are 99.8 percent dead for a good many years now.

As for Detroit, I bet it was a complete polyglot, as many Euro-immigrants as southerners moved northern and urban.

I'd think that the those who thought fighting the Nazis was a poor idea prior to the declaration of war are 99.8 percent dead for a good many years now.

And plenty of them were right-wing populists at the time too, as I understand. Speaking of which, and as George suggests, it's hard for me to believe that the strong German/Polish Catholic bent of much of the Detroit area's working class white population originated in the South. So I suspect there's some major hyperbole in R.J.'s claim, but I'd still like to see any population figures that might support it. (And I may well check out that Bluegrass book, if it details the migration pattern clearly.)

John Rich should have taken the opportunity to write an anti-union tune, which would have been more in line with his previous politcal stance. 30 years at a union plant and there's no way that guy would be losing his home, unless he had another one in Traverse City and a boat in the driveway. As it is, I realize John Rich is just blowing with the wind and wholly full of shit.

On a side note, one feels sorry for Cowboy Troy, missing out on this momentary glory. Last night he made an acting debut in Furnace, a Sci-Fi Channel Saturday night 'special'. It was a movie for various jobbers including Michael Pare, JA Rule, the ugly Mexican guy from central casting who has tattoos all over his chest and was 'Machete' in one of the Grindhouse trailers, and Tom Sizemore, who has been ruined by drugs, prison and Heidi Fleiss. Furnace was, naturally, about a prison called Blackgate, one in which a dead warden molested his own child, who he put in the furnace. And then he was killed near the furnace. So the ghosts come out of the furnace to start killing prison guards and the condemned for no obvious reason. Troy plays a janitor and is killed early, perhaps a blessing because it's a two-hour movie that seemed like four and it must have been nasty having to stand around on the set for days.

Sci-Fi channel advertises its Saturday night specials as 'the most dangerous night on television.' It is truth in advertising, very dangerous to your ability to stay awake.

Anthony E., who I told should resume posting here, asked this on my lj:

John Rich's song about Detroit, Runaway, Johnson's High Cost of Living, three make a trend, but other country rock recession documents? (this is good, sort of like shelton, a lot like urban, but i love the steel guitar)

Btw, I don't think "Runaway" and "High Cost Of Living" are recession documents (and I also don't know what the parenthesis refers to; Anthony doesn't like Jamey and is pissed off at Rich, and I don't hear any pedal steel in "Runaway," though I think there's a little bit of slide).

Juvenile piece of hagiography on Bruce Springsteen in today's LA Times. Paper actually went ot the the trouble of sending their reporter, who usually does the comic book beat, to Asbury Park
to take dictation from the ummah.

Springsteen, it is said, is "a troubadour for troubled times." That made me laugh. I dunno how anyone can write, let alone read, that kind of line with a straight face. I'd think any normal person would flinch if they saw that said of them, no matter how bloated on themselves
they've become. And by the look of it, Bruce's has been drinking in his own p.r. for some time, actually thinking that the lyrics on his latest album are deep.

Of course, the album's not sold as well as expected and there are empty seats at some of the shows and, let's face it, did you really think him singing the chorus of "Glory Days" at the Superbowl gig was great? We went out for a quick burger stop. Seemed like he was still singin' it when we got back.

"(Bruce) paused and pondered his illustrious songbook." Man.

"The live show is a current event at all times." I should hope so.

"The forever-young Springsteen seemed to be pulsing with new reasons to believe after watching the election of Barack Obama."

"Springsteen is driven, competitive, and whether it's on stage or in the gym, obsessed with a muscular expression of himself as some sort of populist-poet-as-athlete ..."

Effin' Ay!

"For the singer, it's not enough to be an essential artist, he also wants to be urgent."

So apparently Clarence Clemons walks with a cane now because he's had hip replacement, and Nils Lofgren, like Eddy van Halen, has had both replaced.

Speaking of which, and as George suggests, it's hard for me to believe that the strong German/Polish Catholic bent of much of the Detroit area's working class white population originated in the South.

I hope I didn't imply that. I was just saying the migration was very real, and the big cities of the Midwest had significant numbers of Appalachian people.

A friend of mine, who is something of a Appalachian expert, recommended to me this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Appalachian-Odyssey-Historical-Perspectives-Migration/dp/0275968510/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238969365&sr=8-1

Unfortunately, it's too expensive for me. Here's the blurb for it:

One of the greatest internal migrations in American history has been the movement of the people of Appalachia to a variety of rural and urban destinations all over the country --- wherever economic opportunity beckoned, from the industrial Midwest to the timber empires of the Pacific Northwest. This movement (about five million in the 1950s alone) has taken place in several waves throughout the twentieth century, and continues to this day. Appalachian Odyssey provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the impact of this phenomenon on both the Appalachian region and the country as a whole. Scholars from a variety of social science disciplines bring their perspectives to this volume in an examination of the historical, political, social, economic, and cultural impact of a talented group often derided as "hillbillies". Appalachian Odyssey provides a much-needed corrective to this bias, and a deeper understanding of a people who have significantly influenced the American story.

Frank Rich on this morning's NY Times Op-Ed page, on Detroit, Wall Street, and John Rich:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/opinion/05rich.html

In the unsatisfying aftermath of Rick Wagoner’s demise, we must rid ourselves of the illusion that there’s a rigid separation between Wall Street and what John Rich calls “the real world.”

Mike Hudson of the Pagans once said that Ohio city dwellers were scared that the hillbilles were gonna come swarming in and steal the jobs. This had something to do with fear of Elvis, Jerry Lee etc (not that a lotta sane Southerners would want to encounter Jerry Lee in the flesh). Southern blacks and whites both migrated to the Midwest, of course, and were more concentrated in some areas.(Didn't the longtime mayor of Dearborn ban African-Americans? Dunno what Henry Ford thought about them; maybe he was too busy stdying the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to bother). That novel The Dollmaker is a saga of such migration; think I'll read it when I get time (saw the movie long ago, with Levon Helm and Jane Fonda--seemed good at the time). Xxhuxx, Willie Nelson wrote "Bloody Mary Morning." It kicks off the ex-husband's side (Side B) of Phases And Stages, ca. 1973: excellent concept album/soap opera about two exes after the break-up(excellent opp for product placement if they'd drunk Dos Equis, but no labels are recited from).

Hudson didn't go on to write that fear of a hillbilly planet in Ohio had to do with fear of Elvis, etc. that's just my take.

And then of course there was A Face In The Crowd, with a musical hillbilly TV fascist messiah (inevitably portrayed by Andy Griffith), and Flem Snopes, ancestor of the method acting white trash-with-new-moneymutant Jett Rink, of Giant, and of Anton Chagur (spelling?) the principled psycho in No Country For Old Men (yeah the Gone To Texas thing, that was also big down here in the Southeast)

Todd Martens (who used to write for me at Billboard) live-blogs the ACMs on the LA Times website, giving each performance a letter grade (usually low ones):

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2009/04/acm-awards-the-performances-as-they-happen.html

(Fwiw, Todd used to write the indie column in his trade-magazine days; not much of a country music fan, I don't think, which that snarky blog post pretty much confirms. I didn't see the ACMs myself.)

(Actually, though, re-reading it, it's not entirely snarky, and not entirely un-country-fan like. And for all I know, I would've graded lots of those songs at least as harshly. So ignore my last post.)

(okay.)

5. Jamey Johnson's "In Color." The first ballad of the night comes from newcomer-ish Johnson. The cut has already won song of the year, and it's not. Performing largely in black-and-white here, this one is aimed straight for your heart. Isn't it sweet how he inspires us to reminisce about our grandmother and high school teacher? No. Skip the song and look through your photo album: C-

Where I realized the writer had nothing to say to me.

Re the LATimes Pop blog: The ACM's were covered in the real newspaper by Randy Lewis and that story ran today inside the Calendar section. Since I know how the Times handles its blogs -- it's practice is to encourage its reporters to continually update them with as much stuff as possible at the expense of the copy editors and regular staff who do the gut work, it's kind a sore point. The Times continually publishes its growing hit counts but does not release how much money it actually makes off all this 'action.' Secondarily, and this is a philosophical point, but a big one: If you don't do the copy-editing your blog, or pull the trigger on it, or even deal with it when the software application falls over on you (like most people who do regular blogs do), is it actually a blog, or just you doing the free-lance mill providing more content for the old media's new media site, desperate to get eyeballs? This has extra meaning for the Times since it just finished another purge of its editorial staff. In these purges, staffers get left go from their salaried positions and in frequent cases show up doing the same stuff they did the week before, except they're now on free-lance or whatever the free-lance blogger scale is at the joint. And while this is not rare in journalism, there is something very unseemly and sleazy about it, circumstances in which the executed get to participate in their own execution, after which they are exhumed to do work at zombie scale.

And that doesn't seem very 'country' or 'Merican does it? Vulpine, yes.

In the real world they're shutting copy editors down.

For what it's worth, back in the mid '90s even when we weren't falling ever deeper into a recession the environmental and engineering firms I worked at were doing the same thing with the support staff (technical editors and word processors), cutting the salaried employees and bringing in temps - though I think there's some potential problems you can get into with the NLRB if you fire someone and then bring that same person back as a temp (not that I know anything about labor law).

A couple of Jamaicans ride a Benny Hill riddim and try to put on southern accents.

Lady Saw "Jealous"

Leftside "Cowboy"

(Neither of which is nearly as good as Timberlee f. Tosh "Heels" (where she not only attempts but masters a Southern California accent) or Elephant Man "No Tikkle.")

Questions or comments on the recent posts on this thread.

xhuxk have you moved to Texas? (don't answer if it is personal, I'm trying to figure out where you are hearing this music on the radio)

Hank Thompson is better than Mel Tillis, but I'm not an expert.

I saw either Rich or Big's house on CMT Cribs last weekend, and it was a big tacky building that looked like a woodland lodge, but I fast forwarded through it because I just wanted to see Denny Hamlin and Mark Martin's houses (NASCAR)

The rural Midwest always seemed just as country as the south to me, even though my family migrated the other direction, and it really isn't that far if you are driving north from a "southern" or "Appalachian" area to the Midwest.

I've got Springsteen tickets for Wednesday, and today on the radio they announced "front section tickets for 20 dollars if you show up at the box office at noon on Tuesday with a food donation" way to screw loyal fans who paid full price, pretend you are doing something good with your can of beans, get press, and fill the house.

Hey James -- Yep, moved to Austin in early March. Where are you??

And I don't disagree about the "rural" Midwest (the cornfields of Southern Indiana say), but it's probably worth mentioning that Detroit and Ann Arbor aren't exactly rural. (Also, for what it's worth, I barely heard any country music at all growing up in Suburban Detroit -- not sure whether anybody in my high school listened to it, though maybe the Keego Harbor kickers taking all industrial arts classes did, who knows -- but when I went to college in Missouri I met plenty of Willie and David Allan Coe fans my age.) (Charlie Daniels too, though come to think of it he definitely got airplay on Detroit's AOR stations in the late '70s. But he was considered more "Southern rock" than "country" then obviously.)

I need to check out the hicky dancehall tracks Frank linked to; "Heels" is in the running for my single of the year so far. Which reminds me I emailed a long incoherent multi-part rant to Frank last night on what I'm convinced is the horrible state of '00s (and for the most part '90s) r&b. May expand on it to some extent sometime here, seeing how it mirrors some folks' feelings about '00s and '90s commercial country who I disagree with. I do touch on it a bit in these skeptical Southern Soul posts though:

Chitlin Circuit Double-entendre -filled Soul 2004 (and onward) Theodis Ealey's "Stand Up In It" is a song of the year

And speaking of (a lot more) skeptical, here's my Rolling Stone review of the new Bonnie Prince Billy album:

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/26987513/review/27078310/beware

I tracked down the Detroit radio station the Osbornes, as well as many other country musicians, appeared on.

WJR

They had a show called the "Lazy Ranch Barn Dance" in the 1950s. It took place every Saturday night at 12101 Mack (St? Ave?). The also had a show called the "Big Barn Frolic"!

Jake Owens "Don't Think I Can't Love You," in the country top ten; in which it is asserted that even poor people can have the s3Xor. Song is kind of boring, unfortunately. (So, perhaps, is the sex.)

Taylor much more in tune this year than last year at the ACMs, and did "You're Not Sorry," the best song on Fearless. Wrote about it on my my lj:

Somewhat strange "You're Not Sorry" from Taylor Swift at the ACMs: she clips off each word, making the song sound really angry - which it is, of course, but on the studio version she kept the voice sad and let the words carry the anger, which is more effective. But this is effective in its own right, or tense, anyway, almost hard to watch.

She seemed totally immersed in the sadness and upset, as if the audience weren't there (though of course that might have been exactly how she intended to come across). Speculation in the YouTube comments that she was ill while performing. Also, this, which made me go "Huh?":

ricefarmer (10 hours ago)
fuck ugly muslims

NECOLE21 (9 hours ago)
ricefarmer...fuck u'r mama!by the way taylor is not muslim!usucked ur bitch even im not muslim u should not do that to them...coz they are not bad as u know

Here's more info. However, this says it was WXYZ, not WJR:

This is from: http://www.hillbilly-music.com/programs/story/index.php?prog=400

On Saturday nights in the mid-1950s, folks turned to radio station WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan for the "The Lazy Ranch Boys Barn Dance" show at 9:00pm every Saturday night. The show had a cast of 14 regulars and special guests as they appeared. They had such infamous guest stars as Moon Mullican, Lulu Belle and Scotty, Jimmy Dean, Ken Marvin, Tommy Sosebee, Ernie Lee, Neal Burris, Jonnie and Jack, Kitty Wells, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Smiling Max Henderson, The York Brothers and more! So this show looks like a stop on the touring of some of the more famous hillbilly acts back then.

The hosts or headliners of the show were the big little band called the Lazy Ranch Boys. They consisted of Casey Clark, fiddler who also doubled up as the shows emcee, Herb Williams, guitar and vocals, Barefoot Brownie Reynolds, for comedy relief.

Barefoot Brownie played the harmonica and bass and was said to be quite funny. He had worked with folks such as Red Foley on the Grand Ole Opry, at the Renfro Valley Barn Dance up in Rock Castle County Kentucky and other Saturday Night Jamborees. His career was said to have started on the Pa and Ma McCormick show that aired over WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Herb Williams palyed the rhythm guitar and did most of the vocals for the Lazy Ranch Boys group. He did a lot of ballads or folk songs and they said his recitations and poems were always near the top of the request list. He wrote many of those compositions. He was a rather down to earth fellow and that earned him the nickname of "The Country Gentleman". He was the smallest of the group, but ate the most and said he stayed thin because he "carried it around".

One of the popular acts on the show was the duo of the West Virginia Sweethearts, Charlie and Honey. Honey was quite the yodeler then. They got their start in radio on WCHS in Charleston, SC on the "Old Farm Hour" show. Then they moved on to WSM in Nashville and also the Renfro Valley Barn Dance.

Another attraction was a 12-year old singer by the name of Little Evelyn who also appeared with the Lazy Ranch Boys at personal appearances. Then there was Mary Ann Johnson, a songwriter of some fame, who had her tunes of "Honey Baby Blues" and "You're Stepping Out" recorded by Neal Burris on Columbia Records. Mary Lynn, was the show stopping fiddle players on the show. The Kentucky Boys were noted for their "hillbilly comedy".

Some of the regulars on the show at that time were:

* The Lazy Ranch Boys, Casey Clark, Herb Williams and "Barefoot" Brownie Reynolds
* Chuck Carroll
* Herb Williams
* Little Evelyn, 12-year old singer
* Mary Ann Johnson
* Mary Lynn
* West Virginia Sweethearts (Charlie and Honey)
* "Barefoot" Brownie Reynolds
* The Kentucky Boys, Nat and Bill

Yeah, without doing web research to confirm this, I'm pretty sure I thought of WXYZ and WJR (both on AM) as "parents' radio stations" or "grandparents' radio stations" when I was a kid -- get the idea that, by the late '60s, WJR and possibly both featured a lot of news-talk. Teens and pre-teens into cool Top 40 tunes gravitated toward Windsor's legendary CKLW -- before eventually switching to FM: Which meant WDRQ first (Top 40 unto disco), then WABX, WRIF, WWWW, and eventually WLLZ (All rock/AOR. But what comes around goes around: One of those AORs at least temporarily later switched to a country format, I believe, probably after I'd moved away.)

Richard Thompson's soon-to-hit-shelves four-volume Walking On A Wire: 1968-2009 deserves a mention on this thread because, obviously, British folk music is just country music by British people. Anyway, Discs 1 and 2 are definitive (at least to somebody like me who owns no previous Richard Thompson box sets), and Discs 3 and 4 are basically unlistenable (even though I kind of liked his Sweet Warrior album two years ago.) Fortunately, I was sent the box as two separate two-disc sets! Which means one stays on my shelf; the other doesn't.

And the Yeah Yeahs deserve a mention here too because the instrumental-seeming (though not technically instrumental) fourth track of their new album, "Skeletons," has some penny-whistly British folk music wafting through it. And the album has several better if less country tracks too, most notably the one that goes "off with their heads/dance til you're dead." And they seem to be incorpoprating dance-music-type space and beauty into their sound, which seems an improvement over the last time I paid much attention to them. (Which has been a while -- never got why folks liked "Maps" so much, and to be honest I kind of lost track not long after their debut EP all those years ago.) That said, though, a lot of the album still hits me as too vague and shapeless -- maybe partly because Karen O's voice (which I find kind of grating in the first place, though not nearly as grating as say Bjork's or whoever) seems to fade into the mix too much. And she doesn't exactly kill me even when she doesn't fade into the mix. But Frank says the album is likely to end up among his top five for the year. So perhaps further listens will change my mind.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, obv.

In far more relevant news, here is my long-awaited (by me anyway) "Battle Of The Country Hunks" roundup of new albums by Pat Green, Rodney Atkins, Eric Church, Keith Urban, Dierks Bentley, and Jason Aldean (which I like in more or less that order):

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-04-08/music/battle-of-the-country-hunks/

And to be fair to Aldean, it should be noted that Sasha Frere-Jones is currently listing his "This I Gotta See" as his ninth-favorite song of the year on his website. (His #5 is "I Forget The Name" by Holly Williams. No idea if that's the song's actual title.)

Jason Aldean in Manhattan, eh? I'll bet that'll be one of his least fun nights on record. Now there's a guy who could use a short form vinyl LP live album, one with everything non-electric guitar left off. Why he's playing NYC is the 50 buck question.

BB Kings seems like only a 25 buck answer.

I must admit that I find it personally hilarious the New Yorker would rate his music highly, let alone deploy the disciminatory power necessary to place it at #9, as opposed to #6 or perhaps #11.

Maybe it is time for Mama Tried to Walk the Line: The 500 Greatest Country Albums starring Richard Thompson, Kelly Clarkson, and Son House.

xp, to xhuxk I'm here in Houston, and our country music, like the rest of our radio is in sad shape, but what you were describing on the radio sounded like it could be Austin. I may search the AM dial and see if there are any classic country stations at the moment.

Billy Bob momentarily dissed by blogger at National Post

Billy Bob Thornton gets two to three grafs in the shorts from the National Post for being uncooperative on the CBC when the host wanted to talk about his acting rather than the Boxmasters. Pretty standard reaction, interviewer's not interested in the second career, which is why the interview was set up. Collision ensues.

Someone please send me the pr contact for Thornton's rekkid on Vanguard. I would very much like to request a copy, seeing as how I liked the first one muchly.

First impressions on Boxmasters' ModBilly:

http://dickdestiny.com/billybobgirl.jpg
They dint grow 'em like that in 1963

Much more chime and Merseybeat ("Turn It Over" and the Stones' "As Tears Go By," the latter which sounds more Beatles than Keef, Brian and Mick)in this than on the debut. Somewhat less lap and pedal steel, too, which makes it less cornpone-sounding by a few degrees.

"Heartbreakin' Wreck" and "That's Why Tammy Has My Car" remind me of Hee-haw and Roy Clark although TV would've never allowed the chorus "I'm a moron/He's a dumbass" and the lines about assholes going to far and throwing the finger.

Honestly, once past the nods to the British Invasion much of this sounds like The Outlaws' first record, less the two Les Pauls and one Strat going full throat which, tonally, changes things quite a bit, but not the tenor. Songs in question: "New Mexico," "You Crossed the Line," "Santa Rosa" -- which is to say some of it also sounds New Riders of the Purple Sage-ish. Makes some sense because Boxmasters and Outlaws both covered "Knoxville Girl."

And the vintage tones are all carved and in place, a good deal of the point. Came with drink coasters with Tiger Beat-like profiles on the backs. "Fav Chicks:" Ann Margaret, Suzanne Pleshette, etc. Must be single-handedly adding some asterisks and change to Mike Nesmith's royalty statements. If there is a thing like a Mike Nesmith tribute band, Boxmasters is it.

No doubt about it, more than half of the appeal on these records is Billy Bob's knack for wry avuncularity ("Tammy's Car," "Two Weeks Notice,", etc). He delivers the chorus, something
characteristically droll and chuckling, followed by sly Tele and drum fills in the turnarounds.