Rolling Country 2006 Thread

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is anyone watching the big reba special, cause i think im going to blog it!

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Sunday, 19 November 2006 06:21 (seventeen years ago) link

http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/274184.html

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Sunday, 19 November 2006 08:18 (seventeen years ago) link

saw reba talking to megan mullaly (sp?) yesterday. couldn't really watch more than 10 secs of it, tho. reba makes me nervous, like there's a prize rabbit or some kind of exotic rodent people keep as a pet squirming around in the bathroom with me. i know this is irrational. she sings good and at times i have enjoyed her and i think i've watched almost all of one episode of her sitcom.

kirchen's record has the same faults as his show i saw this fall. he's real good for about two songs. his supposedly awesome guided tour of pop where he interpolates all the licks he knows is actually pretty great, but seemed empty even with a couple beers in me. you kind of wish he'd go johnny guitar watson and write more songs about more interesting and perhaps raffish reality. the songs blur in my mind. the curse of reverence and "americana" and all that, but he's been at it for a while just like nick lowe, who used to write about more interesting and raffish reality but now is a very good genre artist. we all love arthur alexander, man. (i love nick lowe, but the last record of his i found remotely interesting was "party of one," which is what, 1990?)

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Sunday, 19 November 2006 15:14 (seventeen years ago) link

So I figured out with 95 percent certainty the track #7, my favorite (and probably the most pop, thanks to the sweet-voiced lady singer) track on the Borat soundtrack, is "Eu Vin Acasa Cu Drag" by Stefan De La Barbuletsi, which originally supposedly appeared on AMMRA Records S.R.I. The other legit/non-Borat-sung tracks (apparently middle eastern and or eastern European, though maybe or I assume not usually Kazakh per se) are consistently really good, too, and first came out on labels like Piranha, Essay, Crammed Discs, World Connection, etc. O.M.F.O., who made an album I liked a couple years ago, have two tracks, which I'm pretty sure are tracks # 10 and 12. The only really confusing thing if you sit down with a pen and paper is that there seem to be three "real songs" between Borat's "You Be My Life" at # 13 and his "O Kazazhstan" at # 18, but only two titles between them. Which makes tracks #14 throuh #16 somewhat mysterious (since #17 is Borat high-fiving a gay-bashing redneck of some sort).

(Hey Frank brought the album up! I guess I should put all this on the world music thread too. I'm not sure what it has to do with country, though yeah, there's a twang in the music now and then, and didn't one of you guys vote for Gogol Bordello in a Nashville Scene poll once? This CD belongs on a shelf near them, Kultur Shock, Balkan Beatbox, etc, unless like me you file in alphabetical order.)

And my new maybe-favorite on Kirchen's CD is "Skid Row in My Mind."

― xhuxk (xheddy), Sunday, 19 November 2006 15:19 (seventeen years ago) link

(i love nick lowe, but the last record of his i found remotely interesting was "party of one," which is what, 1990?)

ha ha, for me it was labour of lust in 1979! (though i guess i gave nick the knife or whatever a fairly mixed review for my college paper in missouri when it came out, a few years later.)

― xhuxk (xheddy), Sunday, 19 November 2006 15:42 (seventeen years ago) link

So yeah, in the end, I'd say the Kirchen album squeaks by more on its real good song selection than its better-than-competent performances (and singing). But it still bats at least .500 in my book. I even wound up liking the track called "Heart of Gold," which is not a "Heart of Gold" I've known before. (It's credited to one T. Johnson). Best original is "One More Day," which turns out to be more Bob Wills than Dock Boggs, more Western swing than white blues. Anybody know who Blackie Farrell, who wrote "Skid Row In My Mind," or J. New, who wrote "Soul Cruisin'," are? They're both really great. "Devil With A Blue Dress" is totally dreary in this version, though maybe I'd forgive it here if I didn't grow up on Mitch Ryder.

― xhuxk (xheddy), Sunday, 19 November 2006 22:45 (seventeen years ago) link

speaking of things eastern european, darko rundek & cargo orkestar's "mhm a-ha oh yeah da-da" from this year is really nice. sort of croatian (?) hedonism. hints of pere ubu and beefheart but it also evokes august darnell if he were from croatia and living in paris. very unusual tone. "wanadoo" is one of the best things i've heard this year.

ghostfinger, a nashville (actually murfreesboro, tn.) band, does really cool country-rock pastiches. the singer sounds like jagger or arthur lee or some white guy trying to be soulful, and it's mostly funny. they get doleful and sometimes the rockers don't quite work, but "moon" alternates sections of fake-rock and country-rock quite effectively. can't make out what it is they're exactly trying to express, but get the feeling they're a bit more than the usual history lesson. it's been a good year for nashville pop bands--lone official, the features, ghostfinger and i guess lambchop, too, have all released good records. certainly, lone official's "tuckassee take" made my no depression top 20 new releases.

and i have to say that i've listened to neko case's record (which also made my ND list) as much as i have anything this year; the songs are better than i initially thought, and she sustains a *mood* throughout that sorta skirts desolation--the line about driving past the beautiful flooded fields resonates as they say with my experience. and it's one of the great records in 6/8, a time signature she manipulates savvily and which suggests, i guess, the timelessness (or the immersion in memory) she's going after.

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Monday, 20 November 2006 15:54 (seventeen years ago) link

Darryl Worley album on this week's AOL listening party, though I'm not going to get the chance to hear more than a couple of tracks before I fly to Connecticut tomorrow. Track one he equates drinking and being free of his old record label (he presents both as positives). Track two uses acoustic blues for good sharp riffs.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 20 November 2006 20:34 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, Neko made my ballot too. It under-achieves but what it achieves is still her own.

So this Dixie Chick flick, Shut Up and Sing, is playing in town. Should I go? That whole brouhaha seems like decades ago.

― Roy Kasten (Roy Kasten), Thursday, 23 November 2006 02:50 (seventeen years ago) link

its done by the woman who did harlan county usa, so its got a good pedigree

did the ND Ballots go out already?

― pinkmoose (jacklove), Thursday, 23 November 2006 11:42 (seventeen years ago) link

Thanks Anthony. I'll go this weekend (I'm supposed to see Casino Royale tonight, but maybe I'll talk my date into the Chicks Flick). ND Best Of voting is just for regular contributors, mostly Contributing Eds and Senior Eds, but they expanded the comment section this year beyond just the latter--which is cool.

Do we know yet if the Scene poll is dead? Is Himes gonna do it elsewhere? I mean, he's got the rolls...

And I know this has been chattered about elsewhere, but I never got a clear answer: what's to become of Pazz n Jop?

― Roy Kasten (Roy Kasten), Thursday, 23 November 2006 15:09 (seventeen years ago) link

two years pass...

New George Strait album Twang. The First single "Living For The Night" is so classic. Any thoughts?

― Jacob Sanders, Friday, 14 August 2009 17:10 (fourteen years ago) link

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