Rolling Country 2006 Thread

i think that for a variety of reasons (research, vehement anti censorship, free speech, the only thing that kills mould is sunshine, historical value) that johnny rebel should be availble, and that it was wrong to ask cd baby to take it down. though i am often a hypocrite about this, and sometimes my analysis and yellign seems like a calling for censorship, and i most lilkely feel worse about other words

Anyway, the guy's voice in "Looking for a Handout" resembled David Allen Coe's.

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During America's sharp decline in the 1960s, there were a few bands that tried to compose some patriotic and pro-White music. I heard a few of these songs and they are really just god awful. The only pro-White music of any quality to come out of the 1960s and early 1970s, was with some American Country music, which has been lumped together to be called "Johnny Rebel." There were many different musicians touring the Southern honky tonks, playing these Johnny Rebel songs. There was one rather famous country singer that is rumored to have written most of the really popular of these songs, such as "Coon Town" and "Move those Niggers North," but if true, he wants to keep his identity private. There was even George Lincoln Rockwell who made an attempt at pro-White music with the band "Otis and the Three Bigots." Otis and his Bigots meant well, but the music was bad.

There were no mainstream record labels that would touch these songs, so they had no ability to become heard, let along rise in popularity. There was one famous Country music singer named David Allen Coe who used the word "Nigger" openly in a song in the 1970s. This song can still be heard in maybe 1,000 jukeboxes currently across America in small bars and restaurants. This song is "If that ain't Country." David Allen Coe also wrote another song that his mainstream record label refused to release. The name of this song says it all: "White Girl and a Nigger."

natvan.com/adv/2006/03-04-06.html

>Also top of the playlist this weekend: Huck Johns, Detroit transplant to LA who google seems to suggest turned down a Velvet Revolver opening slot at least once. Looks like Tim McGraw to me, though I'm guessing he gave a lot more thought to picking his truckers hat and those Fleetwood Mac and Muddy Waters albums on the couch on the CD's back cover than Tim might give to more apparel choices. I won't hold that against him though. Album very much rocks, even the grunge parts, but especially maybe the tributes to "Highway to Hell" and ELO's "Turn to Stone", and the Seger "Ramblin Gamblin Man" cover and maybe more. (Which reminds me I need to get back to that live Kid Rock album soon too.) (Pretty funny too that Huck's Capitol Records subsidiary is called Hideout, same name as Seger and the Last Heard's label from Persecution Smith/East Side Story/Heavy Music daze.)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), March 18th, 2006.

Huck Johns is sounding better and better. Turns out he's apparently from Lincoln Park, MI, and wrote a song for Kid Rock once, though I didn't know that when I put them in the same paragraph up above. Album is basically mostly '70s Ford assembly line singer-songwriter hard rock; the "grunge" I refer to above has to do with ballads that remind me somehow of Stone Temple Pilots, one of one which, "One Good Man" (which I guess doesn't remind *that* much of STP) may have a possible gay undercurrent, given that Huck's searching for one good man in it. In his liner notes Huck thanks not only eternal Detroit AOR station WRIF and Seger but also Johnny "Bee" Badanjek of Rockets/Ryder fame, and the producer is one Arthur Pennhallow Jr--interesting, since I swear I remember a guy named Arthur Penhallow being a longtime DJ on late '70s/early '80s Detroit rock stations. So now I'm wondering if Huck's some kind of local Michigan hit. Weird that the CD's on Capitol, given that it seems to have way more in common to what you'd find via cdbaby.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), March 18th, 2006.

Bon Scott, MC5, Bob Seger, AC-DC, Chris Cornell, STP, Rolling Stones, CCR, Pink Floyd, J. Geils, Ted Nugent, Frankie Miller, Faces, Otis Redding, Iggy, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, Johnny Cash, Merle, Waylon, Willie

Sounds like I might even like it. If there's a pr e-mail or contact, send it my way so I can make a request.

One caveat I gotta state about the Huck Jones album is that he probably does *too many* Stone Temple-style ballads. They're fine (less coagulated than STP's own early ballads were -- I'm talking STP in Pearl Jam not powerpop/glam mode here -- and, in Jones's "Forgiveness," almost more like a *Use Your Illusion* ballad done in a lower register), but they're really not the guy's best songs (so far I'm leaning toward lead cut/single "Oh Yeah," "Infatuation," ELO "Turn to Stone" rip "Kill Everything," and the Seger cover for those), and they seem too plentiful compared to his faster hard rock. Also STP's best songs weren't ballads anyway. But maybe a la Cargun, I'll decide Huck's aren't as grunge as they seem.

I'm betting Johnny Rebeltunes-type material is also popular in some enclaves of soCal. The LA Times went out and surveyed the white voters after the Bush victory, the counties that went for him which are in the interior deserts and such, also out to the Sierra's, and they sounded like Johnny Reb's. Mostly wanting to vote for Bush because they felt the Reps were better ready to do something about the 'illegals' and here's one quote paraphrased, 'cuz they carried/carry diseases and that's a threat to security. Same as 'Move them Niggers North," only 'Move Them Pickers South.'

And new Dixie Chicks single is streaming here:

http://music.msn.com/artist/?artist=16097852>1=7702

I dig. It's like the Chicks fronting the Hearbreakers. Oh wait, it basically is.

Rough Shop's a St. Louis group that Roy's working with. I posted about their "Far Past the Outskirts" above--basically, it sounds like good ol' tortured drone-country, sort of on that Mekons/Fairport Convention wavelength. I think it's pretty good, and just ugly enough for me. I like the songs that Anne Tkach sings, like "Destination Everywhere."

and Moody Scott's record is real good, the best kind of semi-pro you'll never see on Nashville Star...his raps are good (he doesn't really rap, but he definitely has some things to say about our particular moment in time), and it's all post-Malaco/I-55 bluessoulfunk, with a few cheeseball synthin-kitsch-sink keyboard ballads that because they're coming from Moody, aren't even unlistenable. and the "Something You Got Baby" he does links him definitively to some kind of weird New Orleans tradition I don't have all the links for--'cause it is Chris Kenner's '61 "Something You Got" except very slightly different words, same arrangement/melody. And good--so did Kenner cop his hit (which is really important New Orleans record, as far as that goes, since it started the "Popeye" dance/song craze of late '61, blues skolars) from somewhere else?

xps

In fact, I'm astonished by the songwriting craft on just about ever cut, it only faltering by the last couple of tunes when they turn off the electric guitars. And at one point they even do something that sounds like Jackson Browne around "Running On Empty."

And I didn't think it would grow on me as much as it has. Also belongs in the category of heartland rock staked out by the Michael Stanley's of the country.

I got the new Bottle Rockets, and on first listen, it's pretty good, tougher than the last album, though I'm not so sure about the mastering. Kinda bright for what the band is going for. Release date is early June on Bloodshot.

Well, obv. Woody did, but so did the Hag; if I recall correctly, it goes "The illegal immigrant is making America grow."

also saw Rosanne Cash and The Little Willies (feat. Norah Jones) do an instore - Rosanne only did five songs and forgot a line or two from "Tennessee Flattop Box" but that was fine by me cause the other four she did were all from Black Cadillac and personally I'm loving that album.

oh yeah, and I caught Elizabeth McQueen and the Firebrands twice too, once right before Billy Joe - she threw out a bunch of free swag during "All I Need is Money" and I helped myself to a beer cozy.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0350,eddy,49290,22.html

1) There are definitely good arguments available for moving from Limp Bizkit type music to Lynyrd Skynyrd type music (or even from Rage Against the Machine type music to Bad Company type music). (For example, here's one: melodies are *good* things.)

2) He makes better albums now than Eminem does (which I wouldn't have predicted.)

And by the way, speaking of *Cocky* (and Iraqis) the last line of this great RJ Smith review from late 2001 now seems eerily prescient; I wonder if Kid read it and took it to heart?

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0151,smith,30841,22.html

So everyone is talking 'bout how redneck revolution means rocking and they can get fucked as far as I'm concerned. Being a redneck is coincidental, poxy fules.

The sound is noticebably off in this epidsode. It's reverberant, shrill and the crash makes it difficult to decipher what Cowboy Troy is going on about. Troy is up, he's so up it seems he's taken a pill, maybe one too many. He's talking too fast and a Prilosec logo, the drug for curbing heartburn acid reflux, is flashing next to his face and if there's someone who looks like a bigger fool tonight, you're going to have to go a long way to find him or her.

Rock, rock, rock, redneck rock is the mantra for tonight, adds Wy. Let's all rock through the show. It's so irritating my teeth are rattling.

Last week was fair. This week the meat wagon's being driven over the cliff. Were the ratings bad?

only one id like to fuck, too, which is why i msotly watched last year

Gretchen did her second song, Politically Uncorrect or something, and the fiddles and Telecaster were way too loud and I like loud instruments. But the Tele player was just a goon hack with a shaved head and the fiddles, eh. And you know I'm sick of Gretchen who appears to have lost weight which tells me she's taking pills on the advice of her management. Plus, they were phoning it in because they had the look of people who expected the audience to go wild every night while playing it, which is what the studio audience did.

One girl came on -- Torres -- and she looked great and her jeans were spray painted on, but the song was boring and everyone fawned over her because she was HOTT.

Another of my big objections is that none of the contestants show any human superciliousness or enmity, both of which are necessary qualities in pop rock and dealing with any audience live. It stands to reason the guy who did the Big & Rich cover OK, after being drubbed by Anastacia the dick for two weeks running, would have snarled back at her. But no, all the contestants, when fed shit, ask for more. Good character traits for working in cubicles at corporate America USA, maybe convincing to sheep watching on TV, not so good for anything else.

Quote of night: "I love to have a great time." Wow, pearls before swine.

and well, lets not talk about the guy who did the charlie daniels, the desperation and exhaustion and sadness and esmaculation and all of it hiding behind this played out masculinity...its a hard song to sing, and he was so safe, people shouldnt play broken hearted drinking songs until theyve had enough time to be well be broken hearted and drunk--last week the same thing happened with tequilla, unless you actually have spent time on a bender, the lavisoucness just doesnt slither out...

and cowboy troy is just awkard, he doesnt know where to go and what to say...

Really? *Blue Sky* is the only album by them that's ever really clicked for me, and that one only half way; I mean, I liked "Baggage Claim" just fine, but despite their trappings they always seemed to wind up on the wrong side of the alt-country vs. southern rock divide to my ears. Haven't listened to the new one yet, though. And perhaps I should listen to their old ones more (though outside of *Blue Sky,* none are around here anymore.) (I was thinking I liked some almost pub-metal/Count Bishops song they did in the mid/late '90s with "rural route" in the title, but I'm not finding it on AMG; maybe I'm confusing them with somebody. Either way, I always wished their guitars were louder, a la the Cactus Brothers.)

ps. I never knew Bottle Rockets' nickname was "the Brox" til now. But I figured it out!

There's no reason whatsoever you should be interested in this fact.

Xhuxk, I was thinking that "Devil" was Kid's first. I think American Badass is the one I was calling his second. And of course I don't necessarily believe it needs to be Rage-type guys who back him up. Just someone to lay down some fire. My impression (and this may be very wrong, since I haven't listened to nearly enough of it) is that his singing nowadays is trying to be straight-up legitimate, whereas I think he needs something to provide him cover so that he can do what he does best, which is to do some variation on sing-talking. As I said, this could be all wrong, including my opinion on what he does best.

"Picture" felt like slow, dead sentimentality pinned to the near calm sky. But I've not heard it more than 3 or 4 times, and not recently.

Turns out I goofed; there's no Kid Rock LP called *American Bad Ass*. Shows what I know. That was the single off *The History of Rock,* which was mainly sort of an odds-and-sods early years comp, duh:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0027,eddy,16173,22.html

"Picture"'s beautiful-loser bullshit actually sounds fairly lush and billowing and good-humored to my ears, not dead or draggy at all.