I'm not a huge "country music" fan - at least, not a fan of what is typically sold as "country music" and you know damn well what I'm talking about; rednecks, longnecks, pickup trucks, God, the Flag, the EwwEssofAy, corn, and...well, corn.
I hate fucking corny unless it's REALLY corny. I can tolerate dorky old Broadway songs, but the 21st Century version of ignerant hicks proud to be ignerant? Fuck that noise.
But...there's a certain sort of country that I do enjoy, and Eilen Jewell puts it out like sweet bourbon on a how summer's night. Here she is doing "High Shelf Booze"...
And since I'm feeling generous, here's one of my favorite rockabilly/Latino/Western Swing bands, The Mavericks, knocking over one of my favorites: "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down":
Hope you're looking forward to the weekend. Drink your Gatorade; it's gonna he hot outside.
Showing posts with label country music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label country music. Show all posts
Friday, August 08, 2014
Friday, October 11, 2013
Friday Jukebox 2: Gasoline on the Killing Fields Edition
Left, right, left right left
Pack 'em up Charlie, gonna leave this place
Turn our shoulders to the empty space.
It don't matter if you're gone today
Long as everybody stay away.
Rich is rich and poor is poor.
And the money you had ain't good no more.
Wait in a line, wait in a line,
Hey mister, can I buy a little time?
Everything you planted is gone to rot.
No one around to pull the little you got.
Four big wheels, American steel,
Pour gasoline on the killing field.
March them soldiers down that line.
March them boys in straight time.
Good for boys like fuel on the fire,
Bad news comin' down the eggbeat wire.
Dance and turn til your fingers burn.
What, if anything, did you earn?
Pain, it tastes like a savage fire.
The blood lust of the youth gone wild.
Everything you planted is gone to rot.
No one around to pull the little you got.
Four big wheels, American steel,
Pour gasoline on the killing field.
Everybody's sick, there's a fever going around.
Set it on fire and burn the whole thing down.
Go somewhere, he's gonna do time,
Where nobody has to hear that terrible sound.
Everything you planted is gone to rot.
No one around to pull the little you got.
Four big wheels, American steel,
Pourin' gasoline on the killing field.
Pourin' gasoline on the killing field.
Pourin' gasoline on the killing field.
Just in case you weren't in the mood for Japanese techno-pop...
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Country when Country Wasn't Cool
Just a brief note that at the same time I was bloviating about country music Erik Loomis over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money was doing about the same thing
His money graf: "Rather, today’s country radio provides messages that fit in very well with the modern Republican voter: reinforcing what they see as traditional values based in an idealized rural setting that they see as threatened by B. Hussein Obama and his Weatherman-loving, Derrick Bell-hugging ways with his health care and such." And he also has some interesting things to say about the marginalization of the "old" country style after the Seventies.
Worth a look.
His money graf: "Rather, today’s country radio provides messages that fit in very well with the modern Republican voter: reinforcing what they see as traditional values based in an idealized rural setting that they see as threatened by B. Hussein Obama and his Weatherman-loving, Derrick Bell-hugging ways with his health care and such." And he also has some interesting things to say about the marginalization of the "old" country style after the Seventies.
Worth a look.
Friday, March 09, 2012
Friday Jukebox: Dead Man Walkin' Edition
I've developed a mild obsession with the music of The Civil Wars:And the thing is, I'm not a particular fan of "country" music, at least the kind of thing that comes out of the Nashville yick-a-hoo music factories today.
The Civil Wars create something very different; a frighteningly naked, stripped-down, achingly-harmonious plainsong of the sort that my Celtic ancestors brought with them to the impoverished hills of places like West Virginia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas that eventually became the blues, and Western swing, and finally the country-and-western that we know today.
The "country" music you hear cranking out of pickup trucks and from the speakers in the faux-cowboy bars always seems to me to be fundamentally about pride and arrogance. The singers - and the listeners - may adhere to the old formulas about whiskey and broken hearts and faithless women. But down inside is a sort of inverted smugness. Yeah, the music seems to say, I'm an ignerent shitkicker...but because of my bone-deep Country Strength (and patriotism and the love of Jesus in my heart) I'm a better man (or woman) than you latte'-sipping sophisticates and I - and down deep in your heart, you - know that.
If the music of The Civil Wars is "country" it sounds to me like the older country; the "country" of the Scots-Irish refugees who came here seeking not a better life but any life at all, having been whipped out of their old lives like starving dogs. It's a grievous music, full of the knowledge that while the meek may inherit the Earth while they live in it they'll probably get jack, and shit; that the rich man and the strong man are going to grow richer and stronger and the poor man will not. That a lifetime of toil and heartbreak are your lot and mine, and we cannot change that, and we cannot escape it.
The Civil Wars create something very different; a frighteningly naked, stripped-down, achingly-harmonious plainsong of the sort that my Celtic ancestors brought with them to the impoverished hills of places like West Virginia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas that eventually became the blues, and Western swing, and finally the country-and-western that we know today.
The "country" music you hear cranking out of pickup trucks and from the speakers in the faux-cowboy bars always seems to me to be fundamentally about pride and arrogance. The singers - and the listeners - may adhere to the old formulas about whiskey and broken hearts and faithless women. But down inside is a sort of inverted smugness. Yeah, the music seems to say, I'm an ignerent shitkicker...but because of my bone-deep Country Strength (and patriotism and the love of Jesus in my heart) I'm a better man (or woman) than you latte'-sipping sophisticates and I - and down deep in your heart, you - know that.
If the music of The Civil Wars is "country" it sounds to me like the older country; the "country" of the Scots-Irish refugees who came here seeking not a better life but any life at all, having been whipped out of their old lives like starving dogs. It's a grievous music, full of the knowledge that while the meek may inherit the Earth while they live in it they'll probably get jack, and shit; that the rich man and the strong man are going to grow richer and stronger and the poor man will not. That a lifetime of toil and heartbreak are your lot and mine, and we cannot change that, and we cannot escape it.
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