Category Archives: From where I sit

I browsed the newsstand this morning before heading to my last day at my job in Jersey City and I scanned Rolling Stone (can’t suck all the time) and there was a positive review of the new Lucinda Williams CD “West” (Feb 13). But the tone the praise took the form of an attitude I’m finding more and more outside of No Depression. I’ve read it in reference to artists that have their past formally in country and roots but take the genre to new, interesting and sometimes odd places. Ryan Adams, Neko Case, the Dixie Chicks and Calexico that have taken chances in their sound to mixed success. What gets my goat is the condescending tone taken that the reason these artists are so much “better” in their cultural gatekeeper eyes is that they’ve finally shaken the unseemly twang thang. Bullshit!

When Miles Davis did Bitches Brew did the press say “Thank god he finally stopped that jazz garbage.” The twang hating reminds me of when Dylan went electric but in reverse. Instead of Dylan being ostracized by the folk purists the press would be yelling “Turn it to eleven for god sakes!”

Artists that do the same thing time after time can be dependably consistent or annoyingly boring. So for every Wayne Hancock there’s a Jim White. The roots are firmly planted in tradition but the branches move in many directions, but always to the sky.

It’s the yin and yang of twang.

My sweetie got me my favorite gift of the holiday, My Name Is Earl – The Complete First Season on DVD. Man I love that show. Jason Lee is brilliant and the whole cast of hilarious and twisted. And Jamie Pressley is funny and hot like if Lucille Ball once posed in Playboy.

Happy holidays to all my readers and lovers of the music that thread us together as one adoring seething mass…okay now I’m creeping myself out. I’m always a little morose after a 12 o’clock nog. Anyhooo..

I hope all of ya’ll got what you wanted and were able to unload those gifts you didn’t. So put on the Johnny Cash Christmas album and hoist a few to Christmas past, when music was necessary, inspiring and dangerous. And here’s hoping the past kicks the future in the ass.

How do you make something good even better? Why put in on ice of course! Disney films! The Nutcracker! Ballroom dancing! and now country music.

I kind of like Gretchen but this is some sad, silly shit.

from CMT – Gretchen Wilson will stage a 12-song concert as Olympic ice skaters perform to her songs on Nov. 8 at Philadelphia’s Wachovia Center. The event is being taped for a two-hour ice skating special, Gretchen Wilson’s Country on Ice, to air Dec. 23 on NBC. Skaters confirmed for the special include four-time world champion Kurt Browning, two-time Olympic medalist Irina Slutskava, five-time U.S. champion Todd Eldredge and three-time U.S. titlist Michael Weiss. Lucinda Ruh, who holds the Guinness World Record for the longest and fastest spinner on ice, will also perform.

I heard the rumor, but I just couldn’t believe it. It just couldn’t be true. But there it was, but there was a sliver of doubt in my mind. “Yes, based on past behavior, this could be true.”

And then there it was.

Kenny Chesney Producing Willie Nelson’s Album.

Kenny Chesney! WTF! Willie, in your long and prestigious career you’ve become known as a serial collaborator. Some of these collaborations were brilliant – George Jones, Ray Price, Ray Charles, Kristofferson, Cash and Waylon with the HighwayMen, Emmylou Harris and Daniel Lanois on the brilliant “Teatro” and recently with Ryan Adams on this years release “Songbird.”

And some were a bust – Don Was on the Reggae disaster “Countryman” and though the duet with Julio Iglesias “To All the Girls I Loved Before” might have sold a lot of records, it is total schmaltz. Ditto Toby Keith, sold a lot – total crap!

Your a living legend in Country music and nothing is ever going to change that, but I don’t get the upside for you in this arrangement. You get introduced to a demo that wouldn’t know a Hank Williams song even if it was covered by Rod Stewart on one of his saccharine “standards” products? You don’t need that kind of exposure. They won’t appreciate you anyway. Your not young, pretty or slick enough and you use drugs openly. The soccer moms that eat up country pop garbage like Chesney are not going to want an old hillbilly hippie around their SUV.

You have something that Chesney and that crowd will never have – you have a legacy. Why not use that legacy to bring other great talent recognition and into the spotlight. Artists that embody the outlaw spirit that ledyou out of Nashville and back to Texas and changed the industry forever and made you an icon.

William Elliot Whitmore, Scott H. Biram , Wayne Hancock could all benefit from sitting at the side of the Texas Yoda. And the last two even live in Austin!

Chesney and all the other Nashville hat-acts are the products of everything you walked away from in Nashville back in the 70’s. You were right to do so. It was the best career move you ever made. Don’t now offer your legendary status to the highest bidder and give undeserved prestige on undeserving and mediocre talent.

There is an interesting article in todays Wall Street Journal about how EMI and Blunote
will allow a single,”Thinking About You,”  from the upcoming Norah Jones album to be bought from Yahoo Music in the MP3 format. This has so far been a contested move for the major labels because MP3 files have no inherent anti-piracy qualities and can be easily shared with friends.

The labels are late the game in this. They’ve allowed Apple years of market lead time
to satisfy an obvious market demand and now they, like Microsoft with the clearly  inferior Zune, are too little too late.

EMI is hedging the piracy concerns on the older demographic of Jones. The thinking goes they are less likely to steal or share music. They are either more ethical or more technologically ignorant.

The concept of containing a song in a physical form and therefore controlling the distribution is long gone. The labels need to figure out a way to bring better music to more niche markets (Like Twang!) and incubate their eggs in many baskets instead of continuing with a model that is obviously dead.

EMI and Bluenote are calling making the MP3s available an “Experiment.” I call in desperate.

I got an email today that Larry the Cable Guy is coming to the Radio City Music Hall. Larry the prick guy is both the Amos and the Andy of Southern comics and makes Southerners look like slope-browed hick idiots. As a resident of New York City and a Native son of the South I’d like to take a moment to send a big fuck you to this wanna-be piece of crap and his lame grandma fart jokes. Ron White has more talent in his whiskey sippin’ hand than Larry the idiot guy has in his entire fat body. Git “this” done, bitch!