Country music. There are few genres out there that even people who use the vacuous phrase “I like all kinds of music” draw the line at. Country is one of them. Rap frequently joins that list. There are a few who exclude jazz. Various forms of techno sometimes get the nod, but not so much these days, with “EDM” having finally washed up on the US shore, 30 years after the fact.
Before we head off the rails into what exactly is wrong with country music, let’s take a moment to admire that quote, a product of Armando Iannuci’s fiendish mind. Iannucci, the profane genius behind the swearingest show on British television, The Thick of It, has scripted some of the most quotable lines never repeated in mixed company. (“Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off.” “Useless as a marzipan dildo.”) This one, while lacking the usual f-bombs (and equally as frequent c-bombs), is devastatingly good.
[If you haven't checked out The Thick of It, you're missing out on some of the best paint-peeling dialogue ever to bleed through your TV speakers. Iannuci runs every script through a “swearing consultant” for maximum effect. Behold this mostly muffled "exchange" {and its sheepish "denouement"} and then head to the YouTube to check out the rest of the series.]
Country music, itself an almost self-consciously “rustic” form of music, is dismissed with a phrase just as rustic. Nobody “cannot abide” anything in this era. It’s obsolete vernacular being used to deride an art form whose purveyors frequently celebrate obsolescence. [And we'll continue on without mentioning the casual linkage of country music and domestic violence threaded blithely into the fabric of that quote...]
They still like old-fashioned things like high school sweethearts, marriage vows, decrepit pickup trucks, lite beer and flag-waving Americana. They pride themselves with having a minimum of education and a maximum of good ol’ boy/girl ”intangibles,” like being capable of drinking beer and raising hell. Various undertraveled areas of America are held up as paragons of virtue (the South, the backwoods, any place filled where people refer to themselves as “rednecks,” Texas [itself a country of its own]).
It’s a lyrical form of stasis. (The music keeps moving, but we’ll get to that later.) We like things the way they were before “progress” started moving people to the coasts, taking with them all manner of forward-thinking and culture and desegregation. Permanent nostalgia, delivered with a twang that defines them as “good people” — the kind that eat dinner at the table with the family and cut the sleeves off their denim shirts. The kind that won’t let a little thing like paraplegia or cancer stand in the way of living life. Very positive even in the most negative situations. The sort of thing that would be admirable if it hadn’t already become cliche.
[Quick break for something country-ish and tolerable, courtesy of mashupist KMT. Click through to his Bandcamp page to hear/download more.]
As for the music itself, it continues to morph, grabbing whatever bits of crossover-ready rock and pop it can shake loose, devouring it all and regurgitating a bland paste that contains all of the attributes of the appropriated but none of ass-kicking (rock) or the earworming (pop). There has never been another musical format so intent on pandering to so many people at once. Any bit of risk-taking or originality is thrown out in favor of various Mutt Lange-isms. Layers and layers of polish are added until the only thing anyone can see is a shiny, distorted reflection of themselves.
Country gives you everything you want out of music, as long as what you want is just the highlights. There’s precious little anger, and what little there is tends to be of the “righteous” type, which is further limited by being mainly of the “self-righteous” type — which has more in common with patting yourself on the back for being so “emotional” than any ugly display of fury.
There’s no hate. There’s only God-like fully-justified vengeance. There’s no heartbreak. There’s only singers stating that their hearts are broken in smoothly assured tones, like a salesperson expressing his qualified dismay at your failure to add rust-proofing to the option list. My heart is broke (never broken), they declare, before telling you just how broken it is for the next verse-chorus-verse. It’s a few late nights, teary-eyed and sleepless. It’s never hours and days (and years) of bitterness, frustration and frequent indulgence of a psychotic overimagination.
Country music wants you to feel but it also wants you to be able to shift emotions in time for the next track. Right now, you’re wondering where she is. Now, you’re hoisting a bottle in the air, celebrating yourself for being in the company of such good, earthy people. Now you’re wandering down your own personal Memory Lane, as remembered by someone else using events that never actually happened.
It’s less an art form than an act of commerce. Music fans are used to commerce. After all, we have pop. Pop is commerce aimed at everything from the dancefloor to the bedroom. Country music presents itself as an Honest Music, but at this point, it’s more interested in spreading itself as thinly as it can in order to appeal to the widest base. It is, in fact, paper thin music.
[One more break: John Denver remixed by Database. Denver's music was also paper-thin and as wispy as a Carpenter, but at least he had the good sense to exit early rather than be co-opted into some fiscally-sound three-way with Lady Antebellum or whatever.]
I won’t speculate on the emotional validity of her marriage to superproducer Mutt Lange (who added layers of top-selling gloss to bands like Def Leppard, Nickelback and Foreigner), but it certainly didn’t hurt her career. Her “superproduced” albums proved that you no longer needed to drag an accomplice from outside the genre into the studio to create crossover appeal. You simply needed to create shiny pop things and then add in the bare minimum of genre indicators to secure the label “country.” It’s tempting to lay the blame for country’s current watered-down state at her feet, and so we shall, because resisting temptation is for do-gooding sons of bitches.
(Speaking of do-gooding sons-of-bitches, another indication of country’s overwrought inoffensiveness is the fact that many Christians who decry every other form of music [outside of "praise music"] as “glorifying Satan” are willing to welcome country music into the fold. I’m sure exceptions are made for songs that glorify drinking [and there's several of those], but otherwise country is just good clean fun.
Another indicator of its toothlessness is the fact that it’s the background music of choice at many businesses. The chance of offensive lyrics/unexpected noises is so low as to not even register. THIS IS WHY I HAVE HEARD MORE COUNTRY MUSIC THAN I’VE EVER WANTED TO, FAMILIARITY BREEDING NOXIOUS CONTEMPT LIKE SO MANY INBREEDING TWANGY RABBITS ON E.)
There’s nothing like barroom philosophy, especially when it results in a successful artist stumbling onto another large sum of money by having an old man leave him his inheritance simply because he THAT ONE TIME showed a bit of humanity and discussed the finer things (beer, God, people) with another drunk at a bar. Even if this narrative is false (and it certainly is), the fact that Currington thinks people want to hear about how he became even richer is disturbing. Unless his narrator is supposed to be just some “average guy”and not Currington himself, in which case I can’t even wrap my mind around that. That’s a lot of disassociation to dump on the casual listener, Billy.
The repeated “philosophy?” God is great. Beer is good. People are crazy. FULL STOP. Think the hell out of that one. Most people will agree with two out of three, so go cozy up to the oldest career alcoholic at the bar and keep your fingers crossed.
Toby Keith – Any Song, But Especially Red Solo Cup
Keith attempts to horn in on Jimmy Buffett’s “I’m a madcap careerist who is celebrated by successful boomers and trust fund kiddies alike because I sing about drinking and beach life and THAT ONE TIME about drinking and casual sex” territory, crafting an ode to the only thing a kegger needs other than the keg itself. I suppose it’s a universal thing. Toby might be a millionaire but he still drinks his beer from the same cups as the masses.
It’s full of horrible touches, including backing “vocals” by an assortment of ultra-white hype men and some rhymes that Keith no doubt felt were some of the cleverest ever written:
“In fourteen years, they are decomposable
And unlike my house, they are not foreclosable
Freddie Mac can kiss my ass.”
OH FUCK YEAH ZING! Take that, fat cats! Multimillionaire Toby Keith has chosen to stand with the working man during this ongoing housing debacle! And all the while drinking from the same common keg without a hint of pretension! There’s something about how well he can write his name on the cup and make time with the ladies, perhaps using a surefire pickup line like, “I’m Toby Keith, multimillionaire,” and then remarking on the fact that they both have red Solo cups so why don’t they head out back and have some sort of redneck-y sex.
[Quick breather for something classic by Mr. Cash.]
AT THIS POINT I WILL BEGIN MAKING ARGUMENTS IN COUNTRY MUSIC’S DEFENSE.
(Feel free to leave. Or to get up and stretch your legs for a bit.)
1. Making country music is hard.
It seems simple. The same subject matter sung with the same earthy twang over the same instrumentation. Hell, Kid Rock pulled his career out of the gutter with a crossover single. Double-hell, the Head Blowfish, Darius Rucker, has completely resurrected himself with a second career as a country singer, very possibly doubling the number of black attendees at any given country concert in which he appears.
I’ve heard it referred to as the “Special Olympics” of music, a genre where anyone can be both a participant and a winner because the bar is just that fucking low. But it isn’t. Like any other genre, it requires hard work, talent, etc. to get to the top. Maybe the occasional nudge from American Idol. It seems cliche to state this, but to get an idea of just how tough making country music is, browse through this series of posts over at McSweeney’s which detail one man’s attempt to become a Nashville songwriter.
But Nashville, contrary to the belief of people who don’t really listen to country radio, doesn’t hardly ever want a downer. Very few downers. ”Remember: your target is driving her minivan to drop kids off at school in the morning before she goes to work,” is the frequently quoted advice of one well-known songwriting columnist.
A good starting point is Why You Hate Modern Nashville which sums up most of what I’ve said here, before the following posts neatly pick apart all the points I’ve made.
2. Double-standards
Plenty of other genres rely on formulaic cliches. It’s not just country music being lazy. Rap music is just as lazy, another genre that relies on a holy trinity (guns, women bitches and bling) and whose mainstream appeal relies on used-up musical tricks. (808 set to “adequate.” Hype men shouting things. The same eight funk song samples.) There’s also a certain amount of pandering going on, with pop stars grabbing rap stars to bolster their street cred and a ton of half-assed “duets” that go the other direction.
[Another break: The Cramps were about half-country. They were also half-blues, half-punk and half 3/4-crazy. Let's take a listen (and try to ignore the leather-pantsed fiend attempting to talk us out of our last cigarette and only virginity...)]
The biggest difference between these two genres is the perceived “safety” level. Very few businesses will tune the communal radio to the “urban” side of the dial during the workday. For the most part, rap is still upheld as indicative of What’s Wrong with America and Kids in General. And rap’s portrayal of the “hood” is generally unfavorable. Sure, never forget where you came from and all that, but you can’t get rich without getting the fuck out. (However, you can still die tryin’.) There’s lots of nostalgia, but it’s tempered with bursts of violence and bleak portrayals of crack houses and rogue cops. No one really wants to go back there and it sure as hell isn’t being glorified as being a “better place” than the world surrounding it. There’s a weird sort of protectionism driven by an even weirder loyalty that tends to add a bit of nobility to the people who populate the hood, but the hood as an object is something to escape, rather than something to yearn for.
3. Country fans aren’t stupid.
People who listen to country are not dumb, despite the genre’s insistence on portraying themselves (and by proxy, their fans) as some sort of holy fools. Living in the deep Midwest for several years has put me in contact with many country fans and for the most part, they tend to be no less intelligent than fans of other genres. If your definition of “smart” is solely going to rely on college degrees, GPAs and cultural spread, then yeah, you’ll probably feel these fans are a bit off. But while I may not be able to engage them in a conversation about economic theory, intellectual property issues viz a viz the motherfuckin’ internet and etc., these guys (and most of the people I know well are guys) know how to do extremely practical things like build a garage from the ground up, incapacitate a variety of rogue animals and repair anything from a vintage Ford pickup to a late model combine.
In terms of actual useful information and skills, they’re way ahead of me or most people that I would consider “educated.” The stuff they know trumps the stuff I know when it comes to day-to-day life. When shit starts to go sideways, who do you think you’re going to want backing you up? The guy who blithely types “viz a viz” into a rambling blog post or the guy who can get your vehicle up and running again using little more than his Leatherman (which he is never without)?
4. The mainstream always panders.
The mainstream is always weak, no matter what genre. Calling out a single genre for excess pandering is a strawman held together with bullshit. I almost completely agree with my own counterargument, but pop seems to be expanding a bit past its usual “everyone do what everyone else is doing” blueprint. Lady Gaga may be the second coming of Madonna we never asked for, but at the very least, her whole persona rides the edge of bizarre like no one else. Other pop artists are grabbing influences from outside pop’s closed circle and bringing a whole new set of influences to the mainstream. (Well, perhaps not the artists themselves, but certainly their producers are.)
Other than R&B’s refusal to rise above makeout music, pop is going in all directions at once, something country definitely can’t say. Only the safest, most universal bits of gloss are being applied to country’s skeletal framework. Formulas are great because formulas work, but the word “formulaic” is never a compliment. You can lay some of the blame at the feet of the undemanding fans but let’s face it: no artist with the slightest bit of self-preservation is going to feel the urge to escape a profitable rut.
AT LONG LAST, A CONCLUSION
As much as I try not to be a musical elitist, I’m afraid that country music is never going to “grow” on me. Call it close-minded, but the combination of lazy musical and lyrical shorthand leaves me completely cold. I can’t identify with the singers, the songs’ protagonists and I simply can’t “abide” the music itself. Of course, country’s an easy target, with nearly as many detractors as fans. The genre will never get much respect from those inclined to think (and write) about such things, which I guess is unfortunate. I’m sure I’d feel worse about it if I were here to defend country’s honor.
There are some things I like about it, but most of what I like comes from years past. Like Dolly Parton:
And (more recently), this caught my ears (and eyes). Taylor Swift (who has the most symmetric face I’ve ever seen) covering Eminem live (kill it at 1:40 to avoid Uncle Kracker):
And, of course, the Dixie Chicks turning on George W. Bush (and their own audience), which certainly means they won’t be invited to play a Wal-Mart shareholder’s meeting for the rest of ever. (Which they did in 2001. I know. I was there. Not at the concert, but a mile or so away stuck in a shitty top-floor dorm room on the Univ. of Arkansas campus. Remind me to tell you about it sometime…) I hate knee-jerk politicking as much as the next libertarian, but alienating your own audience is always a tough card to play. So, minor applause for that.
But when it all comes down to it, I have no interest in the genre as a whole. The music, lyrics and entire “god, guns and the American flag” pretension make it unbearable. And the few moments away from the holy trinity are usually spent espousing such dubious things as The South, The Country, The Beer and The Way Things Used to Be. I cannot abide.
This track is pure, uncut sex. Combines the dismissive seductiveness of Gainsbourg’s vocals with Boys Noize’s commanding bump-and-grind, turning Trick Pony into an aural lapdance.
Play it loudly enough and you’ll probably receive letters of complaint from prudish special interest groups, letters which you won’t be able to answer because you’ve been arrested for corrupting every minor in earshot. So, for your own good, put on your hastily discarded clothing, close the drapes and plug in the headphones, unless you’re fine with being the epicenter of skyrocketing pregnancy rates.
[P.S. I would totally do this song, were it somehow personified and ambulatory. I would. With enthusiasm. And in front of a crowd. In mid-winter. Outside. (RAWRR and such noises.)]
Continuing on from where we left off on Post #1, wherein I detailed my brief DJing career and the downside of doing a job you love in place you kind of hate. From the Big Beats, we move on to the house/trance gems that were forced upon unsuspecting drinkers and shoved down their ear canals until they LOVED it, or at least, hated it a little less.
We’ll start out with something dark and long (and not actually by Underworld). I’ve found that Deep Dish’s originals tend to be hit-and-miss affairs, but they are unstoppable when operating as remixers. This is their epic take on Love & Rocket’sResurrection Hex, a track off their latest (ha! – it was like more than a decade ago!) and apparently L&R’s last.
There’s a ton of breathing room in this track despite the 4/4 pounding, which I often filled with HAL 9000′s modulated death threats and death throes. (“My mind is going… I can feel it…“) In fact, I did this often enough that it became the preferred version. Deep Dish + L&R+ HAL 9000. Sure, 90% of the requests came from the bartender but when you’re allowed to drink on the job, this is the person you want happiest.
Some more DJ info for you, scientifically gathered via personal anecdotal evidence. Also this: the fine love/hate notes you see scattered in these posts are courtesy of No Breasts No Requests who lovingly aggregate the best passive aggression ever scrawled drunkenly on a cocktail napkin/coaster.
1. Bachelorette Parties
If you’re not familiar with the “thrill” of an incoming bachelorette party, you might actually think the world “thrill” should have the quotes stricken from the record. A bunch of theoretically unattached women drunkenly escorting the bride-to-be from bar to bar. It would seem like a match made in heaven for drinking men everywhere. And maybe that’s true. But it does nothing for the drinking man handcuffed to the DJ booth.
The problem for the DJ is that this pack of women is under the mistaken (and usually, drunken) impression that the entire bar revolves around them for as long as they deign to grace us with their presence. This means they will travel to the DJ booth multiple times, usually as a group, to state their music preferences and constantly remind the DJ that “X is getting married,” as if getting married was some sort of extraordinary act that hadn’t been performed by millions of others before them, a large percentage of which have ended in failure.
[Quick break for some more music. You've met Deep Dish and their exceptional remixing skills. This track is just another example of why they are like knob-twiddling gods to me and, to a lesser extent, the dancefloor denizens who were alternately pummeled and soothed by this colossal remix. Not one, but two (2)(!!!) HUGE, verging-on-bombastic drops that are as drop-dead gorgeous as any sweeping vista you can imagine (and subsequently instagram into some sort of postcard). I do mean HUGE. The first breakdown runs from 3:54-5:10. The second runs from 8:25 (with a full drop at 9:10) to 10:51.]
Not only that, but bachelorette parties have, collectively, the worst taste in music. I don’t know how it’s possible, considering every bachelorette party represents a cross-section of women in general, but apparently something happens on this “special night” and every reasonable request is replaced by a plea for horrible pop tunes that even the most die-hard Top 40 fan wouldn’t touch. Every novelty pop hit that burnt itself out long ago is given mouth-to-mouth by this group of trying-so-hard-to-party-so-hard girls, much to the dismay of everyone else. On top of everything else, they’re just visiting. No bachelorette party ever stays in one bar for the full night.
[More music. System F (a.k.a. Ferry Corsten) has been a trance icon since before trance was cool, as well as during trance's heyday and continues to hold his "icon" position well past the sell-by date. Mauro Picotto pumps up the pace and sets dials to stun for the breakdown. As with all great back-in-the-day trance, Out of the Blue is nothing if not subtle. No, wait. The last part: "not subtle." Big room trance, brighter than daylight and built for pleasing crowds. There's a reason it was immensely popular.]
I didn’t often hit the decks before 9 pm so I usually caught the tail-end of these rather hollow experiences, whether it was something “officia”l (like a birthday) or just a “hey, let’s all go out and have some drinks” occasion. Either way, the cross section of the late 30s-early 40s demographic and people who didn’t normally go to bars meant you were instantly inundated with requests for disco, classic rock and Jimmy Buffett. Someone might mix things up by requesting something “current” (meaning a track off a half-decade old MTV/Jock Jams compilation).
If obliged (and I was, as the normal crowd was still on its way), the playing of said musical “gems” would sometimes be accompanied by the half-hearted awkward dancing of people who a.) didn’t normally dance and b.) would be off to free up the babysitter in another hour. The question “Do you have…” would normally be followed by “No,” which would then be followed by the person staring skyward as they dusted off the record collection of their minds. “What about…” Again, “No.” Helpful suggestions were made. “Well, I have…” I’d offer, dusting off the unused parts of the CD collection. “I guess. How about…” After this unproductive back-and-forth, vague suggestions about “disco” and “fun music” and “not rap” were made, accompanied by my mostly internal eye rolling and giving of the finger.
[Timo Maas' rerub of Azzido Da Bass'Dooms Night conquered dancefloors everywhere, but most subjectively, it tore apart the one I was in charge of. Taking Mr. Oizo's Flat Eric as a blueprint, Dooms Night shook speakers with eruptions of overcharged bass noise. Pre-dating dubstep's fascination with the drop, Timo Maas extended and morphed the distinctive tone into an instantly recognizable whomp. And so it went: whomp whomp whomp whomp whompwhompwhompwhomp. Fists were raised and pumped. The uninitiated left us to our own devices and looked on in bemusement as the unholy brown noise echoed around the bar.]
There’s nothing sadder than a bunch of people trying to have fun because they feel like they’re having fun. The dancing and lyric-mouthing and outdated hand gestures gave off the desperate air of someone trying to convince a kidnapper they were indeed “not going to breath a word of this to the cops if you let me go.” Gun-to-the-head enthusiasm mixed with it’s-getting-kind-of-late attitude does not make for a pleasurable experience. Not for the DJ and certainly not for the office party, which would get a handful of tracks thrown in its general direction before the “real” music started and they all faded quietly into the night, never to be seen again.
The Space Raiders were another Skint signing, joining such illuminaries as Fatboy Slim, Midfield General and the Lo-Fidelity All Stars. More house-oriented than its labelmates, Space Raiders played slightly left-of-center in their chosen field and operated with a welcome sense of humour. Disko Doctor hollas back at disco while keeping one foot in the present with its loping, looping take on disco-house. Vocal samples get filtered, vocodered and spun backwards, riding atop an ear-worming, good-natured house beat.
3. Radio DJs
Seeing them in the crowd wasn’t an issue. But more often than not, you’d see these poor souls in the DJ booth as the result of periodic aneurysms that management mistook for “ideas.” This was followed by an attempt to “leverage” some sort of “cross marketing” by bringing in a DJ from whichever radio station the club was advertising on. Someone would say “free advertising” and actually believe it.
The logic seems to be complete. People listen to x radio station and therefore, they’d come to listen to x radio station’s DJ do his day job, except at night. Overlooked was the fact that, yes, many people listen to the radio but with very rare exceptions, no one cares who’s playing the music. Plus, DJing at a club is much different than DJing in a highly-regimented format plagued by intersitial ads and “hilarious” banter. Club DJs know their crowd. Radio DJs know playlists and demographics. A “crowd” and a “demographic” both involve groups of people, but they are very different things.
Most of these radio DJs didn’t last very long. Seeing that no adoring audience was lining up to hear you play tracks in a this-works-on-the-radio fashion has to be a bit of a blow to the ego. Having people visit the DJ booth simply to tell you that you suck and ask “Where’s the other DJ?” doesn’t help. Some DJs can do both but in my experience, not a single one of these DJs could.
Electronic music was never mainstream (except that now it actually is — go figure). Roaches is the Trancesetters’ “Positive Affirmation of the Day,” validating the freaks’ love of repetitive beats and occupying the edges.
Underground will live forever, baby We just like roaches Never dying Always living
We were the kids that weren’t like the other kids. While the others were happy with their Top 40 and their crossover country hits, we were driving out to open fields in the middle of nowhere (and one time, memorably, the VFW) to hear DJs spin pounding, strobelit “techno.”
Josh Wink tore acid house a new one with his twisted and screeching Higher State of Consciousness. He then went back to the studio and tore house music some new ventilation, operating with enthusiasm trumping technical skill (although he has plenty of the latter). Don’t Laugh is a dare, I suppose: a quasi-house beat paired with a constantly-fucked-with laughter loop. To sing along is to appear insane.
On the other hand, sanity seems overrated in the face of constant laughter, pitched to and fro by Wink, with both hands on the knobs and tongue safely secured in cheek, landing on just this side of “annoying novelty single.” and pointing our way towards Vol. 3 in this subjectively nostalgic series where I’ll be throwing out a selection of the noisiest stuff I got away with playing. Until then…
Like something that wandered off the soundtrack to a style-over-substance ’80s flick (say, The Hunger, perhaps), composed entirely of Nagel prints, chrome and neon highlights. Cooler than a thousand Simon Le Bons laid end-to-end and as self-aware as a rogue AI, Tres combine the uber-deadpan vocals of Yaz with uber-charming ESL enunciation. The lyrics don’t add up to anything, but everyone’s looking too good to care. Welcome (back) to the decade when surface area meant more than mass.
I’d point you to more Tres but details on the group are nearly non-existent. Lastfm’s best guess is “Swedish minimal electronics act.” This definitely fits the style and explains the just-off pronunciation. Here’s where I got ahold of this track if you’re curious. The Mediafire link on that page is still active and gets you the whole compilation. Additional info from the source says this track was an unreleased demo. “Unreleased” would seem to define the Tres catalog as they only released one 7″ single during their career of indeterminate length.
Washington, DC native DJ Doc Rok is one of only a handful of mashup producers whose most-recognized output is in the form of full albums. Following (inadvertently) in the footsteps of Dangermouse (whose Grey Album crafted an unlikely partnership between the Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album), Doc Rok first full-length mashup album, American Zeppelin, took a fistful of Led Zeppelin samples and made them play nice with Jay-Z’s American Gangster. (Full album download here.)
Speaking of ignant shit, Doc Rok has put together a rather spectacular selection of the lowest common denominator rap, featuring the sort of lyrics that make concerned parents fear for the future of America, normally in the form of letters to their Congressional representatives. Every track here is the sort of thing pointed at by the self-appointed guardians of culture as examples of What Is Wrong With Hip-Hop Today. For everyone else, it’s just a fuckload of stupid fun.
Doc Rok’s next project, The Biggie Hendrix Experience, takes two artists who went down during their prime, both of whom would be surprised to learn just how much dying increases your productivity. Jimi and Biggie have released somewhere in the area of 300 albums since their death, which puts them in Tupac’s neck of the graveyard, but still leaves them a few albums short of The Fall (est. albums – 377). (Full download available here.)
All this leads up to what is Doc Rok’s most masterful work yet. Take 50 Cent’s laidback low-key thugging, add some choice instrumental and vocal loops from back in the day (like possibly your parents’ day — the ’50s and ’60s), mix well and chill for an undetermined length of time. Serves party of 4. Fun for ages 7 to 70!** [Full download available here.]
**(Theoretically. Mr. Cent’s affinity for ribald, sexually frank discussions, quite-a-bit-more-than-occasional swearing and offhand violence will most likely lop quite a few years off both ends of that spectrum. I mean, the kids will dance to it but everyone around them will be horrified and cover the kids’ ears/write letters to their Congressmen.)
Because I love you (mostly platonically, but sometimes more than that when you’re passed out) and I love this album, I’m going to give you TWO tracks to sample just in case the previous mastermixes haven’t fully grabbed your ears.
And he’s brought tons of music. Setting up shop at Bandcamp, Whitey is re-releasing his previous albums with tons of bonus tracks. While re-releases aren’t a rarity in this world of bonus packaging and posthumous triple-deluxe-editions of whatever rapper/singer/pop tart happened to find themselves on the wrong end of the dead pool, this set of re-releases is actually worth checking out.
At long last, Whitey has released Great Shakes (in two volumes), his previously-scrapped album that was presumed dead and buried shortly after some enterprising piece of shit ran off with the goods and leaked it all over the internet. For those of us who aren’t this particular POS, this is great news. For the first time in EVER, we can pick up the legendary “lost” album and in return for our money, get the nice warm feeling of making things right while also getting a shit-hot collection of kickass tracks.
Whitey’s most recent album (Canned Laughter) is due for an extended re-release as well at some point in the near future. If all of the eye-grabbing pictures and ear-grabbing tunes haven’t persuaded you to throw some money in Whitey’s direction, perhaps some choice quotes from this rather wordy gentleman will give you the extra verbal shove you shouldn’t really need.
“Liars, Vipers, Jokes and Fakes” rides a blissful island rhythm into dark waters, filled with every evil in the world, perpetuated by those who have the power to change things. Everyone else just gets to pay for it. “Send Out the Clowns” attacks the same subject matter with a different metaphor and even brings along some more tortured calliope tones for good measure.
Speaking of fucking great, here’s yet another fucking great track from Whitey. Just another day at work for the master, combining an a distorted electro loop that defines the word “crunchy” with some great drumwork and a great set of cynical lyrics directed at all those people who insist on showing their uniqueness by doing what everyone else is doing.
Starts rather low key with Whitey’s subdued singing, a little organ and some sparse handclaps. It proceeds along in a rather orderly but catchy fashion until around the 2:50 mark, when the floor drops out (and into a faux-fade) only to be replaced with a whoosh and a banging return to the original beat…Various electronics join the commotion and the tempo shifts as does the tone of the song, going from a plaintive to pissed off (protagonist to antagonist). Stick around for the whole thing.
Consider yourself fully informed. Now get the hell out of here and get yourself some Whitey. I’m purchasing the whole lot next Friday* and will be bashing people about the head with the new stuff for weeks thereafter.
*Sorry, Whitey. It would be earlier but blogging is still paying in round numbers and I’ve got a limited supply of gas/food/hooker/comic book money to throw around until payday, but rest assured, that money is as good as in the bank. (Except that it isn’t yet, hence the waiting.)
The Isotopes don’t have a huge catalog, only a handful of EPs. They sing short punk songs about baseball. Typically, themed novelty acts offer mild entertainment for those with an interest in their niche, but the Isotopes at times offer a bit more. They are the musical equivalent of a collegiate command and control type pitcher drafted outside the second round who occasionally flashes plus velocity and hints at being something more than originally projected.
Take The Ballad of Rey Ordonez as an example. Ordonez was an interesting, imperfect player who defected from Cuba when their national team was playing an exhibition in Buffalo, New York. Ordonez stole away from his minders, hopped and fence and got into a waiting red Cadillac. A brilliant defensive shortstop and human highlight reel afield, Ordonez was a woeful hitter even when judged by the lesser expectations placed on up-the-middle defenders. Spectators were simultaneously wowed by his fantastic glove work and frustrated by his struggles at the plate. The Isotopes song focuses on how that push and pull affected Ordonez as he wore out his welcome in New York and tried to find regular work with another Major League club. It surely is a song about a baseball player, but listeners need not be interested in baseball to take an interest in a flawed and somewhat tragic figure like Ordonez.
I left my kid behind
And I left my wife alone
Hopped a cyclone fence
Into Buffalo
And I don’t wanna talk about it
Now I’m making highlights
Like nobody’s ever seen
But if the team ain’t winning
They take it out on me
And I don’t wanna talk about it
‘Cause I’m the Cuban Missile baby
But I just can’t get no respect
Because I can’t find a way to connect
They walk the pitcher when I’m on deck
And I’m the Cuban Missile child
But I can’t find no one to relate
Because I’m still batting .188
Oh man I just ain’t no good at the… (plate)
Now my career is tanking
And my contract is up for sale
But I can’t go back home
Or they’ll put me in jail
And I don’t wanna talk about it
‘Cause I’m the Cuban Missile baby
But I just can’t get no respect
Because I can’t find a way to connect
They walk the pitcher when I’m on deck
And I’m the Cuban Missile child
But I can’t find no one to relate
Because I’m still batting .188
Oh man I just ain’t no good at the… (plate)
I’m hated in New York now
And Tampa didn’t work out
No love in old Chicago
No luck in San Diego
More bad news in Seattle
And Havana is so far away now
(Havana’s so far away…)
Other tracks of note are the Curse of Jim Eisenreich, about the former Major League outfielder who walked away from professional baseball for two years in the middle of his career after being misdiagnosed, then properly diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome, Goodnight Havana, a song specifically about Cuban defection that draws on the experience of Cuban players like Orlando Hernandez who have crossed the 90 miles of open ocean between Cuba and Florida on makeshift rafts, the informative Infield Fly and the instructional Around the Horn.
Beating a Dead Horseman: Why I Can’t Stand Country Music
Linton Barwick, In the Loop
Country music. There are few genres out there that even people who use the vacuous phrase “I like all kinds of music” draw the line at. Country is one of them. Rap frequently joins that list. There are a few who exclude jazz. Various forms of techno sometimes get the nod, but not so much these days, with “EDM” having finally washed up on the US shore, 30 years after the fact.
Before we head off the rails into what exactly is wrong with country music, let’s take a moment to admire that quote, a product of Armando Iannuci’s fiendish mind. Iannucci, the profane genius behind the swearingest show on British television, The Thick of It, has scripted some of the most quotable lines never repeated in mixed company. (“Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off.” “Useless as a marzipan dildo.”) This one, while lacking the usual f-bombs (and equally as frequent c-bombs), is devastatingly good.
[If you haven't checked out The Thick of It, you're missing out on some of the best paint-peeling dialogue ever to bleed through your TV speakers. Iannuci runs every script through a “swearing consultant” for maximum effect. Behold this mostly muffled "exchange" {and its sheepish "denouement"} and then head to the YouTube to check out the rest of the series.]
Country music, itself an almost self-consciously “rustic” form of music, is dismissed with a phrase just as rustic. Nobody “cannot abide” anything in this era. It’s obsolete vernacular being used to deride an art form whose purveyors frequently celebrate obsolescence. [And we'll continue on without mentioning the casual linkage of country music and domestic violence threaded blithely into the fabric of that quote...]
They still like old-fashioned things like high school sweethearts, marriage vows, decrepit pickup trucks, lite beer and flag-waving Americana. They pride themselves with having a minimum of education and a maximum of good ol’ boy/girl ”intangibles,” like being capable of drinking beer and raising hell. Various undertraveled areas of America are held up as paragons of virtue (the South, the backwoods, any place filled where people refer to themselves as “rednecks,” Texas [itself a country of its own]).
It’s a lyrical form of stasis. (The music keeps moving, but we’ll get to that later.) We like things the way they were before “progress” started moving people to the coasts, taking with them all manner of forward-thinking and culture and desegregation. Permanent nostalgia, delivered with a twang that defines them as “good people” — the kind that eat dinner at the table with the family and cut the sleeves off their denim shirts. The kind that won’t let a little thing like paraplegia or cancer stand in the way of living life. Very positive even in the most negative situations. The sort of thing that would be admirable if it hadn’t already become cliche.
[Quick break for something country-ish and tolerable, courtesy of mashupist KMT. Click through to his Bandcamp page to hear/download more.]
KMT – Jolene Is Mine (Dolly Parton vs. Jay-Z).mp3
As for the music itself, it continues to morph, grabbing whatever bits of crossover-ready rock and pop it can shake loose, devouring it all and regurgitating a bland paste that contains all of the attributes of the appropriated but none of ass-kicking (rock) or the earworming (pop). There has never been another musical format so intent on pandering to so many people at once. Any bit of risk-taking or originality is thrown out in favor of various Mutt Lange-isms. Layers and layers of polish are added until the only thing anyone can see is a shiny, distorted reflection of themselves.
Country gives you everything you want out of music, as long as what you want is just the highlights. There’s precious little anger, and what little there is tends to be of the “righteous” type, which is further limited by being mainly of the “self-righteous” type — which has more in common with patting yourself on the back for being so “emotional” than any ugly display of fury.
There’s no hate. There’s only God-like fully-justified vengeance. There’s no heartbreak. There’s only singers stating that their hearts are broken in smoothly assured tones, like a salesperson expressing his qualified dismay at your failure to add rust-proofing to the option list. My heart is broke (never broken), they declare, before telling you just how broken it is for the next verse-chorus-verse. It’s a few late nights, teary-eyed and sleepless. It’s never hours and days (and years) of bitterness, frustration and frequent indulgence of a psychotic overimagination.
Country music wants you to feel but it also wants you to be able to shift emotions in time for the next track. Right now, you’re wondering where she is. Now, you’re hoisting a bottle in the air, celebrating yourself for being in the company of such good, earthy people. Now you’re wandering down your own personal Memory Lane, as remembered by someone else using events that never actually happened.
It’s less an art form than an act of commerce. Music fans are used to commerce. After all, we have pop. Pop is commerce aimed at everything from the dancefloor to the bedroom. Country music presents itself as an Honest Music, but at this point, it’s more interested in spreading itself as thinly as it can in order to appeal to the widest base. It is, in fact, paper thin music.
[One more break: John Denver remixed by Database. Denver's music was also paper-thin and as wispy as a Carpenter, but at least he had the good sense to exit early rather than be co-opted into some fiscally-sound three-way with Lady Antebellum or whatever.]
John Denver – Sunshine on My Shoulders (Superpose Re-Edit).mp3
THREE EGREGIOUS EXAMPLES
Shania Twain – Any Song
I won’t speculate on the emotional validity of her marriage to superproducer Mutt Lange (who added layers of top-selling gloss to bands like Def Leppard, Nickelback and Foreigner), but it certainly didn’t hurt her career. Her “superproduced” albums proved that you no longer needed to drag an accomplice from outside the genre into the studio to create crossover appeal. You simply needed to create shiny pop things and then add in the bare minimum of genre indicators to secure the label “country.” It’s tempting to lay the blame for country’s current watered-down state at her feet, and so we shall, because resisting temptation is for do-gooding sons of bitches.
(Speaking of do-gooding sons-of-bitches, another indication of country’s overwrought inoffensiveness is the fact that many Christians who decry every other form of music [outside of "praise music"] as “glorifying Satan” are willing to welcome country music into the fold. I’m sure exceptions are made for songs that glorify drinking [and there's several of those], but otherwise country is just good clean fun.
Another indicator of its toothlessness is the fact that it’s the background music of choice at many businesses. The chance of offensive lyrics/unexpected noises is so low as to not even register. THIS IS WHY I HAVE HEARD MORE COUNTRY MUSIC THAN I’VE EVER WANTED TO, FAMILIARITY BREEDING NOXIOUS CONTEMPT LIKE SO MANY INBREEDING TWANGY RABBITS ON E.)
Billy Currington – People Are Crazy
There’s nothing like barroom philosophy, especially when it results in a successful artist stumbling onto another large sum of money by having an old man leave him his inheritance simply because he THAT ONE TIME showed a bit of humanity and discussed the finer things (beer, God, people) with another drunk at a bar. Even if this narrative is false (and it certainly is), the fact that Currington thinks people want to hear about how he became even richer is disturbing. Unless his narrator is supposed to be just some “average guy”and not Currington himself, in which case I can’t even wrap my mind around that. That’s a lot of disassociation to dump on the casual listener, Billy.
The repeated “philosophy?” God is great. Beer is good. People are crazy. FULL STOP. Think the hell out of that one. Most people will agree with two out of three, so go cozy up to the oldest career alcoholic at the bar and keep your fingers crossed.
Toby Keith – Any Song, But Especially Red Solo Cup
Keith attempts to horn in on Jimmy Buffett’s “I’m a madcap careerist who is celebrated by successful boomers and trust fund kiddies alike because I sing about drinking and beach life and THAT ONE TIME about drinking and casual sex” territory, crafting an ode to the only thing a kegger needs other than the keg itself. I suppose it’s a universal thing. Toby might be a millionaire but he still drinks his beer from the same cups as the masses.
It’s full of horrible touches, including backing “vocals” by an assortment of ultra-white hype men and some rhymes that Keith no doubt felt were some of the cleverest ever written:
OH FUCK YEAH ZING! Take that, fat cats! Multimillionaire Toby Keith has chosen to stand with the working man during this ongoing housing debacle! And all the while drinking from the same common keg without a hint of pretension! There’s something about how well he can write his name on the cup and make time with the ladies, perhaps using a surefire pickup line like, “I’m Toby Keith, multimillionaire,” and then remarking on the fact that they both have red Solo cups so why don’t they head out back and have some sort of redneck-y sex.
[Quick breather for something classic by Mr. Cash.]
Johnny Cash – The Losing Kind.mp3
AT THIS POINT I WILL BEGIN MAKING ARGUMENTS IN COUNTRY MUSIC’S DEFENSE.
(Feel free to leave. Or to get up and stretch your legs for a bit.)
1. Making country music is hard.
It seems simple. The same subject matter sung with the same earthy twang over the same instrumentation. Hell, Kid Rock pulled his career out of the gutter with a crossover single. Double-hell, the Head Blowfish, Darius Rucker, has completely resurrected himself with a second career as a country singer, very possibly doubling the number of black attendees at any given country concert in which he appears.
I’ve heard it referred to as the “Special Olympics” of music, a genre where anyone can be both a participant and a winner because the bar is just that fucking low. But it isn’t. Like any other genre, it requires hard work, talent, etc. to get to the top. Maybe the occasional nudge from American Idol. It seems cliche to state this, but to get an idea of just how tough making country music is, browse through this series of posts over at McSweeney’s which detail one man’s attempt to become a Nashville songwriter.
A good starting point is Why You Hate Modern Nashville which sums up most of what I’ve said here, before the following posts neatly pick apart all the points I’ve made.
2. Double-standards
Plenty of other genres rely on formulaic cliches. It’s not just country music being lazy. Rap music is just as lazy, another genre that relies on a holy trinity (guns,
womenbitches and bling) and whose mainstream appeal relies on used-up musical tricks. (808 set to “adequate.” Hype men shouting things. The same eight funk song samples.) There’s also a certain amount of pandering going on, with pop stars grabbing rap stars to bolster their street cred and a ton of half-assed “duets” that go the other direction.[Another break: The Cramps were about half-country. They were also half-blues, half-punk and
half3/4-crazy. Let's take a listen (and try to ignore the leather-pantsed fiend attempting to talk us out of our last cigarette and only virginity...)]The Cramps – Muleskinner Blues.mp3
The biggest difference between these two genres is the perceived “safety” level. Very few businesses will tune the communal radio to the “urban” side of the dial during the workday. For the most part, rap is still upheld as indicative of What’s Wrong with America and Kids in General. And rap’s portrayal of the “hood” is generally unfavorable. Sure, never forget where you came from and all that, but you can’t get rich without getting the fuck out. (However, you can still die tryin’.) There’s lots of nostalgia, but it’s tempered with bursts of violence and bleak portrayals of crack houses and rogue cops. No one really wants to go back there and it sure as hell isn’t being glorified as being a “better place” than the world surrounding it. There’s a weird sort of protectionism driven by an even weirder loyalty that tends to add a bit of nobility to the people who populate the hood, but the hood as an object is something to escape, rather than something to yearn for.
3. Country fans aren’t stupid.
People who listen to country are not dumb, despite the genre’s insistence on portraying themselves (and by proxy, their fans) as some sort of holy fools. Living in the deep Midwest for several years has put me in contact with many country fans and for the most part, they tend to be no less intelligent than fans of other genres. If your definition of “smart” is solely going to rely on college degrees, GPAs and cultural spread, then yeah, you’ll probably feel these fans are a bit off. But while I may not be able to engage them in a conversation about economic theory, intellectual property issues viz a viz the motherfuckin’ internet and etc., these guys (and most of the people I know well are guys) know how to do extremely practical things like build a garage from the ground up, incapacitate a variety of rogue animals and repair anything from a vintage Ford pickup to a late model combine.
In terms of actual useful information and skills, they’re way ahead of me or most people that I would consider “educated.” The stuff they know trumps the stuff I know when it comes to day-to-day life. When shit starts to go sideways, who do you think you’re going to want backing you up? The guy who blithely types “viz a viz” into a rambling blog post or the guy who can get your vehicle up and running again using little more than his Leatherman (which he is never without)?
4. The mainstream always panders.
The mainstream is always weak, no matter what genre. Calling out a single genre for excess pandering is a strawman held together with bullshit. I almost completely agree with my own counterargument, but pop seems to be expanding a bit past its usual “everyone do what everyone else is doing” blueprint. Lady Gaga may be the second coming of Madonna we never asked for, but at the very least, her whole persona rides the edge of bizarre like no one else. Other pop artists are grabbing influences from outside pop’s closed circle and bringing a whole new set of influences to the mainstream. (Well, perhaps not the artists themselves, but certainly their producers are.)
Other than R&B’s refusal to rise above makeout music, pop is going in all directions at once, something country definitely can’t say. Only the safest, most universal bits of gloss are being applied to country’s skeletal framework. Formulas are great because formulas work, but the word “formulaic” is never a compliment. You can lay some of the blame at the feet of the undemanding fans but let’s face it: no artist with the slightest bit of self-preservation is going to feel the urge to escape a profitable rut.
AT LONG LAST, A CONCLUSION
As much as I try not to be a musical elitist, I’m afraid that country music is never going to “grow” on me. Call it close-minded, but the combination of lazy musical and lyrical shorthand leaves me completely cold. I can’t identify with the singers, the songs’ protagonists and I simply can’t “abide” the music itself. Of course, country’s an easy target, with nearly as many detractors as fans. The genre will never get much respect from those inclined to think (and write) about such things, which I guess is unfortunate. I’m sure I’d feel worse about it if I were here to defend country’s honor.
There are some things I like about it, but most of what I like comes from years past. Like Dolly Parton:
And (more recently), this caught my ears (and eyes). Taylor Swift (who has the most symmetric face I’ve ever seen) covering Eminem live (kill it at 1:40 to avoid Uncle Kracker):
And, of course, the Dixie Chicks turning on George W. Bush (and their own audience), which certainly means they won’t be invited to play a Wal-Mart shareholder’s meeting for the rest of ever. (Which they did in 2001. I know. I was there. Not at the concert, but a mile or so away stuck in a shitty top-floor dorm room on the Univ. of Arkansas campus. Remind me to tell you about it sometime…) I hate knee-jerk politicking as much as the next libertarian, but alienating your own audience is always a tough card to play. So, minor applause for that.
But when it all comes down to it, I have no interest in the genre as a whole. The music, lyrics and entire “god, guns and the American flag” pretension make it unbearable. And the few moments away from the holy trinity are usually spent espousing such dubious things as The South, The Country, The Beer and The Way Things Used to Be. I cannot abide.
-CLT
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Tagged as Billy Currington, Country Music, Database, Dixie Chicks, Dolly Parton, Jay-Z, Johnny Cash, KMT, Mutt Lange, Shania Twain, Taylor Swift, The Cramps, Toby Keith