New Monday #35
Happy Monday -
I hope you’re off to a good start, perhaps with a nice cup of coffee.
Last week I went into a fave cafe in Montreal, hoping for a cortado and a croissant, and was greeted by country music as I walked in the door. A bit odd, out of character. Especially as it was a good cafe and awful country music.
Awful, cliché, mindless, beautifully played, recorded and sung country music. Modern country music, with practically no melodic movement. Country music for bringin’ up th’ brood in a development in suburbia. Everything on the recording was so perfect you could hear the manly, perfectly trimmed, autotuned stubble on the singer’s cheeks.
Ai Does Dallas
The kind of music you’d get if you fed this prompt: "Modern country song, mid-tempo, male singer, lyrics about how he loves his life, his wife, his kids, God, America, his truck, time spent with the boys watching sports, and how he likes to work hard for his family" into this Ai Music Generator.
I got these two: https://www.udio.com/songs/2Yo9vSP98DwAzqSERgeXG3, and this, https://www.udio.com/songs/4a4bxXqV1GGZ3613hP2n8B.
Yee haw, look at me, I’m writing country! Honestly, they sound just like the music I heard in the cafe, but I’m pretty sure that’s a bad thing.
The whole bad country music thing got me thinking about good country music. Is there good modern country music out there???
Yes, of course, there’s good modern country music out there. We’ll just pick out one for now: Midland.
Midland
Midland formed in Texas in 2014. Three good old boys. Ok, one of them is an actor and a male model (guess who’s the lead singer?). And the bassist directed the Uptown Funk video for Bruno Mars. And the lead guitarist... well, he’s a good player and a very good songwriter. So they’re very modern. They have their own tequila!
The music is Neotraditional Country. What is that? Uh... contradictory. It translates to "New Traditional." I’m trying to figure out how that might work.
Sonically, it means songs with interesting chord changes and arrangements that tap into more traditional country themes. Like drinking. Drinkin’ Problem was their debut single... and it’s great. Great playing and production, kinda funny. I want to steal the opening riff. Their bass player directed the video. I’m not a huge country fan but I like a good drinking song as much as the next legally of age person. This one by Lou Reed pours my Pino. Say what you want about Mr Reed, but he can be funny as hell when he wants to be.
I listened to some more Midland, slowly growing more and more disenchanted. I knew the love affair was over when I ran into this video.
I’m pretty sure I’m not the target audience, but... I can’t look at this without being embarrassed for the guy. Although, DAMN I LOVE THE BASS on this.
It occurred to me that I just might be having flashbacks...
Flashbacks to this...
How to Destroy Your Career
Musicians come and go, trends come and go, but there’s no denying that there’s Billie Squire before this video, and the Billie Squire after...
If you’ve not seen Rock Me Tonight, you’re in for something. A treat? A laugh? A question mark floating over your head?
I wonder how the director managed to pull this performance out of Billie. "Prance, Billie, Prance! Give me everything you’ve got! Now, spin around like a dying praying mantis! Do that arm thing we discussed! Yeah!"
The 'Rock Me Tonight' video blew Mr Squire’s street cred, and while he continued to make music, and still does, it was an inflection point in his career. He was huge before it, and never returned to the charts after.
I do not know how we went from a cafe in Montreal to Billie Squire’s bedroom in 1984. I also don’t know how Ronald Clyde Crosby managed to go from Oneonta, New York to Austin, Texas and become
Jerry Jeff Walker
but somehow, he managed it.
Jerry Jeff Walker was one of the instigators of the Outlaw Country Movement. The outlaws — Jerry Jeff, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, David Allan Coe, Johnnys Paycheck and Cash — were rebelling against the Nashville studio system that had a veritable stranglehold on how country music was written and recorded. Heavily influenced by rock music from the late 60s, the outlaws wanted artistic control.
Jerry Jeff Walker REALLY wanted nothing to do with the Nashville studio system. He didn’t want anything to do with studios period. His debut album for MCA was cut live to 16 track tape — he made the engineers bypass the console and somehow plug straight into the tape deck. I’m reckoning there had to be mic preamps in there somewhere.
Jerry Jeff’s desire to have it as authentic and raw as possible led him to recording an absolute country classic, ¡Viva Terlingua!
¡Viva Terlingua!
¡Viva Terlingua! was cut live on the stage of a dance hall across a week in Luckenbach, Texas, in 1973. It was recorded by a father and son mobile recording team from New Jersey, called Dale Ashby and Father. I couldn’t find anything on these guys, other than that they followed Jerry Jeff and his Lost Gonzo Band around for months after, recording everything.
This is a killer record. It’s immediate and raw, yet wonderfully recorded and played, despite the fact that sessions began with Jerry Jeff whipping up a vat of sangria with God knows what in it. Maybe that’s why it’s so good: the band certainly wasn’t feeling any pain.
My favorite cut off it is Get It Out. The recording is totally in your face, without a hint of reverb, your head buried in the drum set or the bass amp, or whatever is featured at any given moment. I love well-written bridges on songs, and this one has one.
The entire album is worth it. Hear it here.
There’s a story behind Luckenbach Texas, too. Like Billie Squire’s video, there was Luckenbach before the recording of ¡Viva Terlingua! - it was a ghost town with a population of three. After, well... it still has no people in it, and its zip code was retired, but it’s become a country music destination of sorts, hosting various festivals and Willie Nelson Fourth of July parties, and of course, there is the famous dance hall. The town was also immortalized in a song by Waylon Jennings. Coincidently, ol’ Waylon never visited the town, but the song is lovely.
Let me know what you think of ¡Viva Terlingua! if you listen to it.
Luke
What a strange, wonderful world we live in.
