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by Senor Barborito 01/01/2005, 5:53am PST

Happy New Year, by the way.

jeep wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

Johnny Cash is an okay touchpoint, but the Man in Black was never too particular about keepng his country, his rock, and his blues separate.

Neither am I. I prefer post-punk to punk and similarly I don't mind someone affecting country in any other genre. I think that other than the aforementioned Cash and that one Neil Young record, the only country sounding stuff I have is Halo Benders. I had or have a copy of Yankee Echo Foxtrot, but jesus is it awful.

I hate Neil Young. I hate Wilco.

But: have you ever seen Joe Versus The Volcano? It's the only tolerable Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie, a bit surreal, Tom gets sacrificed to the volcano god, etc. Well there's one scene in the beginning where a newly rich Tom Hanks is standing outside a hotel looking lonely and the song "Blue Moon" is playing.

That song is an old country standard, sung by a very very young Elvis Presley. If you've seen that movie, and you didn't hate that song, I can stick up the whole album for you ("The Sun Sessions", some of Elvis' very first recordings, it's allllll country classics like "Blue Moon Of Kentucky" and "You're Right, I'm Left, She's Gone".) Now that album is full of country so stripped down, and so wayyyyy before Charlie Rich and the Nashville Sound - which, I'm going to guess, is what's giving you at least a third of your hives over country music - that you might actually dig it. I got it on a whim, along with the Velvet Underground banana record, when I was about 13, and I thought it buried VU. Twelve years later, now that I hate Europeans, I think it buries VU even further into the dirt.

Senor Barborito wrote:

ITrivia fact! "Just Checked In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)", the cameo supersong in The Big Lebowski, is in fact a Kenny Rogers song, sung by Kenny Rogers. (I love Kenny Rogers, by the way, but almost all his work is exactly the sort of thing jeep would despise.)

I actually took the Kenny Rogers joke out of that other post. I think other than Harvest, The Gambler had to be the first country record I ever heard, and I fucking hated it then, too. Kenny Rogers fans can take solace in the fact that I was beaten viciously for expressing my opinion in front of my parents' friends. I guess bakc in the late 70s it's wasn't every day you heard 4 year olds saying 'this music fucking sucks'.

/jeep/

Oh yeah, Kenny Rogers is 100% shiny Nashville Sound back when it still was pretending to be sko appalachia. You probably hate Dolly Parton too even though boy could she sing and boy could she write a song. The Grand Ole Opry only goes in for Nashville Sound for guest stars though, outside of that they do what they can to get in the good old mountain music and lost cowboys. The Weaponsmith's dad listens to the Opry on the radio every weekend, getting progressively drunker and making chicken and ribs on one of those huge Oklahoma Joe grills, and when the new kids come on with their shitty songs and overplayed "country" look and feel, the old man starts bitching them out and doesn't stop until the show's over.

I got torture tested visiting him, because he'd grill me too about the new crap in the Opry. "Do you like this shhh...the shit?" He'd have to work up to the swears, he didn't want to swear in front of a girl but he fucking hated the music. "I can't believe anyone likes this bullshit. Listen to that, if Roy Acuff were still here he'd strangle.... he'd take that piece of shhhh...shit off the stage. Do you like that whiny stuff? Boy I can't believe it..." then he'd have some more beer. NO SIR!! I DO NOT LIKE THAT NEW COUNTRY SIR!!!! Then he'd hoot in appreciation over some suitably old-time band, like the Old Time Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and tell me in exhaustive detail the history of the band and their relation to and previous appearances at the Opry. He was a fucking encyclopedia and I couldn't escape because, you know, future in-law. Sitting out there on the deck at night, chilled, as he kept shoving iced-down boxes of chocolate milk in my hand and inviting me to turn up the radio just a bit for him, and I couldn't escape.

Where was the Weaponsmith? Let me tell you: he, along with his much smarter mother and visiting brothers, were all inside watching TV. They got the idea early on that I didn't like TV a whole lot, so they figured I'd be happier "keeping Dad company outside. Oh go on, Zseni, and take him another case of beer. And don't forget your jacket."

So now I know a little about country music and how surprisingly cold the South can get at night in all seasons. As it happens, Kenny Rogers was my first celebrity crush. I saw him on TV when I was barely able to conceive of narrative history. I guess I have a thing for Santa Claus or something.

Though I almost never take solace in seeing aryan children get beat, no matter how prodigal.