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anorthiteMcGeorge Bundy, you’re going to reap just what you sow!
I love listening to new music and sometimes when I feel like I need a hobby RIGHT NOW, I go browse AllMusic and listen to the sort of people that fall into my "heard OF but not actually heard" category. This time I ended up in the sort of pre-2000s folk/country/blues/Americana department, and after thorough investigation and a deeply unfortunate trawling of "60 best female country singers ever" lists, here are my thoughts.
I LIKED:
Barbara Dane and the Chambers Brothers, “” --> The folk revival had soooo many fantastic altos! Buffy Sainte-Marie! Odetta! Karen Dalton! Barbara Dane! Although all these singers released truly wonderful albums that were just singer/guitar affairs, the addition of the Chambers Brothers (who sing out of your right earphone; Barbara is on the left) and extra instruments makes it better for playing in the car and stuff ... goals which matter to ME! Also I just love dense harmonies which the Chambers Brothers do gorgeously.
Best Song: You’ve Got to Reap What You Sow (which has a fantastic spoken word dedication to a bunch of Vietnam-era lackeys AND LBJ by his full name)
Crosby, Nash, & Stills (& Young???), “So Far” --> This is just ... good? People who are good at singing and writing songs and playing the guitar to be found here! Genuinely not sure if Neil Young is included or not but it doesn’t matter because he did not lay waste to the nice blues-aligned folk on this album if he was. Also interesting in the artifact sense because Ohio is much more elegant and less hope-love-and-changey in the way that the more cloying 60s protest songs can sometimes be.
Best Song: Ohio
Tom Waits, “Bone Machine” --> I have a lot of thoughts about Tom Waits (go figure). He’s has the kind of “male revered auteur” following that I find incredibly annoying and often steer clear of, and although I do enjoy some of his music, he’s vastly more interesting to me, like Johnny Cash, as an image, specifically the John Brown figure he cuts on the cover of Mule Variations. I do think this is a really good album, though. Tom Waits music is all about chopping up a genre and burning it into ashes and serving up the nearly unrecognizable results as performance art, and I’d much prefer he did it to the blues than to cabaret or jazz. Even if there’s a caricaturish, cartoony element--he REALLY can sound like a muppet at times--there’s also a stagey earnest commitment to the character, the clattering percussion, the doomsday preacher wailing etc., that is hard to find elsewhere. It is too about an ugly fringe America in the canon of GYBE “F-Sharp A-Sharp Infinity,” Lingua Ignota “Sinner Get Ready,” and Natural Snow Buildings “Terror’s Horns,” or one of the really harsh and angry cuts from Adia Victoria “Beyond the Bloodhounds” or Springsteen “Nebraska.” It’s a sound that’s almost impossible to find sustained album-length no matter how much I love it, and maybe it’s unfair to ask it of Tom Waits.
Best Song: Jesus Gonna Be Here
John Denver, “Rocky Mountain High” --> John Denver has a supremely uneven discography where he wrote some of the best, most soaring country/folk choruses of all time (Matthew, Looking For Space, Rocky Mountain High, Rhymes and Reasons ... etc. etc.) and ALSO some of the most grating and hokey title tracks of the 70s, and then put an even number of each onto every single album he did. I think this is one of his most consistent albums, though, especially because it’s one of the most folky--more traditional and dense acoustic guitar than saccharine easy-listening arrangements. Also it’s hilarious that he had to testify before congress that Rocky Mountain High *wasn’t* about weed.
Best Song: Rocky Mountain High
Emmylou Harris, “Wrecking Ball” --> The production is the real hero of this one to be honest--moving the traditional country palette of instruments from a standard recording room and into an amorphous space of reverb and distance. Some clever high/low passing reduces instruments to their essential frequencies; the mandolins are basically percussion. There are also subtle electronic elements lurking underneath, and over-dubbed Emmylous floating at an uncertain length from the microphone. It’s a really impressive and adventurous updating of one’s sound for 1995, and for someone who definitely didn’t have to undergo change to remain a famous and successful country music figure.
Best Song: All My Tears
Robert Johnson, “King of the Delta Blues Singers” --> This is a bit of cheating since I already knew and loved Robert Johnson songs before this, but speaking of images and their relative compellingness in comparison to an artist’s music, this is definitely a case in which the apocryphal tales of having sold one’s soul to the devil measure up perfectly starting from the spidery slide-guitar intro of every song.
Best Song: Cross Road Blues
Honorable Mentions (I really liked them but I don't have much to say): B.B. King "Singin' the Blues," The Staple Singers "This Little Light," Ry Cooder "Into the Purple Valley," Lynyrd Skynyrd "Second Helping," Lucinda Williams "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road."
I DID NOT LIKE:
Johnny Cash --> wayyyy more interesting as a sort of shadowy archetypal overlord of American country than an artist who makes albums. He’s not very good at singing and I really wish his Rick Rubin reinvention, where the music I like best happened, had included an interesting instrument palette.
Bob Dylan --> I have a vendetta against this man and I think he sings like a leaky tire.
Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette --> girl help it’s too debutante Grand Ole Opry plantation wedding country for me.
The Yardbirds --> imagine you had one MORE bowl-cut sporting member than the Beatles but were somehow still extremely boring except for coining the superbly British phrase “having a rave up.”
I HATED:
The Carter Family --> ok, it’s unfair to say that I really *hate* them, but they’re the patron saints of the “realllll music and reallllll instruments ... this is what America sounds like ... gooooood clean fun!” brigade and I am allowed to be mean to them as a treat if I want to. Also I hate a dynasty.
Led Zeppelin --> I always feel kind of like I’m being a pointless contrarian when I hate on super beloved bands so all I can really say is that maybe people who really like guitar virtuosos see something in these albums? I just dislike it for the same reason I dislike Pink Floyd--overlong, over pretentious, discordant and unresolvable, going nowhere. Sacrilege, I know! It’s not even that these albums could or should have been edited into more compact songs; you get the feeling that were that done, you might be left with nothing at all. I simply Don't Get It.
I love listening to new music and sometimes when I feel like I need a hobby RIGHT NOW, I go browse AllMusic and listen to the sort of people that fall into my "heard OF but not actually heard" category. This time I ended up in the sort of pre-2000s folk/country/blues/Americana department, and after thorough investigation and a deeply unfortunate trawling of "60 best female country singers ever" lists, here are my thoughts.
I LIKED:
Barbara Dane and the Chambers Brothers, “” --> The folk revival had soooo many fantastic altos! Buffy Sainte-Marie! Odetta! Karen Dalton! Barbara Dane! Although all these singers released truly wonderful albums that were just singer/guitar affairs, the addition of the Chambers Brothers (who sing out of your right earphone; Barbara is on the left) and extra instruments makes it better for playing in the car and stuff ... goals which matter to ME! Also I just love dense harmonies which the Chambers Brothers do gorgeously.
Best Song: You’ve Got to Reap What You Sow (which has a fantastic spoken word dedication to a bunch of Vietnam-era lackeys AND LBJ by his full name)
Crosby, Nash, & Stills (& Young???), “So Far” --> This is just ... good? People who are good at singing and writing songs and playing the guitar to be found here! Genuinely not sure if Neil Young is included or not but it doesn’t matter because he did not lay waste to the nice blues-aligned folk on this album if he was. Also interesting in the artifact sense because Ohio is much more elegant and less hope-love-and-changey in the way that the more cloying 60s protest songs can sometimes be.
Best Song: Ohio
Tom Waits, “Bone Machine” --> I have a lot of thoughts about Tom Waits (go figure). He’s has the kind of “male revered auteur” following that I find incredibly annoying and often steer clear of, and although I do enjoy some of his music, he’s vastly more interesting to me, like Johnny Cash, as an image, specifically the John Brown figure he cuts on the cover of Mule Variations. I do think this is a really good album, though. Tom Waits music is all about chopping up a genre and burning it into ashes and serving up the nearly unrecognizable results as performance art, and I’d much prefer he did it to the blues than to cabaret or jazz. Even if there’s a caricaturish, cartoony element--he REALLY can sound like a muppet at times--there’s also a stagey earnest commitment to the character, the clattering percussion, the doomsday preacher wailing etc., that is hard to find elsewhere. It is too about an ugly fringe America in the canon of GYBE “F-Sharp A-Sharp Infinity,” Lingua Ignota “Sinner Get Ready,” and Natural Snow Buildings “Terror’s Horns,” or one of the really harsh and angry cuts from Adia Victoria “Beyond the Bloodhounds” or Springsteen “Nebraska.” It’s a sound that’s almost impossible to find sustained album-length no matter how much I love it, and maybe it’s unfair to ask it of Tom Waits.
Best Song: Jesus Gonna Be Here
John Denver, “Rocky Mountain High” --> John Denver has a supremely uneven discography where he wrote some of the best, most soaring country/folk choruses of all time (Matthew, Looking For Space, Rocky Mountain High, Rhymes and Reasons ... etc. etc.) and ALSO some of the most grating and hokey title tracks of the 70s, and then put an even number of each onto every single album he did. I think this is one of his most consistent albums, though, especially because it’s one of the most folky--more traditional and dense acoustic guitar than saccharine easy-listening arrangements. Also it’s hilarious that he had to testify before congress that Rocky Mountain High *wasn’t* about weed.
Best Song: Rocky Mountain High
Emmylou Harris, “Wrecking Ball” --> The production is the real hero of this one to be honest--moving the traditional country palette of instruments from a standard recording room and into an amorphous space of reverb and distance. Some clever high/low passing reduces instruments to their essential frequencies; the mandolins are basically percussion. There are also subtle electronic elements lurking underneath, and over-dubbed Emmylous floating at an uncertain length from the microphone. It’s a really impressive and adventurous updating of one’s sound for 1995, and for someone who definitely didn’t have to undergo change to remain a famous and successful country music figure.
Best Song: All My Tears
Robert Johnson, “King of the Delta Blues Singers” --> This is a bit of cheating since I already knew and loved Robert Johnson songs before this, but speaking of images and their relative compellingness in comparison to an artist’s music, this is definitely a case in which the apocryphal tales of having sold one’s soul to the devil measure up perfectly starting from the spidery slide-guitar intro of every song.
Best Song: Cross Road Blues
Honorable Mentions (I really liked them but I don't have much to say): B.B. King "Singin' the Blues," The Staple Singers "This Little Light," Ry Cooder "Into the Purple Valley," Lynyrd Skynyrd "Second Helping," Lucinda Williams "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road."
I DID NOT LIKE:
Johnny Cash --> wayyyy more interesting as a sort of shadowy archetypal overlord of American country than an artist who makes albums. He’s not very good at singing and I really wish his Rick Rubin reinvention, where the music I like best happened, had included an interesting instrument palette.
Bob Dylan --> I have a vendetta against this man and I think he sings like a leaky tire.
Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette --> girl help it’s too debutante Grand Ole Opry plantation wedding country for me.
The Yardbirds --> imagine you had one MORE bowl-cut sporting member than the Beatles but were somehow still extremely boring except for coining the superbly British phrase “having a rave up.”
I HATED:
The Carter Family --> ok, it’s unfair to say that I really *hate* them, but they’re the patron saints of the “realllll music and reallllll instruments ... this is what America sounds like ... gooooood clean fun!” brigade and I am allowed to be mean to them as a treat if I want to. Also I hate a dynasty.
Led Zeppelin --> I always feel kind of like I’m being a pointless contrarian when I hate on super beloved bands so all I can really say is that maybe people who really like guitar virtuosos see something in these albums? I just dislike it for the same reason I dislike Pink Floyd--overlong, over pretentious, discordant and unresolvable, going nowhere. Sacrilege, I know! It’s not even that these albums could or should have been edited into more compact songs; you get the feeling that were that done, you might be left with nothing at all. I simply Don't Get It.
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