It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

Week before last I stumbled on a $5 copy of Rosanne Cash hits.  Naturally I pounced on the CD because despite my love for “Seven Year Ache” and “Tennessee Flat Top Box” I don’t actually own a Rosanne Cash album.  Here I got both those hits plus several more I recalled from the 80s.  Sweet.

I expected I would lock in on “Seven Year Ache” but instead I’ve found a new earworm in “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me.”

How in the hell had I forgotten this song?  I can only assume that the two previously mentioned tracks as well as “This Is the Way (We Make a Broken Heart)” overshadow this little ditty, despite the fact that “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me” was what won Cash a Grammy for Best Country Female Vocal Performance in ’85–beating out Janie Fricke’s “She’s Single Again” (that should get Kristy’s attention).  For added irony, apparently the hook and a portion of the lyrics were born out of Cash’s thoughts upon losing a Grammy in previous years.

I honestly can’t put my finger on exactly what it is about the song that has led me to listen to it at least 30 times in the last 36 hours.  The lyrics–amusing stories about Grammy inspiration aside–are not incredibly deep.  They’re kind of fun “I’m in the right mood / I’ve got the new shoes tonight…I’ve got the new dress / I couldn’t care less tonight…”

Being the more tune-inclined listener of the MTVMPB crew, I have a feeling the secret in the attraction lies there.  It’s catchy, it’s upbeat, and yes, that is Vince Gill on background vocals.  But is it really a musical stand out?  I can’t say.  I do know it’s a fabulous pace for getting things done–it’s now on my house-cleaning rotation and during the past two days of marathon effort on a project at work, it’s been just the right combination of upbeat without excess speed, or harshness.

Or maybe the addiction for me is more personal.  The music video for this song is at the heart of a pointless, but very vivid early memory.  This music video came on and my brother, who was about 3 or 4 was totally entranced.  Stopped playing with his cars, dead halt and fixated on the TV.  As the video wound down he asked, “Who is that lady?”  Mom told him it was Rosanne Cash.  He then announced with a firmness and conviction beyond his years “I like Rosanne Cash.  I like how she sings.  And she’s pretty.”  And then he went back to playing with his cars.  For several years after that, if asked about singers he liked, Rosanne Cash was the only female vocalist he would name.

I don’t know why the song is so addictive, and I don’t know why I ever let it slip out of my repertoire, but I know I’m glad it’s here and I won’t lose track of it again.

Back in the glory days of 80s country music a group called Shenandoah released a song called “Ghost in this House.”  I liked the song, even though I’ve never been wild about the group performing it*.  It painted a very different image of a break up–a lonesome, desperate, defeated kind of image.  It’s like a textbook description of clinical depression–phone and door unanswered, not picking up the mail, sitting in the darkened (and unmaintained) house.

I’m just a ghost in this house / I’m just a shadow upon these walls…

And backing up this accurate description of a person who has been rendered a shell of his/her former self is a haunting, but simple tune (I can hum this on my own without cringing at sour notes–that’s no easy thing, I tell you).

The combination was potent enough that Alison Krauss covered the song in the 90s–creating an even more beautiful and haunting version than Shenandoah’s original.  This version seems to be the one through which more non-mainstream-country fans have been exposed.

And now, score one more for exposure.

I was more than a little shocked, and totally stoked and giddy, when I popped in my newly imported copy of Sissel’s new album Til Deg….** and within 4 notes of Track 7 beginning I was bouncing my chair.  ”Levande Död” was undeniably “Ghost in this House” (and I totally started singing along in English).  It sounds beautiful.  This fits right in my deep love of good covers of good songs AND my deep love of hearing covers done in random languages (especially if the translation fits well….which means it’s not an attempt to do a one-to-one word swap, but still maintains the original theme story).

I haven’t had a chance to translate all the lyrics, but the title alone tells me that the lyrical theme of the original remains in tact.  ”Levande Död” was pretty obviously “Living Dead” to me (I confirmed this with Google translate).  So either Levande Död is the coolest way to refer to ghosts in a Norse dialect (fairly sure this cover is in Swedish)…..

Or maybe Sissel’s singing a really beautiful song about zombies.

That would be awesome, too.

*Shenandoah actually had a number of selections I loved as pieces independent of the particular performance.  I can’t fault their ability to choose gems.  They also had “Sunday in the South” and “Church on Cumberland Road.”

**In theory there will be a US version of Sissel’s album out eventually, but given it’s already been 4 months since Til Deg… came out in Europe, I’m not sure it will ever come out here, at least not with the high percentage of Norse-language content.  I’m cool with Sissel singing in English, French, Italian….but I have found more favorites when she’s singing in Norwegian, Danish or Swedish.  Unfortunately, that’s also the stuff that tends to get removed in US releases of her albums.  Apparently it’s okay to expose Americans to foreign influence if it’s a Romantic rather than a Germanic language….

This is a few days late, but besser spät als nie.  March 6 marked the 175th anniversary of the Alamo (and remember kids, when you Remember the Alamo, you need to Remember Goliad, too).

In the Southern part of Texas, near the town of San Antone…

So starts the ” Ballad of the Alamo”.  Now, unlike the ballads that have street credit in Kristy’s pro-folklore world, this historically inaccurate, though very catchy, musical telling of the Battle of the Alamo didn’t come about until the 1960s.  It’s been recorded by Frankie Avalon (which, really, I can’t take seriously.  Because it’s Frankie Avalon), but more importantly, by Marty Robbins, a man whose name is synonymous with Western Ballads.  The song was authored, at least in part by Dimitri Tiomkin as part of the soundtrack for the John Wayne classic version of The Alamo*.

This is not a scholarly work.  There are errors and exaggeration and a tendency to romanticize, and yet, in spite of all that, it’s still powerful as a way to introduce someone to this part of history.  Since the 1960s, plenty of kiddos in Texas have been exposed to the song–and more than one of us who can’t remember numbers for shit has run through these lyrics in 7th grade Texas history to make sure we had the right year for our final exam “Back in 1836, Houston said to Travis…” And “One hundred and eighty-five, holding back five thousand” is a highly speculative set of figures when it comes to the head count for the battle.  But, since scholars are not completely settled on the exact population of either force (particularly not the Mexican side), we can accept this–and again, it can sure help narrow the options on that multiple choice test.  You hit most of the high points of the story (holding against multiple advances, the playing of “De Guello”, the lack of back up/support, the lack of gravesites) and the key names involved.

Any perceived failure comes in the overly romanticized frame for the story–much as I like the image of the “fortress all in ruins that the weeds have overgrown” the fact is that what remains of The Alamo is in the great big middle of San Antonio and has been for a very, very long time.  To get to the very-well-maintained remains of the sanctuary (the rest of the presidio walls are long gone), you have to exit into downtown SA.  But that doesn’t matter–to a kid who is just starting to discover the story of the battle (and who isn’t growing up in Texas) the place might as well have been a fortress in ruins just waiting to be uncovered.  And if a catchy tune, some snappy guitar work and the smooth lilt of Marty Robbins’ voice draws the kind of mental picture that capture’s someone’s imagination and gives her a reason to seek more information about this little tidbit of history?  Then the accuracy sacrificed in the name of rhyming and romanticism is totally worth it.

*Incidentally, Tiomkin also gave us another gem in the theme for that same film –”The Green Leaves of Summer” if an absolutely beautiful theme (with or without the lyrics by Paul Webster).  In terms of pure music, I prefer it to “The Ballad of the Alamo”

Until 10 minutes ago, I’d fully intended to talk about the “Ballad of the Alamo” since 23 February marks the start of the 13 day siege of the Alamo.

But then I got an e-mail informing me of a not-unexpected death in the family and about the only thing I’m really feeling like listening to is Sissel’s rendition of “Lær meg å kjenne.”

You can google fairly easily to get the words/translation from Norwegian.  The lyrics are meaningful, but I mostly listen for the music.  Oddly, despite the rather somber nature of the tune and the lyrics, the best rendition I’ve ever heard of this was performed by Sissel at the wedding of Norway’s Princess Märtha Louise to Ari Behn in 2002.  Wouldn’t have pegged it for a wedding tune, but it worked and if I had the rather obscure link to that footage, I’d share it.  As it stands, the best I can do is point you to one several other videos from a concert special.

On a different night, I’d gush a bit about how much I love this song, but I’m not much up to it.  It will either stand on its own merits, or not.

Hmm, I feel I should look into what it is about Wednesday that results in my seeking musical therapy….While my usual solution is some Jimmy Buffett, today, I had to boost the dose of attitude change with something that was slightly less laid back–and to deal with the back log of, well, crap I find myself re-examining.

Enter Mother Mother’s “Body of Years“.

First of all, I like the pace.  You start with the drum beat that will keep you company the whole way through, build in the bass, then the rest–all steady, consistent, and just a little dark.  The vocals do nothing to detract from the pace, and with an opening line that mentions a cadaver, the words are far from shiny-happy.

The entire song uses bones, cadavers and remains as a metaphor for the memories and experiences of our years that we all have.  That “body” of years may be a rotting corpse, but it’s a piece of you that you can’t really ditch, and you continue to stumble over.  It may be a way back to days you revisit, but it can also be “a pile of shit, you can’t seem to forget.”   Normally I like to keep the decomposing bodies confined to episodes of Bones, but it works so well here, in part because there’s not a lot of attempt to unravel the whys or wherefores of the Body of Years we’re burdened with.  It’s not about fixing it, or explaining how it comes about that we wind up with so much past to weigh down and trip us, it’s just telling you it’s there.  They hand you the metaphor and you can read as much or little into it as you feel like.

And also refreshing is this little music-box-esque break this song takes about three minutes in.  For a brief period, that steady beat drops out, and the bodies give way to diary pages.  Then after only 30 seconds of this change that is so drastic, yet so smoothly executed, that same beat come building in again, taking you right back and on to the end.

It may not fit the normal feel-good rotation for a post bad-day decompression, but on occasion, it hits the spot.

As Kristy covered some time ago:  1983 was a year of some kind of musical magic.  Kristy’s original realization of the disproportionate amount of awesome that came out of pop/rock in 1983 led to me to look back at country since that’s the music I was being exposed to almost exclusively at that time.  I was pleasantly surprised–and slightly weirded out–to find that the statistically improbably percentage of musical gems was present in the country world just as in the pop/rock arena.  And, like Kristy, I found that the overwhelming majority of the songs listed were basically the soundtrack to some of my earliest memories.

Now, the nature of the country niche means that, unlike the songs Kristy identified before, not all the songs will have as wide a following.  But, part of the thing that amazed me in a look at just the Billboard country charts, were the number of songs that did break out of the genre.  The biggest example is “Islands In A Stream” (which was number one on 3 different US Billboard charts,  and several foreign charts including Austria’s…really?  Austria???).  Honestly, if you haven’t heard Kenny and Dolly on this at least once, I really don’t know what kind of intergalactic odyssey you’ve been on for the past 28 years.

But that wasn’t the only one that tends to get some love outside of country fans:  this was the year that Shelley West made sure we knew that “Jose Cuervo” was a friend of ours (oh, do I EVER beg to differ with that statement).   Anne Murray was just looking for “A Little Good News” (which has a nice, timeless message if you can overlook the whole part about “Bryant Gumble was talking about the fighting in Lebanon”) and at a time when everyone was worried about Japan taking over our jobs (yeah, remember when they were the global market threat?), the Oak Ridge Boys’ assured us their baby was “American Made.”  And somehow a very bizarre assortment of my friends who generally hate this genre learned that “Houston (Means That I’m One Day Closer To You)” from Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Bros.

For those more familiar with the country genre, there’s plenty that might not be known to the outside, but which that you should recognize as absolutely classic fare.  In 1983 not only were you getting the ascension of today’s mega stars like Reba McEntire (“Can’t Even Get The Blues” was the first number one of the year), and George Strait (“A Fire I Can’t Put Out” was #1 in September)  coming in with a neotraditionalist sound (which George has kept and Reba has mostly ditched), but the general epic fail of the country/pop crossover of the 70s had finally ripened into something awesome with the likes of Kenny, Dolly, Alabama (“The Closer You Get” although, it’s arguable that Alabama had some neotraditionalist tendencies because you also have “Dixieland Delight” the same year), Janie Fricke (“He’s a Heartache Looking For a Place to Happen”) and even Charley Pride’s “Why Baby Why” (because, yes, kids, there have been black country singers well before Darius Rucker).  You were also still getting the outlaw country, in particular the absolutely classic musical epic of “Pancho and Lefty” from Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson (I still remember the music video for that one–it was much higher quality than many videos of that time).  Even songs that didn’t make number one were awesome (honestly, until now I never knew that George Strait’s signature song “Amarillo by Morning” was not a number one in the US).

Maybe it was this unique transition and overlap, or maybe there was just some kind of weird planetary alignment, but something was just right in 1983, and while the rest of the 80s were also (in my far less than humble opinion) fantastic for this niche of the musical market, something about 1983 was just a stand out.

In true Cammy fashion, I obtained the new Reba McEntire CD like clockwork yesterday.  I’m happy to report that the fannishness that drives me to pick up a new album on release day does not necessarily color my view of the CD:  All The Women I Am is a few gals short of awesomeness.

I had a sneaking suspicion I was in for an experience that would rate only a “meh” when the first single was released.  I was actually visiting Kristy at the time so she can attest to my underwhelmed reaction to “Turn On Your Radio.”  It’s catchy enough, I guess, and Reba executes it well, but at the end of the day the song itself and the arrangement are the same variety of drivel that’s been plaguing country music for a while now.  I’m all for eliminating the lines between genres, but there’s eliminating the line, and then there’s poorly executed hybridization that annoys both sides of the fence.

I could overlook it if this were the only track on the album that fell into the over-used sound, but, leider nicht.  The title track, “All The Women I Am”, has the same feel as “Turn On Your Radio” (rock pretending to be country pretending to be rock like some kind of frakked up Victor Victoria identity crisis).  I could forgive the recurring theme of Girl Power in the lyrics.  In fact, I am quite amused by the self reference they contain (“I’m a daughter of the red dirt / Okie dust still in my bones / But I can light up New York City with my red hair and rhinestones”), but they aren’t enough to compensate for how much I don’t enjoy the musical arrangement.

The coup de grace was the final track.  A dance remix of “I Want a Cowboy” from her last studio album.  Let’s get this straight right now:  I generally despise dance mixes.  If you’re going to do club dance stuff, do club dance stuff–there’s a time and a place where you need that style.  I’ve never heard a dance mix of a non-dance song that didn’t suck. Country songs subjected to this Dr. Moreau treatment come out particularly ridiculous.  Honestly, what the hell kinda club would play an electronica dance mix of a Reba McEntire song?!?  So with a song that was mediocre to begin with, and made worse by the dance mix treatment?  Honestly, I couldn’t even listen to the whole track.  I hit skip about 30 seconds in.

“A Little Want To” is tolerable mostly because in comparison to the previously mentioned tracks, it’s almost a gem.  It’s a little too far to the twanging honkey-tonk grind side for me, and the lyrics, while upbeat don’t really catch me.  Why is everyone in country trying so hard to “rock” a mandolin?  I appreciate the traditional elements, but the way they’ve been used on this and so many other songs is like a musical cliche.  So, meh.

There’s minor hope for “The Bridge You Burn” but nothing to blow your dress up.  ”Cry”  and “Somebody’s Chelsea” are about the same–on any other album they would be those songs you forget about but never actively dislike.  On this one, I’m kind of glad to have them.

I will admit that the sap in me like “When You Have a Child” and I know myself well enough to admit that I’d like it regardless of the rest of the album content.  I won’t try to sell it though because I recognize schmalz when I hear it and while I will revel in it, I’m not going to drag you all down with me.

I kept hoping for a surprise favorite to pop up like “I’ll Have What She’s Having” cropped up on the previous album (a toe-tapping, western-swing look across the barroom at the kinda guy you’d like to see on the menu–ask Kristy how excellent the song is).  The closest I got was on a track that I had low expectations for: “If I Were A Boy.”

Now, when I heard Reba was covering a Beyonce song, I about shit a brick.  Beyonce is just not my style.  I’ve tried to listen to her, but she just doesn’t work for me, musically.  And, having heard her original version of “If I Was a Boy” I was fairly certain this listening experience was going to try my Reba fannishness.  Lo, I am surprised.  I actually like the damned thing.  Very different arrangement from Beyonce (thank you, Jesus), that fits Reba and comes off quite well (though I’d like to lose the echo).  It’s not traditionally country, but unlike the other ugly baby hybrids, this is a somewhat decent example of genre cross pollination.  It’s also an example of why I love hearing different artists cover the same song–love one, loathe another.  This one gave me a little hope for some envelope pushing out of Reba like we used to get back in the day.

“The Day She Got Divorced” is not a song I will ever like, but it’s one I can kind of respect.  Where I’m very used to the female empowerment, upbeat songs Reba puts out, as well as her tear-jerkers on the heartbreak of a divorce, this song is neither.  It’s a divorce tale without the pro-gal slant.  It begins with the image of a woman chain smoking and going about a very pedestrian morning.  The husband is rotten, but the wife’s having a crappy affair, too.  And rather than the post- divorce heartbreak, the day after this marriage ends is just like the day before.  It’s just kind of….dingy.  I dislike the woman, the man, the entire situation.  But I give props to the idea of this slightly grittier and less emotional look at divorce.  I will never enjoy hearing the song, but I can appreciate it.

All in all, I’m a little let down with this package as a whole.  That said, this is still Reba, so even her worst is a lot better than some of the best that you get out of others, and I don’t regret my purchase.  I know that eventually some of the mediocre songs may grow on me a little.  But an album like this makes me scratch my head and wonder where the days are when Reba burst out with something so different from the rest:  ”Fancy”, Annie Get Your Gun….There are sparks of hope from “If I Was a Boy” and “The Day She Got Divorced” but they are pale in comparison to what we’ve seen in the past.  Reba’s shown us a lot of women over the years, but the album feels like she left out the best of them.

If I could kick the asses of the little MBA assholes who push their marketing strategies down on music, I would.  The use of “genre” labeling to market music is annoying as shit to me.  It stands between me and the radio station of my dreams an it only serves the number-grubbing strategies of bean-counting little asshats.

Genre labeling sucks, particularly for those of us consuming the music.  Does anyone ever listen to only one genre of music?  Rarely.  And yet you try finding a radio station that mixes formats.  Good friggin’ luck.  The best you can hope for is some kind of public radio that dedicates certain hours to certain genres.

And try defining a genre and getting everyone to agree on it.  Fat chance.  I, for one, have strong opinions about what should be classified as “country”–or, more accurately, what shouldn’t be.  If I’m going to be held hostage by a system that forces everything into the labeled boxes, then they damn well better stop shoving pop shit into the jar labeled “country” particularly when that means squeezing out stuff that is honest-to-goodness-two-step-worthy-country.  It’s not that I don’t like pop, I just don’t appreciate having it packaged as country in some kind of frakked up attempt to bump up marketing (especially since aspring pop stars seem to be using country as their easier road to the top–but that’s a rant for another Wednesday).

Even after you “define” a genre, what do you do with the stuff that just doesn’t fit?  There so much great music out there that doesn’t get played anywhere because of the lack of big-business backing and also because no one knows which of those ill-conceived categories to put it in.  Exhibit A, Eddie from Ohio.  They play some country, some folk, some rock, some pop, some blues, some gospel…what they don’t play is radio and that’s not because they aren’t good.

The only winners are the marketing gurus who have simplified the playing field and made it easier to control the creation of megastars.  In the meantime we get crappy radio stations that over-play sound-a-like junk and run screaming in fear of anything that might come from outside their ill defined boundaries.

Screw it.  I’ll just listen to Last.fm.

Is it too much to ask that there be a station out there that says “screw labels, let’s play music” and gives me Jonathan Coulton’s “Mandelbrot Set,” Reba’s “Fancy,” Arcade Fire’s “Intervention” and Aaron Copeland’s “Variations on Simple Gifts” in a back to back set?

Back in February I alerted you, gentle readers, to Canada’s subtle invasion of the US via music in TV shows and commercials.  As promised, I’ve continued to keep an ear out for other instances of our rocktastic northern neighbors creeping into our musical subconscious (much to my great delight).  However, I’ve been remiss in updating the Invasion Playlist until just recently.  Here are just a few of the new additions:

-”Model Homes” In-Flight Safety, (heard on Chuck)

-”Who Taught You To Live Like That?”  Sloan (heard on Castle)

-”The Laws Have Changed” – The New Pornographers (which I noticed in a Gilmore Girls re-run)

-”Stuck for the Summer” – Two Hours Traffic (the only time I have ever watched Royal Pains was because I heard this while I was channel surfing–I changed the channel when it was done)

-”It’s a Curse’ – Wolf Parade (I really don’t know what the show was–some form of drama involving people in cop uniforms and other public servants–maybe one of the million Law & Orders?  It was another case of heard-while-channel-surfing)

-”Take Me Anywhere” – Tegan & Sara (Grey’s Anatomy re-run)

There are some other new additions beyond this.  A few that other people pointed out to me and some that I had jotted in my notebook with no clue as to what ad/show they came from.  And these are just the ones available on R3.  ”River’s Edge” by the Great Lake Swimmers was in an episode of Bones,and “Before I Knew” by Basia Bulat was in a Subaru add, but neither are available for linking on R3.

That’s it for the fall update on the invasion.  Toodle over to the updated Invasion Playlist and familiarize yourself with our new overlords.  If you feel up to it, feel free to get in touch with your inner Ranger and drop a line if you catch any others for the list.