Split Lip Rayfield, Thursday, May 28th, at the 400 Bar

Early in his life, Henry James expatriated himself to Paris to write condescending literature about America. As a Kansan hiding out in Minnesota, I understand some of his motivations behind getting away from his birthplace, but I have nothing but fond memories of my roots, and it often causes me great consternation that I so seldom have the opportunity to visit.

Luckily, there's a little band called Split Lip Rayfield, made up of four wild-eyed hillbillies from the Sunflower State. Ad Astra Per Aspera takes on a whole new meaning when you get whipped into a broken string, Old Style® swilling frenzy by a quartet of guys in blue jeans, t-shirts, and rotting out Chuck Taylors, singing about stuff like hot rods, booze, and broken hearts. Lawrence is just a glorified suburb now, but when I was a fresh-faced boy of 16 with a new driver's license and a sky blue, rag-top, '68 Buick Electra 225 (so numbered because it was 224.9 inches long, take your shoes off and divide by 12), the high speed run to Snob Hill could be done in about 30 minutes, with or without headlights, and there was always mayhem at the end of the line. Split Lip Rayfield's catalogue has spoken to that young man deep within me for many years, and I felt young again as they tortured their instruments for an hour and half on the hole-in-the-wall stage. It goes without saying that any band that sports a guy playing a gas tank for a bass deserves immediate enshrinement into the Country, Rock, and Pro Football Halls of Fame. Their music is grass in its roots, but make no mistake, this is paranoid, dropout, bootlegger music; and, if your knuckles turn white and you feel like a little late night "hunting" afterward, well, that's just the primordial ooze rising up in your belly and doing battle with all those Lutheran beatdowns you've been receiving since kindergarten. "Shut the fuck up and play!" was shouted more than once from the audience, and it was both delivered and received only half-jokingly throughout the evening. This band...this band...awwwwwww, shut the fuck up...

Hands Up!, by The Two Dollar Pistols

I've spent a lot of time with this record for the past few weeks, so I wanted to doll it up nice and take it out for a good dinner, with hors d'oeuvres, a crisp salad, and all the trimmins. I've told a few people that if they had a warm summer night, some cool water, a handful of stars, a twelve-pack, and this album, they could probably get lucky. The songs aren't happy go-lucky songs about being in love and having babies; but, they are good, old-fashioned country songs about lovin' and leavin' and drinkin'. John Howie, Jr.'s lyrics are catchy, and at times, cutting, and the music itself is smooth like a drop-top 66 Impala on a North Carolina highway. Just off the top, "Too Bad That You're Gone," "It Doesn't Matter Much To Me," and "It's All Fun and Games," are the kind of songs that jump out of the speakers and make you feel like you know the words already...you know them in your bones. If you've ever had a little romantic difficulty in your life, then you've been to the places Howie's been, and he captures those feelings of anger, frustration, and confusion in a strangely soothing and cathartic way through verse and melody that actually makes you feel BETTER after listening. The added bonus is that the whole damn album could be a dance record if you know how to swing your gal, swing your guy, or swing your gal into a guy. They used to make stuff like this in Bakersfield, so the hillbillies could drunkenly lament their plight while draggin their gals across the floor on a Friday night. I give it 4 (four) out of a possible 4 Pabsts.

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette,
Puff, puff, puff it and you'll puff yourself to death
Tell St. Peter at the pearly gate
You just hate to make him wait
You just gotta have a-nother cigarette!

--Tex Williams (1947) [Thank you Jerry Clark, the little voice inside my head reminding me how dumb I am]

If you spend any time in bars and clubs--and most of you don't, no matter what you're telling the girl in sales on Monday morning--you know that the proposed smoking bans are weighing heavily on the minds of a few...mostly people who smoke. "Well, no shit Sherlock," you say.

Growing up in Kansas City, I was always in the presence of a smoldering Winston, my old man dragging on stick after stick, in between meals and sips of strong coffee brewed by his Texan wife, the apple of my eye, Marnell. Like measles and small pox, I received my nicotine innoculation early in life, so my own feelings on the topic have always been tempered by a tolerance borne of familiarity.

But what of the bars and clubs? I don't smoke myself, so I'm not going to lie to you, I wouldn't miss it too much. On a physical level, I don't need cigarettes, and it's just more laundry when you feel like you have to put on a clean shirt for bed on a cold night after beating the cops home from some joint filled with clouds of tar. Honestly, there are only a few people who'll tell you that they prefer the smell and residual effects of cigarette smoking in the bars. There's the whole physical addiction part, and there's the "I only smoke when I drink" crowd, and that's pretty much the long and short of why people do it.

"If they're going to ban it, it should be statewide," says Big Frank Szewc of Grumpy's Nordeast. The obvious reasoning behind that is, if it's just Minneapolis and/or St. Paul, then smokers will find first ring bars that allow it, to spend their kids' lunch money on booze. "Also, it creates more work for the bartenders," continues Big Frank. Say a smoker decides to go to a Minneapolis bar regardless of the ban...say 20 smokers show up...they all have to step outside every time they want a grit. Now, the staff has to keep an eye out for what's going on outside. They have to police whether they're trying to sneak their drinks out there; they have to police the noise levels. In other words, banning smoking in bars has the potential of creating two "rooms" at every bar, where only one existed previously.

But let's just wad those arguments up like paper and toss them in the trash for a moment. On a purely statistical level, the STATES that have banned smoking have found there's economic benefit, not harm to it. So, for the sake of ranting, let's accept that banning smoking on a statewide level is a good thing economically.

A feverish mind is always suspicious of people telling it what it can't do. What is the greater, more nefarious or benevolent thing going on here? As good ol' Harry Truman once quipped, "how long do you have to let something hit you in the head before you stand up and ask what's hitting me in the goddamned head?"

Who are the players in a smoking ban? Well, Player One is Tobacco. Injured and on the run, Tobacco has been marshalled into a corner in a country founded upon it. Player Two is a cloudy devil's pact between health insures and state governments, wherein they've joined their clawed hands and cloven hooves because of long term health cost liability due to constant smoke exposure. Player Three is Booze. Booze gets theirs no matter who wins, but booze is still stirring the pot. And lurking not so far underneath is Player Four, the pharmaceutical companies. Studies have shown that reduced access to areas where smoking is okay causes people to attempt to stop smoking...well, they gotta do something if they don't smoke all of the sudden, and gobbling handfuls of prescription mood enhancers and addiction copers seems like a great start.

Seeing as how all four players have a lot of loose money lying around, it's no secret that influence can be won in the halls of government with a check or two. So don't believe for a minute that your elected leaders give a shit about your health. Elections happen in November, and there hasn't been a "free" one for centuries.

But, let's even ignore for a moment that your elected leaders are pushing this hot button issue during an election year when all of them have failed to create jobs, deliver affordable healthcare and education, and bring world peace. Examine the mechanics of the law...

If passed, the government, under the rubric of "public health" is saying yet another thing can't be done in public areas. I've found myself arguing most about this point with friends, foes, and drunks propped up against the bar. Your government is exercising some pretty vague power as a steward of the public health to clamp down on something that many people do out of choice; it's not like sewage leaks, or even lead in the drinking water. Folks are knowingly puffing on rockets at their local watering holes.

The BAD analogy is, "what's next? Big Macs are bad for me, can they outlaw those too?" The proper response to that is that your Big Mac doesn't immediately and directly affect those around you. The GOOD analogy is sex. If I decide to take a woman home from the bar and we soil each other all night long without protection, we are immediately and directly inserting ourselves into a chain of possible STD transmission, assuming I forget both her name and number the minute I walk out the door. The government has an equally compelling interest in curtailing that kind of behavior, and don't laugh at me when I tell you that it's next.

Finally, we can never ignore the greatest argument of them all...WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!?!?!?!? If the government has a compelling interest in protecting anything in this country, it needs to protect the fucking children. Children should never see porn, hear cuss words, eat fatty foods, breathe dirty air, drink rusty water, swallow lead paint, or fall down and get a boo boo on their knees. If the government can say people can't smoke in bars where people have willingly exposed themselves to booze, smoke, manic-depressive alcoholics, me, and Big Frank, then they can most certainly say that you really ought not smoke at home around your kids...THEIR kids...THE STATE'S kids...there's a compelling interest in not leaving one child behind, no matter the issue.

There's a good chance that a lot of this is gibberish, but you only have to sit through one, two, or 236 classes during 3 years of law school to see the natural progression of things when it comes to the "state's compelling interests." I really don't care whether folks smoke. They're making the terrible choice to kill themselves, and, over time, a bit of money comes out of my pocket to deal with the issue, and I'm not so hip on that. But I'm pretty dead set against the jackoffs who pass for our elected leaders telling me or anybody else what we can and can't do based on the nebulous concept of "the public good." Whether you're 73, 83, or 93, you're going to die. It's inevitable. So fuck you. On behalf of the hacking, coughing, and wheezing oppressed, I vote NO on the smoking ban.

Van Lear Rose, by Loretta Lynn

From Pam Belluck, New York Times:

ST. ALBANS BAY, VT. -- The hunter's prey darted into the shadows, just out of reach of Henry Demar's gun.

Dressed in camouflage, gripping his .357-caliber Magnum, Demar was primed to shoot. But this time, no such luck. With a flick of its tail, his quarry -- a slick, silvery fish -- was gone.

Fish shooting is a sport in Vermont, and every spring, hunters break out their artillery -- high-caliber pistols, shotguns, even AK-47s -- and head to the marshes to exercise their right to bear arms against fish.

It is controversial, and Vermont's fish and wildlife regulators have repeatedly tried to ban it. They call it unsportsmanlike and dangerous, warning that a bullet striking water can ricochet like a skipping stone.

But fish shooting has survived, a cherished tradition for some Vermont families and a novelty to others. Every spring, fixated fish hunters climb into trees overhanging the water or perch on the banks of marshes that lace Lake Champlain, on Vermont's northwest border.

"They call us crazy, I guess, to go sit in a tree and wait for fish to come out," said Dean Paquette, 66, as he struggled to describe the fish-shooting rush. "It's something that once you've done it ..."

Paquette has passed fish shooting on to his children and grandchildren, including his 31-year-old daughter, Nicki, who started shooting at age 6. "You have to be a good shot," she said. "It's a challenge. I think that's why people do it."

Country Music, unlike pop, was firmly rooted in a tradition, until about 1990. Pop followed trends, and there are certain things that ring true about its cotton candy nature, regardless of whether it's Frankie and Annette surrounded by a few hundred white children on a soundstage beach in Hollywood, or Britney Spears dressed like slut in a schoolgirl outfit surrounded by her mother and her mother's accountants; but there isn't a core talent pool, or common experience that informs American Pop outside of our needs to get bombed and get laid and gettin' our collective groove on.

Country, for good or ill, is informed by things like fish shooting, cheating husbands, and wood alcohol. And it ain't something that should be programmed and mass marketed, geared toward increasing the TSL from the P1's, like those jackasses over at the "country" station here in town do (they should all be zipped up in bags and dumped off a barge in Superior). No friends, when it comes to country music, you gotta climb up in the tree, take aim and shoot. The most informed critique of my opinion on this is something that the apologists have been saying for a while now, that talentless people like Shania Twain and Kenny Chesney are part of a pop infusion into the genre that is somehow renewing it. Of course, that ignores the fact that country music, like everything else in the recording industry, tanked in the last 5 years with all the downloading and multi-media overload we've all been exposed to with the Silicon Revolution.

No, dear readers, Country and music in general has suffered because the shitheels at the major labels and mainstream radio stations (you know, those people who should be zipped up in bags and dumped in Superior) have been shovelling you a giant spade full of shit...meaningless music, not meant to stir you, affect you, and create any kind of "brand loyalty" that comes from product quality. Fuck 'em all, I say.

Instead, turn your eyes and ears, as always, to alt country, and also, to the strange little revivals that have happened with older artists...first with Rubin and Cash, and now, with White and Lynn.

My first reaction to listening to this record was, "Loretta Lynn, sweetheart, where the fuck have you been?" There's something about the combination of Lynn's "stay-away-from-my-man" oeuvre and White's straight razor, 4-piece, Memphis shit hole, all-junkie band lightning that jerks you out of your Fucking Faith Hill stupor in the first 10 seconds. With those other cows, you know all that stuff is simply made up, overlaid with syrupy strings and mindless steel guitar parts, then crammed in between a tampon ad and a Cancun giveaway to see some bald guy lip synch songs in a tight black shirt and cowboy hat about Jimmy Buffet and crying when the baby he has with his high school sweetheart dies and becomes an angel.

Granted, Lynn is not immune from pitiful sentiment on this album, but there's just something more authentic about her words; and, White's arrangements are somewhere between beautiful and a bag full of cats, tied to a cinder block and tossed into the river from the 8th Street Bridge. The metallic edge of the music never lets Lynn slip into a maudlin coma of saccharine regret, never overpowering her vocals and lyrics, and making a punk sideshow of the whole thing.

Take all of your Shania Twain, Faith Hill, and Martina McBride records and burn them. You don't need them anymore.

In the middle of this cloudy day, I was studying the club scene, the calendars, to see what would grace our fair city in the coming weeks, so that I could update my site and feel, at least, like I was some kind of edgy DJ on a tangential AM signal in some suburb, that cared about music more than the jaggoffs who work for huge corporate radio conglomerates, little boys and girls with their hands tied by bullshit things like TSL by the P1's and expressionless robots, like the accountants who run the alleged "country stations" here in town, men who tell the local papers lies like, "I let my DJ's play whatever they want," but, who have said things to me, to my face, on days like May 12th, 2002, at or about 1pm, like, "Jack, you need to decide if you want to be one of the people who PLAYS the music, or one of the people who PICKS the music, because I don't let my DJ's play whatever they want to,"...yes, it was one of those days, and I was looking at great dates like June 23rd at the 400 Bar when Richmond Fontaine will sidle in from Portland, Oregon swinging the big stick that is their latest album, "Post to Wire," and they will be good, and you will enjoy them...but there will also be this Friday, when Dale Watson will show up at Lee's and do it right, like a honky should, taking your requests, shouted rudely at the stage, but accepted graciously and returned expertly, twangy and blue...but, dear readers...drop your cocks and pull up your socks...Wednesday, June 2nd...First Avenue...Mainroom...The Fucking Gourds, from Austin, Fucking, Texas...indeed, the honkies will be tonkin' that night...men will leave home, tense and angry, and the knots in their trapezia will magically leave them as they sway to the strange, weird, and often creepy lyrics of the last hillbilly band on earth...the BEST band on earth...it's pretty hard for me to be objective about The Gourds...but, you need to know that Wednesday, June 2nd, will be an absolute waste of fucking time in your life if you don't go to First Avenue to watch this show...it'll be like getting your ass kicked by a cow...

When discussing golf, the well-informed understand that it's important talk about basketball. Somewhere along the way, David Stern forgave Marv Albert for donning panties and biting a hooker's ass. Forgiveness is a central tenet of the Judao-Christian ethic. Shit, for all I know, it's at the center of all religions; but, growing up just south of the Kaw River, I wasn't so well-versed in the day-to-day processes of Siddartha and Mohammed.

But this is a golf story; and when you're in Grumpy's bar on a Monday night, and Marv's calling out the ice cold rainbow 3 pointers of Reggie Miller in the final minutes of a tough loss to Miami, you wonder whatever happened to Ben Wright, the greatest golf commentator of all time. Ben, like all golf analysts from across the pond, was fond of having a belt or ten whilst on or off the air. In one of the all-time great hatchet jobs, a reporter asked him a few questions about women's golf, in which he candidly voiced concerns about the various aspects of their game that might weaken its popularity among the general populace. Naturally, criticism is reviewed under a much more powerful microscope than praise, so Ben was summarily guillotined from a hard-won good living.

In one of his last Masters broadcasts, Wright was getting the opportunity to comment on everything because quite frankly, he could say one word about a shot or hole and you and your friends would be quoting it ad nauseam during your next round at the local muni. Greg Norman was in the middle of his typical Saturday afternoon charge/swoon, and needed a big drive on 13, a par 5 where pro golfers can really go after it. Feherty had replaced McCord (post "bikini wax," another travesty) and quipped, "Norman will probably come out of his shoes on this drive," in his slightly toned-down Irish accent. But it was Wright, the master of loaded understatement, who said all that needed to be said as Norman whipped the club around on the ball and laced it like a fucking laser down the fairway...in an almost whispered British baritone..."quite violent."

No one cares about this shit anymore. It's time to forgive Ben Wright and let him back on the air. It's imperative to hear him say things about Tiger and Phil and Ernie like, "he's left himself a bit of worrrrrk for his par."

Posted by the Operations Manager and Program Director at K102, KEEY FM, at Red and Nater.com:

Country ups and downs

It's probably because we have a smaller universe to play in. I long ago accepted that not everyone would listen to country, let alone admit to listening.

We have a fairly healthy cume, but we really depend on a lot of TSL from P1s, moreso than pop or rock stations. We see wild swings from month to month depending on whether Arb put diaries in "country" areas. (They tend to be in outer-ring suburbs, moreso than in the city.) Every station has to deal with this problem, but for a station that plays in a limited world (Urban, Country, Hispanic, etc.) and your listeners are fairly concentrated, you can lose big if Arb can't find your audience. The nice thing is you have a fairly exclusive cume and it's salable. But it does make for some pretty nasty ups and downs.

"...let alone admit to listening." Country Music isn't Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson, it's lots of TSL from P1s, and those of us in the audience are ashamed to admit we listen to it. Nice.

Pretty much just reinforces what I've been saying in print and on the air, we're all just demographics to these people. All he wants is TSL from his P1s, a longer time spent listening by his core demographic. If he can yank that TSL higher, then EVERYTHING else goes by the wayside. That's why they spent about 3 days playing stuff from the "O Brother..." soundtrack a few years back. That's why they spent about 3 hours playing Johnny Cash after he died. That's why he crams talentless knuckleheads like Shania and Kenny down your throats. He's looking for exclusive cume that's salable. Anything that doesn't deliver that exclusive, salable cume to him gets thrown in the trash. He HAS to narrow his playlist to deliver that statistic. He CANNOT admit that country people are diverse, thoughtful, and interested in a wide range of sounds from different regions, that grab the twang and bend it their direction. Let the man's words speak for themselves.

Jack's TSL from the P1's Top Five:

1. Two Dollar Pistols, Hands Up!
Best all around Country record I've heard in a long time. Smart writing, catchy musicianship. With a twelve pack and a warm starry night, we're all gettin' lucky with this record on in the background.

2. Ed Burleson, Cold Hard Truth
The record that everyone's been waiting for Ed to make for years. Good'n Texan.

3. Dana Thomspon, Ox
Guaranteed more TSL from the P1's, or not? He'll never know because it's local, and he'd have to leave the suburbs to stumble upon the HUGE country scene in his own backyard. "Where'd this come from?" he'd ask, completely perplexed.

4. Joe West, South Dakota HairDo
Some of the best lyrics I've heard in a while. I'm really looking forward to his May 27th show at Lee's.

5. Eric Athey, Open House
This sounds really good in my truck, as I tool around the first-ring suburbs, trying not to be ashamed of my music choices.

Rough work, iconoclasm--but the only way to get at truth. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Heresies are experiments in man's unsatisfied search for truth. -- H. G. Wells

On August 5th, 1518, Emperor Maximilian I--a cross-eyed inbreed of the Hapsburg family--declared Martin Luther a heretic. It was just another example of firmly entrenched institutions, bolstered by years of blind faith and corrupt power, stomping on a little guy with different ideas about the world.

This same rebellion against King and Church is at the core of our own country's genesis.

Of course, the heart of this blog doesn't involve Patrick Henry style personal sacrifices, but if my king is supposedly the Nashville Musical establishment and my church is Mainstream Country Radio, I'm ready to dress up like an Indian and dump some tea in the harbor; I'd love to roll over to K102's offices and nail 95 theses about why they suck to their door, but the pissant who runs the joint would probably have me locked up, and who could blame him?

Anyway, the people have spoken, and the new capital of Country Music is Austin, Texas.

In fine French tradition, Kenny, Shania, Garth, Faith, and Tim should be lead to the guillotine and decapitated, but that would make all sorts of people with gaudy 90's style mechanical bull clothing and phoney girl-anthem sloganized jean jackets feel self conscious about their fashion choices.

If enough of us keep saying it, they'll be forced to change. I have no battle cry. Just turn that shit off and learn about Ed Burleson from Texas, the Drive By Truckers from Atlanta, the Two Dollar Pistols from North Carolina, Neko Case from Chicago, Drag the River from Colorado, Joe West from New Mexico, Grey De Lisle from Los Angeles, Richmond Fontaine from Portland, Oregon, Dana Thompson from Minneapolis, Eric Athey from Pennsylvania, The Wrenfields from Detroit, and many, many others.

You'd think that Borgia Popes, Von Hanover Kings, Bush/Kennedy governments, and homerun records would have taught all of us by now that just because things move a certain way, doesn't mean it's right. Music row could start burning to the ground, and I wouldn't piss on it to put it out.

There wasn't a skinny girl in the place, and no one cared. In my quest to become the city's most beloved and respected Home & Garden columnist, I felt it was important to accept my friend Nate Dungan's invitation to go to the Stahl House on Rice St. in St. Paul last night to listen to the traditional Mexican dance band that was playing there. Quezacoatl was a lusty god, who liked his wives on the steatopygous side, and the daughters of Monteczuma were shakin' what the corn god gave them to lyrics only they understood.

In the words of Nate--a wild-eyed hillbilly from the tent revival regions of the South--Stahl house is an American success story: a German bar and bowling alley, owned by a Vietnamese guy, who hires a Mexican guy to book Tejano and Conjunto bands in there on weekends. But, it doesn't take a multilingual genius to learn beer names and to count out the money in multiples of 50 cents and 5 dollars.

Make no mistake, alcohol is consumed, but people come here to dance. As David Allan Coe sang, "where bikers stare at cowboys, who are laughin' at the hippies, who are prayin' they get out of here alive." The cocked baseball hat crowd mixes and mingles in even portions with the Stetson crowd, a group deeply entrenched in a battle for the best belt/boot/shirt combo on a weekly basis. Last night, the hands down winner was a guy in a shirt that had the Virgin Mary, her whole body haloed by a rainbow, printed onto a field of stars, front and back. Discretion prevented me from offering him $50 for his shirt on the spot.

Needless to say, Nate, Me, and two others were the only white people there, and everyone was wondering what me and Nate were doing there. Luckily, we were given proper introduction to the bar by Luis Castillo, the Master of Ceremonies, somewhat, of this fantastic scene. He quickly introduced us to Hector Costilla, drummer for Tejano Dos Mille, a band that had last night off, but is playing next Friday at Stahl House. My affection for Tecate and a few stories of desperate runs into Nueva Laredo with my oldest brother about 14 years ago helped me get on Hector's good side early. I think it also helped that I was booted up and wearing my twisted Resistol, cocked back slightly.

Knowledge of this joint is going to ruin my summer. Maybe not next week, but there will come a hot Friday night when I've got nothing to do and a fresh paycheck, and the little green truck will be pointed East. Sure, I don't speak the language, but music, dancing, and laughter are their own tongue. And, if you're willing to buy a round or two, they might just let you dance with one of their girls.