March 2005

Jack who?

Filed under: Imported

I

First, a little business...

A country original is coming to Lee's Liquor Lounge tonight. Jimmie Dale Gilmore will be playing the early set, followed by local favorites Big Ditch Road. Gilmore is a West Texas Longhair who fronts the legendary Flatlanders and played Smokey in The Big Lebowski, the pacifist that Walter pulled the gun on for being over the line. His version of Mack the Knife was used in the short film The Accountant, which won an Oscar (more on that in a second). I've seen him solo and with the Flatlanders, and he is truly one of the finest performers in America. In song and interview, he's disarmingly normal, but, it's hard to not feel like you're tapped into something mystical around him. If you want pure country disguised as alt country, you need to go see this gig. As I was finishing college, I came across a used copy of "More a Legned Than a Band," and it changed my whole outlook on what was happening to my favorite genre of music.

II

"I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces." --Mark Twain

For good or ill, I'm a radio guy now. I don't do it for a living, but I do it often enough, and I've been on long enough in a major market, to have the smallest, slightest sliver of credibility as "on air talent." I don't do all the tricks to make my voice smoother, and all the prep to make my between song bits sharper, but I hold my own, and I'm not a mouse who backs off the mic and vomits forth academic drivel, or even worse, my personal psychiatric history complete with prescription chart.

So anyway, when you're a radio guy, sometimes it's necessary to comment on the state of radio, and there are forums and message boards for that kind of thing, and they're fun to read because it keeps you in tune with what everyone who does it for a living is thinking. Something I posted here a few weeks ago got posted on one of these things, and the person I attacked responded to what I said about him. He did it in a very logical and classy manner too--which is his M.O.--you can never have enough civility in this world.

But, while making me sound like a kook, through the haze of his response, he basically reaffirmed everything I said about him. Two points in particular.

Gregg Swedberg of K102 said that they tested the latest Cowboy Troy song with "the housewives" and they shredded it. So Cowboy Troy doesn't get on K102. So "the housewives" are making the decisions. It's a bedrock fact that Country radio is aimed at a Female 25-45, suburban, with household purchasing power demographic. Music that doesn't appeal to that demographic gets excluded from the playlist, no matter who it is. Let me repeat that. Music that doesn't appeal to that demographic gets excluded from the playlist, no matter who it is.

Which brings me to point two. Swedberg, and two or three of his colleagues from other cities in the Clear Channel Country radio empire have directly and indirectly accused and/or labelled me as the type of radio person who wants my "own personal jukebox" on the air. They've all used that exact same phrase, like the mantra of some cult, hoping to ward me off in the cold dark night like some evil spirit. But, it's the supreme head fake. A respected, yet backstabbingly entrenched, radio figure says something like, "Jack just wants his own personal jukebox on the air," and little ol' me looks like the kook; however, he and his ilk FREELY ADMIT that if the housewives don't like it, they don't play it. I play every stripe of country music that gets excluded by these pencil pushing morons--some of which I absolutely hate--in an effort to preserve a tradition and art form that I love, and the whole gig gets marginalized.

These people killed Johnny Cash just the same as any heart attack or Parkinson's Syndrome did. If you read this space regularly, or you're here for the first time, you need to understand that these people stand for the idea that Country Music is only what appeals to women between the ages of 25-45, living in the suburbs, with household purchasing power. These are the only people they test songs out on anymore. If it flops in a sampling of a 100 or so of these women, they don't play it. You see, they'll take the hit on their overall listenership, if they can tell Target, and Aveda, and Wal-Mart that in this town, they have the biggest listenership in that demo. Meanwhile, the art and the music get choked off.

I'm neither talented nor popular enough to head this off. By listening to K102 and stations like it, you're saying, "it's okay to kill Country Music." The labels in Nashville already turn down talented and exciting artists for recording and work because they know they're not going to get their music on the radio. This is, quite simply, WRONG. By not listening to K102, you're registering disapproval. By calling them constantly and requesting artists like Charlie Robison, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Eleven Hundred Springs, Frog Holler, The Gourds, Drive By Truckers, Richond Fontaine, and Christ, even the Jayhawks, you're saying, "hey Gregg you asshole, there's a lot of other Country music out there. Add it to your playlist. Kenny Chesney sucks." And he does suck, no matter what Jon Bream says in his weekly Tiger Beat columns.

III

Lee's Liquor Lounge is going to be a haven for off the charts kick ass country music for the month of April. The Gourds will be coming on Thursday, April 28th. I think they're the best band in America. I've never dragged anyone to see them who came away saying anything less than, "wow." In addition to Gilmore tonight, and the Gourds on the 28th, Reckless Kelly will be there on Saturday, Moot Davis from LA on Friday the 8th, Jesse Dayton on Thursday the 14th, Wayne "The Train" Hancock on the 22nd and Chris Stamey on the 23rd. All are "can't miss" opportunities. Bravo Taco is all I have to say.

Posted by Jack Sparks at March 31, 2005 11:30 AM

Ugh

Filed under: Imported

Pop quiz:

Q: You're stuck in Kansas City, staying at your brother's house on a Monday night--I'm not saying he's square, but he's a high school math teacher.  What do you do?

A: Of course you go see The Fixx at the Uptown Theatre.

Eighties guitar only sounds a certain way.  There's that distorted bass riff that is always paired with the high, dinga-ding sound of a D chord fill or something similar, and a guy singing about nuclear holocaust.  We loved it, we ate it with a spoon, and we tuned into it for hours on end at MTV.

The Uptown Theatre is an old school establishment much like our State Theatre, but the first 20 rows of seats or so have been ripped out and replaced with white cloth covered tables and a sizable chunk of bare floor.  My friends and I sat--at first--at a comfortable table just below a replica of David and his penis, stage left.  When The Fixx hit the stage, everyone was more or less sitting at a table, sitting through an inevitable waterfall of high school bullshit that must have been flowing over them since about 1984.  I fully expect to have that dream where I'm late suiting out for a football game and coach tells me I'm sitting the first quarter.  But this is the price you pay when you knowingly stumble into nostalgia.

Maybe this is the NEXT wave for Vegas.  The New Wave plays to the old folks as they slide into oblivion in front of oceans of slot machines.  Keep "Red Skies," and "Dancin' With Myself" and "Close to You,"  cranked at top volume, and make sure the drink girl comes by more than once an hour.  A plastic cup full of nickles is a SMALL price to pay for glory days and the tingling of that ol' tuning fork in your loins.

What really kills me...what really chaps my ass...is that I'm going to tell you that you're going to have a great goddamned time if you go down to the Fine Line on Wednesday night and catch these guys.  Of course they're bored of playing their 80's hits over and over again, BUT, they're not mailing it in and playing them half-assed.  And, if you want the cherry for your sundae, Cy Curnin sometimes falls into doing the hand and facial gestures of the videos they made as he's singing the songs.  THAT, dear readers, makes it worth every damn penny.  I could just imagine Princess Diana shaking her ass while Charles looked flummoxed.  Where the fuck was Kurt Loder?

On a personal note, the best performance was "Secret Separation."  It brought back a terribly specific memory that I'm going to need about 6 weeks to forget.

I can't believe I wrote any of that. 

On a more serious note, the brackets have been published for the 2005 NCAA Wrestling Championships, and Minnesota's Mack Reiter is the 3rd seed at 133 pounds.  This child is not so much a human being as he is a 133 pound drill press, and he probably represents Minnesota's best shot for an individual title.  Cole Konrad is seeded 2nd at Heavyweight, but he'll have his hands full with Mocco from Okie State, and he hasn't beaten him yet; so there will be all sorts of personal bullshit, coupled with the typical referee bullshit involved in that match if it happens.  Reiter's run differs in that he's young and dumb, and he isn't afraid of anyone.  And why should he be?  Mark Jayne of Illinois was ranked Number 1 at 133 for most of the year, and Reiter has pinned him twice in the last month or so.

Mack is one of those unique wrestlers who gets better when he panics.  On a number of occassions this season, he was deep in a hole, and somehow he twisted and turned and caught his guy and that was that.  He's what the old wrestling guys call a "pinnner," and he's what we new wrestling guys call a "fucking brute."  He only thinks of winning when he steps on a mat, and his head hasn't been clouded with seeds of doubt. 

Don't count the Gophers out in the team race at all...if 10 guys could win their first two matches....

Posted by Jack Sparks at March 14, 2005 10:18 PM

A Donkey's a Donkey

Filed under: Imported

From the Associated Press and CNN.com:

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- The suspect was a little long in the face after being arrested and is braying for an early release.

Police said Tuesday they detained the suspect, a donkey named Pacho, after a motorcycle crashed into it on a road in a northeastern city, with the motorcyclist suffering serious injuries.

"When there are road accidents and serious injuries, the vehicles involved are always impounded," said Diana Rojas, spokeswoman for the Arauca city police department.

"We had to impound both the donkey and the motorcycle and put them at the disposal of investigators so they can decide what to do with them and whether to release them," she said.

Pacho's owner, Nelson Gonzalez, said no one should pin the blame on the donkey for Sunday's crash.

"Neither the donkey nor I were responsible because I was in front and the motorcyclist saw me,"Gonzalez told RCN television.

Bill, it's time for me to take a much needed vacation. I won't be travelling by Donkey, but I AM going to visit the most lawless society in America...Missouri. The funny thing about Missouri, the state that hatched that absolute dingbat John Ashcroft, is that pretty much everything is legal as long as you don't get caught, and don't hurt anyone else. You can buy dynamite at roadside fireworks stands if you know the secret handshake, and, what you and I call poaching, they call "seinin.'" It might be small Bill, it might be an illegal size for the state limit, but it makes great bait, and as long as your neighbor doesn't care, everyone else can mind their own damned business. The motto isn't so much "Show Me," as it is "Show Me Your Warrant."

After a brief visit with my family on the far Eastern border of Kansas, I will make the short trek to St. Louis for the NCAA Wrestling Championships. I've written about wrestling in this space before Friedman, and I will be doing special reports each day, despite my obvious handicaps, on all of the action. The Division I Wrestling finals is one of the tightest and most well-run tournaments in the World, and the machine-like precision of the support staff allows the violence to bloom fully each day for the spectators in seven minute bursts of intensity seldom seen in many of your other sports. Oklahoma State is a pretty heavy favorite going in, but the usual cast of characters will try to unseat them; naturally, I'll be travelling in and among the Maroon and Gold of Minnesota, gauging opinion and mood while looking for cheap thrills in the Archway to America.

But enough of the previews. There is business to address.

Last week's Country Weekly magazine contained a fluff piece by the honorable Michael McCall on Big & Rich's Muzik Mafia. He asked me for an opinion and some quotations for what he thought might be an actual article about something happening in Nashville. Through no fault of his own, he ended up making a brochure for a boutique label owned by mega-giant Warner Brothers records, which just keeps the wheels going round and round, Bill. There was even a quote from our old friend, Ed Benson, about phenomena or something. I was too busy fucking myself to really let what Ed said sink in. Needless to say, he was falling all over himself about the "rebellious" Big & Rich. Someday, someone with a by-line is going to fly into that town and interview nothing but studio musicians, giving them Woodward & Bernstien type knicknames like "Buck" and "Roy." This person will write the story and get it published in a respectable periodical, and we will be done with these shameful spectacles and money grabs disguised as "something different." For the record, and for those playing at home, here's what I wrote to McCall for his article:

There are really two ways to look at Big & Rich and their Muzik Mafia.

First, take them out of the equation specifically. The process of making and recording music in Nashville has become so homegenized and geared toward delivering Mainstream Country Radio's core demographic--and vice versa--that you have to look on anything "new" coming from there with suspicion. People like David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren have often made the argument that country music, over time, has always borrowed and incorporated the best elements of the trends in popular music and woven them into the fabric of the genre. But, in my view, in the past 20 years at least, that hasn't happened. Rather, the mainstream country establishment has opportunistically jumped on those trends and prostituted the genre toward them, until they either beat the idea into the ground or determined there was no money to be made there. Sure, they talk about how they're "music without boundaries," but remind yourself, they're on Warner Brothers records; when was the last time a major label took a chance on "music without boundaries?" One thing I've been told over and over and over again by industry people is that what I do is an exercise in vanity about my own music tastes, and that mainstream recording and radio are the true pulse of the people. Are all of those powerful people now being hypocrites by producing and supporting this "edgy" "alternative" act? Highly unlikely. Rather, the more probable explanation is that this is another example of trotting out "the next big thing" to see if they can take advantage of some untapped revenue streams.

Which brings us to the second way to look at them. Their performance on the recent CMA's was an exact copy of Kid Rock's typical stage show in every detail, right down to the midget. Obviously, the Nashville brass is trying to tap into the urban, white--note, I said white--hip hop market that has had enough exposure to country music to be considered part of its core audience. They're grooming them for the big kill when they become adults. It's pretty much Economics 101. Country that's funky, or some other such nonsense. As the Faiths, Tims, and Shanias get older and start moving out of the demo, they need something to replace them with, so expect lots of copies of Big & Rich to come along, AND, expect performers who are already close to them in style to try to bend so they don't get swept aside (i.e., Montgomery Gentry's pitiful attempt on the CMA broadcast).

Also, ask yourself, "why the Chevy commercials?" Honestly, I don't begrudge them their ability to make hay while the sun shines. But, when you're trying to portray yourself as rebels and iconoclasts, outside the mainstream, then the broadcast hops from Toby warbling about Fords to you yapping about Chevy's, you're being terribly hypocritical. Go ahead, ask yourself, is Save A Horse, Ride a Cowboy, a song or a jingle or even worse, a bumper sticker? I thought Kenny Chesney doing "You Had Me At Hello," after seeing Jerry Maguire was one of the worst examples of this ever, until I heard them record this stupid bumper sticker phrase. These are the kinds of things that would make genuine wordsmiths like Harlan Howard turn over in their graves.

In the end, I fear two things: one, these guys will become a standard like Garth Brooks did, and there will be yet another 10 or 12 years of copycats that cause even more music to get aced out of the genre and process; two, Gretchen Wilson, who I believe is a genuine country performer with a lot of potential, has hitched herself to a crew of people who sold her a bill of goods about being different, and they're going to chew her up and spit her out.

The best of the best, however, came in last week, when the Minnesota country music Satan himself weighed in on something...

From the Tennesseean:

By PETER COOPER
Staff Writer

The album doesn't come out until late spring or early summer, but a single called I Play Chicken (With the Train) is being given out to radio tastemakers at this week's Country Radio Seminar. The radio professionals already know about Cowboy Troy, who moved here last fall, because of his association with Big & Rich. He is a part of the Muzik Mafia collective that includes Gretchen Wilson, and he is the first act signed to the Mafia's Raybaw Records, a Warner Bros. imprint.

"I would bet that if Big Kenny and John Rich are involved with this, they're not going to put out a piece of (junk)," said Gregg Swedbert [sic], ClearChannel's VP of programming in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Swedbert is in town for the radio seminar.

"There are people who are purists who absolutely would not like the format to be any more complicated than an early Hank Williams record," Swedbert continued. "But things change. The audience will tell us whether this is something that can get played or not. All we can do is expose people to new sounds. If they like them, good. If they say 'This isn't country,' then you've got to go with that."

I'm surprised he didn't catch on fire when he said, "All we can do is expose people to new sounds."

If you want an expert on the business of running a radio enterprise, synergistically leveraging your properties with your advertisers, to produce a low cost broadcast product that maximizes P1 listenership for the various tightly defined formats, then Gregg's your quote machine. But, asking Gregg Swedberg about Country Music is like asking the Pope about porn stars. There are few men in America more to blame for narrowing of the format on radio, and for the destruction of creative avenues for artists with something new to play. He's said it so many times, that I think he is actually beginning to believe his own bullshit about exposing people to new things, etc. He's the one person who has insured that people don't get exposed to new things; that those people are given the same thing over and over again so that the same people keep coming back to the same spot at the same time to be bombarded by the same ads. He's done about as much for expanding "new sounds" in Country Music as Osama Bin Laden did for expanding the list of things you can carry in your shaving kit on an airplane.

The point of all this...and there is a point...is that now you can see everyone is in on this, from Ed Benson to Gregg Swedberg. Country Radio is going to try and deliver an urban white, hip-hop influenced demo to its advertisers, in addition to, and maybe in replacement of, its solid block Female 25-45 with household purchasing power one. The TV specials have been taped and the articles have been written, with fabulous wisdom and incredulity from the intelligentsia and tastemakers about the brash rebelliousness of it all. Shiny like a penny, Bill, shiny like a penny.

Posted by Jack Sparks at March 10, 2005 11:21 PM

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