April 2006

Smell yourself...

A Hell's Angel who lived on Thirty-seventh Street in Sacramento was continually being complained about for making suggestive comments to women who passed by his house..."Let's make it, baby," or "Hey, beautiful, come sit on Papa's face." A patrolman, checking on one of these complaints, first threatened the outlaw with jail and then asked him contempuously if he couldn't find "something better to do." The Angel thought for a moment and then replied: "Not unless it was to be fucking a cop."

From Hell's Angels, by Hunter S. Thompson

Yeah. Strange, huh, Miles, but--something ya gotta know about specialists--they pay a premium, and they never cause fuckin' trouble. Sometimes I imagine in my declining years runnin' a small joint in Manchester, England, catering to specialists exclusive. And to let 'em know they're amongst their own, maybe I'll operate from the corner, hanging upside down naked like a fuckin' bat, hmm? Oh, we're not such bad sorts here, huh Miles?

--Al Swearengen, From the TV show Deadwood

Using an artificial light to lure or attract fish, or to see fish when spearing, is unlawful. Exception: While angling, a person may affix to the end of a fishing line a lighted artificial bait with hooks attached. Any battery that is used in lighted fishing lures cannot contain any intentionally introduced mercury.

--From Minnesota Fishing Regulations 2006

First and foremost, let's cut to the chase:

Louie's Lee's Liquor Lounge
Friday, April 28th, The .357 Stringband with Those Poor Bastards
Saturday, April 29th, Jack Fuckin' Ingram with the Copperheads

Fine Line Music Cafe
Friday, April 28th, The Missing Numbers with The Gleam, Big Ditch Road and Little Man
Saturday, April 29th, Hookers & Blow

The 400 Bar
Saturday, April 29th, Spaghetti Western

The 331 Club
Friday, April 28th, Tuesday's Robot CD Release Party featuring Tuesday's Robot and the Como Ave Jug Band
Sunday, April 30th, Willie Nelson Birthday Tribute featuring Brett Larson, Raz Russel, Lazy Ike, The Roe Family Singers, Pocohantas County, Molly Maher, The Tin Star Sisters, Dana Thompson, Jackson Buxton, The Ditch Lillies, Ben Baker, Erik Brandt, 3 County Tour, and Jon Rodine

The White Iron Band with Trampled By Turtles, Charlie Parr, and 40 Watt Bulb
Wednesday, April 26th, at Rascal's(21+), Winona, MN
Thursday, April 27th, at the House of Rock(21+), Eau Claire, WI
Friday-Saturday, April 28th-29th, Two night stand, at the Tap Room(21+), Duluth, MN

Forget for a moment that on Saturday, May 6th, Canterbury Park will be opening its gates to the unwashed for live racing and foolhardy Show bets on Sinister Mister; forget that you will have the unenviable choice of sticking around The Cabooze for Eddie Spaghetti's inevitable request for free drugs, or hopping the whiskey train to the end of the line and the treacherous walk to Lee's for Charlie Robison. Those are the kinds of nights where you end up in Rogers, trying to talk the owner of an ill-tempered Burmese Mountain Dog into throwing him into a freshly dug pit in his pole barn with your friend Demko at 6-1 odds, viciously advocating that Demko gets to wear his soccer shoes during the fight.

No, those thoughts will get you more than a citation and a court date; people will fit you for an extremely unfashionable sport coat, and the good folks at Pfizer will weed your mental garden with a hellbroth of elixirs that will cause you to remember, in vivid detail, and nostalgic longing, the slideshow of your 70's single swinger Kindergarten teacher's summer trip to Hawaii to visit her boyfriend, "Ron."

Pull back Grasshopper, leave Master Po in the shadows and focus on THIS Friday. Aim for the train. Tell yourself that you're always just a two dollar train ride from things the squares will never understand, and, if you proportion your money properly, you can take it all in for less than a hundred bucks over the entire 60 hours. Grandma used to take the train. It got her where she was going.

Don't think of these places as destinations, think of them as stops, and draw them on your noodle as a twisted circle...point A to point B being for linear thinkers (bad divorced drunks, stuck downtown after going overboard during happy hour) and cops. The tangential route allows you to pull the rip cord...orbital velocity and escape velocity being matters of degree, a great whip to the backyard to kill the motion lights and ignite the fire pit for some serious after hours decompression.

Trouble is where you find it. Sometimes it finds you. Sometimes you have waffles for breakfast and make all the same mistakes you made the day before.

Posted by Jack Sparks at April 26, 2006 2:20 AM | Comments (2)

Video killed the radio star

Which brings me to the Bokonist concept of a wampeter.

A wampeter is the pivot of a karass. No karass is without a wampeter, Bokonon tells us, just as no wheel is without a hub.

Anything can be a wampeter: a tree, a rock, an animal, an idea, a book, a melody, the Holy Grail. Whatever it is, the members of its karass revolve about it in the majestic chaos of a spiral nebula. The orbits of the members of a karass about their common wampeter are spiritual orbits, naturally. It is souls and not bodies that revolve. As Bokonon invites us to sing:

Around and around and around we spin,
With feet of lead and wings of tin...

And wampeters come and wampeters go, Bokonon tells us.

At any given time a karass actually has two wampeters--one waxing in importance, one waning.

--From Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

Comments

Jack: Is there a way to email without making an actual post? I simply wanted to gently suggest you comment on that godawful CMT Awards show.

Posted by: Old Bat at April 24, 2006 01:33 PM

I've gotten two emails asking me if I watched the CMT Awards show. No...no I didn't. For the same reason I don't go to Church.

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone...(John 8:7)

Judge not, that ye be not judged (Matthew 7:1)

Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these of my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:40)

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's. (Luke 20:25)

I don't need a self-righteous man in his 70's wearing Prada shoes and Gucci sunglasses to tell me what these things mean. In my heart I know that Kenny Chesney is the biggest phoney fucking poser since Milli and/or Vanilli. But, just like the Church, millions of people still tune in for "the message," when it's written down plain as day for them to read at any local independent record store into which they may stumble.

CMT, CMA, WSM, The Grand Ol' Opry, K102, Universal South, Mercury Nashville, Curb Records, the Nashville bureau of Billboard, all hornets nests of musical Phillistines, looking to pillage the already frayed borders of what we call American Twang.

Remind yourself that there are people like Phyliss Stark, who write stupid shit like this:

"The Southwest, if you're not George Strait, is absolutely the hardest place to start any record, whether it's an established act or a new artist," says Gator Michaels, senior VP of promotion at Warner Bros. Nashville, home of Faith Hill.

When Quarterback Records national promotion director Anne Weaver was a Southwest regional promoter in the early '90s, "it was the region artists (and) songs broke from. Not anymore," she says, "and I think it's because of consolidation and very conservative (radio) brand managers."

Weaver is not alone in citing corporate consolidation as part of the Southwest's problem. Off the record, many label officials specifically finger radio giant Clear Channel as the main culprit. One label promotion head says the conservative nature of Clear Channel stations in the Southwest "causes a huge void in that region."

First, anybody in the music industry who calls himself Gator...aww fuck it, start calling me Rooster. Fuck Jack Sparks, I want to be known as Rooster Sparks from here on out. EXACTLY. Stupid shit.

Second...consolidation? Yeah, that's it, you fucking geniuses. It couldn't POSSIBLY be that the product sucks big fat green heaving sweaty oozing donkey dicks, could it? Is it just possible that you people in Nashville are so fucking full of yourselves and your designer clothes and your shiney belt buckles and your fucking putt-putt-putt yacht boats in the Bahamas that you forgot that folks like a little country in their country music? You know why your shit doesn't play in Texas? Because it sucks...it sucks exponentially compared to the ball busting, Shiner Bock soaked, red dirt choked MUSIC of Texas.

But, let's put a bow on this package. Please continue Phyllis:

"Radio [airplay] is the first and foremost way to break acts," Billboard's Stark says. "But an artist needs three radio hits before it can headline a club tour. That's why opening for a star is such a crucial step."

Phyllis says this because Phyllis works for the company that tracks radio airplay. If radio airplay didn't matter, Phyllis' company wouldn't matter. It's important for Phyllis' company to matter, otherwise, they wouldn't be able to charge exorbitant rates to their advertisers, and to the the various hangers-on and industry leeches who worship them because they do matter. What phucking Phyllis ignores, of course, are the arenas that Pat Green sold out across the state of Texas, sans 3 radio hits.

For years I gave it a shot. From time to time, I would turn on CMT, GAC, K102, hoping in vain for some sign that somebody was getting it. They never did, they don't now, they never will. Fuck them all. Country is where you find it, not where it's rolled into a giant shit ball and spoon-fed to you through a limited number of outlets, all lock step in content and message.

Country music will spend decades digging out from under the damage done to it by CMT, Mick Anselmo, Kenny Chesney, and people like Phyllis Stark. Fuck them all.

Posted by Jack Sparks at April 25, 2006 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

drugs don't let friends do

...And Skag was a scientist, and he found a way to reproduce himself in chicken soup. He would shave living cells from the palm of his right hand, mix them with the soup, and expose the soup to cosmic rays. The cells turned into babies which looked exactly like Delmore Skag.

Pretty soon, Delmore was having several babies a day, and inviting his neighbors to share his pride and happiness. He had mass baptisms of as many as a hundred babies at a time. He became famous as a family man.

And so on.

-->Skag hoped to force his country into making laws against excessively large families, but the legislatures and the courts declined to meet the problem head-on. They passed stern laws instead against the possession by unmarried persons of chicken soup.

And so on.

The illustrations for this book were murky photographs of several white women giving blow jobs to the same black man, who, for some reason, wore a Mexican sombrero.

--From Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut

The reason Mick Anselmo could never let someone like me on his flagship shithouse, K102, is the same reason that single people couldn't have chicken soup in Kilgore Trout's story about Delmore Skag: the laws against possession were based on fear, and that breeds incongruity. Two things would happen if I were on K102: 1) actual Country music would get played from time to time, and 2) I'd take the filthiest, most off-color songs, overdub the bleeps, and slap them on the air at the most inappropriate times of day, right as grandma was about to read her People with her morning coffee, just before her stories came on the television.

As such, you get what Trout had instead, the musical equivalent of a black man in a sombrero getting fellated by several white women, and Anselmo calling it "country."

I like Hank III more than I like Shooter Jennings. I can't put my finger on it, but I've not only seen, I've also observed them both, and Hank just has a leaner, more desperate, slant to what he's doing. Both are derivative (Jesus, how could they not be?), but Hank has more of an edge; at the end of a Shooter show, I find myself wondering who the lazy stoner is.

I like that this 2-disc set was put out by Bruc records. He used to record for Curb Records in Nashville, the same fat shit heels who brought you Tim McGraw. I can't tell you what Bruc is; I can't tell you if it's just a play on words and he's still on Curb. But, if he's not, this is certainly a clever way to tell a major label to shove their whole program up their asses.

I like that most of this album couldn't be played on K102 by whole-milk and Wonder Bread Travis Moon and his army of robots, without heavy use of Cool Edit and the bleep.

I like that every other song is about drug abuse.

How much of this shit is manufactured? I don't know. Like I said, it's just a feeling, but the overly slim, overly tattooed, rat-tail wearing sumbitch who bombs his way into town two or three times a year, never leaves me doubting that he's got some real fucking problems, despite the name and the money.

I don't know, maybe I'm buying a load of goods...maybe I'M the legislator passing the laws against possession of chicken soup, thinking I'm protecting somebody or doing some good. But, at the end of the day, Hank III's whole act depends on whether you buy "it."

One thing that is very thumbs up about the whole product is that he worked it all out with the assistance of Joe Buck, who really IS talented and really IS shithouse rat crazy. And the absolute shiniest part of this penny is without a doubt the fiddle parts supplied by Donnie Herron. The fourth time through on this disc, I concentrated on the fiddle. The answer to the question, "Whatever happend to BR5-49?" is all too readily apparent. If you're aspiring to hillbilly violin mastery, THIS is how it's done, pay attention.

Posted by Jack Sparks at April 24, 2006 2:12 AM | Comments (4)

All the wrong ideas about tradition in country music

Some people get the wrong idea about tradition in country music. They think the way to preserve the music they love is to protect it from noncountry impurities; the better to ensure it remains the same. But that approach couldn't be more wrong...

...The country tradition isn't about the way things have stayed the same--it's about how they've changed, yet remained connected. As shown by the careers of country Hall of Famers Bill Monroe and Buck Owens, Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton--really, you can pick any major figure you like--jumping the fence is not the same as leaving for good...It might even be more accurate to say that the fence jumpers are the tradition...

...Country music has seen its share of stagnation and shortsidedness. The Urban Cowboy period of the early 1980s is perhaps the most obvious example...

The music seems to be going through a similarly uninspired period at the turn of the twenty-first century. Just turn on the radio and proceed to your local Hot Country station. Chances are, apart from records by Lee Ann Womack, Alan Jackson, the Dixie Chicks, and a handful of others, you'll hear emotionally simplistic ditties that are scarcely discernible from--and indeed, that segue imperceptibly into--the frothy jingles sponsored by the stations advertisers. Shut out of the mix are many of even the most commercially successful recordings, such as the bluegrass and old-time O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, a #1 country album for two months in 2001, as well as so-called heritage acts--even those like George Jones and Dolly Parton who continue to make great, contemporary-sounding records. All have fallen victim to the shrinking playlists, increasingly fragmented audiences, and sweeping consolidation that plague the radio industry as a whole.

...358....Shania's terms of endearment--she's echoing the demand for romance and respect Loretta issued on "Don't Come Home A'Drinkin'"--don't exactly break new ground. What does, though, is her other message--one that serves notice to the men who run her record label and, by implication, the rest of Music Row's boys club, that she's taken control of her career.

--both passages from Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles, by David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren

For me, there are 5 crossroads of pop and country:

1. True crossover success, by true hillbillies, whose music and talents transcended their original genre. Dolly Parton, Glenn Campbell, John Denver, and Willie Nelson come to mind here.

2. All of that stuff with Chet Atkins and Billy Sherrill, the "Nashville Sound." You've got all of those dynamite vocal performances by Patsy Cline and Ray Price in this block, so it's a beautiful illustration of what DC and BFW are talking about above.

3. Hamfisted forays into country by pop stars. Sitting back, nothing makes me think of this more than Tony Bennett's recording of "Cold Cold Heart." It was a big hit because it was a Hank Williams song and it was Tony Bennett singing it, but God did it suck.

4. All of the shit you've heard on K102 since Garth Brooks. Brother Al Kunz, formerly of the Rockzillaworld Church of Music and Literature converted me to Brooks' importance in the music, but the caveat is always that no matter who or what he was, all the shit that followed him was a disaster. It wasn't a healthy pop infusion, it was formulaic nonsense based more in economic theory and marketing savvy, than music.

5. The infusion of alternative forms of rock and pop in this thing that I call alt country.

When I bought Heartaches By the Number, I didn't open it to the front, I didn't flip through to their Number 1 song to read what they wrote there...no, I started from the back, in the awesome cross-referenced indices, looking for Shania. I wanted to see if she made it, then I wanted to see what apology they wrote for her. I wasn't disappointed, either.

...her other message--one that serves notice to the men who run her record label and, by implication, the rest of Music Row's boys club, that she's taken control of her career.

There probably isn't a performer on earth less in control of her career than Shania. She might control her daybook, but Mutt Lange decides everything else...how she looks, how she sounds, what kinds of songs she records. Quite simply, there isn't a more calculating or researched "artist" in the genre. To try and hide her under the umbrella of pop infusion validity leaves a lot of other more deserving people terribly wet. They should kick her ass out and hand her a metal rod for good measure.

Like an old machine
Sputtering along
Wheels don't turn as fast as they used to
Sometimes you take a right
Find out that it's wrong
Don't know the difference anyway
'Cause it ain't it for now and then
Always help me find my way again

When you add the 4 short bars of ringing piano following these words, Lee Alexander and the buttery voice of Norah Jones, through their side project The Little Willies, have done in 50 seconds what DC and BFW would probably argue that Lange and Twain have been attempting for roughly 11 years. Compared to this, the latter have been abject failures. If you want pop infusion and influence with some meat in it, you need to start with a base of talent that has room to grow inside the music it chooses where it can find its way and maybe leave a few marks here and there. Whereas Twain's music is chosen for its pop sensibilities and whether it fits her image and is sellable on shithouses like K102, the members of the Little Willies chose the music they recorded for its depth and feel, then tailored their talents around bringing a pop sensibility to the obviously twang underbelly. Because Twain's talents are purely showmanship and looks, the interpretation that the Willie's bring to bear on the non-originals they recorded for this album, will never be a part of her repertoire.

It's a long way to go, I know, but all that shit that DC and BFW said about Sammi Smith's recording of "Help Me Make It Through the Night" is equally true about Norah's recording of "Nightlife." This is how I've always heard this song, and Willie should give her and the other Willies a medal for the performance.

Posted by Jack Sparks at April 23, 2006 9:16 PM | Comments (2)

Watch out, Eugene, you don't make things worse

The world has never had a good answer for pure, raw speed. When something can be accomplished with coordination, controlled fluidity, perhaps even poetry, while at the same time being blindlingly fast, we applaud it; we nurture it; we pay it exorbitant sums of money to go faster if possible.

Demko knows this. It's why thoroughbred horses make him twitch. There are those of us in the Taco Martin Equine Society down at Canterbury Park who joined for the gambling. We're the worst kinds of degenerates, dropping foolish amounts on vastly misinformed bets in the vain hope of buying luxury goods, or even a nice dinner with the spoils. We're not there for the verse of hoof on earth, man and beast flashing around the turn, a great whip of sinew and silk, hurtling mercilessly at an invisible finish line, and maybe an extra pale of oats. THIS my friends, is what makes Demko full in the pants.

Me, my head is full of dreams...picking the first four horses of the Kentucky Derby in order, based on some tortured calculus of approximately 4 months of meaningless races across shorter distances and disjointedly contrasted tracks. The truth is in there for me. I want to see it, like Moses on the side of the Mountain.

Brother Derek is faster than the other horses in this race. It's a fact. Even if he doesn't win the race, he's faster than all of them. You space them 5 feet apart and run them for a half mile on a straight line, and it will look like a cheap race scene from a John Ford movie, Derek saddled with the handsome male lead.

But the Derby is a mile and a quarter (1 1/4) of treachery. Speed is beautiful, speed is innate, speed is a Greek tragedy, the black-eyed chorus wagging its finger at Hermes, tired from a night of extreme travel up Mount Olympus, too exhausted to deliver the message.

A few minutes into the second song ("Gravity's Gone") of the Drive By Truckers' latest record, A Blessing and A Curse, we get this:

Between the champagne, hand jobs and the kissing ass by everyone involved
Cocaine rich comes quick and that's why the small dicks have it all.

"Cocaine rich comes quick..." Members of the Teimon school in the 16th Century used to furtively self-flaggelate hoping for 5 syllables like that.

No, Daniel-san, if the paint-the-fence lesson is sinking in, you know fat money on Brother Derek is "cocaine rich comes quick" anticipation, a wager so sure, you'd swear Dick Cheney would watch the whole thing from the betting window, with his back to the track, waiting for the first possible second to slide his ticket across to the fresh freckle-faced girl putting herself through college on a stool at the pari-mutuel counter.

Sure things breed fear in mortal men. The independent music circuit in the Twin Cities used to unfold before me like a childhood copy of "Where the Wild Things Are." Up one street and down another, all along the train, an iffy hot dog stage-left in the Mainroom at First Avenue, you could predict the results. We all knew the Drive By Truckers would one day record A Blessing and A Curse:

The welfare lady said enough is enough
The kids ain't been to school in weeks

Crystal Meth in the bathtub
Blood splattered in my sink
Laying around in the aftermath
It's all worse than you think

That's why we went. We just knew they were going to do it louder, faster, more inbred, and exponentially more coordinated than the fucking posers in the mainstream music industry. If you're standing around working your pud inside your Carhartt's at a Van Zandt concert, trying to pretend it's Lynyrd Skynyrd, not only have you been had, you fucking deserve it.

Posted by Jack Sparks at April 22, 2006 8:33 PM | Comments (0)

Eloi Eloi lama sabach-thani

Hey baby, what ya know good?
I'm just gettin' back but you knew I would
War is hell, when will it end?
When will people start getting together again?
Are things really gettin' better
Like the newspaper said?
What else is new my friend,
Besides what I read?
Can't find no work, can't find no job, my friend
Money is tighter than it's ever been
Say man I just don't understand what's goin' on across this land
Ohhh, what's happenin brother?
Are they still gettin' down where we used to go and dance?
Will our ballclub win the pennant,
Do you think they have a chance?
And tell me friend
How in the world have you been?
What's happenin' brother?

--What's Happening Brother, from "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye (1971)

Jesus was a Capricorn
He ate organic foods
He believed in love and peace
And never wore no shoes
Long hair, beard and sandals
And a funky bunch of friends
Reckon they'd just nail him up if he come down again
'Cause everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on
Who they can feel better than at any time they please
Someone doin' somethin' dirty, decent folks can frown on
If you can't find nobody else then help yourself to me

--Jesus Was a Capricorn, from "Jesus Was a Capricorn" by Kris Kristofferson (1972)

I've stated elsewhere in this space that my inspirational reading tends toward 3 books that constantly renew my intellectual fish hook: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter Thompson, Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, and Box Socials, by WP Kinsiella. But I also like to dig in "The Good Book" from time to time, looking for something meaningful, horrific, or amply suited toward the illustrative. It was just such an excursion that led me to my favorite Biblical passage, one that just about sums up the whole thing for me in a nice shiny package:

And David sent messengers to Ishbosheth Saul's son, saying, Deliver me my wife Michal, which I espoused to me for an hundred foreskins of the Philistines. (2nd Samuel 3:14)

Thus sayeth the Lord.

Last week, the news was plastered with word of the New Word: the "Judas" Gospel. Quickly embraced and dismissed by anyone who's ever read, condemned, burned, or based their entire European vacation on The Da Vinci Code. It was a real beauty too. Much like Cancer Man as a young Marine in the storm drain at the base of the grassy knoll, the story goes that Jesus and Judas set the whole thing up. Judas was acting according to the Shepherd's will when he brought the wolves with him. I live for that stuff.

The whole thing made me think of a new question...why the kiss? I went back and reread the relevant passages from the four Gospels. If Jesus was such a big trouble maker, why did Judas have to kiss him to give him up to the priests and soldiers? Was he a stealth Jesus? Were his metaphysical bombs being dropped from an invisible pedestal of righteousness?

Perhaps I'm going to Hell, but these are the questions I ask myself, especially on days like Good Friday, the busiest golf day of the year in the State of California. I spend a great deal of time on Holy Weekend listening to the two albums above, both timeless in their essaying of faith, frailty, and fraternity.

Posted by Jack Sparks at April 14, 2006 3:37 PM | Comments (2)

chevy rhymes with levy...no kidding...

Dear Kenny Chesney,

Welcome to my town. I hate you because you're destroying Country Music. But don't take my word for it.

When Johnny Cash said these words to Nicholas Dawidoff:

To see the music now so homogenized still has Johnny Cash a little shaken. "I think a lot of it's sex," he says. "These guys wear these tight jeans. They work out with a trainer three times a week. I can't see a lot of good country songs coming out of it. Individuality's missing. But it's working for them. It's like rivers and politics, you know. Bad stuff sometimes floats to the top. But I don't care. I'm still doing it my way. I just don't spend any time on Music Row, Nashville."--From In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music, by Nicholas Dawidoff

...he was talking about YOU.

When Waylon Jennings said these words:

This music they're pushing now is not country. It's regurgitated rock 'n' roll. They've got some great ones still in there — Travis Tritt's wonderful, Mark Chesnutt is one of the best, a natural. But the people at Epic told me I was over with. I'm trying to cut an album and this guy says, "This is wonderful, wonderful, but I hear an Eric Clapton guitar here." I said, "Well put it on and we'll see." He didn't know what he was talking about. Then they finally told me that radio was not going to play me, they don't like my kind of music any more, that I was over with. In other words, why don't you go crawl into a hole somewhere and die? A friend of mine over there at Epic said, "If you have someone under 40 and Waylon Jennings, who do you sign? The person under 40." I thought, "Well maybe that's true, maybe I've had a good run." I wasn't bitter. I probably had a little pity party for a day or two. But then I thought, "It's not a matter of eating or not eating. I'll keep playing, but I don't have to record." And that's when I realized that radio controls the charts, not the audience. And the people still come [to shows], they still remember. I haven't had a hit song in 10 years, but the other day in Albuquerque, New Mexico, they had about 20,000 people at a rodeo, and I was the only one out of some of the young bucks that they've had there in 4 years that sold the place out. They were so excited. Here was this radio station talking to me and they said, "You sold it out, this is the best thing." I said, "You don't play me, do you?" And they said, "No, but we have a sister station that does." I said "What has age got to do with music? I know a lot of those little bitty kids love me. You know it shows you something — I sold out your place here and the ones you're playing couldn't sell it out. I might blow up your radio tower or I might hit your radio station with a class action suit. That's discrimination."

There's 400 stations out there that control what's played. In the mid-'80s country music became big business like rock 'n' roll did in the '60s, to where that's all it's amounted to. There's payola, and what's sold is what's crammed down people's throats. John Cash was over at the house the other night and I said, "I think I know what it is: the people who are in control of radio don't know who we are. They have no emotional ties to us, what we've done."--Waylon Jennings

...he was talking about YOU.

When Merle Haggard said these words:

Oh, its a lot different than what I call country. I really don't think that's what it is. Its sort of country without the grit, you know? Pretty generic and pretty smooth. I enjoy the videos with the sound off, where you can look at the belly buttons and everything. Really some pretty girls, but I don't know about the music.--Merle Haggard

...he was talking about YOU.

When EmmyLou Harris said these words:

I find it pretty vapid and bloodless. You listen to Bill Monroe and he sings about the dark side of life. There's an inherent adultness and grabbing the mettle of the other side of life that is kind of not there in country music right now, in what's being heard on country radio. I listen to Lucinda Williams' new record, and that girl has some soul. But you're not going to hear her on commercial country radio except via performances by Patty Loveless, who I think has done some great stuff, and Mary Chapin, who is great. There are a couple of exceptions to the rule, because it can't all be as bad as it appears. You turn on the radio and it's very greeting-card. Very generic. Very cookie-cutter. And sometimes I feel like there's one male singer and one female singer out there cutting all the records with the same band. And yet I know there's good stuff out there. But it's not being heard, and I think at some point this mass popularity of country is going to explode, that it's going to eat itself. But maybe not.--Emmylou Harris

...she was talking about YOU.

Guess what?

"The truth is that some of the brightest and best musicians are guys who are playing at a Ramada Inn on Friday and Saturday nights," he continues. "And recording artists are people who barely know what makes up a D chord."--Jim Heath, aka Rev Horton Heat

...yep, still talking about YOU.

Oh, and...

"Country's being held in check by what I call the gatekeepers in Nashville," he said. "You go to a Garth Brooks concert, all the smoke, the lights flashing . . . he's going to have a pointed bra out there next." "What they're calling country on radio now is very much this stuff, this marmalade," he said. "Homogenized, Big Mac music." Professor Gerald Haslam, Author of "Workin' Man Blues," Sonoma State University

...sigh...it's all about YOU, Kenny. Hell, you've probably met some of these people, shook their hands, told them you loved their music. The BEST part of it...the real shits and giggles part of it...is that they probably responded in kind. In fact, let me guess here...

...your producer, Buddy, played bass for Mel Tillis...after you begged and pleaded, he got you in one night to meet Merle...not because Merle wanted to meet you...not because of your immense talent, not because he wanted to trade songwriting ideas with you...no, because you were "rich" and a "big star," you finally got to be in the presence of a man who in many ways has changed a part of America...whereas people will be wiping their asses with the liner notes of your "work" in ten years...but I digress...

...but, you know what happened after you shook their hands and left the room? They shook their heads and laughed. They laughed, because A) they don't consider you country, and B) don't consider you talented. You're not their peer, a continuation of their art form, or anyone that they really want to be associated with. Stings, don't it? I mean, you know Jack Sparks can't stand you, but he's just a shit heel with a blog in an urban arts rag. Johnny Cash couldn't stand you, Waylon Jennings couldn't stand you, Merle Haggard can't stand you and EmmyLou Harris can't stand you. If your only validity is record sales, and arenas full of a fraudulently co-opted demographic, it's a very hollow victory indeed my boy.

And while we're at it, Waylon couldn't stand your buddies at K102 either. Read what he said again...PAYOLA...I live for quotations like that. So while you're all backstage at the Xcel this weekend, eating catered chicken with mixed vegetables, patting yourselves on the back for your "Country Success," realize that the price of your success is an absolute and documented lack of validity with all of the strongest, wisest, and most authoritative persons in the genre.

Know this, as you pull into our town on your floating whorehouse tour bus...Garrison Keillor is having Brad Paisley on "A Prairie Home Companion" this same weekend. Why? Because he can really play his guitar, and every now and then writes his own songs. Where was your invite?

Have fun play-humping your guitar player tonight you fucking clown, I'll be watching the Goddamned Gleam.

Luv,
Jack

P.S.--this is just the kind of bullshit I'm always complaining about:

Not every country newcomer can play clubs. Rookies typically start by playing for free at radio-sponsored concerts or for small fees at county and state fairs.

"Radio [airplay] is the first and foremost way to break acts," Phyllis Stark, Nashville bureau chief for Billboard magazine says. "But an artist needs three radio hits before it can headline a club tour. That's why opening for a star is such a crucial step."

Opening slots often fall to acts sharing a business relationship with the headliner -- the same record company, for example, or same booking agent. Toby Keith is touring with three unknowns signed to his fledgling label.

Just lask week, First Avenue was asshole to elbow with people to see Neko Case. It'll be that way in the next town she goes to too. She's never gotten any airplay on Mainstream stations. Bream should have put his pom-pom's down for a minute at this point in his conversation with Stark and said, "you mean a major label, cookie-cutter act can't headline a club tour until they get 3 hits, much like a pimp only prizes a whore when she's bringing in money, or a drug dealer trusts a runner with more routes and various aspects of his business after he's proven himself violently loyal." But this is just another puff piece on Nashville out of this paper. It's hard sometimes, for me to believe that Riemenschneider and Bream work in the same building. There are groups and singers all over the place that headline club tours without any Mainstream airplay and they pack clubs like First Avenue, the Cabooze, and the Quest, no problem. Phyllis Stark makes her statement because she materially gains from the bullshit idea that airplay and the charts are what matters; if she admits, talks about, or even casually discusses independent acts and clubs at afternoon tea, she undercuts her whole act, and she would probably get fired.

Fuck these people.

Posted by Jack Sparks at April 6, 2006 11:07 PM | Comments (10)

Leave yr city behind...

From Central Florida's The Local 6.com:

Some Central Florida trappers have reported a significant increase in the number of calls for help with alligators and snakes at homes during the area's recent spell of dry weather, according to a Local 6 News report.

"My company has tripled with the snake calls," trapper Jim Bronzo said. "The snakes are at dried up retention ponds, they eat the frogs and fish and they are ending up in people's pools and their garages."

During dry weather like Central Florida has been experiencing, lake levels drop and water recedes from vegetation. It then exposes the animals and leaves them searching for new places to hide, Local 6 News reported.

"Warmer weather increases animal activity and that means gators and snakes are on the move," Local 6 reporter Louis Bolden said.

Bronzo has been working overtime trapping snakes at homes.

"Unfortunately, some are water moccasins that are dangerous," Bronzo said. "Most are the water snakes which look similar."

Other homeowners have called for help with alligators.

"Folks, I hope you understand how dangerous an (alligator) like this is when he is out of his element," trapper Bill Robb said.

Residents who find alligators or snakes in or around their home were urged to call professionals, the report said.

Back in the 80's, there were a lot of deceptively violent, drug addicted, homosexuals who just loved Husker Du; there were a lot of suburban, violent, white drunks that moved downtown who just loved The Replacements; there were a lot of funky black people who loved loud guitars, in addition to driving beats, in songs about fucking, who just loved Prince. Minneapolis had identities to its music. And everybody intermingled. But the chief fact was that the music was born here. They were professional musicians, to be sure, but they were also professional Minnesotans; and even though they've gone down different paths that have produced various results, you can walk around Block E and Uptown with a headset on, listening to that stuff and still get a bit of the reverb.

Which unfortunately brings me to the Goddamned Gleam, and their new disk, Lookout for Evils.

I'm not going to analyze lyrics, or even, God forbid, talk you into going out and seeing this band. If I did that, you would surely be disappointed. You know why? Because you've spent the last 3 or 4 years of your life watching American Idol. YOU think that good music means some little girl or little boy who can belt out Celine Deion's greatest hits in perfect tune. Some skinny self important British asshole and a former Laker girl whose favorite meal is the nail on her right ring finger have insured that.

Look, they sing out of tune, they play out of tune, but there simply isn't a more Minnesotan band in the state right now. Cover bands and acts who begin their interviews with lame fucking phrases like, "this is a business," have washed over this state and destroyed everything that we hold holy about First Avenue, Lee's Liquor Lounge, the 400 Bar, the Fine Line, the Turf Club, the Cabooze, the Triple Rock, the Entry, and God knows where else a man, woman, boy, or girl can go to get some fucking reality.

They're the Goddamned Gleam. They got gigs all over the place this week, next week, next month, the month after that. You probably won't go. I don't care. Greil Marcus doesn't care. But Greil Marcus lies awake at night, rubbing his own cock, fretting over the fact that he's not Lester Bangs.

My biggest cinematic guilty pleasure is the the vastly underrated Basquiat, where the artist is portrayed by Jeffrey Wright...you know, "that guy in that one movie." The whole point of the movie is that art, when it's happening, is probably stupid; and, if recognized at the time it's happening, probably overblown; and, if overblown, probably destructive, and ultimately, not really art. The Goddamned Gleam is that Minnesota music art implosion. They make no fucking sense at all, but I guaran-fuckin-tee you that all the music-heads in this town are going to be shitting all over themselves to say they saw them first in a couple of months. It's just that stupid, and wonderful, and real, and awesome. Me...I like them because they make me punch the sky and demand satisfaction from the Great Magnet...who owes me one or two.

Fuck the Gleam.

Posted by Jack Sparks at April 5, 2006 12:30 AM | Comments (1)

« March 2006 | Main | May 2006 »