Country Music

[Hellraiser]

 

Edited February 6 by Hellraiser

[Hobo]

7 minutes ago, Skummy said:

 

 

One guy who I'll miss when he's gone is Kris Kristofferson.

Just an immensely fascinating figure in country music.

[GoGo Yubari]

Wild that both Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson ended up outliving Toby Keith.

And yeah, you know. I know he ended up pivoting a little, endorsed Obama and all that, but it's very hard for me to separate him from what an odious presence he was in the wake of 9/11. He was basically the voice of the dumbest, ugliest part of a particularly dumb, ugly moment in American history and the way he tried to make country music an inhospitable space for popular artists who felt differently, eugh. Guess we'll always have that time he inexplicably turned up at the very first TNA show and suplexed Jeff Jarrett?

[Skummy]

didn't he basically pivot all the way back later on, though? He was a big Trump guy, IIRC.

Toby Keith was one of the many people Jarrett tried to convince into buying or bankrolling TNA over the years too, and put up some of the money for GFW.

I listened to the (mostly excellent) album of Willie Nelson's 90th birthday concert, and remember thinking that Kris Kristofferson sounded really frail on it, and then realised that he's 87 years old. 

[Hobo]

4 hours ago, Skummy said:

didn't he basically pivot all the way back later on, though? He was a big Trump guy, IIRC.

Toby Keith was one of the many people Jarrett tried to convince into buying or bankrolling TNA over the years too, and put up some of the money for GFW.

I listened to the (mostly excellent) album of Willie Nelson's 90th birthday concert, and remember thinking that Kris Kristofferson sounded really frail on it, and then realised that he's 87 years old. 

I saw some of the video and Kristofferson looks just as frail as he sounds.

That was a rare public appearance for him. He's had memory problems for years following a case of Lyme disease which was mistakenly diagnosed as alzheimer's and had quietly retired at the start of the pandemic.

And yeah, Toby Keith was a Trump supporter.

[GhostMachine]

If politics come into it, there's a lot of artists I'd never listen to, and not just in country. Hank Williams Jr got fired from doing the Monday Night Football for comparing Obama to Nazis, and Jason Aldean is a world class asshat. I refuse to buy anything new from either, and avoid obviously right-wing slanted songs. 

Maren Morris decided to leave country music, and its partially due to all the bullshit. But I also think its due to her pop songs being more successful. 

[GoGo Yubari]

18 hours ago, Skummy said:

didn't he basically pivot all the way back later on, though? He was a big Trump guy, IIRC.

Yeah, I somehow completely missed him going full Trump until I read this very good obit that basically works to contextualize both Toby Keith's embarrassing politics and the fact that it seems like he could in fact write a very good country song regardless of that. Makes me wonder just how sincere any of it was, almost feels like he just could tell which way the wind was blowing and adjusted to that every time.

[Hobo]

A lot of what I didn't like about country music that I heard up to 2005 or so when I stopped listening to the country station my dad listens to (as I moved away for college) was the god, America, and underlying conservatism.

As a teen, I mainly gravitated towards the likes of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and particularly Steve Earle.

Cash was conservative and devoutly Christian but still had that strong social conscious.

Willie Nelson is definitely more liberal.

While Steve Earle is a socialist, anti death penalty activitist and by the early 2000s was completely off the main stream country radar.

I also remember picking up Kristofferson's live album Broken Song of Freedom too in my late teens. That is very political album there's anti Iraq war stuff as was the style at the time but also songs about the victims of the military junta in Argentina and a song about the Sandinistas.

Discovering the immensely political side of Kris Kristofferson is a bit like listening to a Randy Newman album like Good Old Boys if you only know him from Pixar soundtracks. It's a bit of an eye opener.

 

 

 

[Pooker]

So, how is everybody feeling about Beyonce going country? I've only listened to one of the two songs released so far, and it was super repetitive, just like her pop music, just had a country twang to it.

[GhostMachine]

Haven't listened yet, so I can't comment. But Post Malone says he's doing a country album, and I am looking forward to that. 

 

 

[Pooker]

Same. I've been saying for years that Post Malone needs to do a country album. When he just sings, no rap or autotune, he can sing.

[GoGo Yubari]

Heard "Texas Hold'em" on the radio yesterday. It's too stomp-clap for me, regrettably, honestly feels like it has as much in common with that whole folk revival from fifteen years ago as it does country. Would rather hear something more like a ballad, but maybe that doesn't go with Renaissance's whole thing since everything I heard off the first one was dance music.

All for Rhiannon Giddens getting paid/getting exposure, though. Everything I've heard from her I've tended to like.

[Skummy]

yeah, "Daddy Lessons" from Lemonade was a better avenue into "Beyonce does country", particularly the version with The Chicks, than Texas Hold 'Em, which feels too contrived. 

[DMN in the House]

On 06/02/2024 at 20:34, GoGo Yubari said:

Wild that both Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson ended up outliving Toby Keith.

And yeah, you know. I know he ended up pivoting a little, endorsed Obama and all that, but it's very hard for me to separate him from what an odious presence he was in the wake of 9/11. He was basically the voice of the dumbest, ugliest part of a particularly dumb, ugly moment in American history and the way he tried to make country music an inhospitable space for popular artists who felt differently, eugh. Guess we'll always have that time he inexplicably turned up at the very first TNA show and suplexed Jeff Jarrett?

Well, Willie has looked 85 for like 50 years, so maybe the marijuana just pickles you and you survive forever, it's the other shit that kills you.

On 07/02/2024 at 16:14, GhostMachine said:

If politics come into it, there's a lot of artists I'd never listen to, and not just in country. Hank Williams Jr got fired from doing the Monday Night Football for comparing Obama to Nazis, and Jason Aldean is a world class asshat. I refuse to buy anything new from either, and avoid obviously right-wing slanted songs. 

Maren Morris decided to leave country music, and its partially due to all the bullshit. But I also think its due to her pop songs being more successful. 

Look, if I have to start looking into my country music singers politics, I'm going to have to give up Charlie Daniels, and, fuck, I won't like it, but, man, look, Still in Saigon is a hell of a track.

On 08/02/2024 at 06:23, Hobo said:

A lot of what I didn't like about country music that I heard up to 2005 or so when I stopped listening to the country station my dad listens to (as I moved away for college) was the god, America, and underlying conservatism.

As a teen, I mainly gravitated towards the likes of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and particularly Steve Earle.

Cash was conservative and devoutly Christian but still had that strong social conscious.

Willie Nelson is definitely more liberal.

While Steve Earle is a socialist, anti death penalty activitist and by the early 2000s was completely off the main stream country radar.

I also remember picking up Kristofferson's live album Broken Song of Freedom too in my late teens. That is very political album there's anti Iraq war stuff as was the style at the time but also songs about the victims of the military junta in Argentina and a song about the Sandinistas.

Discovering the immensely political side of Kris Kristofferson is a bit like listening to a Randy Newman album like Good Old Boys if you only know him from Pixar soundtracks. It's a bit of an eye opener.

 

 

 

I fucking love Steve Earle. As an artist and as a man. He was on The Wire, too. Sings maybe my favorite country song, Copperhead Road. Just a very, very interesting dude.

9/11 killed country music for me, but I grew up on it, but we were a honky tonk/outlaw country style family, being white trash and all, so all this more corporate and sanitized country is not for me, plus the god and country stuff really doesn't help. Still love the stuff from before the mid-90s, though, especially the late 70s-80s, great years for country.

[GhostMachine]

@DMN in the House Copperhead Road is the first country song I ever bought the cassette single of back in the day. Its still to this day one of my go-to songs. (Look up the Wailin' Banshees cover on Youtube for an Irish take on it.)

I agree about country music and politics, but I listed Aldean and Hank Jr because those are two specific cases of assholes who I have given up on due to their political beliefs. Aldean's "Try That In A Small Town" is bullshit because small towns are exactly where a lot of that has been happening. Bocephus comparing Obama to Nazis was too over the line. I still listen to their old stuff, but will not pay for or listen to anything new. And Aldean's most well known song, "Dirt Road Anthem", is a cover. Colt Ford and Brantley Gilbert did the original version.

(Kid Rock is on that same musical shitlist, but I only liked a couple of his songs to begin with.)

Willie Nelson may very well outlive us all. Him and Keith Richards.

 

 

Edited February 15 by GhostMachine

[Pooker]

And Dolly!

[VerbalPuke]

So I'm listening to that personal DJ thing and he says "And heres some of your favorite country starting with Jello Biafra". Fucking funny to me, but its his work with Mojo Nixon which is quite good to be fair.

Edit - Followed by Ween 

[DMN in the House]

17 hours ago, VerbalPuke said:

So I'm listening to that personal DJ thing and he says "And heres some of your favorite country starting with Jello Biafra". Fucking funny to me, but its his work with Mojo Nixon which is quite good to be fair.

Edit - Followed by Ween 

Hey, GG Allin did some of my favorite honkytonk type stuff!