Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

I've been exploring the back alleys of American folk music all morning. There is a subtlety and  true flair for melody in many of these songs. I haven't been able to get "Richmond is a Hard Road" out of my head. The song was originally a Union Army song that had been adapted from "Jordan is a Hard Road to Travel," a song which was written by Dan Emmett, who also composed "Dixie." The roads these songs lead listners to, the familiar melodies, the catchiness of the tunes all give them a timeless quality. Greil Marcus wrote, "America is a place and a story, made up of exuberance and suspicion, crime and liberation, lynch mobs and escapes, its greatest testaments are made of portents and warnings." These qualities are the backbone of the American songbook. There is hardship and joy, faith and doubt, uncertainty, and great hope wrapped up in these songs. None of these qualities are true binaries -- just gradations of sentiment and feeling. A...

I have a knack for finding records at thrift stores, digging through the dust and crinkled cellophane and finding that one elusive gem. I chalk it up to the persistence of the hunt that finds me going back week after week, month after month, while some would just buy the damn thing on eBay. After digging through the Mantovani, Mitch Miller, interminable copies of Carole King's Tapestry , I had begun to give up hope that I would find something halfway decent. Then, I pulled a Jerry Reed record that I was unfamiliar with, The Man with the Golden Thumb . I've long been a fan of Reed's humorous songs and his criminally underrated guitar work, but I had no idea how good this record would be. The title track has shown up on Greatest Hits collections, and is just another in a number of good novelty songs about guitar players that stem back to Reed's early hits, such as "Guitar Man," which made it to number 53 on the country charts in 1967 before Elvis Presley too...

Since I've been a kid, I've been obsessed with liner notes -- the details that catalog the minutiae in the grooves. My father used to subscribe to the Time Life Classic Country collection, and I used to categorize and memorize the liner notes, storing them for some unknown future. Even then I was a music historian by default. Later, when my mom got the Sounds of the Seventies cds, I would pore over them. As I built my own collection, I still read liner notes. You can learn so much about a record, but also about the scene or situation that it has developed from. Each kernel leads to another. The bands in the acknowledgements section, the producer, the additional musicians -- all tell the story of this record, while leading to other important bands and albums. A voracious music junkie will always find another clue to building a collection, while scraping together a narrative of that record's invention. My continual search through liner notes first became evident when I ...

The weather is a bummer. Cold and grey, melting snow, traversed by numerous cars, is all there is. The air feels heavy and stolid. So am I. Impassive, lethargic, plodding, I shift along the sidewalk. A robot, increasingly shiftless. A ne'er do well on a quest of nothingness.

The clouds started forming at five o'clock pm The funnel clouds touched down five miles north of Russellville Sirens were blowing, clouds spat rain As the thing came through, I swear it sounded like a train -- Drive-By Truckers, "Tornadoes" A massive F3 tornado came through my hometown of Park Falls, Wisconsin in the summer of 1985. My family and I were spending the night at my grandparent's cabin 20 miles away riding out what we thought was a typical summer storm. Mostly all I remember was reading comics at the cabin and the usual fights I had with my uncle (he is only three years older than me). I kept my comics at the cabin, but after this tornado I got into reading them more. I put them in boxes and I would have to hide them in the basement with each passing summer storm. In the morning my dad went to survey the damage of the storm. We used to have big, sheltering trees in the front yard and these were gone now. They had been toppled over by the winds. On...

I write about Jason Isbell a lot. And for good reason as he's one of my favorite guitarists and he's a great songwriter and singer, telling hard-edge slice of life stories that anyone can relate to. He made my top ten list for two subsequent records, placing in the number 2 spot for 2011 and 2013. Strangely, and unintentionally, he was beaten out by Ha Ha Tonka both times. This will be my last Isbell post for some time. Probably until his next record comes out, or I go see him live -- I haven't made it to a show since he was touring behind Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit . Lately, I've been hearing that many people don't like the first two albums. While I think Here We Rest is the best, the first two have a number of great tracks. Sure, there is some dross, but no record is perfect. While he has definitely grown as a songwriter deserving the acclaim he has been receiving, some of his earliest tracks still rank among his best. Drive by Truckers tracks, like "O...

Combat Rock , released on May 14, 1982, was the record that monetarily put the Clash on the top of the punk heap. Even so, it has never been seen as a particularly good album, especially compared to their first self-titled album (both British and American versions) and London Calling . Even Give 'Em Enough Rope has more proponents. After the Clash released the double album London Calling, they released Sandinista to little fanfare. The triple LP felt bloated. Its predecessor had included experimentation and attempts to expand the band's repertoire, mostly as homage to the American roots forms that the band had consciously (or not) avoided on their first two albums. Sandinista was another beast entirely -- the band took an everything but the kitchen sink approach, experimenting with dub, hip hop, children choirs, and even took a hit on royalties so they could release it in this fashion. Combat Rock continued some of this experimentation, also flirting with world music and ...