Monday, January 11, 2010

ENTRY LEVEL COUNTRY


Everyone who's really into music has done it. You find out someone you're not quite familiar with covered a song that you already know like the back of your hand. So, you buy their record, and find yourself liking it. You notice other covers, so you check out the originals, and all of a sudden you find yourself working backwards, getting closer to the source. So it is that the Rolling Stones can lead to Merle Haggard, or Commander Cody can lead to Red Sovine or Bob Wills, and so on. Pretty soon, you're looking for session players like Sneaky Pete, Don Rich and Phil Baugh. To paraphrase the Talking Heads, "You might find yourself saying, 'how did I get here?'" It seems especially true for genres left under explored in your younger years. But that's the cool thing about music.

There's a neat quote that was on some blog somewhere, that was from a sign in a record store. It was directed at music fiends, but, shit, it applies to everything, across the board. It said "You will never know everything. You will never hear everything. You will never own everything. You will never remember everything." I'd like to think that it came from a wise old sage, but more than likely it came from a snotty record store counter guy who was being a little profound completely by accident.

I can think of at least a dozen people in my past who have emphatically pointed me in the direction of a country artist of some sort. All had different starting points, and all were followed up on. But, still, I'm a country neophyte, so a rather obvious starting point was Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers. I got as far as Buck and Merle, realized that I was opening up a can of worms and just cut to the chase, one of the aforementioned session guys, Phil Baugh. As a side note, I've got to add that Dave Dudley's "Two Six Packs Away" is a personal favorite. Not only does he sound drunk, but those perky backing vocals piping in repeatedly with "Two Six Packs Away" always manage to slay me.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
The Flying Burrito Brothers - Christine's Tune (Devil in Disguise) mp3 at Rock-52.net

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am still lost in the corn maze and don't really wanna get out... Mr. Parsons was my lure, and only because I was intrigued by some ad agency that always tried to work in a subliminal Graham Parsons reference in their work...