Monday, August 11, 2014

My Music Monday

I guess I'll keep with the Country-theme for this month. It won't kill you - and some of it you might actually like.

The chance of you getting anything from "today's country" is 0% chance. Nashville today is where people go who failed in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle - and yeah, I'm talkin' to you Sheryl Crow, Jewel and the Hootie guy.

While this selection, the Dixie Chicks' "Lubbock or Leave It"is pretty much full on country, especially with Emily Robison's banjo playing, the tune and the album were produced by Rick Rubin, who was responsible for the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and LL Cool Jay.

Sure he went on to produce Tom Petty, Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond - all with critical, though not necessarily commercial success. But I do think he did a phenomenal job with the Chicks' Taking the Long Way.

Like many of the songs on that disk, DCX addresses head-on or partially-on, the fall-out from those 13 words that Natalie Maines uttered in London on the eve of Shrub launching a war in Iraq. It also pretty much ended their commercial success - and possibly career as a group. While Taking did sell 2 million copies, it was far short of the 10, 10 and 6 million copies they had sold prior to.

Maines is originally from Lubbock and she sings about the hypocrisy of churches to drunken teens in town and how everyone acts like a good Christian on Sunday mornings. It also addresses how her hometown turned their back on her, like they did Buddy Holly before her.

Still, the structure of the song is great - or so I think. There is no real slowdown on the piece and even under the hands of Rubin, it is still a rocking tune.....though very very country based.


the Dixie Chicks - "Lubbock or Leave It"

2 comments:

Bob said...

The Chicks are one of the few 'country' acts I can take, mostly because I love Maines.

Erik Rubright said...

I miss the Chicks. :(