10 Essential Alt-country Albums

[myboyblue]

barking up the wrong tree

that's perfect.

 

Why I still am surprised by some of the dipshit comments made on the inner web is beyond me. Yes, Orkie, I'm looking at you.

[bobbob1313]

It really is a semantic argument.

[LouieB]

that's perfect.

 

Why I still am surprised by some of the dipshit comments made on the inner web is beyond me. Yes, Orkie, I'm looking at you.

Double trolling...

 

It isn't strictly about semantics. alt.country was something different than country rock, no doubt about it and no one was calling NRPS or Poco or even Gram Parsons alt.country...it was always country rock. Townes Van Zandt was just trying to write a bunch of good songs and have others play them if they would. Willie and Waylon were Outlaws. Even Steve Earle was hitting the tail end of outlawdom.

 

LouieB

[bobbob1313]

It all depends on whether you believe that a genre title that wasn't created until the late 80's can apply to artists who had a similar sound and approach to music prior to them, then.

[LouieB]

It all depends on whether you believe that a genre title that wasn't created until the late 80's can apply to artists who had a similar sound and approach to music prior to them, then.

Well okay I half see your point, except that the music that was being made DID have varous labels, but not specifically alt.country. Certainly the artists that we are talking about influenced those that I we can half agree are alt.country, but they weren't making music under that banner. Certainly alot of groups were playing country type music; in fact artists never stopped making country and country influenced music. But add some punk and a bit more attitude and it became alt.country. Artists such as Earle and Van Zandt and EmmyLou and Waylon and Willie and the Flatlanders and a ton of others were all making country music outside of the established routes, venues, styles, etc. So. really there isn't much of an argument here, just what applies I suppose.

 

LouieB

[bobbob1313]

I personally don't think labels are all that important. If someone wants to call Johnny Cash Alt.Country, I can dig it. It doesn't really change the music.

[M. (hristine]

We're taking an historical perspective here. Subjective names for music that occurs along and morphs out of a timeline. What precedes has much to do with the ethos of a particular ("labeled" ) genre of music (whether incorporating or rejecting).

[CortezTheKiller]

You'd be wrong of course.

 

http://folkmusic.about.com/od/artistsaz/p/Townes_profile.htm

It's rather unfortunate that you gather your knowledge from the internet. You can come up with countless links to prove your point. Townes = country, folk, and blues. The categorization of "alt.country" doesn't fit here. Nice try, but your way off. Throw a 'D' on the beginning of the name too please.

[markosis]

I think its pretty funny how long a conversation can go on when all we're talking about is semantics. I couldn't care less what you call it, alt-country, intellegent country, country rock, who gives a shit? Do you need to really differentiate between alt-country and country anyway? All it does is complicate things. If you get rid of a meaningless sub-genre tag, and all you're left with is "country", it surely wouldn't bother me that The Jayhawks and Garth Brooks share a similar genre tag. It wouldn't change my listening habits or my opinion of the music. Why does everyone get so hung up on the label? Is it a big deal if someone thinks Townes Van Zandt played folk music, and someone else thinks he played country, and someone else thinks he played country-folk? Does that change the way the music sounds to you?

[Orkie]

Yes.

Before there was punk there could be no alt country.

 

That's laughable. Most alt.coutnry has no punk element whatsoever.

[Orkie]

The dude is part right:

 

Yup.

[junkiesmile]

So if a label doesn't exist at the inception it can't be applied in retrospect ?

 

Chicken,egg,egg,chicken

[Spawn's dad]

I have Sky Blue Sky tagged alt country just to piss people off. Johnny Cash too.

[Littlebear]

So if a label doesn't exist at the inception it can't be applied in retrospect ?

 

Chicken,egg,egg,chicken

 

I think it can, but it just depends how you use it in your personal view. There's free fancy about labels. In my humble opinion, Townes Van Zandt isn't more alt. country than alt. blues or alt. folk. I think he was also an alt. guitarist, an alt. lyricist and an alt. human being.

 

And here's an alt. banana:

[Spawn's dad]

so much depends

upon a red wheel

barrow

 

glazed with rain

water

 

beside the white

chickens.

[M. (hristine]

That's laughable. Most alt.coutnry has no punk element whatsoever.

What's your damage, dude?

 

That's like saying reggae didn't grow out of ska.

[Spawn's dad]

What's your damage, dude?

 

Wheelbarrow has a wobbly wheel, I suspect.

[M. (hristine]

Yeah you'll have that.

[OOO]

so much depends

upon a red wheel

barrow

 

glazed with rain

water

 

beside the white

chickens.

 

I hated that section in poetry. That god damn plum poem.

[M. (hristine]

Why do you hate William Carlos Williams?

 

Williams' most anthologized poem is "The Red Wheelbarrow", considered an example of the Imagist movement's style and principles (see also "This Is Just To Say"). However, Williams, like his associate Ezra Pound, had long ago rejected the imagist movement by the time this poem was published as part of Spring and All in 1923. Williams is more strongly associated with the American Modernist movement in literature, and saw his poetic project as a distinctly American one; he sought to renew language through the fresh, raw idiom that grew out of America's cultural and social heterogeneity, at the same time freeing it from what he saw as the worn-out language of British and European culture.

Williams tried to invent an entirely fresh form, an American form of poetry whose subject matter was centered on everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. He then came up with the concept of the variable foot evolved from years of visual and auditory sampling of his world from the first person perspective as a part of the day in the life as a physician. The variable foot is rooted within the multi-faceted American Idiom. This discovery was a part of his keen observation of how radio and newspaper influenced how people communicated and represents the "machine made out of words" (as he described a poem in the introduction to his book, The Wedge) just as the mechanistic motions of a city can become a consciousness. Williams didn

[myboyblue]

That's laughable. Most alt.coutnry has no punk element whatsoever.

good bit

[Spawn's dad]

traditional meter

 

I'd like to stuff a traditional meter somewhere

[PopTodd]

That's laughable. Most alt.coutnry has no punk element whatsoever.

 

Just like Uncle Tupelo's No Depression, right?

They just named a magazine about the subject and the whole damn movement after that raucous motha of a record.

[M. (hristine]

I'd like to stuff a traditional meter somewhere

Waxing poetic?

[Spawn's dad]

waxing the shaft, maybe.