» I’m Country Al
I never thought I’d say this, but I’m getting into Country. I’m Country Al. I dig a sub-genre called Outlaw. Here’s a quote about it from Wikipedia: “the fundamental opposition between law-and-order authoritarianism and the image of ‘outlaw’ authenticity… has structured country’s discourse of masculinity since the days of Jimmie Rodgers.”
Here’s one of the Grand Ol’ voices of Nashville, Porter Wagoner doing a song by Johnny Cash. The Nashville look is very much about big hair and flashy suits, f.y.i.:
It’s one of the only songs about mental illness/drug abuse in the super-genre of Country, written by an Outlaw writer. The fetishism of crazy people in our society (the whole insanity-is-close-to-genius thing) probably ties into the fetishism of criminality enough that only a “rebel” genre could successfully discuss it at first. Then it end-of-lifecycles into the mainstream. Same reason Cash covered NIN, probably.
I think that the “outlaw” mentality was a lot more mainstream in country back in the “old days” (when, I think, there was actually a lot of good country music).
You probably know this song, but it’s worth linking to Sunday Morning Coming Down, a great song on the drug abuse theme. I was going to refer to it as a Johnny Cash song, like the one above sung by Porter Wagoner, but, actually, SMCD was written by Kris Kristofferson. Cash and Kristofferson both seem associated with non-standard country themes. How many other country songs are there about reincarnation?
Don
6 Apr 08 at 5:43 pm
Yeah, Sunday Morning Coming Down is one of my favorite “Cash” songs. It captures something about the morning after a hard Saturday night that I think is instantly recognizable.
Jack
7 Apr 08 at 9:48 pm
And yeah: I haven’t heard a lot of Waylan Jennings, but so far I’m a big fan of all of the other Highwaymen.
Jack
7 Apr 08 at 9:49 pm
Woody Harrelson is ridiculous:
Jack
7 Apr 08 at 10:02 pm
Oh, and I’ve had a theory for a while that Country and Hip Hop are the same thing. My evidence is Kid Rock’s crossover:
I love the vocal distortions in that song.
Jack
7 Apr 08 at 10:22 pm
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