This Southern boogie business?

Great bands I've seen, and brought up on the recent Kings of Leon-hatin' thread, are All Night, Dragstrip Syndicate, Those Peabodies, Alabama Thunderpussy (not great, but worth a 7 dollar admission). Don't know about their records, though, except DS, which is great.

and must we discuss the difference between the "belly beard" and the "treasure trail" again?

Guy on left: So you just dial 118?
Guy on right: Twice, 118

The Black Crowes could've been good, but they sound so damn flabby -- I like my hippies southern AND angry.

I can understand being rubbed the wrong way, Ned, but how are they dishonest or unsoulful or any of those other barbs you tossed at them? How do you judge that? What about their music makes you feel that way? Can you point to anything specific?

For the love of god, will you take that Toasters pin off your backpack, you fucking ska nerd!

Yes, I really believe this is slang. Oh baby.

;-)

--Great comment, Horace. I like the Allmans OK with Duane A. Some of Gregg's solo work is nice too. I do think, however, that Lyn Skyn was a great band, overexposed as they are. "What's Your Name" is such a great radio song and anyone who goes around saying that Big Star was such a great group ought to ponder the fact that something like "What's Your Name" kinda is a redneck version of the same calibrated post-British-rock thing...
The NM All Stars suck, I used to see them in Memphis before they got big and they were much better. They played to this big crowd of idiots as openers for the Squirrel Nut Zippers in Nashville in '97 and all the Gnash-ville know-it-alls were saying "That's not blues" and other stupid things, of course they're blues, Luther and Cody are great musicians. But as a concept, they're terrible, just a better jam-band. Jim's kind of in the southern-rock thing but not really, his stuff is good and somewhat overrated and owes much more to the jug-band tradition than your average group of rebs from Jacksonville or wherever. The one time I saw the Drive-Bys, they sucked, but I like their records all right. Marshall Tucker, western swing? Ah, I might have to go back and re-listen to "Can't You See," which is kinda nice. Wet Willie? Bad fake-boogie, altho "Keep on Smilin'" ain't terrible as some kind of watered-down Stax thing or whatever, Dukk Dunn bass-line 101.

The southern boogie biz is no more ridiculous than any other current style of "rock and roll." I'm not sure how ripping off the Stooges or Television is really on any kind of defensibly higher aesthetic plane than ripping off Lyn Skyn, Allmans or R. L. Burnside. I too hate the Black Crowes and everything they stand for, I do remember some groups called Humble Pie and the Stones.

Actually, their version of Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle" swings as hard as any rock that got radio play in the '90s. It also beats the hell out of Otis's version. Beyond that, I never really cared about the Crowes one way or another; the ballads just struck me as pretty bland, not catchy enough. Pretty unexciting singer, I guess. I mean, play anything they did up against, say, the second (or even third) Cinderella albums, and it should be obvious what was missing. But I wouldn't say I *hate* them, even if I did call the Black Fucking Crowes on another thread -- I guess I'm just kinda shocked that a band that sounds so much like them is passing for a next big thing in certain circles already. (But I don't really hate that band, either, to be honest. I mean, I honestly have nothing much *against* Orleans or Pablo Cruise or the Doobie Brothers, who Kings of Leon's EP sounded to me like. I just don't get what's so "Southern rock" or "garage" about that stuff. It's innoncuous and harmless and fun to laugh at, though, which is more than you can say for lots of stuff.)

>>Nashville Pussy and Alabama Thunderpussy, at best, always struck me as slightly better than average Motorhead-inspired hardcore bands; at worst, they were stupid novelty acts. Wearing wifebeaters and trucker's hats in the form of a stupid Hee-Haw joke just isn't enough to make me give a shit, no matter how well your Amazon women simulate fellatio on stage. Country stations these days play Montgomery Gentry and Brooks and Dunn, both of whom, at their best, rock a LOT harder. Toby Keith has his moments, too. And the parts of the new Kentucky Headhunters album that sound like Bad Company are as convincing as anything on All Night's album (which I also like; there have been a couple other things out of the stoner-rock realm in the past couple years that deserve mentioning within the same parenthetical phrase as Blackfoot or Point Blank, too, but I forget what they're called.).

And anyway, didn't Antiseen do the stupid novelty part (floppy turkey-shooter hats, washboards, David Allen Coe covers, songs about the singer fucking his sister) first and better (i.e.: long before Nashville Pussy), way back in the mid '80s? (And REO Speeddealer were even more half-assed than Nashville Pussy, if anybody's taking notes. And Nashville Pussy's name comes from a stage rant by Ted Nugent--from the same part of the South that Kid Rock is from, obviously. And now that I think of it, I can't remember if I actually ever *heard* Alabama Thunderpussy. Which probably just means more that they were forgettable than that my memory's bad.)

What I mean by this, I guess, is that as ridiculous as Kings of Leon are, they still sound a hell of a lot warmer and more rhythmic and more lively than lots of stuff that rock-haters seem to prefer, just like the Black Crowes were more fun than lots of acclaimed indie rock of their time. So though their HYPE is stupid (what people say about them has no connection to how they actually sound), their MUSIC isn't necessarily all THAT stupid. Though it could sure be a lot smarter.

Nashville Pussy, though, is just pointless.

Blind Melon, argh.

Well, like I said above, I can't remember now when I might have actually HEARD them. So it's very possible I'm getting them mixed up with Nashville Pussy, given the similarity of their stupid names and stuff. (I DID tend to like LOTS of what was on Man's Ruin a couple years ago, though -- And if I remember right, they put out an album on that label, and it was MUCH lamer than most of the other stuff Man's Ruin put out. Unless they didn't, in which case I'm wrong.)

>>both Chuck and Drag City's masters love AC/DC, for example.<<

Yeah, but they don't UNDERSTAND AC/DC like I do, heh heh. (Hint: they were a DANCE band, at least when Bon was alive, which is really the only AC/DC I truly give a shit about. Almost DISCO, in fact.)

Note: major AC/DC fan speaking.

And unless you spend all your dancing time in slampits, I have no idea what you mean by slow tempos. People danced to Donna Summer and Chic, who were no faster than AC/DC as far as I can see.

Maybe it's not the tempos, maybe it's just the groove, or maybe it's my age -- I was a tiny tiny being when people first danced to Donna Summer.

Well, duh. But I don't hate rock, I apparently hate fun, but you are all wrong, yah boo. ;-)

I've always wanted to hear a southern rock band do "Boogie Shoes," I bet it would be great.

"Night Prowler" is too slow.

But the rest is A-OK goodness. Like I say, "Girls Got Rhythm", it's just your basic four-on-the-floor, 120 BPM; listen to the way the first two chords syncopate with the drums in the first measure of the statement of the riff.

re: AC/DC, can I just thank you all for giving me a goal for the evening? I smell a party brewing.

Somehow this sentence came to me as a revelation.