Xark!

Who's Whistling Dixie?

About once a month, generally late in the evenings, my Bonnie and I will snuggle up on the couch and engage in a two or three hour marathon viewing of country music videos. It’s odd when it happens, as neither of us listens to much country music on a regular basis (although we each certainly have our favorites); on the other hand, it also feels perfectly natural to be drawn to the most popular manifestations of a genre that was vaguely in the air in both of our hometowns as we grew up. As with all music, we like some and dislike some, but the real fun for each of us comes from looking at the video images that are reimaginings of the songs. In my mind, there is no better place to begin an interesting conversation about culture than in the landscape that makes up Great American Country.

I want to focus here, however, on one particular video as an example of a wider visual phenomenon that I've recently witnessed (or imagine that I have); I have no idea if this is "new" or ongoing, although I would tend to guess the latter.  Rather than lay out my thesis, it might be more fun to have you simply watch the starkest example and see if the same idea strikes you.  Our case study, then, is Randy Houser’s Whistlin’ Dixie (it’s only three minutes; give it a whirl):

The song is one of those somewhat standard "Southern and proud of it" country rockers; to be honest, there is a part of me that always loves these songs despite a simultaneous political discomfort that comes along for the ride. Indeed, this particular manifestation of the "Proud Southerner" song has a lot of the visual and lyrical panorama that you would expect from the title "Whistlin’ Dixie": honky tonk dancing, Appalachian-lookin' camaflouged kids sitting on the backs of pick up, old rural shacks, trucker hats, a naked woman in a trailer, gun imagery, grills, and so forth. And again, I find myself alternatively amused, entertained, angered, embarrassed and mystified by these images.

Here's the catch with this one, however (and again, I don't think this is unique to this video): just when you think you've got the song figured out (i.e., "Oh, it's about redneck pride"), just when you think you know the characters who make up this community (i.e., "It's a bunch of racist southern boys"), BOOM, it turns out that they have African American friends--friends they eat with, dance with, smoke with. Indeed, what I see in this video is something that might be called the inoculation of southerm pride through the inclusion of African American bodies (it would be nice to come up with something snappier, of course, but this is a first pass). Take a look at that honky tonk: there are a number of African Americans dancing there. When the catfish is cooking, it's African Americans doing the cooking. When Houser sings about smoking, he has an African American stand in for him.

While there is no rule that says that the video should feature a completely white cast, there is something about the music itself, and the remainder of the images, that makes the scenery seem somehow less than inviting for anyone but a white population (and honestly, most of the tourist honky tonks in Nashville are bereft of anyone but white people even when the songs are mostly covers of Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw). Again, I want to stress: I'm not saying that the images don't represent one version of a reality, or that "the south is all racist" (heck, as a proud Southerner, I despise that stereotype); I'm more simply pointing out that the characters drawn by the song and the accompanying images wouldn't normally lead me to expect the inclusion of African American characters in these roles. And while one thesis might be that I'm simply completely out of touch and have no clue what I'm talking about, if you check out some of the racist comments about the video on YouTube, you'll see that there are some viewers who neither expected it nor liked it (although, to be fair, most people either didn't notice or simply didn't mention it).

At any rate, given that I'm a person who would certainly be pleased with a world that is more inviting of everyone--more egalitarian, I'm intrigued by the images in this video. On the one hand, as I've noted, there is something odd afoot here--the inclusion of African Americans sticks out, seeming somehow unrealistic. One function they serve--intentionally or not--is making it difficult to say "Randy Houser" or even fans of this song, are racist, or, even more generally, the images are protection against the claim that the video shows that country music itself is racist. "Heck," the images say, "You can be southern, you can love shotguns, you can live in a trailer, you can shout about southern pride and still live in a culture of racial equality."

And you know what, you can. Or rather, you should be able to. The fact that these ideas are rarely articulated--at least so rarely that the images seem uncomfortable together--doesn't mean that it's not possible.

As always, the more I think about this, the more questions I'm left with. In essence, I don't know whether I should applaud the images or be very skeptical about them. That is, if critical thinking demands reactions, should mine be: "The record company included African Americans in this video to simply make it difficult to accuse everyone involved of racism?" Or should I look at these images, and the ways they don't necessarily fit, and applaud them for helping me imagine a different kind of world, a different kind of articulation. But just what kind of articulation is it that I'm applauding, if I do so?

Big Rock Candy Mountain

Luke Conover: Big Rock Candy Mountain from Dan Conover on Vimeo.

Xark hijo Luke Conover plays the first day of the Youth Gives Back music festival at Awendaw Green on Aug. 8.

Playing the Same Place

Because the ad said that Dex Romweber would begin at 9 PM, and because we thought we would arrive in time to have a drink and survey the surroundings before the show actually began, my friend Steve and I arrived at The Basement at exactly 9 PM.  Big mistake.  Save the drummer for one of the two opening duos—who was fiddling with one of her cymbals—we were literally the only people in the bar.  No other patrons, no other musicians, and no bartender.  Steve literally had to walk outside to find someone to sell us a beer.

I hadn’t seen Dex (formerly of the Flat Duo Jets) play in years, and, if no one was going to show up at this show (two opening bands before Dex played and no one was here?), I wasn’t quite sure I could stand to stick around either.  The whole thing had the feeling of a depressing nightmare from which I wanted to slink away.  And had I been alone, I may well have done so.

“What must it be like,” Steve asked, “to play in places like this for all these years?”

Three Xmas songs you hear in Hell

There are lengthier lists. There are worse songs (apparently, something called The Christmas Shoes is so astoundingly horrible that if you hear it in your sleep and don't wake up before the last verse, you die). And granted, I tend to stay at home and shop over teh Interwebs just to avoid bad Christmas music in stores. But these three songs are just goddamn EVERYWHERE, and they sap my will to live.

Little Saint Nick by The Beach Boys: There is vapid. There is cloying. There is crassly trading on your usual schtick in a cutesy way that holds your audience in utter contempt for the sake of strip-mining them of cash. And then there is The Little Saint Nick. God punished Brian Wilson for writing this song by crushing his soul, making him fat and putting him on house arrest from 1968 to 1985.

Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney. Former Beatle John Lennon did Merry Christmas/War is Over and got murdered. Paul McCartney did Wonderful Christmastime and we're still waiting.

Step Into Christmas by Elton John. Of course, John didn't actually write the lyrics. Bernie Taupin bears that stain. But John did write the music and sing the words, and under South Carolina law, the hand of one is the hand of all.

Step into Christmas bears the distinction of being a Christmas song that's not even about Christmas in any discernible way. In fact, it might be the laziest greed-inspired swipe at feigning interest in a topic ever recorded.

Welcome to my Christmas song
I'd like to thank you for the year
So I'm sending you this Christmas card
To say it's nice to have you here
I'd like to sing about all the things
Your eyes and mind can see
So hop aboard the turntable
Oh step into Christmas with me(ohh)

Really? I've known crack whores who make more of an effort than that.

Once upon a time there were evil record company executives who seduced pop stars into writing shitty Christmas songs to make a quick buck. The world does not miss them.

Q-Tip, Comments, and the Inactive Imagination

A few months back (and I can't recall where), Dan commented on a small portion of an interview he conducted with Laurie Anderson when she was performing in Charleston.  If I remember correctly, Dan was asked Anderson about the excitement of new media and how it opened up avenues of artistic expression to more people, providing greater tools for DIY art. 

Anderson's response, you could tell, was somewhat disappointing to XARK’s fearless leader.  She observed that while there were certainly positive aspects, most of the work seemed less interesting.  When we’re all pulling our crayons from the same box, she noted, the work is bound to become somewhat less interesting, somewhat more homogenous.

One of the reasons I found her claim so interesting is that, like Dan and a lot of other folks, my tendency has been to celebrate the increasing access people have to a variety of tools as well as to a wider range of information.  Here was an interesting oppositional angle, coming from an “artist,” no less:  if we give the same tools to everyone, what makes any particular “artwork” or any particular statement, interesting?

The Last, Great Hope for Musical Sincerity

Several years ago, I read Johnny Cash’s memoir, Cash: The Autobiography.  Of the many passages that stood out to me, the strong one came from a very brief section in which Cash was discussing the songs and style of country artists.  With just a tinge of “old man-itis,” he noted that while country artists of the past wore clothing and sang songs that reflected the materiality of their lives (i.e., those jeans and cowboy boots were part of their labor; songs about poverty reflected their lives), it was more the case now that the style and the themes were a requirement of the genre and no longer reflected lived experience (i.e., those jeans and boots are not reflective of a working life). 

While I’m not interested in defending “authenticity” in music or elsewhere, and while I have no cause to romanticize the past, I do want to spend a moment reflecting on, for lack of a better word, sincerity.  I want to reflect on this in relation to music in specific because, for my money, there is no art form that can so richly tap a wide array of emotions.  And tapping into those emotions from time to time—aurally and otherwise—is valuable for a number of reasons. I also want to reflect on it because I witnessed a performance last night that has changed my thinking somewhat and has given me hope.

Over the years, I have found it more difficult for music to open my emotional cylinders in quite the same way it did when I was young, and, honestly, I miss its therapeutic function.  Some of the reasons it no longer works are obvious: age jades.  Regardless of the buoyancy of your personality, emotions don’t tap as easily—or at least in quite the same way—when you’re middle-aged as when you’re young.  But I think it’s more than that: pleading guilty to my own case of “old man-itis,” I want to suggest that Cash is right.  It’s difficult to perform sincerity when you’re so strongly self-aware that you’re performing.

Building a Better Nashville Star

While Nashville Star is now in its sixth season, this is the first year that it has appeared on broadcast network television, appearing on Monday nights on NBC (having been on USA through the first five seasons).  For those who haven’t watched it, Nashville Star is a country music step child of American Idol (hereafter, AI)--which is sort of odd in that Carrie Underwood, one of the current darlings of pop country music, emerged on American Idol. 

While I am a fan of American Idol and a sometimes fan of pop country music, I did not watch Nashville Star until this season.  The set up is similar to AI in that the early show shortens the list of procedures from the masses down to a smaller number (12 in the case of Nashville Star) and the following weeks—all with themes—allow “America” to vote to eliminate one singer each week.  While there are a few minor differences in the format, the show is very similar to AI. 

All in all, it’s an adequate show and fairly entertaining.  While there is no one with the charisma of Simon Cowell, John Rich does a wonderful job as the sarcastic centerpiece in the judges’ chamber.  Country music newcomer, Jewel (yes, for those who haven’t been paying attention, she’s hitting the country charts now) is far more thoughtful and useful than Paula Abdul and singer-songwriter Jeffrey Steele actually gives advice beyond “That was pitchy, dog.”  The singers are hit and miss, just as on Idol, but you can find yourself getting emotionally connected to the show. 

That said, the show does have some glaring problems that, if corrected, could make for a strong rival to American Idol.  Here, then, I propose, five ways to improve Nashville Star:

Tim McGraw's Profound Sound

I was listening to my iPod the other day when--and this is one of those artists about whom I often lie about having in rotation—I heard the first few notes of Tim McGraw’s Red Ragtop.  I smiled.  I couldn’t help but smile.  I love that song. 

Let me be clear: I don’t love that song in a way that simply makes me want to shake my head along to a beat; I don’t love that song the way one loves a guilty pleasure (although I suppose there are elements of that emotion in my experience); I don’t love it the way I love hearing an artist for a minute or two in the throes of nostalgia; no, I love that song in the way one loves one of the top fifty greatest songs they’ve ever heard.

Trumpet of the Living Dead

While I have more than a passing knowledge of most of the jazz canon from the 1950s to the 1980s, I never became much of a Chet Baker fan.  While I listened to his work with Gerry Mulligan, there was something about the . . . well . . . the lyricism of much of his playing that didn’t appeal to me.  Indeed, I always had something of an unearned snotty attitude about west coast jazz.  Nonetheless, it was with some excitement that I went to see the “revival” of Let’s Get Lost, the 1988 Bruce Weber documentary.  Evidently, in anticipation of a new print going to DVD for the first time this year, the film is making its rounds at art film houses, and it arrived in Nashville just this week.

My reactions to the film were wildly different than I had expected.  I had read that the film provided a poignant portrait of Baker, counterposing images of Baker as a young James Dean with a trumpet with contemporary (1987) images of an older Baker, ragged from a lifetime overuse of speedballs and alcohol.  While some question the veracity of the film’s narrative (i.e., the film makes it seem as if Baker’s life was in complete decline while, according to some accounts, his career was on something of a late upswing in the mid 80s), the accuracy of the narrative—hell, Baker himself--was the least of my concerns as I sat in the theater shaken by the awful physical transformation one sees between the young and older versions of him.

In which I give props to Mariah Carey

I'm not a Mariah Carey fan (which is not to say that the woman lacks the pipes), so when I saw the headline that she had just passed Elvis for second-place in the all-time list of No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 (Carey has 18; the Beatles had 20) I was prepared to be annoyed. But here's what she said about it:

"I really can never put myself in the category of people who have not only revolutionized music but also changed the world. That's a completely different era and time... I'm just feeling really happy and grateful."

That's really a perfect statement in the context of the accomplishment. Elvis and the Beatles lived in a time when you could be a mass-market hit AND still drive the culture in innovative ways. No one has ever accused Carey of trying to do that, but there's something refreshing about a pop star who recognizes that she's a pop star and doesn't attempt to be pretentious about it.

To put Carey's accomplishment in context, think of it this way: Her No. 1 hits represent the most successful plurality in a massive, fractured, Long Tail audience. She is not driving the culture or innovating on the fringes: Carey is a talented, attractive vocalist and a reliable brand with broad name recognition.

Is she your favorite singer? Probably not. Do you hate her music? Probably not. Can you name three of her 18 songs? I can't. But you know who she is, she has a nice smile and sports a perfectly maintained (surgically enhanced) body that still drips youthful sexuality. And that's what it takes to get a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 these days.

The obvious question?

Who gives a shit about the Billboard Hot 100 anymore?