I'm too interested in today's cricket match (England 35-0 chasing an unlikely 500 to win as we go to press) to listen all the way through this double-album compilation, though I've heard about 80% of it.
It was compiled to accompany a series of gigs centred on the Barbican in 2001, though I didn't buy it until three years later, when it was a fiver or less at Fopp.
It's a very mixed bag, I think. Perhaps that's to illustrate the 'argument' that country music has spread into a diaspora of different styles. But I find the quality of the contemporary pieces on the collection pretty patchy. And the contemporary disc misses out the Garth Brookses and Kenny Chesneys of modern country music. My cynical guess as to the reasons for this is that the exercise is mainly an attempt to develop the audience for country music in metropolitan areas and the green belt of England rather than the rust belt and bible belt of the States.
Hence the inclusion of Gram Parsons — easy on the eye and clearly not a redneck. But Gram Parsons needs Merle Haggard like tails need heads. Merle is included on the first disc, but his contemporaries are not on the more one-sided second disc.
Also I find the sleeve notes too hyperventilating. "If this stagger through the desert doesn't represent the ultra-miserabilist tendency in Country, lying out in the hot sand, stripped down, waiting for the buzzards, you can call me the Lone Ranger." Don't hold your breath waiting for my call, Lone.
Evidently the people who compiled this collection do regular trade in such tie-in releases. On this experience, I prefer the compilations by Ace and Proper.
Nerd note: this album has at least one track from every decade from the 1930s to the 2000s. So far that is a record on Music Arcades.
![]() disc 2 |
Comments