More Country
 "Stupid Boy"
Keith Urban
My two best friends in college were from Kansas. Although they didn’t know each other until they arrived at Middlebury. And they were oh-so-different. John was a single child, a product of public school, who always did his best to fit in. Whereas Steve was the man in the middle, an iconoclast, private school educated, yet anything but uppity.
Every summer I used to go to K.C. to visit them.
I stayed at John’s house, but Steve would come over, in his MG Midget. We’d sit in the driveway, under the vast Midwestern sky, and listen to 8-tracks, like "Sticky Fingers".
On the radio you hear "Brown Sugar", and "Bitch". But the key tracks on that album are more subtle. My favorites are the dreamy "Sister Morphine" and its only slightly more upbeat follow-up, "Moonlight Mile". Today the Stones are seen as a party band, but back then, they were a thinking man’s act. Doubt me? Listen to the third side of "Exile On Main Street".
We weren’t talking, "Moonlight Mile" was playing out of the deck between the seats. Nothing was being said. This was the seventies.
I was hiking listening to country music on my iPod.
First I played all of Bruce Hornsby’s "Spirit Trail". A double album worth the discs. But then, I dialed up my country playlist, populated with recommendations by those who weighed in after I’d written about my newfound fascination with country music.
And I liked the references to Milwaukee and Lynchburg in Brad Paisley’s "Alcohol", but the music was too pedestrian. And I had to look at the device to find out that George Strait was singing this song about giving it away. And when I was close to my car, stepping over the stones, thinking about what I had to do as the day wore on, a song started playing that was closer to rock than country. It had the acoustic guitar of the "Desperado" album, but with the feel of those quiet Stones tracks. I fell into a groove.
Well, she was precious like a flower
She grew wild, wild but innocent
A perfect prayer in a desperate hour
She was everything beautiful and different
Modern country is about the lyrics, the story. But this first verse is generic, like a rock song, wherein the music makes the difference, where the lyrics are secondary.
But THEN!
Stupid boy, you can’t fence that in
Stupid boy, it’s like holding back the wind
She laid her heart and soul right in your hands
And you stole her every dream and you crushed her plans
She never even knew she had a choice and that’s what happens
When the only voice she hears is telling her she can’t
Stupid boy, stupid boy
Okay, another country lament, a hangdog guy beating himself up, feeling the pain of his loss. Only not. Well maybe, but MORE!
What do you do when they give you everything and it’s not enough? You want them to look like the girls online. You want them to suck your dick like in a porn movie. You want them to be some fantasy. But they’re not. Can you accept who they really are?
But this story is worse. This wasn’t a completely selfless woman. She had life, she had vitality. But he was controlling, he had to be the focus. Now she’s gone.
You’ve got to let them be them, or it’s never going to work. You’re lucky when you find someone whose life consists of more than you, but still considers you paramount. Why couldn’t you see this, why couldn’t you see how great she was? STUPID BOY!
And you’ve got a country rock groove. With the intimacy of all those albums that used to come sleeved in cardboard. And maybe since Keith Urban is from Australia, there’s little twang. Just that sound you loved so much, but with a twist. It’s new.
So what made you think you could take a life
And just push it, push it around
I guess you build yourself up so high
You had to take her and break her down
And now the drums have kicked in. And by the end of this verse, the guitars are starting to WAIL! And he’s singing the "push" part like Rob Thomas in Matchbox Twenty’s biggest and best hit. But the boy’s doing the pushing here. He’s oblivious. As men are. He needs to be the center of the universe. Otherwise, he’ll crack. That’s what women know, how vulnerable men are. But what about her?
It took a while for her to figure out she could run
But when she did she was long gone, long gone
We’re past the peak, the record’s almost four minutes in. This is the end.
But it’s not. After a hesitation, a pregnant quietude, the acoustic guitar comes back in. And then a slide. Wistfully expressing the man’s state of mind. Yes, after you think the record is over, it becomes TRANSCENDENT! It’s like the end of "Moonlight Mile".
Then the guitar accelerates, expressing hope, that she’ll come back.
But they never do.
Nobody’s ever gonna love me like she loved me
And she loved me, she loved me
God please, just let her know
I’m sorry, I’m sorry
I’m sorry, I’m sorry
Baby, yeah, I’m down on my knees
She’s never coming back to me
The full six minute plus tour-de-force is on Keith’s MySpace page. The fidelity won’t be as good as a CD, even an iTunes AAC, but you’ll feel it. If you hang in there, until the end.
"Give It Away"
George Strait
She was stormin’ through the house that day
An’ I could tell she was leavin’
An’ I thought: ‘Aw, she’ll be back’
Till she turned around an’ pointed at the wall and said:
If my fingers had been a bit more nimble, if I’d been able to locate my Nano in my pocket, I would have fast-forwarded and never heard this track.
But hanging in there long enough to hear what the woman said, I CRACKED UP!
That picture from our honeymoon
That night in Frisco Bay
Just give it away’
She said: ‘Give it away’
‘An’ that big four poster king-size bed
Where so much love was made
Just give it away’
She said: ‘Just give it away’
This is a portrait of a marriage. There’s the honeymoon, and the marriage bed. You build a home, a life…and then it falls apart.
And George Strait is singing these lyrics laconically, like he’s riding a horse. This ain’t modern country, this is more akin to Roger Miller and "King Of The Road". And if there were still Top Forty like back in the day, this would be a hit that EVERYBODY would know, because "Give It Away" wouldn’t be confined to the country ghetto, it would be a TOP TEN HIT!
When that front door swung wide open
She flung her diamond ring
Said: ‘Give it away
Just give it away’
An’ I said: Now, honey, don’t you even want
Your half of everything’
She said: ‘Give it away
Just give it away’
It’s the way George sings these lines that cracks you up. Like he’s reciting the phone book. Sans emotion. Like it just happened to him, like he had no involvement. Even though it was probably his LACK of emotion that drove her out the door!
So I tried to move on
But I found that each woman I held
Just reminded me of that day
Hmmm
He’s GUN-SHY! He loved and lost and he doesn’t want to AGAIN!
Ain’t that the human condition. Divorce is so rough, so hard to recover from. Oh, the media will tell you it’s no big deal, but if you’ve been through it, you know otherwise. Divorce destroys lives. Love lives in any event. It extinguishes hopes and dreams.
But then the song slows down, the music breaks down, George stops the horse in its tracks, and sings:
I’ve got a furnished house, a diamond ring
An’ a lonely broken heart
Full of love
An’ I can’t even give it away
He’s HURT! And you can’t blame the dame for leaving, he’s such a lug. But he WANTS love, he wants companionship. How come he can’t achieve his dream?
You might think "Give It Away" is just dumb, but it’s a MASTERPIECE!
"Gunpowder & Lead"
Miranda Lambert
The intro, after the snore that sounds like a motorcycle, has got that Patrick Simmons picking, you know, from those Doobie Brothers records you loved, the album cuts from "Toulouse Street", "The Captain And Me" and "What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits".
But this chick, she’s got a twang…
County Road 233 under my feet_
Nothin’ on this white rock but little ol’ me
I got two miles ’til he makes bail
And if I’m right we’re headed straight for hell
Oh, don’t you love the ATTITUDE! Like a small southern girl in one of those AIP drive-in flicks. We’ve got a story song here, but we’re not prepared for what comes NEXT!
I’m goin’ home, gonna load my shotgun
Wait by the door and light a cigarette_
He wants a fight well now he’s got one_
He ain’t seen me crazy yet_
Slapped my face and he shook me like a rag doll_
Don’t that sound like a real man_
I’m gonna show him what a little girl’s made of_
Gunpowder and lead
Miranda Lambert is belting like Joan Jett with a hand in her coochie. She’s PISSED! She don’t care WHO hears her!
This ain’t no Ivy League story, this is all whiskey and emotions. We’re FASCINATED!
God, this chorus is better than the COMPLETELY phony Aerosmith comeback "Rag Doll".
The track quiets down, back to the acoustic guitar and drums. But when they hit the chorus again, the track positively WAILS!
This is DRIVING MUSIC!
They say the track is "Famous In A Small Town", but you want the album cut, you want "Gunpowder & Lead".
"The One In The Middle"
Sarah Johns
I would’ve given you the finger on my left hand
The one that you use for a wedding band
And now I’m givin’ you
The one in the middle
The one that’s a little bit longer
And I got another one
On my other hand
So I can say it even stronger
If you’re askin’ if I’m done
Well, I’m sure not sayin’ you’re number one
That’s all you really need to know.
You’re driving in your car, zoned out, watching the traffic, and suddenly you find yourself STARING AT THE RADIO!
Is she really saying that?
More danger here, in this semi-contrived, generic record, than in all those acts still on MTV.
"Hate It Here"
Wilco
I try to stay busy
I do the dishes, I mow the lawn
I try to keep myself occupied
Even though I know you’re not coming home
Not that Jeff Tweedy believes this. He’s becoming a better man, doing all the chores he never even contemplated when she was still around. So he’ll be more appealing when she’s back. But she’s not coming back.
It’s the wailing guitar that makes this. It’s almost a play on a country song. But it’s country enough for Sirius’ Outlaw Country station. I like this better than anything on "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot".
"Everybody Knows"
Ryan Adams
They’re pushing "Two", but this is better. You can see it on Amazon.com:
I understand this music. This is rock and roll. This is a direct descendant of what came before, in the seventies. But without the focus on perfection, with the grit that the Eagles gained with Joe Walsh that truly made the band iconic, it possesses a roughness that appeals.
Is this a hit?
No.
But it’s got great FEEL! Remember when you put on an album and just luxuriated in the sound, bathed in it, played the record over and over as you puttered around the house, did your chores? "Everybody Knows" is a cut from one of those albums. The kind you nod your head to and FEEL GOOD!
