16 Days

Worst concert ever - When I was younger, I saw George Strait play at Texas Stadium. I thought it was awful. Skoal rings in jeans, and standing on a vinyl pad in pools of Miller Lite. The lyrics sounded like country mad-libs: fill in the blank heartache!

That kind of country - that Alan Jackson, Toby Keith fightin' them terrorists style country, where the song writers are far from the musician, sitting in a blank room somewhere in the Warner Brothers Corporate Lab, pulling the tabs off their coke, trying to calculate a Billboard top 100 hit - is not good.

The funny thing is, everybody laughs at country music. Because it's bad. Terrible.

A recent album that really blew me away was To Willie, by Phosphorescent. It has that smell and feel of an Austin bar or a Wyoming blue sky feel. Yes, everyone sings about smoking and drinking and never thinking - but there is a way GOOD country music does it that makes you feel like nightswimming.

Anyway, to me there's not much better stuff out there, so I thought I post a few songs that get me.

Stranger's Almanac (the awesome special edition) and Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo.
16 Days - Whiskeytown
We've Been Had - Uncle Tupelo