Flex & Wolt's Thread of Truckliness

[matedog]

I'm going to claim that Maggies Farm is a country song. It's about a farm after all.

I thought it was Nu Metal?

[Flex]

As someone representing a nation between the UK and US, I feel qualified to arbitrate. And I rule in favour of the Limeys on this one.

Greil Marcus, in discussing the recording of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, relays that someone at the studio (can't remember who and I can't be bothered to find it, but it was a decent industry name) heard Dylan recording and said he should be recording down in Nashville. Then Dylan did a run through of Oxford Town and everyone decided there's no way Dylan could record in Nashville.

So, there's something there.

And it's only a few years later that he does record Nashville Skyline. How much of a stretch you want to accept those three or four years, given his stylistic output in between, that's something else.

I think two events got him in the Nashville door: 1) not recording songs explicitly about the south's racial segregation and violence anymore, 2) the development of country rock (which he was, in fact, a part of creating) opener the door for an electrified Dylan to go cut songs with a great who's who of Nashville session guys. I mean, maybe Dylan could do what he wanted anyways but I think the landscape by '69 for making country-rock records was pretty different than trying to do a "woke" folk record in Nashville circa '62.

It's always reflexive to treat Dylan as distinct from everything else going on, or as leading the way by a year or two, but, yeah, the environment, musical and cultural, was more encouraging by 1969 for a country-rock hybrid. But at the same time, it was a way of fucking with his fans who just wanted more of what they'd already heard and loved. Even if I can't say I'm a fan of his aesthetic (I don't hate it, either, mind you), I love his resistance to fan expectation.

Something he continues to this day by playing shows of mostly new stuff with some older, deeper cuts in totally different arrangements. Gotta love it.

Regarding country's welcoming of weird rockers, this may be apocryphal but my understanding is that country stations used to put out warnings to their DJs not to play the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) on air because it wasn't a "real" country record. Both unbelievable and yet extremely believable.

[Dr. Medulla]

Regarding country's welcoming of weird rockers, this may be apocryphal but my understanding is that country stations used to put out warnings to their DJs not to play the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) on air because it wasn't a "real" country record. Both unbelievable and yet extremely believable.

I think that's entirely plausible given the kind of cultural/political divide in the US at the time, with rock seen as countercultural and country increasingly acquiring its own political identity as conservative, even reactionary (e.g., Merle Haggard). So separation of musical styles could be understood as part of the tribalism of audiences over stuff much huger than the aesthetics.

[Silent Majority]

I'm going to claim that Maggies Farm is a country song. It's about a farm after all.

I thought it was Nu Metal?

Rage might sound nu metal, but they're too good for me to mentally file them as such.

[matedog]

I'm going to claim that Maggies Farm is a country song. It's about a farm after all.

I thought it was Nu Metal?

Rage might sound nu metal, but they're too good for me to mentally file them as such.

Yeah, I threw that out there for effect. This cover is alright, but I do really really enjoy their Joad cover on that album.

[Flex]

I'm going to claim that Maggies Farm is a country song. It's about a farm after all.

I thought it was Nu Metal?

Rage might sound nu metal, but they're too good for me to mentally file them as such.

Yeah, I threw that out there for effect. This cover is alright, but I do really really enjoy their Joad cover on that album.

Yeah, the joad cover rules. Some real good uns on that one (although beautiful world does not really work iirc)

[Dr. Medulla]

[Flex]

That man should be president

[Dr. Medulla]

That man should be president

So you're a Chris Christie feller?

[WestwayKid]

Greil Marcus, in discussing the recording of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, relays that someone at the studio (can't remember who and I can't be bothered to find it, but it was a decent industry name) heard Dylan recording and said he should be recording down in Nashville. Then Dylan did a run through of Oxford Town and everyone decided there's no way Dylan could record in Nashville.

So, there's something there.

And it's only a few years later that he does record Nashville Skyline. How much of a stretch you want to accept those three or four years, given his stylistic output in between, that's something else.

I think two events got him in the Nashville door: 1) not recording songs explicitly about the south's racial segregation and violence anymore, 2) the development of country rock (which he was, in fact, a part of creating) opener the door for an electrified Dylan to go cut songs with a great who's who of Nashville session guys. I mean, maybe Dylan could do what he wanted anyways but I think the landscape by '69 for making country-rock records was pretty different than trying to do a "woke" folk record in Nashville circa '62.

It's always reflexive to treat Dylan as distinct from everything else going on, or as leading the way by a year or two, but, yeah, the environment, musical and cultural, was more encouraging by 1969 for a country-rock hybrid. But at the same time, it was a way of fucking with his fans who just wanted more of what they'd already heard and loved. Even if I can't say I'm a fan of his aesthetic (I don't hate it, either, mind you), I love his resistance to fan expectation.

Something he continues to this day by playing shows of mostly new stuff with some older, deeper cuts in totally different arrangements. Gotta love it.

Regarding country's welcoming of weird rockers, this may be apocryphal but my understanding is that country stations used to put out warnings to their DJs not to play the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) on air because it wasn't a "real" country record. Both unbelievable and yet extremely believable.

There was a whole thing between the Byrds and influential country DJ Ralph Emery. He apparently refused to play the first single off Sweetheart, which was a Dylan cover (You Ain't Goin' Nowhere). A few weeks later, Roger McGuinn and Gram Parsons wrote the song Drug Store Truck Driving Man to diss Emery. Their appearance on the Opry was also controversial. By most accounts, they took it seriously, even cutting their hair and dressing down, but then Parsons torpedoed the whole thing by deciding at the last minute that they were going to perform Hickory Wind instead of Merle Haggard's Sing Me Back Home - which is what they were supposed to perform.

[Dr. Medulla]

[Flex]

[Dr. Medulla]

I withdraw my comment.

[Flex]

Fuck. Yes: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0b8lKmO ... NmMzNhYWxm

[Dr. Medulla]

Fuck. Yes: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0b8lKmO ... NmMzNhYWxm

If a nuclear explosion happened at the end, you could just show that to an American history class and say, there, that's everything.