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"Back in 1933 / Livin' in the dust was killin' me."
--Woody Guthrie, "End of the Line"
When was the last time a song made the hair on your arm
stand up? Has any track on mainstream radio sent chills
rattling down your backbone or made the blood hum in your
head with excitement lately? In your cruises through the
thin stream of plastic newness that fills pop's main channel,
have you found any music worth living or dying for?
Thought not. I know how it is. Kid Rock's on the
cover of Spin, and things do not look good. Lately,
though, I've stumbled on some cleansing oases in the prevailing
desert climes. Three newly issued archival treasure troves
collect pure American sounds--some laid down in the studio,
others born and bloodied in the fields and streets. These
retrospectives provide a bracing draught of the essence
of the national soul, raw and uncut.
Woody Guthrie: The Asch Recordings Vol. 1-4 (Smithsonian
Folkways) gathers four expansive discs documenting the rail-thin
Oklahoma spectre's untouchable cache of protest anthems,
grimy folk ballads, soaring hymns and sweaty work songs.
This compact box set, beautifully designed and weighing
in at an intimidating 105 songs, is a tight fistful of genius.
This swath of Guthrie's work was recorded by Moses Asch,
the Poland-born sound addict who founded Folkways. In the
'30s and '40s, as Guthrie's raspy, high Okie voice and rattle-trap
guitar powered through tales of Dustbowl desperation, socialist
agitation and outlaw living, Asch's recordings charted the
troubadour's clear-eyed hajj through times of vast corruption
and jolting change. Six decades later, through the ample
old-school tape hiss, this honest hick's rough-hewn prophesies
still pack an astringent sting.
Living Country Blues: An Anthology (Evidence
Records) unites 60 of the hundreds of songs recorded by
two peripatetic German blues enthusiasts in the early '80s.
At a time when interest in authentic down-country music
of all sorts was lost in the Greed Decade's hedonistic haze,
Axel Küstner and Siegfried Christmann lived the archetypal
music dork's dream, wandering the backroads of the South
taping unknown country blues musicians. Forget slick urban
blues and banish Clapton-esque pablum from your mind: Living
Country Blues contains nothing but the truth and the
dirt it came from.
Split into three discs focusing on the Mississippi Delta,
southeastern coastlands and Tennessee and Arkansas respectively,
the anthology captures ragged, propulsive blues, fugitive
fife and drum bands playing the same music Washington's
army marched to, barrelhouse singing and field calls. Chilling
and redemptive by turns, the collection is worth buying
just for the spectacularly dirty lyrics of the very first
track, Son Thomas' surreal erotic ode "Catfish Blues":
"If I was a catfish and your belly was a pond / I'd dive
to the bottom and make myself at home." I'd serve up more,
but the Underemployed Righteous Citizens Brigade would surely
raise Cain over the defilement of public decency.
On a much smoother tip, Legacy Records has reissued a collection
of monumental country albums from the '60s and '70s. The
American Heritage series includes stoner hick
icon Willie Nelson's sweet pop record Stardust,
the lovely Tammy Wynette's signature Stand
by Your Man, eternal badass Merle Haggard's less-mean-than-usual
Big City and pill-popping Marty Robbins'
jukebox classic Gunfighter Ballads and Trail
Songs. For my money, though, the highlight of the exceptional
gang of remastered discs--most of which include unreleased
material--is Johnny Cash's blood-freezing Live
at Folsom Prison. Locked in a room with a few hundred
of California's hardest sociopaths and ne'er-do-wells, the
Man in Black translates the room's nervy tension into a
full-on country inferno. Was it stunt? Maybe, but I'd like
to see some of the self-professed tough guys of today's
pop world pull it off.
These three box sets prove there's some truth in the old
cliché: In some ways, they don't make 'em like they
used to.
Golden
Tidbits:
Meanwhile, here in 1999, life goes on...The much-prophesied
demise of the all-ages techno club Womb came to pass
early last week when the locks were changed on a short,
barely noticed era. Negotiations on the future of the Venue
Formerly Known As LaLuna continue, with nothing on
the record yet...On-again, off-again Southeast Pine Street
club Station 315 may soon reopen under new management...The
titanic North by Northwest Music Festival, slated
to turn PDX into a rock-and-roll Babylon between Sept. 30
and Oct. 2, still needs volunteers. Call 226-2150...Who's
playing NXNW? Funny you should ask. WW's official
program for the festival is in this very issue...Although
Kool Keith's show at the Crystal Ballroom
last Friday was, as the proverb goes, off the hook, some
fans who witnessed the self-proclaimed Black Elvis' early-evening
performance at Music Millennium were sorely disappointed.
At the record store, Keith promised a guest-list slot to
anyone who bought one of his CDs, even taking the trouble
to record their names on a large piece of cardboard. The
mercurial hip-hop auteur's list was not honored at the Crystal
door...On a personal note, I received angry e-mail from
an actual member of Superchunk this week! And so
the battle continues...
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Willamette Week | originally
published September 22,
1999
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