Saturday, January 29, 2011

Surprising Omissions

Whether it's due to their reputation/influence, their considerable record sales, their longevity or sheer prolific output, I am surprised that the following artists are not represented on any of the reputation/critic-based criteria:

Bad Religion
any Ben Folds project
Bikini Kill
Blue Oyster Cult
Bright Eyes *
Built To Spill
Charlie Parker
Cher
Crass
Daniel Johnston
Dave Matthews Band *
the Decemberists *
the Doobie Brothers
Garth Brooks
Gnarls Barkley
Heart
the Hollies
Hootie and the Blowfish
any Jad Fair project
Jandek
Joe Jackson
John Denver
John (Cougar) Mellencamp
Journey
Kenny Rogers
KMFDM
Lead Belly
any Les Claypool project, but especially Primus
Louis Armstrong
Melvins
the Misfits
Modest Mouse *
The Moody Blues
Negativland
Ozzy Osbourne (solo)
Pete Seeger
Phish
Placebo
Rancid
Rilo Kiley
Roy Orbison
the Shins *
Spoon
Sting (solo)
Stone Temple Pilots
Styx
Sublime
They Might Be Giants
Tool
Warren Zevon
Woody Guthrie *
Yo La Tengo

*these are included in the mission due to recommendations from friends and family

PS: I'm sure some of the items on this particular list give away the generation I lived in or my own personal taste in music.  coughsublimecoughnegativlandcoughrespectivelycough.  So, yeah.  We don't need to discuss that.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Hank Williams - 40 Greatest Hits


Mission Control - Entry Number 005

Artist: Hank Williams
Title: 40 Greatest Hits


Release Date: 1978 (material recorded between 1947 and 1952; all material previously released)
Length: 1 hr 47 min
Relevance: RS #129 (2003) / #94 (2005)

My Favorites:"Ramblin' Man" & "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive"

TLDR:  Redundancy equals genre-definition.  Wonderfully simple, not just plain simple.  Like rock & roll without the sex.


I wasn't wondering why Rolling Stone chose to include this Hank Williams collection over any other, but if I had been, Wikipedia has provided a good answer:
Significantly, it was the first anthology in quite some time that did not subject Williams' recordings to either rechanneled stereo, posthumous overdubs, artificial duets with family members (like his son Hank Jr.), or most or all of the above. Because of both this major fact, and ... having a deeper song selection than previous single-disc compilations ... many reviewers consider this anthology to be the perfect starting point for newcomers to Williams' recorded legacy.
And here I am; I am that newcomer.   The first point, about the integrity of this collection, makes me want to find one of the meddled-with ones, mostly out of curiosity.  How bad could they be?  That's not a dismissive hypothetical question.  I'd really be interested to see some executive meddling in action, especially to hear what new Hank Williams fans in the first 25 years after his death may have had to suffer through.

The second point, about having a greater song selection, strikes me as sort of a benefit and a drawback.  With someone who's developed as much of a reputation as Hank Williams, I'm glad to get an extensive introduction.  I will say, however, that I could probably cut the number of songs in half without greatly reducing the overall diversity.  If I wanted to be rude, I would create a list of twenty of these songs which effectively show the range of Hank's songwriting and musical ability, and put the other twenty into a list of redundant extra material.  I won't though, because I don't want to be rude.  Besides, it's not Hank's fault if huge numbers of fans want to listen to the same song under multiple names.  And anyway, how can you build such a strong foundation for a musical genre without a little redundancy, to solidify what exactly the genre is and isn't? 

But the songs, Comet, what about the actual music?  Well, let me tell you.  I liked these songs well enough upon first listen.  It sounded like the music I'd imagine at a cattle-drive or in between acts at a rodeo in the 1950s.  I remember thinking things like, "Well, that's pretty simple" and "Fun stuff, but kind of predictable."  I found myself trying to anticipate when the title of a song would be dropped or how each pair of rhyming lines would be resolved.  It's not a difficult game.  Maybe that's why Hank Williams was so influential, why he's stayed so popular, and why I went so quickly from First-Listen to Foot-Tapping-Along to Humming-When-It's-Not-Even-Playing.  Dan Levitin would say that I get a sense of satisfaction when my expectations of what will happen in the music are accurately met.
Having said that, I need to give credit for all the stuff that's happening with the music that wasn't apparent the first few times I listened.  Instead of lengthy, noodley guitar solos, Hank (I assume it's him) tends to throw in noodley bits through the whole length of the song.  I bet many of these songs would work if the vocals were wiped out; I'm sure I've heard worse instrumental compositions.

I'm excited to see where this is going.  I can tell, from 2010, that rock & roll is just around the corner.  With all due respect, I'm sort of looking forward to hearing what this would sound like if it grew some balls.  Hank doesn't seem interested in being dangerous, or in appealing more to youth than adults.  That's probably fine, because baby boomers haven't gotten close to hitting double-digit ages yet.  (Elvis hit it big in 1956, when the earliest baby boomers were turning ten, so the puberty/record sales connection probably doesn't really count.  I'm sure someone's already written about this.)  Listening to Hank Williams, and guessing as to how his sound developed in response to fan feedback, I can almost hear that he's trying to whip the audience into a frenzy, but he's much too nice to use sex to do it.  Well, that will change in a few years.

Here's where I repeat myself about not listening to the ten hour Hank Williams collection yet.  Ten hours, for God's sake.  I'm thinking it will need to be done in some sort of stream-of-consciousness, one-listen, blog-as-I-go type event, because I'm certainly not going to agonize over the listening for that item like I've been doing so far. 

Up Next: The Jimi Hendrix of the Harmonica