YouTube Gem - Justin Townes Earle

Off his current album, Midnight at the Movies, here's Justin Townes Earle with his cover of The Replacements' "Can't Hardly Wait"

Best of 2009 So Far: Expanded Edition

I usually don't rank everything I've heard for these personal charts, but I thought I'd do so this time around... even including a mainstream country rankings after the main chart.

1. Ben Nichols - The Last Pale Light in the West
2. Justin Townes Earle - Midnight at the Movies
3. The Gourds - Haymaker!
4. Phosphorescent - To Willie
5. Great Lake Swimmers - Lost Channels
6. Mastodon - Crack the Skye
7. Steve Earle - Townes
8. Slaid Cleaves - Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away
9. The Deep Dark Woods - Winter Hours
10. Scott Miller - For Crying Out Loud
11. Eric Church - Carolina
12. Strand of Oaks - Leave Ruin
13. Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit - s/t
14. The Last Vegas - Whatever Gets You Off
15. The Felice Brothers - Yonder is the Clock
16. The Hold Steady - A Positive Rage
17. Silversun Pickups - Swoon
18. Incredibad - The Lonely Island
19. U2 - No Line on the Horizon
20. Terry Anderson & The Olympic Ass Kickin' Team - National Champions
21. Doug Burr - The Shawl
22. M.Ward - Hold Time
23. Mark Olson and Gary Louris - Ready for the Flood
24. The Derek Trucks Band - Already Free
25. Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
26. Bruce Springsteen - Waiting on a Dream
27. The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love
28. Husband and Wife - Dark Dark Woods
29. Chris Isaak - Mr. Lucky

Ranking the Mainstream:
1. Eric Church - Carolina
2. Adam Gregory - Crazy Days
3. Rodney Atkins - It's America
4. Keith Urban - Defying Gravity
5. Rascal Flatts - Unstoppable

Fun With Charts & Graphs Doubleshot

Click pics for a closer view.

.99 Review - Jack Ingram

Jack Ingram - Barefoot & Crazy

The People's Take

I LIKE IT!!
What a great summer song! This is going to sound great on the CD player on those hot summer days at the beach or just cruising around. Oh yeah.....bring on the heat baby!! I could listen to music like this all day.
by Chesneyfan

(most reviews are just like this...)

My Take:
I'm not ready to throw Jack under the same "sellout" bus as Pat Green just yet, but this song isn't heartening. I don't toss the term "sellout" around lightly (except in jest and on Photocrapped album covers) but it becomes a valid edict when an artist veers so far off their original course just for the sake of commerce (obviously a subjective deduction, but whatever) that you can't hear what drew you to them in the first place. Jack's not there yet. He's still got some stones, as evidenced on his non-single album tracks, at least. I won't defend him like his buddy Todd Snider does though, and this song might even make it hard for Mr. Snider to keep having his back. "Barefoot & Crazy" is a big, dumb celebration of summer anthem. Okay with me if it didn't have the word "barefoot" in the title (my wife's mild foot phobia has uh, rubbed off on me) and if it didn't contain the "cliche-even-for-cliches" rhyme "baby" and "crazy." And if it followed even one new road, melodically or musically or lyrically. It doesn't. It's mindless entertainment for people enjoying exactly what the song describes or wishing they could. Wait, no. That's painting with too broad a brush, 'cause I wish I was experiencing what the song describes at this very moment, but if this song had to be the soundtrack, I might reconsider. Put it this way, the only parts of this song I like are the lyrics "my heart was skipping like a stone" and the reference to "Fishing in the Dark." That's it. With enough Miller Lite (yuck), you won't care though. Crank it up if you must. There are worse songs. There aren't many that are more by-the-numbers though.

Total value: .41/.99

The Checklist
Church/God

Mama

Boots

Name Dropping

Dying Person

County Fair

Lost Love

Love

Hometown Pride

Kindly Advice

Truck

Whiskey

Beer

Life Affirmation

USA

Soldiers

Pop Sheen

Star Power

Tim McGraw / Eddie Rabbit Parody

Prescriptions
(Parody of Tim McGraw/Eddie Rabbit's "Suspicions")

I'm so sad that I wed this lady
Was so drunk when she made me her groom
Almost went crazy when she came into view
Stopped by the doc before the honeymoon

[Chorus]
And I got these prescriptions
That's just so I know I can love my baby
Won't be feeling like some wilted clay
Ooh prescriptions
It don't help that she's just so bad lookin'
I have to take these little blue pills seven days a week

When we go out to bowl a game or two
She always turns every stomach in the room
I know she's not on any guy's mind
I fight back nausea, but it gets me sometimes

[Chorus]

Ooh, prescriptions

When I'm with her a part of me has died
Way she touches me, I want to run and hide
The way I get hives when we make love
Takes me more and more meds to keep this up

[Chorus]

Prescriptions
That's just so I know I can love my baby
Won't be feeling like some wilted clay
Ooh prescriptions
It don't help that she's just so bad lookin'
I have to take these little blue pills seven days a week
Prescriptions
Please save me, I'm dyin'

Yeah Cialis
And Viagra

Hope I can anull this thing
Pray somebody's gonna take my girl from me

John Rich's Songwriting Tips #5

Go out and live a little before you start writing. You gotta have a well of experience to pull the bucket up from. You know, kiss a few... hundred... young girls. Burn a few dozen bridges. Make some embarrassing comments on television and radio. Bust a few bottles over sumbitches' teeth. Humiliate and assault people who seek your attention. Alienate friends, associates and those living unnatural lifestyles. Then come back to your pen and paper and tell your story. STDs push MP3s, baby.

Not actually written by John Rich

Josh Turner's Bus Rules

An anonymous source produced this surprisingly strict list of rules for those musicians lucky enough to grace Josh Turner's tour bus...

Fun With Charts & Graphs

Click for a closer view.

Honest Album Covers Country Day - April: XL Edition

Friday is....

Come back Friday for "honest album covers" from Colt Ford, Dolly Parton, Toby Keith, Doug Stone and more!! 18+ new covers...

The Essential Rascal Flatts

If iTunes were honest....



Click for a closer view.

____Deserves a Sackpunch

Soulja Boy Tell 'Em

Tell 'em what? I'll tell 'em. This guy gives our mutual home state a bad name, okay a worser name (blame the MS education system on that bad grammurr). The fact that this dude with the paint pen decorated cheap sunglasses is a millionaire is frequently cited as proof of the death of hip-hop and a particularly harrowing sign of the apocalypse. I wouldn't go that far but... well actually, that sounds about right. War, Famine, Pestilence, Soulja Boy... This horseman of the end times boasts a quiver full of soul destroying weapons including pedestrian, nay, stupid rhymes, simple beats and pornographic terminology hidden behind silly slang phrases. Some of his stuff is so inane it sounds made up on the spot during a drunken ramble, but a lot of Soulja Boy's slang is actually not as fabricated as it sounds. Many of the words can be found on urbandictionary.com, and their definitions might just make you blush. His most popular song is a dance tune that includes a section about, and I'm serious, a man, ummmm, releasing seminal fluids onto a woman's back and throwing a sheet onto it, thus having it stick, resembling a cape... thus, the "superman" dance (in "Crank That"). Yeah, really. And he's peddling this stuff to your kids, or your niece, or that nice young man that delivers your morning paper into the birdbath. Almost as bad, Mr. Tell 'Em is peddling mediocrity, hell, slackerism as the pinnacle of pop culture. Soulja Boy's rap is a mumbling, barely coherent delivery, or as we in the know like to call it, flow... yet, his songs routinely lodge in iTunes top ten singles for weeks on end. I remember cranking "All Eyez on Me" in college and my roommate saying Tupac was a talentless thug. Well if that roommate were to flip the radio to the pop or urban station and run across SB's "Love Me Through the Phone," he'd suddenly feel very warm and sentimental for the days when Pac still ruled the charts and breathed air. Say I'm too old to get SB, that's probably a somewhat fair assumption... but even many young rap critics agree that Soulja Boy is a hack and that the current mainstream hip-hop scene is, by and large, soulless and pathetic...a parody of itself. Hmmm, reminds me of another genre. SB is symbolic of the genre's demise. Downloading isn't what's hurting rap sales; it's garbage sold as gold. A turd's a turd no matter how nicely you package it. Time to flush Soulja Boy. Or at least deliver him a violent sack punch.

Update: After writing this, I read that Soulja Boy said he was sorry for using vulgar language and that he would try to be more of a role model. Good for him, but for past wrongs and current bad artistry, the sack punch is still in order.

Fun With Charts & Graphs: Taylor Swift

News, Notes and 2 Youtube Gems

• Wednesday and Thursday were the two largest hit-days in Photocrap or Farce the Music's 8 month history. Thanks to you for the visits and to the 9513 for the links! As thanks, my next country honest album cover day - possibly next Friday - will be an extra large set.

• Farewell to Nashville Narc! I'm not a huge gossip follower, but Narc provided a lot of great country news and commentary too. And a lot of inspiration for my blog posts!

• Happy Easter to those of us and you who celebrate it!


And on a more somber note, a Steve Earle classic:


And on a funnier note:

Rockin' Friday Honest Album Covers

Fun With Charts & Graphs

Click for a closer view.

Rascal Flatts' Influences: The Real Story

You may have seen the iTunes fallacy about Rascal Flatts' musical influences over at at the bottom of Quotable Country at Country California (if not, check it out first). We all know that to be a joke. Here's the truth...

Click for a closer view.

New Release Honest Album Cover

Mellencamp Parody

This is a parody I wrote a while back of John Mellencamp's minor country hit and ever-annoying Chevy pitch song "Our Country." It is also entitled "Our Country."

Our Country (Ode to Clearchannel)

We can stand beside

Playlists that we write

Cause we play classic tunes

Each Friday at midnight

And you should believe

We know what's right for everyone

This is our country

From the FM

to the AM

We own every station in town

This is our country

There's room enough here

For just thirty songs

And there's room enough here

To play them all day long

New artists understand

A little payola doesn't hurt

This is our country

From the left side

to the right side

We're nearly every stop on the dial

This is our country

Competition would be

Just another ugly thing

And variety should be

Seen only as obscene

Cause the ones that love our brand

Are just the dumb and common man

This is our country

From the FM

to the AM

We own every station in town

This is our country

The young songwriter's dream

Ain't never gonna come true

Cause it's up to us and we

To make sure there's not enough room

To hell with the voice of freedom

We own all of this land

This is our country

Watch your step son

Watch your mouth girl

Or like those "Chicks" you'll be gone

This is our country

John Rich's Songwriting Tips #4

A question from email: Jason D. in North Carolina asks "What's the best way to deal with rejection when pitching songs?" Well, Jason that's a pretty good question I guess. Rejection is well... naw you didn't, man, you've got a big ol' swinging ballsack assuming I've ever been rejected. Every damn song I've ever written or co-written has not only been cut, but gone to number one on all the benchmark charts. Why in the f*** did you ask me that? What's your cell number? You son of a b*tch. Do you know who I am? I've never been rejected as far as you know. I can't believe this. Ike or Bas will be in contact. -JR


Not actually written by John Rich.