By Don Jacobson

This time in Don’s Root Cellar, does anybody really know what “alternative country” is? And does it matter? Also, Nick Lowe croons again and we finally find a pro athlete whose musical taste doesn’t suck.
1. What is “alternative country?”
The thing about it is, even though it’s what I listen to most nowadays, I really can’t answer that question. I just kind of know it when I hear it. The term encompasses so much diversity – much more than what would be reasonably included in, say, the terms “grunge” or “brit pop” or “garage rock” – that fans and music writers have been spilling blood over the question for quite some time now. I mean, when a “genre” can encompass everything from the austere, traditional acoustic laments of Freakwater to the Skynyrd-esque rawk of Drive-By Truckers, is “alt country” really a definable genre at all?
The “no” side has a lot of takers, and I’m one of them. They rightly say that rather than being a “something,” alt country is really more about not being something – that something being corporate Nashville dreck. So, ultimately, I think, “alt-country” isn’t a particular style of music so much as it is an attitude. I’d say that attitude predominantly consists of a rejection of the right-wing politics and phony TV preacher kind of sheen that Nashville has been reveling in ever since Reagan was king – along with a simultaneous embrace of real American values that have been all but lost, such as honesty, social justice and, yeah, even religion – but the old-fashioned kind that preaches love thy neighbor.

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Posted on March 29, 2007

When the news broke a couple weeks ago that Boston lead singer Brad Delp had committed suicide, I suggested to the Beachwood Elders that a look back at the band’s monster debut album might be in store. Our fabulous TV writer Scott Buckner answered the call, but his antipathy toward the record surprised me. I think it’s a classic. Here’s Buckner’s take followed by my own. If you’d like to weigh in yourself, use this contact form and we’ll publish the responses.
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Like 16 million everyone elses and their ugly cousin, I bought Boston when it came out in September 1976, when I was starting my junior year in high school. We just thought it was an incredibly great album on so many levels, and it ended up breaking new ground that few other bands – or albums — manage to accomplish.
With the help of FM radio, the album accomplished something else incredibly amazing, even before the end of its two-year run on the charts: It managed to cause a major portion of us 16 million to become so sick of hearing it that we basically ignored anything else the band put out afterward. Putting out two other albums that sounded the same as the first one we were already sick of didn’t help, but still. This is why, along with anything by Elvis Presley and The Beach Boys, there are three individual songs I can identify in two notes that will have me bolting for the radio exit door: “The House of the Rising Sun,” “Stairway to Heaven,” and Boston’s “More Than A Feeling.”

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Posted on March 27, 2007

By Matt Cook and John Dorr

Every Monday at noon, Matt Cook and John Dorr host Trucker Caps and Cowboy Hats on WIIT from the Illinois Institute of Technology on Chicago’s South Side. You can listen in at 88.9 on the FM dial or stream it here. Each week they concoct some sort of theme to hang the show on, and this is what they’ve been listening to this week in support of their hand-picked motif.
It is the middle of March in the Midwest of the United States. It snowed all winter long in Chicago and it’s worse elsewhere. We had 10 days in a row of single-digit temps and we see the sun only for a few minutes per day every third day or so. It really can bring a man down.
So what do we do to get us through the long days and longer winter? We drink, of course. But we also turn to music. This time, a playlist of songs that feature the sun, which we almost remember, mainly via pictures.
1. Ray Charles, “That Lucky Old Sun.” From the seminal Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, “That Lucky Old Sun” starts us off with some fine imagery. Ah, the joy of simply lazing away the day on a bed of clouds, as opposed to de-icing frozen car locks. Written by Haven Gillespie and Harry Beasley Smith.

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Posted on March 23, 2007

By Don Jacobson

As regular readers of Chicago In Song know, my journey down the byways of the city’s references in popular music has borne some bitter fruit. Initially hoping there would be some kind of diversity in its portrayal, what I’ve discovered is that Chicago holds a fairly uniform place in the imaginations of the nation’s songwriters. The fact the city usually represents everything that’s wrong with the world hasn’t changed too much along the way; only the level of loathing seems to vary a bit from song to song, artist to artist, genre to genre.
As this exploration has shown, the city has been bashed in the blues, old-time country, ’60s classic rock, alternative and college rock, you name it. Now we can add bouncy post-punk to the list. And this time it’s personal because it’s coming from the locals. The Lawrence Arms cover the city and Lucky Boys Confusion take on the outlying areas.

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Posted on March 16, 2007

By The Beachwood Macca Affairs Desk

“Former Beatle Paul McCartney will be the first artist signed to coffee chain Starbucks’ new record label since splitting from Capitol Records after a 43-year relationship.”
– Ireland Online

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Posted on March 13, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

“(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” will live on in some minds as the greatest cowbell song ever (lovingly) parodied on Saturday Night Live, but the album from which that timeless classic sprang is as surprising and mysterious a recording as the band that made it.

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Posted on March 11, 2007

By Don Jacobson

CBC Radio can be criticized for many of the same things that can fairly be said about National Public Radio in the United States: It can be pedantic, infuriatingly stodgy and its high culture outlook results in a lot of classical music references. Part of me is glad someone is out there being very, very smart – and, to be fair, the CBC does loosen up quite a bit on weekends with some very good jazz and avant-garde music programs. But on the whole it’s just not something I’d listen to much if it were down to a choice between that and, say, a hockey game, eh?
But also north of the border they’ve got something of a commitment to indie rock, hip-hop and electronica through a program on the CBC Radio 2 FM network. Airing Saturday nights across Canada from Moncton to Burnaby, it’s called (confusingly enough) CBC Radio 3, and subtitled Breaking New Sound. It’s hosted by CBC jock Grant Lawrence, who has fashioned the show into a satisfyingly rich free weekly podcast of strictly Canadian music.
The podcast and website will soon be the only ways even Canadians can listen to CBC Radio 3 without paying. Starting this month, it will be kicked off the terrestrial CBC schedule and be broadcast exclusively on Sirius Satellite Radio. But it’s worth tracking down. Is it really the best radio show in the world as some claim? Maybe this playlist will help you judge that assertion. This is from the CBC Radio 3 podcast for the week of March 4, 2007.

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Posted on March 5, 2007