Once again, I dig into the big box (and elsewhere) to find old records to listen to and blather on about. This volume branches out a little bit past the usual piles of hair metal and mid-nineties pop rock into one of the more embarassing musical phases of my life, which is something, coming from someone who usually has no shame regarding his musical tastes:

♦Little Texas – Kick A Little: This one’s left over from my mostly ill-advised mainstream country phase, circa 1994-96. Not entirely sure where the phase came from (beyond an unhealthy fascination with Tricia Yearwood); I chalk it up to the unrefined taste of youth. Still, as they say, I got better, and balance a small stack of semi-embarassing CDs with the experience of seeing some surprisingly good live acts during the period, marked by the fact that I was the only one in the crowd dressed in flannel and combat boots, looking like I got lost on the way to the Pearl Jam show. This record is actually one of the less embarassing artifacts of that age, because after the novelty-ish opening title track, you get the surprisingly excellent “I’d Hold on To Her” and the even better “Amy’s Back In Austin” before falling into full-on pandering to the country lifestyle demographic from “Southern Grace” through the closer “Redneck Like Me.” It’s really an exercise in what might have been (see what I did there?), simply because despite making it obvious that they’re clued in to the pattern by taking the piss out of the whole “hot country” genre with “Hit Country Song” (which does nothing but list all the easy-out go-to references one puts into stereotypical country songs for three or four minutes over mournful steel guitars), but then they spend four-fifths of this record offering up hopelessly cliché country lyrics without any sort of irony. I’d love to see what these guys could do if they really tried digging a little deeper lyrically more often, because they’re all great players and the live show was energetic, charismatic, and novel (if you ignore the Steinberger bass on the little spinny belt buckle thing).

♦Steve Earle – Trancendental Blues: One good thing about my country phase was that I dug deeper and found some great under-the-radar country and folk stuff that succeeds in ways that Little Texas mostly doesn’t. Alt-Country. Celtic Folk. 70s Outlaw. Steve Earle. Despite having success as a songwriter, and a troubled personal history to rival Hank Williams, Earle never fit in with his Nashville peers, in part because his leftist political views are at odds with the mainstream. His style is more experimental, gravitating toward rock and folk styles as well as country, all of which are represented here. The opening tracks, “Trancendental Blues” and “Everyone’s In Love With You” are strong, heavy and energetic (and make for an excellent six to eight minutes of driving) before the record settles into a nice mix of traditional sounding country (“Another Town”) and folk (“The Boy Who Never Cried”, “The Galway Girl”), all of which is honest, raw, and engaging. This record, as well as pretty much Earle’s whole catalog, is highly recommended, especially if you’re a fan of modern folk, alt country, or basically just good American roots music.

♦Melissa Etheridge: Like most people, I’d barely heard of Etheridge before Yes I Am was released to great acclaim and many radio singles. I’d seen her on the Grammys back in ’89 and was intrigued, though it took me until years later to reach back and snag the whole early catalog, all of which serves as evidence of her talent as a great emotional songwriter and one of the most affecting acoustic guitar players to ever pick up an Ovation Adamas 12-string. This first album a great rootsy rock record, recorded on the cheap and in less than a week, and the rawness and lack of polish here is definitely a feature rather than a bug; it works; Her voice is best when it’s mostly unadorned and on the edge of breaking. “Water” got nominated for the Grammy, but when I re-listened to this (at probably 1:00am while driving down the interstate), “Similar Features” and “Occasionally” stood out prominently, but the best track on the record is, hands down, “Like The Way I Do,” which does agressive, slinky, and sexy better than anything else I can think of right now. It’s kind of a shame that Etheridge ended up being more famous for being a lesbian than anything else, and that her later stuff (at least the radio stuff) lost a lot of the edge her early stuff has. But that doesn’t make make those first three records (this, Brave and Crazy and Never Enough) any less awesome.

♦ Lady GaGa – Born This Way: Given all the attention paid to indie rock, roots/country and the sheer volume of hair metal I’ve worked through in this little experiment where I write about music so far, a reader might find it odd that I picked this record up a couple of weeks ago. Sure, those of you who follow my random ten posts have probably noticed my dips into modern pop music through the regular appearances of Katy Perry and Avril Lavigne, but would expect that I’m largely a rock sort of guy, and you’d mostly be right. However, I am unashamedly a fan of Lady GaGa, because, above all, she’s interesting in a way that few other artists are these days. I’m not sure if I’ve said it in this space before, but GaGa is what I imagine you’d get if David Bowie, Madonna, and Freddie Mercury somehow managed to have a baby where they all contributed equal amounts of genetic material. Sure, there’s a lot of glitz and glam and showmanship (and impressively, the GaGa image manages to be sexy without ever explicitly selling the artist as a sex object), but behind that important packaging is some scarily competent pop composition skills, as evidenced by how “Poker Face” has been so seamlessly ported over to other genre styles without losing it’s inherent value. Anyway, Born This Way is, not surprisingly, a very good record, and a record that sounds distinctly modern, but with a definite retro 80s feel. As many have pointed out, “Born This Way” does almost serve as a melodic counterpoint harmony to Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” but that doesn’t make it any less effective as pop song – it’s still instantly recognizable (my 3 year old immediately recognizes it whenever it comes on the radio – that’s distinction right there). Much of the rest of the record reaches back to 80s and 90s pop music; there’s quite a bit of Jim Steinman/Bonnie Tyler in the melodies on this record in songs like “Marry the Night” and “Hair,” as well as the newest single, “The Edge of Glory,” which captures the best kind of Celine Dion/Cher arena vibe without any of the drawbacks of actually sounding like either of them. However, most surprisingly, with “Yoü and I”, GaGa’s probably written the best country song I’ve heard in several years, and managed to get Brian May to play guitar on it. Yes, I think the record’s pretty great.