Earlier this week, my man Whit sent me a link to the very kind of clickbait that makes me stop what I'm doing and immediately jump into. Turns out that it wound up costing me my morning.
Paste recently ranked the top 70 alt-country albums of all time. Why 70 and not a more obvious milestone, I suppose we'll never know. But regardless of their questionable numeracy, the editors put together a solid tour through the genre's history. I might pick a few nits on some of the inclusions on the basis of category fit (Big Thief, to my mind, isn't alt-country. Nor is Loretta Lynn.), but not with respect to the quality of the tunes.
Given that I have a 25-hour road trip to Boulder with my kid planned for early August (more about which later in these pixel-pages), I'm in need of some driving tunes. Perfect timing, this catalogue of wheelhouse music.
And because I'm a giver, here's a playlist I made by grabbing a few tunes from each of the 70 albums on Paste's list (with a couple of exceptions for records that fall into the Notify bucket). If you find yourself stranded on a country road with a minivan waiting for a tow, I've got you covered.
Posts
19 comments:
My younger kid moved into boston u fenway campus for five weeks yesterday. Dead and Co. have two shows at fenway this weekend. He reports that it smells like weed everywhere- coincidence?
From the WaPo article about DC sports mediocrity:
The [Wizards] season ahead will be painful, but for a franchise that has won four playoff series in four decades, this is progress.
That stat is unbelievable... unless you've been rotting for the Bullets and Wizards for a long while.
speaking of unbelievable stats, professor g truck claimed on his podcast that 1.5% of americans are involved in auto accidents that require some kind of medical attention each year. that sounds insane.
I assume you left Outfit off this playlist just to trigger me.
nah, oversight. though i thought i'd added it.
I told you!
You did. This Blogger glimpse at the playlist only includes the first 100.
It's a long way from Leesburg to Boulder, eh?
near on 1,700 miles, as it turns out
In the mini?
nope. in the kid's 140k-mile hyundai elantra. gonna get a bit nippy going through the pass.
is lucinda williams alt-country? if so, then the definition of alt-country is country music that i have listened to. also, if golden smog's album "weird tales" isn't on the list, i am spurning it. i will check now.
Golden Smog is different from Smog (and Smaug), right?
boo! no golden smog. but lots of stuff i've never heard of. lucinda williams at number one! wow. we saw her up in burlington on that tour, she was sensational. i like kacey musgraves too. and i guess i should listen to waxahatchee?
wikipedia on golden smog . . .
Golden Smog is an alternative country-rock supergroup of loosely connected musicians mostly from the Minneapolis area. At various times, members of Soul Asylum, The Replacements, Wilco, The Jayhawks, Run Westy Run, The Honeydogs and Big Star have worked with Golden Smog. Given the fluid collaborative nature of Golden Smog the lineup has often changed, but relative constants who appear on all the recordings are guitarists Kraig Johnson (Run Westy Run), Dan Murphy (Soul Asylum) and Gary Louris (The Jayhawks), along with bassist Marc Perlman (The Jayhawks).[1]
The group took their name from a nickname given to Fred Flintstone in The Flintstones episode "Hot Lips Hannigan", which, in turn, was a parody of singer Mel Tormé's nickname (The Velvet Fog).
weird tales is one of my favorite albums
golden smog are great. that’s a notable omission.
I’m a fan as well. Esp the songs V, You Make It Easy, and Until You Came Along.
Stephen King’s favorite songs include a couple of songs from Paste’s article / Rob’s list …
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/a-complete-collection-of-stephen-kings-favourite-songs
barrier reef! no way!
dirty water! duh!
that's quite a list.
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