Old Crow Medicine Show are part of that tour circuit jam bandy old timey genre, of which I am usually suspect, being I live around Charlottesville where there's more than a few faux-country hipsters strolling around in vintage shirts and straw hats with smooth-lined faces that lack the pain and torture of actually struggling. I automatically can't stand that shit - and this has been a running theme of my words forever really, way back to when I did The Confederate Mack, at one point trying to brandish my white trash heritage as a badge of honor, back before that was really a thing people did, and then realizing that when shit like that happens, the masses latch on for the ride, and you end up with guys like Johnny Knoxville and Shooter Jennings on your pop cultural commodities. So I resent people pretending they are some sort of grown up white trash of an odd vintage year like 1979 or 1982 or whatever the fuck they find first at the thrift store. And I fully realize this makes me judge and sometimes hate things that are maybe authentic, but hey, I can accept that in the process of self-preservation. I don't need somebody to tell me about that shit or that life, as I wrestle with it daily. Shit, that conflict is the daily struggle between opposing forces in my life, as I don't have the god-fearing good vs. evil. I have "if you become one of those people you are a sell-out" vs. "those people pretending to be what I am piss me off" - and neither one exactly allows me long-term personal success.
So yeah, this song leads me to believe somebody in this group had a crazy uncle who snorted crank lines off of Molly Hatchet mirrors from the county fair, and that makes me feel more comfortable listening to it over and over, which I did at one point. O.C.M.S. has blurred together in my digital library, and I basically remember that every CD has a couple of really great songs, a couple that sound like Emmett Otter's Jugband, and some real boring ass things. But I don't look too hard at it, since I like them, and just assume that all their great songs are off of their first full-length CD, and then they quit drinking and got a real job and started making music that was okay but not really the same. Kind of like my writing.
STEAL "Tennessee Pusher"
NEXT MONTH: Same as it ever was!
No comments:
Post a Comment