RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.
One who has read my nonsense gibberish perhaps has encountered my thoughts that DJ Quik should be given a MacArthur genius grant to make music to encourage mass revolution. I read an interview once where he talked about how he didn’t use dissonance because it was too dangerous a feeling to encourage in people and he didn’t want to do that. MacArthur genius grant that dude and turn him loose on mass consciousness in my opinion.
But all of that is built off the what should be common knowledge that he is the superest of super producers. You should know that. But what gives Quik that added dimension is his strange left field mic style which I mean you know nobody gonna be like “oh yeah you like that Black Thought 10-minute freestyle? you know who you need to listen to is Quik” but it still serves a wonderful purpose upon this Earth as a voice of many realities. Just like every body type doesn’t have to uphold the norms of accepted beauty (which is ugly tbh) every rapper doesn’t have to get an old head phd stamp of approval notarized by hip hop blogosphere.There is no better more recent album perfect example of this unique DJ Quikness than this track which is a diss song for his lazy piece of shit sister. Imagine becoming famous and wealthy by humble beginnings and supporting your family as is considered the norm, and that family member just continuously fucking you over and not deserving that support. And then you are sad because you kept trying to enforce these external norms on your dysfunctional reality, but you make the break finally, and there is guilt and frustration because you are lamenting a family ideal that never existed in the first place. For many of us, this causes depression and funk (the bad funk) and all types of heartache that is hard to exorcise. Quik had this and figured “fuck it, I’m gonna make a diss track to my piece of shit sister.” It’s so fucking great. Quik is so fucking great. Fuck you if you disagree.
Making good authentic degenerate drug music is
difficult, because one has to be immersed in drug-fueled degeneracy in order to
do such a thing. And it’s never as easy as just being all fucked up and making
music, because music history is full of fools and idiots who thought they were
making music when they were just junkies. Or people who thought they’d fallen
over the edge when they hadn’t even gotten close to it, and they made safe
sterile music that people thought was brilliant but was co-opted for corporate
product sales later on (aka the U2 Rule for Creative Non-Degeneracy), and it
made even more sense in that form than in the original form.
Anyways, country music is not really warm to good
drug-fueled degeneracy. There’s a long history of drug addicts and alcoholics
barely holding their shit together enough to maintain their position as a
country musician, but the outlaw status of that was always still marketable.
Willie and Waylon and crew did this best. But modern country is really defined
by the Garth Brooks 1990s takeover and homogenization which ultimately bleached
the fuck out of it beyond belief. That has left us with two forms of rebellious
country music…
AUTHENTIC COUNTRY MUSIC REBELLION FORM A: The
artist in recovery who because of his recovery from horrible addictions just
doesn’t give a fuck to completely kowtow to Nashville’s politics, and he makes
“real” music. For me, I enjoy Jamey Johnson from this vein, but that Chris
Stapleton guy appears to be this as well, and it’s the type of music that gets
the really boring white dude from a job you had in the past to make a bold
Facebook post about how THIS IS REAL COUNTRY MUSIC LIKE MY DADDY USED TO PLAY,
NOT THAT SHIT ON THE RADIO NOW. I enjoy Jamey Johnson a lot, but every time I
hear him it makes me think of my dead father, because my dad would’ve loved
Jamey Johnson, but hard living and drug-fueled degeneracy helped my dad die
before he could hear recovery Jamey Johnson’s $12 CDs about reality. So there’s
a hypocrisy there I think.
AUTHENTIC COUNTRY MUSIC REBELLION FORM B: The
Americana alternative whatever the fuck internet-friendly artist who is TOO
GODDAMN REAL for corporate country music, and whose songs are regarded (by
internet fuckers usually) as more a short story than a song. I guess Jason
Isbell and DBT are this (ugh) but the past couple pop culture media cycles has
really driven home Sturgill Simpson as perfect example of this. I’ve read all
types of shit about how real and authentic Sturgill Simpson is, and perhaps
people are confused by his real name, but lemme tell you as a guy who has lived
long spells in trailers and trailer parks and did crank with his own father and
also did crank at his father’s funeral day bonfire party (where I had to swear
a lifelong grudge against a guy I legit do not remember because he accidentally
stole a Little Feat CD from me – fuck that guy forever, whoever he might be) –
Sturgill Simpson is dentist’s office music, at best. But authenticity has been
gentrified by assholes, so a bunch of brunch eating fuckfaces who think they’re
country because they support a CSA (the new kind of CSA, not the old one) will
tell you how great Sturgill Simpson is. Lololol FUCK OFF YOU FAKE
MOTHERFUCKERS.
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Anyways, I say all this as prelude to what a
fucking classic Hank Williams III’s Straight to Hell is, because it was in his
spiral of motivation and drugs and accomplishment that he hit his peak here.
And those peaks never hold – you always sink too far into drugs or not far
enough into motivation, and it’s really a tricky fucking matrix to navigate.
(Ask William Burroughs.) But he hit it here. And not only did he hit it here,
but he double CD’ed it here, with the second CD being where he had found that
first CD peak, working at home studio on analog four-track, and said, “You know
what? Fuck it, let’s go all out on this shit.” and just blended it all together
like a good drug-fueled degeneracy would do. “Louisiana Stripes” is the only
track separated listing on Disc 2, before a 42 minute barrage of this and
that’s smash together like a 4-day weekend snorting crank in the backroom of
the outbuilding at the far end of a rambling compound, deepest into the woods,
with top sheets and flags nailed up as curtains. It is the most classic of
drug-fueled degeneracy modern country music that exists, and fuck you if you
disagree.
I still wrestle with class consciousness pretty badly, and the things I’ve
experienced in life and how that makes me both better and worse off. I guess I
shouldn’t expect comfortable people to understand how uncomfortable true
degenerate rural living can be, nor how beautifully special it is in some
strange underlying way. Like I would not have it any other way, to be honest. I
still feel most comfortable on a warm spring day in my shitty little camper
trailer blasting drug music from various genres, even while stone cold (steve
austin) sober, camper door wide open to the wild world outside, peepers or
whippoorwills or dogs or muffler-less Silverados or whatever the fuck rumbling
outside. But Straight to Hell speaks to me on very deep cellular level, and I
guess I believe that’s what makes it feel authentic. I could be full of shit,
in fact probably am, because I’m writing all this on the internet, which is
kinda like being a Sturgill Simpson anyways.
