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Music is a matter of one's individual taste. Despite the fact that I write about old rock albums for the paper, albums that I feel are some of the best ever made, I can also understand that people's tastes can vary. My stereo might consist of Rubber Soul, Beggar's Banquet, and Disraeli Gears at the moment, but if someone wants to listen to The Killers, Jay-Z, or Justin Timberlake then that's cool, I'm not a snob about my preferences and I certainly can appreciate that music as well.
However, I do have a few exceptions, the biggest one being modern country music. It is absolute trash. Being a country fan has, for whatever reason, become a huge fad, even up here in New Hampshire. I find this troubling, not necessarily because people actually listen to this crap, but because these "country" fans really think they are listening to country music. It's not though, it's a pop star up there wearing a cowboy hat and singing in a southern accent. The heart of true country music has no pulse in this crap.
Once upon a time, country music was a very original form of art. There was an actual technique to selecting and playing the instruments, singing in the right vein, and writing songs that were well thought out. None of that exists today. There is a scene in the movie Ray where Ray Charles is talking about country music and he says the thing he likes so much about country music is the stories the songs tell. Mr. Charles undoubtedly would have thought twice about making a statement like that today with lyrics like "I like my truck/I like my girlfriend/I like to take her out to dinner/I like a movie now and then/But I love this bar." Nice work Toby, don't try too hard to stuff anymore clichés of the heartland in there.
In a lot of ways, country music suffers from the same problem that much of rap and hip-hop suffers from today in that area. Everything that's sung is straight out of a simple formula: sing about drinking, getting messed up, and other things that will get people to buy the records. Not that this is necessarily the worst thing, after all, The Beatles sang about the universally accepted notion of love 80% of the time. But this is just so blatant and uninspired, they may as well be singing, "Please buy my record, I'm just like you," over and over again.
Furthermore, there is no distinct playing of the instruments in these country songs. There aren't any Chet Atkins or any other musical virtuosos that add anything to the playing. It's just a straightforward track with a lifeless rhythm and some twangy guitars and fiddle mixed in that comes out sounding so glossed over with production (which is about as un-authentic as you can get). Music, especially country music, should have some roughness to it, but this stuff comes out sounding so slick that it loses absolutely all feeling.
And that's the biggest problem with contemporary country music; everything sounds exactly the same. When a song comes on, I can instantly tell you who made it, even if I've barely heard their stuff. I can pick out the differences between The Animals and the early stuff by The Rolling Stones, Sam Cooke's voice and Marvin Gaye's voice, Eric Clapton's guitar on Wheels of Fire and Eric Clapton's guitar on Slowhand. But I swear on my life, if a country song came on by Tim McGraw, I would never be able to tell you if it was him or Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, or Toby Keith, no matter how much I listened to them all. The nuances that once existed in country music just aren't there anymore. Nothing separates one artist from another, and that's a shame because country music is now stuck in a monotonous drudge yet has never seen as much success as it is now.
So before I start to sound like I'm just whining, I'll step off my soapbox and present to you a remedy. Because I usually write about classic rock 'n' roll albums in this space, I'll stick to my guns and present to you one of the great country rock albums rather than wax poetic about Hank Williams or Lefty Frizzell since I feel that country rock is a lot more approachable to today's fans of country music anyway (although I highly recommend any country fan picking up compilations of both artists at some point).
Sweetheart of the Rodeo is the masterpiece album of country rock. It was released by The Byrds in August of 1968 and was the first significant country rock LP released. Just a little background, The Byrds were one of the most successful American rock groups by this point. They were pioneers of folk-rock with the song "Mr. Tambourine Man," as well as psychedelic rock with the song "Eight Miles High." Going into Sweetheart of the Rodeo, the band had already released five very good albums in three years, three of which I would classify as being some of the best in rock history (Mr. Tambourine Man, Younger Than Yesterday, and The Notorious Byrd Brothers.) And while the group had built its reputation on being a folk-rock outfit that dove into psychedelia, they had dipped their toes in the twangy stuff as well with songs like "Time Between" off of Younger Than Yesterday and "Get to You" and "Old John Robertson" from The Notorious Byrd Brothers.
While the band was recording their late 1967 album The Notorious Byrd Brothers lead guitarist Roger McGuinn and bassist Chris Hillman became fed up with rhythm guitarist David Crosby and decided to cut their ties with him. The album was finished without him, but the group had a hole to fill going into their next album. Enter Gram Parsons, a guitar and piano player with possibly the earliest country rock band, the little known International Submarine Band, and a previous acquaintance of Hillman's. With Parsons on board, The Byrds were ready to move full-steam into pioneering the country rock genre and spin both rock and country music on its heels by going to Nashville and recording Sweetheart of the Rodeo.
There are so many remarkable things about this album. For one, this was a stunning statement considering the times and the band it was coming from. Rock music was deeply entrenched in the psychedelic scene in early 1968, in part because of The Byrds. For a band that was part of that scene to come out and do something that was so radically in the other direction was one hell of a bold move. I was talking to the owner of a record shop on Martha's Vineyard last summer and he told me he saw them play the Avalon in Los Angeles in 1968 with Gram Parsons and they got booed because they were up there playing country music while everyone in the crowd was tripping on acid and wanting to get groovy. While everyone was involved in practicing transcendental meditation, Hinduism, Buddism, Hedonism, and all that other stuff, The Byrds were singing about how they liked "The Christian Life," quite a stray away from singing about things that pretty much everyone can agree with, such as loving a certain bar.
Another remarkable thing about Sweetheart of the Rodeo is that while Hillman and McGuinn, especially, were established songwriters by this point, they contributed no new material to this album. There are two songs on the album written by Parsons, "Hickory Wind" and "One Hundred Years from Now," which are beautifully composed. The other nine tracks are covers; an unheard of ratio of originals to covers for an original album off a major label. Yet, that's the great thing about this album. The group selected great songs to cover, some country, some from other genres, and recreated them to give a unique country rock twist with a great authentic feel to them.
Which leads us to the music that comes from the speakers when Sweetheart of the Rodeo is on. Lloyd Green, a noted pedal steel guitar session player in Nashville, provides absolutely prodigious and tasteful pedal steel playing throughout the album, especially on the Bob Dylan cover "You Ain't Going Nowhere," The Louvin Brothers' "The Christian Life," and the aforementioned "Hickory Wind." McGuinn and Hillman, who played banjo and mandolin, respectively, before joining The Byrds dusted their old instruments off and added them effectively to the mix on songs like Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd" and the traditional "I Am a Pilgrim," both of which also consist of great fiddle parts as well. Hillman also pulls out the bass guitar on the second Dylan cover and closer, "Nothing Was Delivered," and really makes the song swing. Country music had never seen a rhythm like it had on this song, and while "Nothing Was Delivered" is not necessarily the best song on the album, its balance of country and rock music in the mix makes it, along with "You Ain't Going Nowhere" the most definitive songs of the whole country rock notion on Sweetheart of the Rodeo. All in all, the playing is distinctive, unique, and done with a great deal of feeling, all of which are non-existent in contemporary country music.
And then there's the singing, which really sets Sweetheart of the Rodeo apart. The Byrds had already developed a great blend of harmonies with McGuinn, Crosby, Gene Clark, and Hillman once Clark left in 1966 and while losing Crosby's fantastic harmonies could have dealt a huge blow to the mix, Parsons was able to come in and add his great country croon to the McGuinn/Hillman battery, giving Sweetheart a feel that is straight out of the country tradition but doesn't lose the core of The Byrds' sound. Hillman's lone lead vocal on "I Am a Pilgrim" is sweeter than tea while McGuinn proves how versatile a voice he had with his signing on Sweetheart. Parsons' lead vocals on "Life in Prison" and "You're Still on my Mind" are wonderfully honky-tonk while his voice on "Hickory Wind" is achingly beautiful and makes it one of the standouts of the album.
There has always been much ado about the fact that several songs were wiped of Parsons' lead vocals for disputed reasons, although this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. McGuinn was the lead singer of the group and Crosby never really sang more then three lead vocals on Byrds albums before, so this move makes sense in that it keeps it a true Byrds album that isn't overtaken over by Parsons. The only song that really misses Parsons' lead is "The Christian Life," which is a very good song with McGuinn's lead but could have been one of the standouts alongside "You Ain't Going Nowhere," "I Am a Pilgrim," and "Hickory Wind."
This version of The Byrds didn't last long. Hillman and Parsons left shortly after Sweetheart of the Rodeo's release to form The Flying Burrito Brothers while McGuinn was left to reform The Byrds from scratch. Yet for the brief period they were together, they created a sound that was a truly unique and genuine mixture of country and rock. This album was the springboard for the country rock explosion of late '60s and '70s, yet this album was absolutely hated by both rock and country fans alike when it was released. Of course, it didn't matter to them that they weren't doing what was popular or what the people wanted to hear; true country musicians don't care about that anyhow.
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