Buried Treasure: Native Sons

[Today: Keeping the flame alive...]

It’s easy enough to connect the dots between country rock pioneers such as The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Byrds, Michael Nesmith’s post-Monkees outfit The First National Band; 70s crossovers like Poco and The Eagles; and post-punk country bands The Long Ryders, The Knitters and Jason & The Scorchers. It’s a continuum that extends through groups like The Jayhawks, Dave Alvin & The Guilty Men and Uncle Tupelo, right up to bands like Wilco and Kings Of Leon. At best this is a zig-zagging list of artists connected by an aesthetic preference and little else – at worst it’s an irrelevant and highly suspect grouping of artists with disparate ambitions, akin to making a list of athletes who’ve worn green jerseys.

One reason a simple list doesn’t do justice to the progress of country rock is that the best-sellers (some would say sellouts) of the 70s made their coin off the backs of under-appreciated artists like Michael Nesmith and Gram Parsons, and nearly sterilized the genre into a premature grave (disco went through a similar near-death experience around the same time). By the time the 80s rolled around, country rock was about as cool as the pet rock, which makes the work of Kentucky-born Sid Griffin all the more remarkable.

Drawn to Los Angeles by that city’s nascent punk scene, Griffin eventually formed The Long Ryders with guitarist Steve McCarthy, bassist Barry Shank and drummer Greg Sowders. Fusing the raw energy of Nuggets-era garage rock with the twang of The Byrds, The Long Ryders were one of the key bands in keeping the flame of country rock alive during the 80s. Their full-length debut, Native Sons, is one of the great lost albums in all of rock.

My own personal favorite moment here is ‘I Had A Dream’, a crunching, twangy rocker that draws a heretofore unknown line between Merle Haggard and The Replacements. But there isn’t a bum note or bad song to be found on Native Sons. ‘Tell It To The Judge On Sunday’ is a snarling, ill-tempered little tune, ‘Run Dusty Run’ is a galloping road song in search of Friday night lights, and ‘Ivory Tower’ slows things down without sacrificing any intensity.

Based on the resurgence of country rock over the last decade and a half, Native Sons is an album worthy of perpetual re-discovery. Its brilliance certainly overshadows nearly everything with a twang that came in its wake…

Listen: I Had A Dream

Listen: Run Dusty Run

Listen: Ivory Tower

Masterpiece: Kristofferson

[Today: The Buddha of Nashville...]

The solitary figure at the center of most country music is the heartbroken man, the outlaw on the run, the misunderstood, unforgiven outcast. The character at the center of Kris Kristofferson’s music is a seeker – of wine, women and the wisdom that comes with good times and hangovers alike. But unlike most Nashville musicians, Kristofferson wrote songs that radiated an almost Buddhist philosophy. He made music that reflected on the fleeting nature of possessions, chastised over-eager policemen and social critics, and celebrated free love. Each of his songs, in their own way, looked into the darkness and found light.

If Kristofferson wrote songs that were unlike his Nashville contemporaries, it was probably because nobody like him had set foot in that city before. A Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford, he joined the Army after college, where he attained the rank of Captain and completed Ranger school. After leaving the Army, he turned down a position as professor of literature at West Point so that he could pursue songwriting. He moved to Nashville and was literally sweeping the floors at Columbia Studios while Bob Dylan was recording Blonde On Blonde there. Kristofferson’s music came to the attention of Johnny Cash, who helped the not-so-young man find his footing in the industry.

Speaking of his early struggles in Nashville, he said “It was such a creative experience for me; it never seemed as hard on me as it was, I’m sure, on my family and friends who thought I’d gone straight to the devil. Thought I’d lost my mind and gone to Nashville to be a country writer.” After his song ‘Me And Bobby McGee’ was covered by Roger Miller, Kristofferson played the Newport Folk Festival and his career gained enough momentum that he was able to record his self-titled debut.

Kristofferson is certainly unlike anything else that Nashville was cooking up in 1970. It opens with ‘Blame It On The Stones’, a sly re-write of ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ that takes aim at those who blast the youth for being young. ‘To Beat The Devil’ is the tale of a struggling songwriter that is dedicated to “John and June”, ‘The Law Is For The Protection Of The People’ compares aggressive cops to those who hung Jesus on the cross, and ‘The Best Of All Possible Worlds’ is, like most of Kristofferson’s music, incredibly alive to the beauty of the moment.

But Kristofferson’s debut is best known for two songs – ‘Me And Bobby McGee’, a great song of love lost and bittersweet blues that has made his name, and ‘Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down’. A hangover can provide very constructive wisdom, but few songwriters have captured its poetry as well as Kris Kristofferson. “There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth,” wrote the Buddha Siddarta, “not going all the way, and not starting.” Kristofferson’s debut goes all the way, and relishes every bump in the road…

Listen: Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down

Listen: Me And Bobby McGee

Listen: Best Of All Possible Worlds

Listen: Blame It On The Stones

Doubleshot Tuesday: Easy Rider/Apocalypse Now

[Today: A salute to Dennis Hopper and those who served...]

Dennis Hopper can’t be dead. And if he is, I have newfound respect for the Grim Reaper – that’s one collection agent who isn’t afraid to call the hard numbers. Hopper played so many unhinged lunatics (Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, the bus-bombing madman in Speed) and down-and-out losers (Shooter in Hoosiers, Feck in River’s Edge) that those parts began to seem like second nature for him. But it was his role in Easy Rider (a film he also co-wrote and directed) that broke him in Hollywood and set the stage for all those memorable characters that followed.

Easy Rider was a new twist on an old premise: Billy (Hopper) and Wyatt (Peter Fonda) set out across America on a journey of self-discovery. Naturally, these scruffy, drug-imbibing hippies encounter girls, rednecks and trouble along the way, but the fiery ending of this movie is still a shocking reminder of how combustible long hair and peace signs could be once upon a time. Billy and Wyatt’s adventures are slightly hazier, hairier and more far flung that what I was up to in college, but compared to some of the crazies that Hopper would come to play, Billy was as close as he’d get to inhabiting a character I could relate to personally.

Hopper’s role as a demented photo-journalist in Apocalypse Now stands out, if only because he had to rise above a chorus line of loonies in that film, and did. It’s a strange and disturbing movie that wallows in the utter insanity of the Vietnam war – a conflict that was only a few years in the rearview mirror when Francis Ford Coppola started shooting. The rigors of filming in unfriendly foreign territory – while vastly over budget – brought suitably stark and terrified performances out of the whole cast and makes Apocalypse Now a genuine, unnerving glimpse into the senseless horrors of war.

Coppola’s epic rendering of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart Of Darkness is a masterful piece of filmmaking, but it’s a difficult movie to love. The intoxicating aroma of madness hangs over nearly every one of its scenes, but this is still just a Hollywood reflection of a real event that cost real lives. A few years back I got into a conversation with an Uncle about his time in the Army. He was lucky, he told me, because the Army recognized that he was a hippie and wouldn’t make much of a killing machine, so they put him behind a typewriter and probably spared his life. But my Uncle spent his days behind that typewriter processing soldiers going out and bodies coming in, and as he told me about this, a sadness came over him that I’d never seen before. And I realized that in spite of films like Apocalypse Now, you didn’t have to be halfway up the jungle to be driven a little mad by the Vietnam war…

Listen: Ezy Rider [Jimi Hendrix]

Listen: The End [The Doors]