310 posts tagged with Americana.
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One of the largest contributors to the overall aesthetic
Inspired heavily by the concepts behind American pop art and the styles of British pop artists such as David Hockney, Nagai focused on imaginations of a 1950s Americana landscape. Adapting the deep blue skies, relaxed ocean side settings and sleepy nighttime cityscapes from previous pop artists, Nagai developed his own style throughout the late 1970s. His work finally began to gain traction in Japan around the turn of the 1980’s and this coincided fortuitously with the rise of City Pop. from Hiroshi Nagai: Japan’s Sun-drenched Americana [Tokyo Cowboy]
An American Banquet
CNN has put out a list of twenty great American dishes - a list that shows the surprising breadth of the food we eat that have become iconic in American cuisine. (SLCNN) [more inside]
Europe is Healthier than US
'This is my third essay comparing US to Europe, which is the sex scenes of travel writing — usually cringe, usually vapid, but boy oh boy does it sell. The prior two, “US is better than Europe!” and “America does not have a good food culture”, are two of my most read essays.'
Neoliberalism came wrapped in an ideology of freedom and choice
"Music and humor are for the healing of the nations"
This post started as a single video of veteran musicmaker Leonard Solomon performing Skrillex's "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" on a homemade "Squijeeblion."
That led to discovering his YouTube channel @Bellowphone, full of similarly whimsical covers on a collection of bespoke instruments hand-built in his Wimmelbildian workshop, from the Emphatic Chromatic Callioforte to the Oomphalapompatronium to the original Majestic Bellowphone.
Searching for more videos led to his performance in the Lonesome Pine One-Man Band Extravaganza special from 1991, where he co-starred with whizbang vaudevillians like Hokum W. Jeebs and Professor Gizmo.
But what was Lonesome Pine? Just an extraordinary, award-winning concert series by the Kentucky Center for the Arts that ran for 16 years on public radio and television -- an "all things considered" showcase for "new artists, underappreciated veterans and those with unique new voices" featuring such luminaries as Buddy Guy, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, k.d. lang, Koko Taylor, and hundreds more. You can get a broad overview of this televisual marvel from this excellent half-hour retrospective, see a supercut of director Clark Santee's favorite moments, browse the program directory from the Smithsonian exhibit, or watch select shows in their entirety: Lonesome Pine Blues - All-star Bluegrass Band - Nashville All-stars - Bass Instincts - Zydeco Rockers - Walter "Wolfman" Washington - Mark O'Connor - Alison Krauss & Union Station - Sam Bush & John Cowan - Maura O'Connell - Nanci Griffith - A Musical Visit from Africa [more inside]
“It’s really a strange town.”
There was allure beyond negation. Branson’s geo-cultural attributes—not quite the Midwest or the South or Appalachia yet also all three; a region of old European settlement but also westward expansion; perched above whatever modest altitude turned the soil to junk and predestined the land for poor Scots-Irish pastoralists; in a slave state with the largest anti-Union guerrilla campaign of the Civil War but little practical use for slavery—invite an unmistakable imaginative allegiance. This is the aspiration and the apparition that the novelist Joseph O’Neill has termed Primordial America, the “buried, residual homeland—the patria that would be exposed if the USA were to dissolve.” “Wherever they hail from,” 60 Minutes’ Morley Safer went on, “they feel they are the Heartland.” No matter the innate fuzziness, Real America in this formula is white, Christian, and prizes independence from the state. It is atavistic, not reactionary. from The Branson Pilgrim by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi [Harper's; ungated]
Nashville Casualty and Life
What does it mean, Country Music, and why does it all sound the same
In the New Yorker:
Country music's Culture Wars and the remaking of Nashville. All about Music Row vs. what they're now labeling Americana, and more. Is Nashville Music Row anything other than "bro country, slick, hollow songs about trucks and beer, sung by interchangeable white hunks"?
(archive link) [more inside]
(archive link) [more inside]
You got a fast car
“On one hand, Luke Combs is an amazing artist, and it’s great to see that someone in country music is influenced by a Black queer woman — that’s really exciting… But at the same time, it’s hard to really lean into that excitement knowing that Tracy Chapman would not be celebrated in the industry without that kind of middleman being a White man.” On the complicated reaction to the Luke Comb’s cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car.
"Heartbreak In the Key of Roger Miller" - Joe Purdy & Friends
A friend sent me link to this vid and I just keep going back to it. My hope is that it'll catch you, too. This young man (more and more men are young to me as the years stack, I'm guessing Jon to be in his early 40s) this young man often sends me good links. He's from West Virginia, I've told him for years that he's got dirt on him, in a good way, maybe it's more that the dirt is in him; West Virginia seems to get inside the people, I think mostly in a good way. [more inside]
rainbow grill cheese, fair charcuterie, and hmong specialties onna stick
As we enter Labor Day Weekend and US state fair season starts to wind down, let us consider the most important showing of any state fair: the food offerings. Via Mashed.com, 2022's best state fair foods. Of course, the Mashed list doesn't extend to fairs from every US state, so Taste of Home kindly ranked of the best state fair foods from every state. For those looking for a local state fair to attend, Reader's Digest offers a list of the best state or county fairs to be found in every state.
Your favorite band is not my thing, but I admire your passion
"Saying goodbye to Steve, the reader who commented on everything I wrote for 17 years" -- reflections after death closes the door on an exchange of correspondence between a journalist/music critic and an older reader who was always willing to give something a listen.
Mississippi John Hurt Video Collection
Mississippi John Hurt Video Collection
Pretty much what it says on the tin, but, oh, the cameos — both aural and visual.
Pretty much what it says on the tin, but, oh, the cameos — both aural and visual.
"disgrace and pride, forgetting and remembering, change and stasis”
Where the Devil Don't Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers: "The book is partly a band biography of the Drive-By Truckers, partly a travelogue through the South they depict in their songs, and partly an examination of the cultural and political underpinnings of their music. The chapters are all grounded in specific places—including the Shoals, Birmingham, Memphis, Richmond, and Athens, Georgia. Geography is more prominent than chronology, although it does trace their arc from southern rock band to American Band. That 2016 album is renowned for its very explicit political songwriting, but I argue that their songs have always had a political edge to them. They have always grappled with gun violence, income inequality, extremism of all kinds, the urban/rural divide, Confederate flag and monuments and Southern iconography in general, but for most of their career they did so through the filter of characters and stories and places. On American Band they confronted these matters very directly and very explicitly, which has carried over to The Unraveling and The New OK." (Bookshop/University of Texas Press) [more inside]
Themes, dreams and schemes - We're gonna need more ice!
Over 100 episodes broadcast between 2006 and 2009, Bob Dylan hosted "Theme Time Radio Hour". After a hiatus of 12 years ("I mean, does anybody even still have a radio? Some folks might even be listening on a smart toaster."), a new episode emerged in 2020: Whiskey (playlist). [more inside]
Alive in the Hot Zone - music for the modern dark age
When you are a country/Americana musician (with crustpunk roots) trapped across the ocean from your home and family during a global pandemic, why not make an album about anti-fascism and the American uprising?
Alive in the Hot Zone [more inside]
30 Years after: Uncle Tupelo's "No Depression"
Can’t Look Away: Musicians, Writers, and More Reflect on 30 Years of Uncle Tupelo’s ‘No Depression’. Thirty years (and one day) after Belleville, IL's Uncle Tupelo released their seminal alt-country album "No Depression", several current artists and writers talk about discovering the album, what it meant to them, and how it influenced them. Features Lilly Hiatt, Patterson Hood (of the Drive-By Truckers), Rhett Miller (of the Old 97s), Ben Nichols (of Lucero), Eric Earley (of Blitzen Trapper) and many more. [more inside]
how guarded he's been able to remain while talking a mile a minute…
Tall Tales With Dwight Yoakam: An intimate night of conversation and tunes with the hard-charging, mile-a-minute pioneer of honky-tonk himself (GQ) [more inside]
Drinking almost killed him; then it became his great subject
Jason Isbell’s Redemption Songs (GQ): A decade after bottoming out and cleaning up, Jason Isbell has become the last of his kind: a guitar-playing, compulsively honest, relentlessly consistent songwriter. Oh, and he slays on Twitter too. Zach Baron goes to Isbell's family home near Franklin, Tennessee, and finds there's no question the four-time Grammy winner won't answer.
Stockholm, Are You Listening?
Godmother of Rock and Roll
Rock-n-Roll was invented by a queer Black woman born in 1915 Arkansas. Your disordered hardcore punk rock was sanctioned by a kinky-haired Black girl born to two cotton pickers in the Jim Crow South. The electric guitar was first played in ways very few people could have ever imagined by a woman who wasn’t even allowed to play at music venues around the country. The Patron Saint of rock music is Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The original punk rebel from which we were all born, SRT is muva.[more inside]
Cold? Try some "Spice on Snow."
The Freight Hoppers: "Fort Smith Breakdown." Alex Kehler and Jeremiah McLane: "Le Pruneau" on accordion and nyckleharpa. Dana and Susan Robinson: "The Flying Farmer." Mike Merenda and Ruthy Unger: "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." Ida Mae Specker, Rachel Eddy and Brian Slattery: "Boil Them Cabbage Down" and "Big-Eyed Rabbit."
Young Pickers of Note, 2019 Edition
Bluegrass guitarists Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle jam out on the Townes Van Zandt classic "White Freightliner Blues." [more inside]
21st Century Not Included
Whether you want to browse some vintage recipies, get a feel for what was popular in a particular decade, or maybe revisit the top trends from your graduation year, ClickAmericana is an extensive online archive of vintage ads, magazine articles, and popular culture spanning a surprisingly large swath of American history.
A song about a girl
Dovey Johnson Roundtree 1914 - 2018
"A Magazine of Literature, Art and Politics"
For their 160th anniversary, the Atlantic has highlighted some unique articles, stories and essays from their magazine archive and launched a Life Timeline. Enter your birthday and it will tell you how the world has changed in your lifetime. [more inside]
Larkin Poe
Larkin Poe covers Spoonful, Teardrop, Hey Sinner/Black Betty, The Thrill Is Gone, Come On In My Kitchen, Preachin' Blues, One Way Out, No Particular Place To Go. [more inside]
“Hey, computers could be more. They should be.”
‘Halt and Catch Fire’ Is the New ‘The Wire’ [Motherboard] “When HBO’s The Wire finished its run in 2008, it became a topic you couldn’t escape at parties. Inevitably, some dude would walk up to me and we’d start talking about prestige television and they’d ask if I’d seen The Wire. “No,” I’d reply and they’d get this look in their eyes. It’s not the incredulous look I receive when I tell people I don’t watch Game of Thrones. (Note, I watch Game of Thrones . I just like to mess with people at parties.) When I told people I hadn’t seen The Wire, they’d get excited, as if they were about to reveal a great and primal truth. “What’s it about?” I’d ask. “Everything,” they’d say, unhelpfully. AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire just finished up its fourth and final season. The whole show is now on Netflix. Prepare yourself. It’s the new The Wire.” [Halt and Catch Fire as Discussed on FanFare] [more inside]
How To Solve Two Stubborn Murder Cases In One Night, Chicago PD–Style
How To Solve Two Stubborn Murder Cases In One Night, Chicago PD–Style
The two murders were proving difficult to close — until Detective Reynaldo Guevara, who has been accused of framing at least 51 people, showed up for duty. Here’s how, over the course of one night, with questionable evidence, two men who say they did nothing wrong ended up charged with murder.
Season of the Witch
“Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything”
The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth How excessive staffing, little competition, generous contracts and archaic rules dramatically inflate capital costs for transit in New York. (SLNYT by Brian M. Rosenthal)
Literally Anything Is Possible
“Yes, 2017 went off the rails. But what pushed it? We asked 29 of our favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers: What were the most important events of the past 12 months, and what were the least?” - The Morning News on the year was and wasn’t (previously)
Rose Marie of 'Dick Van Dyke Show' fame dies at 94
Heaven just got a whole lot funnier | She was born Rose Marie Mazetta of Italian-Polish parentage in New York City on Aug. 15, 1923. When she was 3, her mother entered her in an amateur talent contest in Atlantic City as Baby Rose Marie. Nominated three times for Emmys, Rose Marie had yet to turn 40 when she joined the Dick Van Dyke Show cast as Sally Rogers, but had been an entertainer for more than 30 years. [more inside]
Phil Freelon, Humanitarian Architect
one of the devil’s great engines of human misery
"Today the glowing, fry-colored marquee is the de facto greeting for anyone coming into the capital from the east. It does not say “Welcome to Washington,” or “Behold, the Majestic Seat of the Republic.” It says:
W ARM UPWITH
A
BACO ATOR"
The story of Washington’s weirdest traffic circle.
Chinese Food, Movies, and ...Museums!
Jewish Americans and Chinese food on Christmas: James Deutsch of Smithsonian Folklife discusses how it evolved. Though the classic day's entertainment for many is movies, it's also a big day for many Jewish-heritage museums, like the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, the Museum at Eldridge Street in NYC, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in SF.
Oh my God, I can’t wait to see his face.
Shanquis loves Charles. Charles loves Shanquis. Charles and Shanquis love wrestling. (SL Washington Post). [more inside]
A brief history of the petroleum business in Texas.
The Dark Bounty of Texas Oil SL New Yorker
Repairing Willie Nelson's Trigger
Since the mid-seventies, Mark Erlewine has been patching up Willie Nelson's guitar Trigger to keep it going for another year. Here he shows the sorts of things this entails: fixing a crack, cleaning and applying laquer. In part two he glues the top where it is separating from the body, restrings and gives it a test. Previously.
Dueling Jingle Bells
Healthcare's wasted $
A Prescription for Reducing Wasted Health Care Spending. "It’s been estimated that the U.S. health care system wastes about $765 billion a year — about a quarter of what’s spent. We’ve identified ways that tens of billions of dollars are being wasted, some of them overlooked even by many experts and academics studying this problem." A ProPublica article series. [more inside]
Happy Birt Jesus
"Christmas in America is a 7-year unvarnished, photographic exploration of the nation’s largest holiday. It's an investigation to discover and reveal what compels so many to devote thousands of hours to hanging lights, to carving and painting figurines, to building miniature villages, to converting their homes, yards, garages, and cars into monuments to merriness." More photos here on photographer Jesse Rieser's website, where the photos are also downloadable.
Vintage Los Angeles Christmas
The fabulous dancing, singing, acting Nicholas Brothers
The Nicholas Brothers, Fayard (born 1914) and Harold (born 1921), grew up in Philadelphia, the sons of musicians who played in their own band at the old Standard Theater. Fayard absorbed the Vaudeville acts he saw and made those acts his own, teaching himself how to tap dance with style. Harold joined him, and together, they were amazing, even at a young age. We Sing, We Dance: The Nicholas Brothers Story (YouTube; earlier documentary of the same name copied from VHS, on YouTube; credits on TMC for the second documentary) [more inside]
Grape Hull Pie
The ones to decide what happens next
One year later, why have an army of young people joined the Democratic Socialists? - Anna Heyward, The Nation.
Take a photo of your main street at midday.
Does the picture show more people than cars? Across cultures, over thousands of years, people have traditionally built places scaled to the individual. It is only in the last two generations that we have scaled places to the automobile. We've actually embedded this experiment of suburbanization into our collective psyche as the "American dream," a non-negotiable way of life that must be maintained at all costs. The way we achieve real, enduring prosperity is by building an America full of what we call Strong Towns.
The Browns Live In Hell
In the season finale of Chart Party, MeFi favorite Jon Bois discusses in detail the suffering that is the Cleveland Browns. (SYLT) [more inside]
A gorgeous little jewel of the Muppets at their best
On the 40th anniversary of Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, an oral history of Jim Henson's holiday musical from muppeteers Frank Oz and Dave Goelz, and songwriter Paul Williams.