The Chicks
(67.2 pts):
- 3 Top 10 hits
- 1 Top 20
- 2 Top 40
- 7 Top 100 hits
- “Not Ready to Make Nice” peaked at #4 in 2006
Art as a form of protest against governments has existed at least since the French Revolution.
But what happens when an off-hand comment by a band leads to them being the ones protested?
In the case of the (Dixie) Chicks, they took a few years, gathered their thoughts, then directed a big, fat middle finger at the protesters.
And scored the biggest hit in their career:
In 1988 at a show in Fort Worth, sisters Martie and Emily Erwin met Robin Lynn Macy and Laura Lynch, and realized they played all the right instruments to form a band.
The next weekend on a street corner in Dallas’ West End they played five songs for tips, and decided to pursue it further.
They entered county fair contests; winning one, then got hired to play a private party for $400. They didn’t have a name yet, only a common love for a 1973 release by Little Feat:
Lowell George co-wrote the title track from Little Feat’s third album with songwriter Martin Gibbee (billed as Fred Martin), who’d been a member of Fraternity of Man.
According to Gibbee, he was driving home after a long recording session in Laurel Canyon where George kept playing the same rift over and over.
He saw a sign: “Dixie Chicken,” rushed home and wrote a story about a wealthy man who got taken to the cleaners by a beautiful grifter over that riff.
The Midnight Special version above was a jazzy version of the song which Robin and Laura probably heard as seniors in high school; though I’m not sure the sisters watched it in 1977 – Martie was eight, Emily four.
The Chicks released their first two albums Thank Heavens For Dale Evans and Little Ol’ Cowgirl on a local label.
Most of the tracks were bluegrass covers: lots of fiddles and banjos that played well to senior citizens. Studio musicians were brought in for the second album, including one Lloyd Maines on steel guitar.
The sisters wanted to go more mainstream country and appeal to a younger audience: against the wishes of Macy, who quit the band. The rechristened Dixie Chicks Cowgirl Band recorded their third album, Shouldn’t a’ Told You That, but still found little success.
Something had to give, and it was lead singer Laura Lynch. Maines put the band in touch with Sony Nashville, and The Chicks auditioned. Executives concluded the band would have greater success with a younger, better singer. Lloyd knew just the person:
His daughter Natalie.
A trained vocalist with a scholarship to attend the Berklee College of Music, and fifteen years younger than Lynch.
Natalie joined, the band ditched their old-fashioned costumes and musical style, then recorded their major label debut.
“Wide Open Spaces” was a smash:
13 million copies sold, 5 singles reached the Billboard Top 100 (including 2 in the Top 40).
The Chicks were nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy in 1999 and won two others: Best Country Album and Best County Performance by a Group with Vocals.
Their follow up Fly also crushed.
Ten million copies sold and SEVEN songs charted on the Billboard 100: something that had been done by a few artists previously: Michael twice, Janet, Def Leppard and Shania.
They headlined Lilith Fair, the first country artist to do so. It was only a matter of time before they hit the top 10. Before they were able to, though, they had to settle a score with Sony.
In 2001, Sony Nashville and the trio went to war over their contract. It played out in the public eye, something unusual in the country music ecosphere.
In the end, The Chicks won, but as they recorded their next album (for which they’d get their first production credits), they distanced themselves from the country music world.
9/11 happened, and the Nashville scene went jingoistic, something The Chicks weren’t comfortable with.
Maines told the LA Daily News in August 2002 she didn’t like Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)”, saying:
“I hate it. It’s ignorant, and it makes country music sound ignorant.”
“It targets an entire culture – and not just the bad people who did bad things. You’ve got to have some tact.”
“Anybody can write, ‘We’ll put a boot in your ass.’ But a lot of people agree with it. The kinds of songs I prefer on the subject are like Bruce Springsteen’s new songs.”
Natalie maines August 2002
The spat went back and forth, played out in concerts and on T-shirts. In a genre that is white, male and right-wing, them’s fightin’ words. It just needed a spark.
Home was released in August of 2002 to enormous success: it would go on to sell over six million copies in the United States.
Its first two singles hit #7 on the Billboard Top 100. “Long Time Gone” is an old-timey bluegrass fiddle-led song I’m not really a big fan of (it’s a 5), but their remake of Stevie Nicks’ classic “Landslide” is a 7 (The Fleetwood Mac original peaked at #51).
Tensions remained high internationally, and George W Bush stated his intention to remove “weapons of mass destruction” from Iraq. On March 10, 2003, nine days before the Iraqi invasion, Maines told a London audience:
Reported by The Guardian in England and seized by right-wing media, the backlash was swift. The Chicks were blacklisted from country music radio stations; boycotts and a few public CD smashing events organized. One former fan even publicly drove over Chicks’ merchandise with a tractor.
The next week, “Landslide” dropped from #10 to 43. And the following week, it was off the Top 100. “Travelin’ Soldier”, the third single from Home fell from #1 on the Country singles – off the charts.
The Chicks went into crisis management while they tried to maintain their political stance. Maines offered an apology, but the damage was done: DJs were fired for playing their music, death threats followed; metal detectors installed at their concerts. Natalie had to hire security to protect her house.
When the Academy of Country Music Awards announced their nominees in May of that year, The Chicks were booed loudly.
It took three years for the band to respond. But man, did they.
Their album Taking the Long Way was a direct response to all that had happened, and they wrote it as outsiders to the Nashville world they once called home.
“Not Ready to Make Nice” opens with an aggressive guitar, but it and the instruments back off to give Natalie room.
During their Oprah interview The Chicks claimed to want a “universal interpretation” for the song, but c’mon – forgiveness sounds good, forget… Natalie isn’t sure she could. The first verse is sung quietly, but builds in intensity.
They’re not ready to back down – they’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. By the time the chorus hits, it rips.
The second verse starts out quiet as well, but after Natalie announces she sleeps well at night she lays into her critics.
Her opponents teach hate, and were broken by her words? She should “shut up and sing” or be killed?
I mean, those words aren’t in the song. but they might as well be.
Listen, I’ll be honest: country music isn’t my taste, but the more I’ve listened to this song, the more I realize this song hits hard.
The video also helps. I don’t know if Tom will wind up talking about Sophie Muller the director, but she might be on the Mount Rushmore of music videos.
She began her work with the Eurythmics after meeting Dave Stewart’s brother by chance.
She’s won tons of awards (including a Grammy for Annie Lennox’s Diva video album), but the breadth of her work is amazing – among my favorites include Blur’s “Song 2”, … Lily Allen’s “Smile”, Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dance Floor,,,
,,, and dare I say, “Not Ready to Make Nice”? This is The Handmaid’s Tale set to music.
The band is in white, being covered in black paint as a way to shut them up while other women are dressed in black, mourning. Throughout the video, the world is trying to take their voice away, but The Chicks aren’t going to go away quietly, tipping over the medication Natalie’s supposed to take, arguing against the quote on the chalkboard she was supposed to write as punishment:
“To talk without thinking is to shoot without aiming.”
It’s a quote from Thomas Fuller, an 18th century physician best known for his collection of proverbs from 1732.
It’s such a declaration of triumph that it would be easy to end the video with a mic drop. But they don’t. Natalie sings the last verse, her face outlined in black: “Time heals everything, but I’m still waiting…”
And with that, The Chicks walked away.
In September their documentary Shut Up and Sing was released at the Toronto International Film Festival, and then the group took some time off recording – fourteen years, in fact.
Martie and Emily went and worked on a side project called The Court Yard Hounds to some success;
Natalie did a solo album and the Dixie Chicks toured, and all of them raised families. Maybe they’d said all they needed to say.
Before I began writing this, I knew nothing about The Dixie Chicks, or even that they were called The Chicks these days. But their stance on controversial issues wasn’t limited to the Iraqi War and Nashville.
In 2007, Natalie spoke out on behalf of The West Memphis Three, and wound up sued for her stance.
In 2020, following George Floyd and the race riots across the country, the group announced they were dropping “Dixie” from their name because of its relationship with the Confederate South.
In 2020, The Chicks returned with a new album Gaslighter. The album did well on the charts; the singles didn’t hit the Billboard 100.
But if the last Top 40 hit they have in their careers is “Not Ready to Make Nice:”
that’s a hell of a way to go out.
And this just in: So Tom Breihan did mention them – in this past Monday’s column, which I’m kind of excited about – after all, his column still has over a decade of songs to cover, and some of the artists he missed are still active. I predicted one of them would be included eventually…but it wasn’t The Chicks!
GRADE: 8/10
TRIVIA: The All-American Rejects had a decent run about fifteen years ago with three Top 10 hits, including 2004’s “Gives You Hell”, but Tom never rated any of their songs, and only mentioned them once…while discussing a comeback story for whom? (“Gives You Hell” is a 5.)
Last week, I mentioned Nazareth managed a single mention in Tom’s column, under stadium rockers REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Loving You” power ballad. (Tom gave it a 6.)
BONUS BEATS: In 2008 The (Dixie) Chicks appeared on The Simpsons and mocked their critics, because of course they did:
Thank You For Your Vote!
Sorry You have Already Voted!
Views: 383
The right wing doesn’t lay claim to much in terms of cultural innovations, so credit where credit’s due: they were the pioneers of cancel culture.
The demand to “shut up and sing” was always a joke, as the people who said it also love when musicians speak belligerently on things they agree with. They just didn’t want anyone to challenge them. They wanted the whole culture to reflect them personally. And they still do, more now than ever.
As worrying as the Bush administration could sometimes be, and as genuinely catastrophic as their signature foreign policy move has proven be, they were not actively stoking authoritarian sentiment. But that sentiment was out there. It had been been bubbling and spreading since at least the late 80s, and by the time of 9/11 it was a raging inferno. But it was mostly happening on the airwaves, on television, and in e-mail chains.
If Bush had decided to go full dictator in the name of national security, there were plenty of Americans who would have been absolutely delighted. It was those same people who demonized the Chicks for daring to speak their minds in a way that was uncomfortable, threatening these people’s fragile moral worlds.
Anyway, I wasn’t a huge fan of the Chicks when they first came out, but the early 00s was when I started to warm to bluegrass and country sounds. Then they released Home, and I really liked that one. Now I can even enjoy their country pop stylings. “Not Ready to Make Nice” does hit hard, especially those lyrics.
Great read, thegue. A time capsule for not so distant history.
I agree, the brouhaha around their political stances really defined the group’s image. But I am amazed that I read your article, gue, and there’s no mention of “Goodbye Earl”! (I know, there’s only so much space in an article…) Before all of the politics, that song was pretty daring. One could be upset by the implications of a song encouraging murder of a domestic abuser, and that is definitely dangerous territory, but I think that it was done with enough humor (especially including the video) that it was perceived correctly. It got the message across, and had fun doing it.
I definitely don’t know all of their hits (I didn’t remember “Not Ready To Make Nice” at all), but of what I know I like “I Can Love You Better” best from 1998’s Wide Open Spaces.
But here’s the hilarious “Goodbye Earl”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw7gNf_9njs
It only hit #19, so I was never going to include in an article of almost 2000(!) words…but there could’ve been an entire column devoted to that song and its repercussions.
I never listened to The Chicks before I began writing this (I knew of their “Landslide” cover, and that was it!), but I really appreciated their story as I researched it.
I hope I feel the same way about all the artists I cover…
Narrator: he will not.
What’s interesting about the brouhaha about “Goodbye Earl” is that it’s not by any stretch the first song with its topic. Half a decade earlier, Martina McBride released “Independence Day” (an 8, and only because it feels unfinished at only two verses to me), in which the narrator is triumphantly recalling the time her mother set fire to the house with her abusive father locked inside. And half a decade before that, Rosanne Cash gave us “Rosie Strike Back” (a damn 9), where she advocates more of a “hit him where it hurts” approach — take the kid and a suitcase and never tell him where you’ve gone — but still: “strike back” is right there in the title and chorus. There is, to quote Dennis Reynolds, the implication.
So why “Goodbye Earl” (a raucous 9) became a minor cultural flashpoint is beyond me. [Takes a look at the Chicks, both literally and metaphorically] Oh, right.
Rob Harvilla has an entire episode devoted to “Goodbye Earl” in his podcast “60 Songs That Explain the 90s” It’s a great listen.
W’s response to 9/11 (and that of his evil minions) has not aged well, to say the least. I was angry, we were all angry, following 9/11, but to lie to the American people and plunge us into years of war, the loss of countless lives, the destruction of societies, and billions of tax dollars flushed make me equally angry. 9/11 required a response, but not the one we got. How might the world be different today if we didn’t have the electoral college?
(Or was W the minion? At least the billionaires were happy.)
This was the beginning of my disillusion with the Republican Party – I was a proud part of them (I met H.W. during his campaign stop in Montgomery County back in 1987), but the libertarian streak in me could NOT understand the spending like drunken sailors, the Patriot Act, and the venomous racism displayed towards the Arab people.
I’d lived in the Middle East, and found them to be the most warm, welcoming culture I’d ever been a part of…still do, in fact. Blaming the Arab World for 9/11 is like blaming America for the Westboro Baptist Church’s hatred. I gave a LOT of after school presentations of my time there, and how Bin Laden/Al-Qaeda were disconnected with the Qu’ran and the Arab people.
I hope I was able to change at least one person’s mind, but I know I was changed – I left the GOP in 2008.
Just a pet peeve of mine, but George W Bush is NOT Texan or even Southern. He was born in Connecticut, raised in Maine, went to high school in Massachussets, then college at Yale. He is 100% a New England boy.
To get even more granular, ask a Texan about the difference between the paired cities of Odessa (blue collar) and Midland (where all the people who employ the Odessa folks live). You know where the Bushes lived (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
I once played a blues festival in Midland and someone hired us to come a day early to play a private party. We thought sure we had gone to the wrong address, because it was an industrial area south of town. It turned out to be someone in the oil business who had one of the nicest venues, complete with a huge stage, a light show, state of the art sound, a full bar, table, chairs, and a dance floor, inside his company’s headquarters. He said they used it for parties once or twice a year.
So, yes, there’s some money in Midland.
The stereotype is that all Country musicians are conservative. Sure, there are far right wingers but some are just taking the path of least resistance. It’s easy to write songs about trucks and beer, and some people become very successful doing just that.
But there are also people writing insightful, and far from conservative, lyrics that break the stereotype. Old school names like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, and Kris Kristofferson, newer stars like Taylor Swift, Sturgil Simpson, Margot Price, Kacey Musgraves, and Brandy Clark, and up-and-comers like Tyler Childers, Charlie Worsham, and Mickey Guyton, all lean left.
The big disappointment with The Chicks was the way Country radio reacted. I’m sure some station managers are conservative but some just, again, took the path of least resistance. It shows they didn’t think their audience could handle differing points of view, and that shows they don’t think very highly of their audience.
Country fans are generally more conservative than pop or R&B audiences and country radio even more so. That’s why somebody like Musgraves has had limited success on the country charts (one top 10 hit, which peaked at #10).
Bingo. Safe bet that Tom will have a lot to say on that subject once he reaches 2023 in TNOs (which is when I expected him to bring up the Chicks… the mention in this week’s column was a surprising bonus).
The Chicks kinda touched on that point in “Long Time Gone” (as you surely know). It wasn’t written by them, but it has the pointed verse:
<< Now they sound tired but they don’t sound Haggard
They’ve got money but they don’t have Cash
They got Junior but they don’t have Hank >>
When I was living in Atlanta, I was friends with a lot of people who were big country fans and they taught me a lot about the genre. And they didn’t like Big & RIch.
Definitely add Jason Isbell to that list, one of the most outspoken of them all.
Liberal, borderline socialist country music fans.
We exist!
“My dream of having a three boy Country trio called The Chixie Dicks.” – Zach Galifianakis
https://youtu.be/-a43xLs0AeI?t=877
Some wonderful tidbits in here. I did not know that Natalie Maines went to Berklee, for one.
Gotta disagree with you about the video, though. Rather heavy-handed (no pun intended) to me.
Heh. Oops.
The song I think of first with the Chicks is “Daddy Lessons”, which they recorded with Beyonce (an actual Texan) for Lemonade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ogc5Pbtxa0
I can’t say I’m familiar with the Chicks music. Just like Chuck’s 1990 list yesterday emphasised diverging tastes as the burgeoning popularity of RnB in the US wasn’t replicated here, same applies for country music. The Chicks had some success, an actual top 40 single with There’s Your Trouble in 1999 and two top 10 albums; Taking The Long Way and 2020 comeback Gaslighter.
For a country artist that constitutes a major breakthrough here. They never had much in the way of mainstream radio play but their stance on the War On Terror got them more notice than their records. I knew the basics of their story from that period but nice to have it all in context and get the three dimensional backstory rather than just the brouhaha (word of the day it seems).
That’s three bands covered so far and all have had behind the scenes machinations leading to multiple member changes. A theme developing.
Wouldn’t it be more of a story if band members DIDN’T change? I mean, The Beatles (Pete Best, Stu Sutcliffe), Rolling Stones (13 listed on Wikipedia, 8 major ones), Fleetwood Mac (JESUS!!!), etc.
I mean, we’re only left with ZZ Top, Golden Earring and ABBA otherwise!
And we can’t even count ZZ Top anymore.
Don’t forget the likes of Coldplay, BTS, Radiohead, Gorillaz, Simon & Garfunkel, The Archies, Dr Teeth & The Electric Mayhem, Alvin & The Chipmunks (unchanged since the 50s!!)
I could go on. Best if I don’t.
Oh, man, upvoted for Dr Teeth & the Electric Mayhem 🙂
Bands change personnel. It’s part of the business. Enough people have been in and out of Iron Butterfly to fill a small army.
Agreed that most bands have had multiple changes to their members, but Led Zeppelin had zero line up changes on any of their albums. (1969-1982) They had guest musicians after Bonham died, but no official additional members.
I’m also thinking about
Cream
Talking Heads
The Zombies
Jimi Hendrix Experience
I’ve never really dug too deep into this band’s music but I’ve always found their story super interesting. Glad you were willing to tackle the thornier issues, thegue.
One of the things that I love about the early Chicks’ records, that shows just how much their style changed, is that there was yodeling. Really good yodeling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTUARGsHufQ
I loved Taking The Long Way – I said at the time that I didn’t know that the Grammys got it right when they named it Album Of The Year, but they for sure didn’t get it wrong – but didn’t really consider the whole of the Chicks’ career at the time. Then my parents gifted me with a copy of Fly that they nabbed at a library book sale (that’s a good album), and I was astonished to realize as I listened that I knew about 3/4 of the songs on the album despite not listening (at the time) to country radio. That album was huge enough that I sucked up most of it through simple osmosis.
The same didn’t quite happen last year when I nabbed Home from the library bookstore (that’s a good album), but the more I dug into their whole deal, the more I realized that the Chicks were a fucking huge band. Wide Open Spaces: diamond. Fly: diamond. Home: not diamond; its run was slammed to a halt by the blinkered jingoistic bullshit of the country-music establishment. Instead, it was hobbled at only six times platinum. Those are insane numbers. They were an absolute monster of an act, pretty much as big as anybody else at the time if not bigger, and the non-country mainstream was none the wiser.
Which makes their blacklisting even more mind-boggling. It’s essentially as if sometime around Houses Of The Holy, there had been an organized, systemic boycott against Led Zeppelin and it worked. Imagine if Led Zeppelin just… stopped, killed in their prime by radio and the labels and then nobody ever talked about it. That’s what we’re talking about with the Chicks. That’s the level of opposition they faced and the level of success that was stolen from them.
*pant* *pant* Anyway, let’s talk about “Not Ready To Make Nice”! It’s a fucking 10. Here’s the thing: There are a small handful of songs I consider uncoverable, not because they’re sacrosanct or because they’re too technically difficult for mere mortals but because they are so specifically personal to the originating artist that anybody else trying to play it demonstrates that they don’t understand the song in the first place. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is one. “The Needle And The Damage Done” is another. And then there’s “Not Ready To Make Nice.” The bridge before the second verse – seriously, I literally just got chills preparing to write about it right now – is the sound of specifically Natalie Maines pouring out every ounce of her fear and frustration and confusion and fury about a situation that specifically Natalie Maines, Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire have been living with. It is almost unimaginably specific to them and only them, which is why anybody who attempts it and holds it aloft as a sort of all-purpose stick-it-to-the-bastards anthem sounds like an absolute moron. Nobody should touch it but the Chicks. Leave it alone. Not everything has to be for you.
The Court Yard Hounds album was pleasant, and I harbor some affection for “Delight (Something New Under The Sun).” But without Maines, they were like a stool with one leg missing. Glad to have them back together, but man, we lost easily a decade of great material from the Chicks thanks to knee-jerk reactionary tribal idiocy.
All brilliantly stated! I think you should write an article for here, because you definitely have me thinking about songs specific to an artist that should never be covered!
(most of my suggestions would probably be from alternative rock since 2000, but still)
*Letter to NYC: Beastie Boys
*505: Arctic Monkeys
or, for that matter, the most recent Number Ones column entry from Adele – I know it’s been covered, but man that is a personal song…
I second that idea. What a great idea for an article.
Sure, YOU would think it’s a great idea.
So you love this concept, huh?
I’ll see myself out.
It can be a tricky line to walk, but I wouldn’t count the Adele song in this category. It was drawn from her life, and from a particular situation in it, but it feels to me clearly scalable to other people; it’s a textbook example of the adage that if you make your art specific, it will have universal appeal. Regardless of the details, getting your heart broken by someone who moves on before you do is something everyone can relate to. (As, I would gather, is breaking someone’s heart and then moving on before they do. In the words of Garth Brooks, ask me how I know.) Being the target of a coordinated cancellation campaign and receiving death threats because you snarked about the President is quite not. I got no problems with Adele covers, save the not-living-up-to issue.
Excellent! I nominate “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen. All covers should cease to exist. (As should the original. I just can’t stand the song in any way.)
Oh, I’ve already written that article.
https://www.npr.org/2011/01/05/132667008/make-a-resolution-for-2011-leave-hallelujah-alone
Nice! But I admit to being an emotionless hack (in this case) that doesn’t like any version of the song.
Do you still write for npr?
Not for a while. I guess you could say we broke up because of artistic differences. They saw themselves as alive, and I saw them dead.
No, wait. That was Chicago. In actuality, I was a freelancer and thus particularly vulnerable to the many, many budget cuts over the last decade. It’s okay, we’re still friends.
I feel like I’ve outed myself somehow.
Terrific article. I appreciate that you shared it here!
I like Bill Callahan’s MOJO supplement version of “So Long, Marianne”. The second version is more ornate.
Jake Shimabukuro. LOL. That’s one name that never came up in TNOCS. I like his cover of “Bizarre Love Triangle”.
I was once downvoted five times for not knowing who Nina Totenberg was. An OG responded: “Don’t you get NPR on Oahu?”
Question: Why has no one ever covered Bruce Springsteen’s “Cover Me”?
I mean, really now…
It’s been done many times. I like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cqj-VObCiU&t=6s
“Not Ready To Make Nice” has been covered a few times. It was popular for contestants on The Voice for the first few seasons. There are lots of a cappella and instrumental covers.
And I hate them all!
Songs that are too artist specific to cover?
“Thank U Next”
“The Ballad of John and Yoko”
“When We Was Fab”
Can something that’s already a cover like “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” be included?
“What’s Love Got To Do With It” is a signature song, for sure, but it’s not literally Tina Turner’s story, not like “The Ballad Of John And Yoko” or “When We Was Fab.” (Both about Tina Turner. Surprising facts!) I feel like the only way you could cover those two would be to do what Too Much Joy did with the Records’ “Starry Eyes,” which was to keep the chorus and rewrite everything else to be about your own shenanigans, rather than recounting someone else’s.
The band didn’t do themselves any favors by posing nude on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. The three women had all these slogans tattooed all over their bodies. What Natalie Maines did took a lot of guts. I just hope she cleared it with her bandmates. Maines remained a public figure. I can’t name the other two musicians off the top of my head.
Great article, thegue. It reminded me of the time I bought the EW at Wal-Mart and the cashier gave me a look that suggested: Are you on Team America or Team Chicks?
Can’t say she didn’t warn ’em.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3swHt97Qtw
Nice write up thegue.
I’m also not too familiar with The Chicks, but I read this statement:
“Anybody can write, ‘We’ll put a boot in your ass.’ But a lot of people agree with it. The kinds of songs I prefer on the subject are like Bruce Springsteen’s new songs.”
and then re-listened to “I’m Not Ready To Make Nice”. At 2:13 in the song, and for the next 10 seconds, is a violin solo that sounds EXACTLY like what Bruce and his band were adding in the songs off The Rising.
I was thinking “Nothing Man”, “Into The Fire”, and “Lonesome Day” — all devastating accounts of 9/11, with that same violin sound — It’s The Chicks ode to the boss and The Rising.
It’s @hokienole ! Good welcome to tnocs.com!
Thanks mt58!
Also, thanks for making this website accessible from my iPad -:)
(stereogum is only laptop accessible, for all intensive purposes).
PS, I just bought a house (god help me in this environment -:) and I told my realtor I can’t do the townhouse thing anymore and need detachment. He asks “too on top of neighbors and too much noise sharing walls?”
I said, “no, sometimes I WANT TO BE LOUD and come home and crank the stereo to 10. I can’t do that in a townhouse”.
im now a half mile from Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD.
Anyone in the TNOCS world is welcome to stay for a concert. Just @ me.
If you’re in Columbia MD (where a friend of mine used to live), we’re going to expect you at the next TNOCS convention! East Coast in the HOUSE!!
To paraphrase Roy Orbison … “You Got It”
I grew up in Columbia. (Longfellow, then Dorsey Hall.) Proximity to Merriweather Post is the only upside I could name.
… I’m sure you’ll be fine, though.
I’ve already done one pet peeve in this comment section. Don’t make me talk about “intents & purposes”.
Can I blame that on writing on an ipad -:)
Yeah! Welcome, fellow NOAA employee 🙂
Like I mentioned to you 4+ years ago Link, I like my music like I like my science … atmospheric.
What a most unusual timeline to share with TNOCS. I’ll always remember the incredible comradery and necessary distraction during the pandemic.
You should email me someday via my work email. It wouldn’t be difficult to figure out my address.
done
Sorry for the delay: here’s the trivia that should’ve been posted with the article…
TRIVIA: The All-American Rejects had a decent run about fifteen years ago with 3 Top 10 hits, including 2004’s “Gives You Hell”, but Tom never rated any of their songs, and only mentioned them once…while discussing a comeback story for whom? (“Gives You Hell” is a 5)
Last week, I mentioned Nazareth managed a single mention in Tom’s column, under stadium rockers REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Loving You” power ballad. (Tom gave it a 6)
Your editor apologizes! Article trivia now intact ^