Culture

Culture

The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.

Alex Massie

Tuesday Afternoon Country: Hank Williams Celebration Edition

Mercifully, the election ain’t the only show in town. There’s actual, real good news elsewhere. For instamce, 57 years after his death Hank Williams has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to American culture. Better late than never. So here, to celebrate, is audio of perhaps his most famous and thus perhaps the

Rod Liddle

Too close to Heaven

I dunno how this passed me by, just missed the news I suppose. But apparently Alex Chilton died a week or two back – which is no great surprise, in one way, but sort of shocking in another. He was one of two or three heroes of mine in that limited but enlivening medium, rock

Alex Massie

Sunday Afternoon Country: The Flatlanders

Their 1970s album was called More a Legend than a Band and that was about right since it and they disappeared for 20 years. Happily the Flatlanders returned and continue to amaze with their groovy, mildly mystical brand of Texas country. Here they are with a song from their album Hills and Valleys called Homeland

Rod Liddle

R.I.P Mark Linkous

It’s a pretty thin and overrated medium, rock music, and too much energy is expended lauding its practitioners. But Mark Linkous, who is dead having shot himself, was one of a small handful with genuine talent which sometimes, just sometimes, teetered into real brilliance. Few people have used the medium better, or understood better how

Alex Massie

Sunday Morning Country: Kitty Wells

Kitty Wells was born in 1919 and she’s the oldest living member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. So it’s well past time she featured here and, this being so, it’s sensible to play her first big hit It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels. If Hank Williams was the inspiration for everyone

Alex Massie

Monday Night Country: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

Bryan Curtis has an excellent piece at the Daily Beast on the current state of country music. Well, the state of commercially successful, Grammy-nominated country music anyway. As you might expect, it’s depressing stuff. Basically, you have a choice between Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift and perhaps the best that may be said of this

Alex Massie

Sunday Evening Country: Waylon again

Been a whole lotta time since Waylon was seen around here. Time to rectify that so here’s the great man singing A Good Hearted Woman which is what every outlaw needs though since all mommas also know they really shouldn’t let their babies grow up to be cowboys you’d think that means they’d be doubly

Alex Massie

Sunday Afternoon Country: Ricky Skaggs & Tony Rice

Well, Sunday afternoon high-class, great-pickin’ gospel really. Alison Krauss has always cited Tony Rice as one of the biggest influences upon her career and here he is, accompanied by the great Ricky Skaggs, performing what is, in my view, a beautiful version of the classic The Soul of Man Never Dies:

Rod Liddle

An apology and some other stuff…

I think I owe my colleague Hugo Rifkind an apology for my comments about his piece on climate change a week or so ago. I think I said that he was a gibbering idiot, a lice-ridden whore and the source of all evil in the western world, I can’t remember exactly – something typically measured.

Alex Massie

Saturday Morning Country: Steve Earle

Apologies for the light blogging these past couple of days. Still, it’s Saturday and so it’s time for some more country. Since I’m seeing him perform in Perth on Monday night it’s appropriate that Steve Earle makes another appearance in this series. And since his latest album is a set of Townes van Zandt covers

Alex Massie

Saturday Morning Country: Laura Cantrell

Yay! Another young, still-to-reach-their-prime performer! I like Laura Cantrell heaps. She has something. Here she is performing When the Roses Bloom Again. A nice, properly mournful song that is, in its title anyway, a spin-off of an old Carter Family tune that itself is reminiscent of some of the old Border ballads and, thus, a

Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 7 November 2009

The Wiki Man

I recently read of a music writer who believes the perfect pop song lasts precisely two minutes and 42 seconds. Crazy though it sounds, he may be on to something. Try ordering your iTunes collection by duration and you may find as I did that songs of that length seem slightly better on average than

Alex Massie

Friday Afternoon Country: Lyle Lovett

Because, frankly, from Afghanistan to Texas to the corridors of Whitehall and the Bank of England, it’s been a pretty bleak week it’s appropriate to bring Saturday Morning Country forward by a few hours. This Lyle Lovett song – If I Had a Boat – always cheers me up. Added bonus: with its dreams of

Alex Massie

Sunday Evening Country: The Louvin Brothers

Elvis Presley once said that the Louvin Brothers were his favourite country musicians. But he nver recorded one of their songs. Perhaps because, like almost everyone else who ever had any dealings with the Alabama-born and raised brothers, he’d been cussed out by Ira Louvin.  Charlie said that his elder brother was all kinds of

Alex Massie

Saturday Afternoon Country: Justin Townes Earle

Yes, that would be Steve Earle’s boy and yes he’s named after the great Townes van Zandt. One of the things I like about country music is it that, in the end, it’s all one big family. Granted, a family that sings about heartbreak and loss and the endless miseries of life quite a lot,

Alex Massie

Saturday Morning Country: Willie Nelson

How is it possible that this series has, until this point, failed to include Willie Nelson? A mystery, folks, a mystery. Now Willie has some odd views and is perilously close to being a 9/11 Truther but, frankly, we don’t hold that against him. The music’s the thing and he’s written enough and done enough

Alex Massie

The Boss Turns 60

Somehow or other I missed the 60th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s birth this week. The Boss turned 60 on Wednesday and if that seems oddly perturbing then, I suppose, at least it’s not as cor-blimey a thought as realising that Martin Amis celebrated his 60th birthday last month. Aye, the times are racing on right

Alex Massie

Hyperbole Corner: Beatles Edition

The New York Times actually paid someone to write this about a new video game: Luckily Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with the widows of George Harrison and John Lennon, seem to understand that the Beatles are not a museum piece, that the band and its message ought never be encased in amber. The

Alex Massie

Saturday Morning Country: Lyle Lovett

The Church of Country is a broad brotherhood (and sisterhood) and it’s fair to say that Lyle Lovett, like many others, has sometimes left it to worship elsewhere. But, again, like others that sometimes stray, he’s always welcome back for the Church of Country is a forgiving house that espouses tolerance, an open mind and

Alex Massie

Chris de Burgh is an Angry, Misunderstood, Man. Apparently.

From the Department of Criticism: the Irish Times handed my old Dublin University Players contemporary Peter Crawley the unenviable task of reviewing Chris de Burgh in concert. It’s fair to say that his notice was less than generous… Certain toes will never uncurl after this experience, but it is almost admirable how unaltered de Burgh

Alex Massie

Saturday Afternoon Country: Iris DeMent

Iris DeMent has only made four albums. And since the latest, 2004’s Lifeline, is a gospel record it’s fair to say that she ain’t on the trendy side of Nashville. In fact her style could harly be further removed from the country-pap that you hear on country radio stations and the teevee. DeMent is proper

Alex Massie

Saturday Afternoon Country: George Jones

If we could choose to sound like anyone, Waylon once said, we’d want to sing like George Jones. And frankly, not too many people have ever bothered to disagree with Mr Jennings’ verdict. And like Waylon and so many other country greats, the Possum has not always had his troubles to seek; rather he’s plunged