Every Picture Tells a Story
Mark it: In 2003, home video began to affect strongly how the music we talk about is released and received.
With sounds of the Americana/indie roots-rock continuum primarily served up live, the DVD format has been especially ripe. Traditional live albums have often worn thin fast; you just can’t stand hearing that particular cough, joke or mistake one more time. Performance video, surprisingly, can overcome that, by adding more details.
Seeing the revealing live interaction between Allison Moorer and Shelby Lynne on the video half of Show, the live record/DVD combo Moorer released in 2003, simply provides more sense of being where you weren’t — and of discovery. If it won’t get played twelve times in a row like a great studio record, it will get happily replayed more often than the CD half. It’s the audio disc that’s the free toss-in!
Music video potential for the American roots genre remains underexploited, with few outlets. (GAC network’s “On The Edge Of Country” hour is one, but appears forced by meager pickings to rely on a lot of material that’s several years old.) Small-budget DIY videos of new artists, perhaps distributed via new media means, have untapped potential for introducing roots artists who can’t appear everywhere and deserve to be better-known.
In the bigger-budget mainstream, the single most radical release this year may be the imagery in Patty Loveless’ “Lovin’ All Night” video, which puts having a good twangy time back in the capable hands of civilians of all ages, backgrounds, races, beautification and hickster/hipster predilections, rather than CMT pinups.
And all hail the increasing release of unavailable legacy footage on DVD — remarkable performances from Howlin’ Wolf to Cousin Emmy to Townes Van Zandt. Classic Grand Ole Opry shows are supposedly being readied for release later in 2004. Now where’s that Johnny Cash ABC-TV series on DVD?
— BARRY MAZOR
Whistlin’ Dixie
Permit me to elevate the level of discourse concerning the major controversy that swirled through country music circles in 2003:
Chicks rule, Toby drools.
Whether or not one shares the disdain expressed by Natalie Maines for fellow Texan George W. Bush, the backlash embodied by Toby Keith smacked of bully boys putting uppity girls in their place. That the Chicks not only survived the boycott but flourished in the face of it suggests America is a greater country than the likes of Keith and other knee-jerk jingoists could ever comprehend.
So, if 2002 was the year of the Dixie Chicks, and so was 2003, maybe every year will be the year of the Dixie Chicks. After the strong-willed trio conquered both the charts and critics with the previous year’s Home, they saw their profile skyrocket even higher with this year’s world tour.
Though the maverick feistiness for which the band has been hailed threatened to derail their career, a spirit of triumph pervades the recently released Top Of The World Tour Live. Not only does the big-voiced Maines show more expressive range than previously, but the soaring harmonies and buoyant instrumental interplay of Martie Maguire’s fiddle and Emily Robison’s banjo spotlight the Chicks as so much more than the Natalie Show.
The powerhouse performance documented on the two-disc release (and companion DVD) has belatedly turned my household’s lone holdout skeptic into almost as big a fan as his daughters. As much as I’d admired the Chicks’ attitude — their embrace of ideals that any punk rocker would hold dear — I’d previously dismissed the trio’s music as more of a novelty. I never suspected that the Charlie’s Angels of contemporary country might somehow become the music’s Nirvana.
Yet just as Nirvana’s success rendered the very notion of “alternative rock” meaningless, the Chicks have dissolved the distinction between alt-country and commercial country. I still have trouble forgiving their desecration of Bob Dylan’s “Mississippi” or their revival of Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide” — but maybe it’s time I confronted my own inner Toby Keith.
–DON McLEESE
