Weekend interlude: Steve Earle

CDM made the assertion the other day that you can't crank country music on your car stereo under any circumstances whatsoever. I think that opinion is somewhat subject to debate; theoretically, anything with a backbeat can be cranked. There were some pretty good hard-edged country artists back in the day whose music sounded good loud - Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams Jr., David Allan Coe for some examples. Waylon Jennings' Ol' Waylon, the only piece of country music I owned back in high school, sounded pretty good played loud on the Mickey Mouse 8-track in my '66 Chevy. Either that, or it was the combination of cheap equipment and cheap beer that did the trick. To this day, I'll still hear somebody like Dierks Bentley snap off a good riff on occasion. The main handicap in official Nashville (as opposed to the underground) is that they rarely let their musicians play all-out (in the studio, anyway). Can't sound too much like rock 'n' roll, y'know.

Steve Earle's "The Unrepentant" is definitely a crank-worthy tune. Although it doesn't have a whole lot to do with country, and that may be the point.



Inspirational Verse:

Now he's standin' at hell's door
With a bad attitude and a forty-four
The devil said, "What's up man
Now what you come here for?"
He said, "Man, let's just get to it"
He said, "I always heard that you were the bad one
There's a few places I ain't been, a few things I ain't done
You got your pitchfork and I got my gun"
Someone's gotta do it