Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
Porter Wagoner
The Rubber Room
(Omni, 2006)
The high gothic nightmares of country’s greatest tragedian.
Sometimes, record labels can be astonishingly ahead of the curve. There was I, this time last year, wondering if, in the wake of his recent death, I could interest a record label in compiling a CD of Porter Wagoner’s more lunatic compositions, and then I discovered this terrifying gem. Compiled by the oracular David Thrussell in 2006, The Rubber Room is subtitled “The haunting, poetic songs of Porter Wagoner” and it should have a Parental Advisory sticker on the cover, such is the horror contained within these gore-soaked two-and-a-half minute playlets. A not entirely welcome Christmas gift, it sound-tracked January 2007, filling the cold January days with ghoulish tales of death, murder, and dipsomania set in the fetid pool rooms, shuttered gaming houses and treacherous front rooms of country Babylon. From the storytelling wife-killer of The First Mrs Jones to the cuckolded husband of The Cold Hard Facts Of Life (who walks in on his wife’s wild sex party and stabs the participants to death), every song seems to starts with a jaunty perk of slide guitar and ends in a blood bath.
Whether wallowing in sodden self-pity or boiling with the righteous anger of the red-top tabloids Wagoner never strikes you as one of life’s liberals, and a compilation like this – whilst highlighting his unease around native Americans and unmarried mothers – also reveals a streak of true evil – as on a song like Woman Hungry, in which the narrator holds that “When a man gets woman hungry he will find a meal somewhere”. Christ! The best country tales are often the stuff of Greek tragedy, in which man is powerless in the face of overwhelming fate, but these songs are pure baroque opera that push further into the mouth of madness than even George Jones or Ray Price at their craziest. It’s perhaps fitting that, in one of his last recordings, Wagoner was back in the rubber room, with Committed To Parkview a song written by Johnny Cash about the time Wagoner spent in the “rest home” in the mid ’60s. Welcome to his nightmare.
Andrew Male
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 9:30 AM GMT 05/01/2009
Further Listening
Porter Wagoner – Wagonmaster (Anti, 2007)
Ray Price – Burning Memories (Columbia, 1964)
Killdozer – 12 Point Buck (Touch & Go, 1988)
Previous Disc of the day
-
-
Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
-
Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
-
Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
-
-
Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
end of body content back to top
Footer
Join us on:
© Copyright Bauer - all
rights reserved.
Reproduction of this
website, in whole or in
part, in any form or
medium without express
written permission from
Bauer is prohibited. All
use is subject to our
Terms of Use
|
|
Comments
Comment on this post
Comment on this post