{"id":102287,"date":"2015-05-17T10:23:31","date_gmt":"2015-05-17T14:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=102287"},"modified":"2015-05-17T10:32:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T14:32:08","slug":"epic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=102287","title":{"rendered":"Epic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zoOQvmhXFSM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nI&#8217;m not really a fan of contemporary country. It&#8217;s too squeaky clean with that tinge of resentment (&#8220;I drive four-wheel drive, you latte-drinkin&#8217; Yankee&#8221; &#8220;I buy my underwear at Walmart and look just as good as them models &#8230;&#8221; Hm. You sure about that? I demand pictures.) &#8230; and it all sounds the same. I like some of it, including the two songs that I just made fun of right there (&#8220;Boys Round Here&#8221; and &#8220;Redneck Woman&#8221;), but comparing it to its roots, to the giants of the field &#8230; it just doesn&#8217;t hold up. I love country. Merle Haggard. Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Hank Williams, Dolly Parton. These people understand pain, compromises, addiction, darkness. Hell, that&#8217;s what a country song is FOR. Express that shit!  <\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know much about Eric Church, but I do know that his album last year was on lots of Best-Of-the-Year lists. So I bought it. And I&#8217;m hooked. He&#8217;s got an edge. He&#8217;s got a heavy-metal soul. He&#8217;s not trying to be a goody-goody good ol&#8217; boy, expressing the proper family values and cultural values so that he&#8217;ll get the stamp of approval from the Resentful Crowd. There&#8217;s an honesty there. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m at the beach this weekend. I&#8217;ve been suffering, y&#8217;all. Needed to get away. Eric Church&#8217;s &#8220;Devil, Devil&#8221; came on as I careened down the Garden State Parkway. It&#8217;s 8 minutes long. It&#8217;s EPIC. Apparently in his stage shows, he has a huge devil statue-thing on stage with him, and the Christians have been all outraged about it. I am <i> so tired of these people<\/i>. They make me think of that great quote from H.L. Mencken: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p> &#8216;Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.&#8217;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What does it feel like to be so afraid? So narrow? If you listen to the lyrics of this song, he is clearly talking about some deep painful shit, stuff that has to do with the music industry itself. Nashville. The country music establishment. What stardom\/money\/fame does. It&#8217;s a devil, and she&#8217;s seductive as hell. It&#8217;s clever lyrically &#8211; the way all great country songs have been in the past. <\/p>\n<p>It grinds, and rocks. Elvis makes an appearance as does Roy Acuff. It has a freshness to its sound, an openness and vitality, that I haven&#8217;t heard in much contemporary country. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m slightly in love with this track, and with Eric Church at the moment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not really a fan of contemporary country. It&#8217;s too squeaky clean with that tinge of resentment (&#8220;I drive four-wheel drive, you latte-drinkin&#8217; Yankee&#8221; &#8220;I buy my underwear at Walmart and look just as good as them models &#8230;&#8221; Hm. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=102287\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102287"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102294,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102287\/revisions\/102294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}