Me and Mr Jones

Far away the country singer that I have the most time for

















The world of regret and shame he puts into the word "foolish"

A few other country things I love



Not for the sentiment, but just the peal of the chorus, the keening nasal explosion of voice




Tried to persuade a girlfriend that this song was in its own way as harrowing as Joy Division

She wasn't buying it

(But it is coming from the same place as "Love Will Tear Us Apart" - mundane pain, stoic dignity)

Country was on the alt-indie agenda for a moment in the Eighties



The best song on the second Commotions album - the only one good enough to be on Rattlesnakes

Costello ahead of the game here (1981)  but the Almost Blue album is a void, the only one in that run from True to Punch that leaves me numb

Most alt-indie takes on country were pretty tepid

One of the exceptions



Things got so desperate in the Bad Music Era, I even bought a Jason and the Scorchers album  - big mistake

Countryisms and Americana in general was a big contributory factor to the badness of the Bad Music Era

Gram Parsons = a very hip reference point for a moment there



I used to find that song very touching - "thought about a calico bonnet from Cheyenne to Tennessee" but I can't re-access the feeling now

Almost none of that country rock (late Sixties school or the 80s redux) compares to the real thing, by which I mean the straight down the line Nashville mainstream, countrypolitan strings and all

Less interested in the supposedly real-er thing.

the Outlaw movement etc

And never got around to Joe Ely

I was just looking at a picture of him and thinking he had that Montgomery Cliff cleancut look that Joe Strummer had

not realising that he done this



and actually sung on the Clash original

some kind of mirror image narcissism attraction syndrome going on there between the two Joes

Always hated Big Audio Dynamite.

Or so I tell myself.

But then there's at least four songs I always turn up when they come on the car radio (which is frequently in the case of the first two, rarely and very rarely with the last couple).

Prefer B.A.D. II to B.A.D. mk 1, but the latter did have....

this was always embarrassing though

still as post-Clash discographies go it has the distinct edge over Strummer's

The Ken Russell of rock.

Bad For Good = another record I desisted from picking up in Sounds, the store in Tilburg.

Another Meatloaf-related artist whose solo album I toyed with for a second or two in the store: Ellen Foley and The Spirit of St Louis.


However this record (her second solo, from 1981) is actually more-or-less a Clash side project - Foley was dating Mick Jones ("produced by" is coyly credited to "My Boyfriend") and there's a bunch of Strummer/Jones compositions plus playing passim from Paul, Topper, Joe 'n' Mick.

Foley did the backing vocals on "Hitsville UK" and this unreleased tune

She also did a record with Ian Hunter (Mott-Clash nexus: Guy Stevens) and sang with Iron City Houserockers which was produced by Hunter, Ronson, and The E Street Band's Steven Van Zandt. 

The linkage between Meatloaf, Springsteen, Mott and Clash seems indicative of how razor-thin the at-the-time-crucial-seeming divisions between Old Wave and New Wave actually were (see also Boomtown Rats's punked up Springsteen-isms) and how quickly they collapsed and commingled into each other.

After a third solo record, Foley resurfaced on a second,Steinman solo project  (solo in all but  name: it was called Pandora's Box) equally overblown and commercially pre-doomed as Bad For Good.  Released in 1989, it was titled Original Sin and out of curiosity I volunteered to review it in MM  . Been meaning to dig that out for the archive blog.