Setting the Woods on Fire

I went out and bought some new CD's today, so I could listen to the following great songs:

Merle Haggard: Silver Wings
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Every Mother's Son
George Jones: Ragged But Right
Johnny Cash: Tennessee Flat-Top Box
Hank Williams: I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive

You guys should listen to them too. But what's the deal with Sweet Home Alabama, now that I think about it. That they don't like Neil Young, I can believe. That the boys from Skynyrd don't give a shit about Watergate, likewise. But that they think the government of Alabama could ever be accurately characterized as "true"? Are we talking about the same Alabama here? Squarish state, near Mississippi? Alabama has some good qualities, no doubt: tasty food, country blues, home, families, er, crippling racism fertile soil, etc.* Good government, though is not one of those things. Nonetheless, the song rocks, obviously.

*Offended Alabamans: please note that I would say the same about my beloved home state of South Carolina. Sure, and lotsa northern cities, too. It's easy for Vermonters to be all superior about this kind of thing; they've got, what, three black people there? And how do European people act when any ethnic minorities actually show up? Piss-poor. I'm not picking on Alabama. This reminds me of when my college boyfriend (from South Deerfield, MA) first came to stay with me at my grandma's place in Savannah. I was showing him the upstairs balcony, which looked out on a little park/street divider on Oglethorpe Ave, dominated by a flag, mainly stars and bars. He was like, "what the hell is that?" And I was like, "It's the state flag. It's not just the rebel flag; it has a blue field with the state seal at the left, see? And then the rest is the rebel battle flag. Um." And did you know that my sister is a direct descendant of the last Confederate General to surrender during the Civil War, Edmund Kirby-Smith? (He was out west, possibly absconding to Mexico with the soldiers' pay.) Her dad (my step-dad) is also named Edmund Kirby-Smith. When I was a kid, we subscribed to Southern Partisan magazine. You can really learn a lot about the War of Northern Agression in that magazine.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall weighs in on this issue.

Comments

[PZ Myers]

With all this talk of the South, now I gotta know: do you have one of those buttery-sweet southern accents, or the flatter tones of the Northern aristocrat? It would help me to imagine the proper voice when I'm reading these.

[Kip Manley]

"War of Northern Aggression"? I like what the South of Broad Street ladies still say in Charleston: "The Late, Great Unpleasantness."

[belle waring]

flatter tones of the northern aristocrat, PZ. thanks for asking!

[Doctor Memory]

Offended Alabamans: please note that I would say the same about my beloved home state of South Carolina.

Mmmmmm... even by the standards of the barely-reformed South, Alabama is very, very special.

[Keith]

My wife and lived/ live in Savannah for eight years (she's still there while I'm in MD getting my MLS). I can't count the number of times I've looked at that flag in confusion.

[Contary Mary]

As to Vermont, I remember a great Daily Show joke from the New Hampshire primary. "The campaign is working on reaching the Black vote, or as we in New Hampshire call him, Kevin."

As a transplanted New Englander, I laughed hard.

[Spencer]

More importantly (to me, anyway), have you listened to Drive-By Truckers Decoration Day?

Great, great Southern Rock.

Worthy of the proper noun.

[spacetoast]

I *think* it's the governor, not the government that's "true" in the versions with that line. So, the governor of Alabama then is George Wallace--who you might remember from such episodes as trying to stop integration at the University of Alabama by blocking the doors or whatever--who ran for prez against Nixon and Humphrey, and was very unpopular with the hippies, etc. I think the idea is mostly just to be taboo-flouting with respect to the overearnest...and sort of annoying...and patronizing and preachy..."politically conscious" popular music of that time (e.g. Neil Young's Southern Man), and saying "yeah, we don't care about Watergate, and we love George Wallace soo much," well, certainly achieves that. I don't know, I always kind of thought that stuff made the song, um, rock. I like "Fighting Side of Me," on your Merle Haggard record too, though.

[spacetoast]

Which, obviously, is not to say that the song is super calculated or anything, but y'know--saying "Yay Wallace!" is, imo, more or less in the same universe as Sid and Nancy wearing swastika arm bands or whatever.

[lourdes]

CD's? Apostrophe's be damned.

[belle waring]

oooh, the governor's true. riiight. that makes marginally more sense. in a crazy, we're wacky enough to be pro-Wallace way. I guess.

[spacetoast]

yeah, yeah, wacky enough to be pro-Wallace was kinda what I was stabbing at. Although, Wallace really did have a popular movement going there, and I think some people who in a fairly general sense would've been sympathetic to that also would've been people wanted to smoke pot, and hence people who wanted to listen to something not-Neil Young but not-Sgt Barry Sadler either. So on and so forth. I find that people's interpretations of country/country-inflected music differ significantly depending on whether they hear it as adopting a pretense of sincerity, or as sincerely adopting a pretense, if that makes any sense. At any rate, the Wallace boosting probably triangulates a certain thing as well as the screed against that Neil Young song does, given what all was going on at the time, so it makes a certain kind of sense from a marketing perspective at least.

[dave heasman]

My intro to Hank Williams songs (apart from Jambalaya, which I can't recall ever not knowing) was via Johnny Burnette. He did killer versions of "Settin' the Woods.." and "Kaw-Liga" that brought out the humour better even than Hank did.

[belle waring]

I guess I've never listened to any Johnny Burnette.

[Max]

Which, obviously, is not to say that the song is super calculated or anything, but y'know--saying "Yay Wallace!" is, imo, more or less in the same universe as Sid and Nancy wearing swastika arm bands or whatever.

Which is why I like to snarkily opine that Skynyrd's 1977 plane crash was, while tragic, the least tragic rock-crash ever. (Just as Sam Cooke's shooting, given the circumstances, gives quite a bit of ground to the likes of Lennon in the all-time pop-martyrdom competition.)

[Max]

Which, obviously, is not to say that the song is super calculated or anything, but y'know--saying "Yay Wallace!" is, imo, more or less in the same universe as Sid and Nancy wearing swastika arm bands or whatever.

Which is why I like to snarkily opine that Skynyrd's 1977 plane crash was, while tragic, the least tragic rock-crash ever. (Just as Sam Cooke's shooting, given the circumstances, gives quite a bit of ground to the likes of Lennon in the all-time pop-martyrdom competition.)

[spacetoast]

I dunno, I think that the John Lennon and Sam Cooke tragedies have equally interesting associated mythologies, which is pretty much my only criterion in the "pop-martyrdom" competition. Tragic, though...How about Mama Cass? I think it would be pretty tragic to have one's death apocryphally attributed to a ham sandwhich.

[spacetoast]

Um, yeah, that was the cause of one's death that I meant...although the other thing might be pretty tragic in its own right.

[Doug]

Nice to know, Belle! Didn't Kirby-Smith wind up teaching at Sewanee after the war? I was told that there were more Confederate generals in the cemetary there than anywhere else. And the Kirby-Smiths have a nifty family memorial, too. (Which I learned when I dated another of the general's descendants about a decade ago...)

[belle waring]

yessir, Doug. My step-dad and his family lived in Sewannee, as well as various army bases around the world. it was very beautiful there.

[catfish]

The aformentioned Drive-By-Truckers (who do, indeed rock) claim that Ronnie Van Zandt and Neil Young were actually friends. One, perhaps apocraphyl(sic) story, has Neil Young as a pall bearer at Van Zandt's funeral. Don't know if it's true, but Neil Young is, by all accounts a strange man with ever evolving political opinions.