Showing posts with label joe diffie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joe diffie. Show all posts

Saturday, April 11, 2020

"An Artist Of His Time"

I read an article today about Joe Diffie's albums hitting the charts again since his tragic death from coronavirus. The story stated that Joe is considered "an artist of his time". I know that was meant as a dis, but what artist isn't considered of his/her time? That's kinda how time and music works.

The intimation is that Joe Diffie could never make it in today's country environment. Absolutely true, but that's more an indictment of new country than of the artist. The Beatles would be dismissed as a garage band today; thus no one should ever listen to their music Sinatra was a flash in the pan.You know how the forties were; people were such rubes.

I fully acknowledge I have a bias toward nineties country music. In my defense, I've been around a long time and I've heard approximately a million songs in my lifetime. I venerate nineties country because it was the best. I have things to compare it to. It goes like this: nineties, sixties, eighties, seventies (which was overall bad), nineties (which was overall worse), and whatever the hell today's music is.

For the most part, music is tied up with our life experiences, but if one takes an unjaundiced look and they're willing to admit it, some musical times were superior. If I solely judged music by the times of my life that were the most momentous, I'd worship seventies country. In fact, I stopped listening to country in the late seventies because it was so putrid.There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the nineties for me, other than the sublime music poring out of my radio speakers.

Unlike some, I'm not a musical snob.I like music that's good, or at least good to my ears. I don't politicize it; I don't subscribe to what's hip or dismiss what's unhip. I have nobody to impress.

So, an artist of his time? I'll simply fold it into my heart and enjoy it, no matter what any "woke" critic dismisses.Music is one of life's few purities.




Friday, April 3, 2020

Joe Diffie


Nineties country music is the soundtrack of my life. The sixties were important to me because they're an imprint of my formative years, but ahhh, the nineties. There was something so optimistic, yet soulful about country in the nineties. Joe Diffie was a huge part of that.

Joe began his career doing the expected mix of ballads and catchy camp that soared to the top of the charts, but make no mistake -- this man had a set of pipes rarely equaled.

Joe Diffie was an artist who was always there on the radio, but not always noticed. In another time he would have been lauded as a musical phenom, but the nineties was so rife with shooting stars, he was but one of a multitude.

I purchased many Joe Diffie CD's -- I bought a lot of CD's; not all of them stellar, but simply owning one or two superb songs satisfied my musical cravings The first Diffie song that really hit me was this:



Then he had this one that really made me sit up and take notice:



1993 was Joe's year, although I wasn't entirely cognizant of it. I'd essentially brushed this song aside until I attended the Mandan Fourth of July parade and spied a float featuring a tableau of this song, and it has stuck with me to this day. Sadly, there is no CMT video available, but here it is:



This is one of those catchy camp songs:



Another:



Here is one with some meat on its bones:



Learning the coronavirus took Joe away seemed like a cruel joke. He was younger than me and it wasn't fair. But life isn't, is it?

Somewhere Joe knows, though, that he touched hearts. 

That counts.

Thank you, Joe Diffie, for indelible memories.






Saturday, August 31, 2019

I'm Selling My Jukebox


UPDATE:  Sold. Gone. Thanks, Dad, for the memories.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sure, it's a little dusty, but then, so am I.

It hurts to put it up for sale. You see, this came from my dad. It was, I guess, 1968 or 1969 when the Rock-Ola took up residence in our garage. My followers know that my dad owned a bar that came as a package deal with the motel my parents purchased in 1966. When we moved to North Dakota in December of '66, the bar, politically-incorrectly named "The Gaiety" was leased out to some guy, so we paid it no heed, except for my dad, who could never resist a flashing neon sign. As the calendar pages ripped, the lease expired and Dad took the bar over. I don't know how the Rock-Ola ended up in our garage exactly, but I think it had been replaced with a newer model; hence my big brother was tasked with rolling the obsolete reject down the bar's front door ramp and shoving it into an unused corner of our garage, smack-dab next to the industrial clothes dryer.

It became a novelty that my little sister and I took notice of anytime we were bored. The machine had its peccadilloes ~ you had to push the reset button on the back to get the record to eject. Not a major deal. All we had to do was prime the machine with a quarter and we could play as many songs as we wanted. The Rock-Ola's ultimate downfall with regard to my sister's and my attention spans was the fact that it didn't house very many records we actually liked. Playing the same two or three records over and over lost its spark quickly. My sister was a pre-adolescent, so we had to haggle to land on records we both liked.

Here are the two I remember:





(We'll never know what The Fireballs looked like in concert, alas.)

Eventually, my mom and dad sold the motel and retired to an actual house. My dad asked me if I would like the jukebox and of course I did. Mom wanted to be rid of it ~ it took up too much real estate, and what would she do with that behemoth anyway? I parked it in my basement and pondered how to make it nicer. First on my list was getting rid of the crappy records and replacing them with songs I actually liked. Then, through some mail order concern, I found jukebox labels. (I don't remember if the labels or the songs came first.) I never took things a step further and refurbished the machine ~ I really couldn't afford to do that, and its rusty exterior reminded me of the halycon garage times.

Now it's time.

Nobody who is a direct descendant wants it, because they don't care about the nineteen sixties, which are akin to the Civil War days. And it's not like I hug it every day. I've essentially ignored my Rock-Ola; yet felt secure in the fact that it was always there whenever I wanted to lay my hands on it.

If I could touch it and bring my dad back, I'd never let it go. But time moves on and we need to shed a tear and surrender.

Jukeboxes are passe. Except in country:















Friday, September 28, 2018

Faking Country


You know me -- I don't listen to today's country. I am easily irritated by cacophonous sounds, like sirens and repetitive construction noises....and US senators preening for television cameras. So, I admit I'm not exactly "hip" to the latest sounds. But I was browsing The Federalist the other day (not actually for music news) and ran across this article regarding a new song by someone named Walker Hayes. The hook is, apparently, that the lyrics reference titles of nineties country songs.

The song was written by Shane McAnally and "LYRX", a suspicious name -- a global conglomerate like "EXXON"; a corporation that features thirty-something brunettes in sensible pantsuits in its commercials, sagely reassuring us that their cabal is environmentally-friendly, while in fact they are poisoning us.

The song is clever! And lazy! "I can't seem to write a good song, so I'll just string some titles together and voila!"

The recording itself is as far away from country music as The Captain and Tennille.


I'm okay with people saying country music is dead, because it is; but don't disingenuously co-opt the name. It's fine -- we get it -- you want country to be a lukewarm glass of 2% milk. But why not call it something else? It denigrates the name "country" when your gas-passing is lumped together with actual music. 

My honest review of this song? It's horrible. Don't try to make excuses. It reeks. 

If one was to listen to any of the songs referenced in the lyrics, they'd slink away in shame.

Okay, since you asked for it:








Meanwhile, I'll get my new music from TV commercials.

At least it's genuine.


Friday, May 10, 2013

A Little Reminiscing About Nineties Country



(And didn't they all have hair like this?)

Maybe it was the place I lived, and the time I lived there, but it seemed like everywhere in my home town; at work, out with friends, hanging out with relatives; everybody listened to country.

I remember we did some kind of stupid team building exercise in my workplace once; in which we had everyone fill out a survey; and subsequently, everyone had to mingle about to try to find people whose answers matched the ones on the card in their hand.  I guess it was Employee Bingo.

One of the questions I offered, as we supervisors were wasting time devising this little game, was, What's Your Favorite Song?

Out of the one hundred or so people completing the survey, perhaps one or two listed a non-country song as their favorite.  And the people responding weren't senior citizens or even demented people (well, generally).  They were for the most part younger than me.

That's not how it is now.  Today, if I ever have an opportunity to listen to music at work, I feel like I'm a teenager again; hiding the fact that the songs wafting through my ear buds are country songs.  (I don't actually hide it anymore.  I'm frankly too old to care what people think of my taste in music.)

I miss the old times; perhaps the camaraderie; maybe simply the superiority of the music.

Today, being a Friday, and thus blissfully more laid back, I surfed on over to my Amazon cloud and set my playlist to "shuffle".  It's fun to be surprised by the next song; which is never actually a song that one would choose from the list.

And I heard Joe Diffie.  Remember him?  What do you mean, no?

This guy is a hell of a singer.  I mean, a singer.  Not a vocal stylist, a la guys whose names start with a K(enny) or a T(im) ~ you know; the guys from which measly little sounds manage to squeak out of their pie holes, helped along with generous doses of auto tune..Guys who sing from their throats; and not from their diaphragms, which is why they squeak.

Joe Diffie was pretty big in the nineties.  Sure, he recorded some mediocre stuff.  Whenever he strayed from his strengths (ballads) into territory best covered by the Billy Ray Cyrus types, he mostly failed (at least with me).  Any clown could do those songs.  But when he let it all hang out, wow!  

Sometimes you didn't even know what the song was about, but you knew it was sad, because he sang it so sad; it hit you in the gut.



"Is it cold in here, or is it just you?"  Great line.



I generally don't like novelty songs, but this one is so sweet.  And it's not really a novelty; rather, just catchy.  I used to go to the Fourth of July parade with my dad and a bunch of my family; and one year, as the farm implements passed by (my dad loved those); a John Deere float appeared, with this song blaring out of the speakers (I can't believe Joe never made a music video of this song).  You know, this record allowed all of us to rejoice in our rural roots, and stop being so embarrassed by them. People today would kill to live on a farm (although, I must disclose that my dad hated John Deeres and loved his IH's):



Joe could honky tonk with the best of 'em, too.  Pull somebody (anybody) out on the dance floor in the nineteen nineties, and you could wear yourself out steppin' to this song:

 



Joe's star started to twinkle out toward the end of the decade (oh sure, he's still performing!)  The times, though, were changing, and not for the better.

Yet, he had this song in 1999 that still hit number six on the charts; and listening to it, sitting on the floor next to my CD player in the basement, made me gulp back tears.  He just sang it so damn sad!  My youngest son would saunter through the room to head upstairs and out the door, and give me a pitying look; same as the time I was playing Alan Jackson's Christmas CD, and he asked me if this was "the saddest Christmas ever".  He didn't get country music. Sometimes we just want to be sad!

This is "A Night To Remember":



I guess some artists have their time; and when that time is over, well, everybody moves on.  There's other guys like Joe; guys (and girls) who were red hot in their day.  They were good; and they didn't change.  Sure, they got older, which is some sort of crime, you know.  No, the music changed.   Music became disposable; it became a "package".  

Now, guys sing about pickups a lot.  But the pickups they drive are those sleek four-by-fours; not the beat-up farm trucks that actually haul things in their beds.   

They don't sing about John Deere tractors.  The biggest tractors these guys drive are lawn tractors, whenever they feel like "getting back to nature" and giving their grounds crew the day off.

Ah well.  

All I'm saying is, don't forget the good stuff.  You can like the stuff of today.  Just don't forget.  You know, George Jones only died a couple of weeks ago.

Don't forget.