DBT Albums - Week 1 - Pizza Deliverance

[Clams]

With a new DBT record a year or so away and rock shows being few and far between, we might as well fire up the weekly stuff again. The aim here is to cover all the studio and live records, the solo albums, The Fine Print, etc. Maybe even sneak in an Isbell record. Should take about five or six months to work through em (in no particular order).

First up:


Released May 1999 Pizza Deliverance is the second DBT record, though according to Patterson's liner notes these songs predate those on Gangstabilly.

DBT at the time was Hood, Cooley, Matt Lane (on "drums and acts of southern aggression") and Rob Malone (guitar, bass, vocals). Interesting that Neff (along with Earl Hicks, Adam Howell and Barry Sell) is listed as a "special guest" rather than a member of the band.

The liner notes on the 2005 reissue are tremendous - lots of good info - No Steely Dan, EZB joins the band, Widespread Panic helps out, etc. I apologize for the tiny print below, but since I couldn't find them online in their entirety, scanning my CD booklet was the only option. If anyone has a link, please post it. (As an aside: I had forgotten how good the liner notes are on all the DBT records - these threads will be a good excuse to revisit them.)


As for the track listing, it took me a few years before warming up to a bunch of these songs. But having done so, nowadays I don't skip any of them. Here it is:
Bulldozers and Dirt
Nine Bullets
Uncle Frank
Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus)
Box of Spiders
One of These Days
Margo and Harold
Company I Keep
The President's Penis is Missing
Tales Facing Up
Love Like This
Mrs. Dubose
Zoloft
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town

If I were ranking the Hood songs, it would look something like this:
Tales Facing Up
Bulldozers and Dirt
Company I Keep
Nine Bullets
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town
Zoloft
Box of Spiders
Margo and Harold
Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus)
The President's Penis is Missing

The three Cooley songs are Love like This, Uncle Frank and One of These Days. Those are pretty much impossible to rank.

If anyone wants to write about a DBT record in a future thread, shoot me a PM.

[dime in the gutter]

clams is a fucking genius, as is this record.

love me some acapella from patterson to kick off an album.

[TW_2.0]

If I were ranking the Hood songs, it would look something like this:
Tales Facing Up
Bulldozers and Dirt
Company I Keep
Nine Bullets
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town
Zoloft
Box of Spiders
Margo and Harold
Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus)
The President's Penis is Missing

The three Cooley songs are Love like This, Uncle Frank and One of These Days. Those are pretty much impossible to rank.

Love Like This
Tales Facing Up
Uncle Frank
One of These Days
Bulldozers & Dirt
Margo and Harold
Box of Spiders
Company I Keep
The Night GG Allin Came to Town
Nine Bullets
Zoloft
Too Much Sex
President's Penis
Mrs. Dubose

But hell, they're all so solid.

This record is Top 3 for me (after DD and SRO) some days.

[Zip City]

You totally stole my idea (that I never realized and never told you about)!!!!

[Cole Younger]

I had been a fan for a while when I finally worked my way around to Pizza Deliverance.

In some ways, when I first listened to it, it seemed like a different band to me. I had been ploughing through SRO-ABAAC and could not believe the volume of great songs.

I liked this from the beginning but it just seemed so different that I almost didn't know what to do with it. In a weird way that I can't quite explain, a counted SRO as their first record for a long time and treated this like some sort demo with really good songs on it.

I love it now of course and it features one of my top three Cooley songs in A Love Like This. To me it is also one of Patterson's strongest records.

I feel like I know a fair amount about this band and the various incarnations of (lineups) but I don't know much about Matt Lane other than he was/is in The Possibilities. I know absolutely nothing about Barry Sell.

I always skip The President's Penis Is Missing. Don't hate me for it. I often skip Margo and Harold too and I'm not sure why. It's a good song. I love the rest of it.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

I also tend to skip "The President's Penis Is Missing" but love "Margo and Harold", one of my absolute favorite songs by Patterson. When I first heard Pizza Deliverance it was within the context of first discovering the Truckers (I got Gangstabilly at the same time) but I'd yet to see them live. They were the topic of much discussion on the Guitartown email list at the time (late 90's) where lots more folks were far more familiar with them at the time than I was. The only song I knew prior to these two records was the acoustic version of "Nine Bullets" that appeared on Revival Volume 2: Kudzu n' Hollerin' Contest on Yep Roc Records a couple years beforehand. To me, songs like "Margo and Harold" and "Bulldozers and Dirt" were part of what a friend described to me as how Patterson and Cooley had a knack for singing about the under sung underbelly of society. I tend to think of "The Deeper In" and similar songs as a continuation of this. I think it can also be a huge turn off to fans that may ask what "Bulldozers and Dirt" is about. Unless, of course, you have a thing for bands that sing about subject matter that is usually not sung about. That wasn't my sole attraction to the Truckers initially but it surely played a part. Another big part of it was Neff's pedal steel, the craftsmanship of Cooley and Patterson's songwriting and the instrumentation that had acoustic guitars and mandolins rubbing elbows with electric guitars. There was also a certain gritty quality that's really not quite as present on their records beyond Southern Rock Opera. Those are all things that continually draw me back to Pizza Deliverance and less so to their post-Isbell works. Not bad records by any stretch but you can't knock stuff like "Box of Spiders" and "Uncle Frank" out of the park every time you're up at bat.

[Zip City]

Don't listen to this one a ton, even though Love Like This is a top 3 DBT song of all time (for me)

[Smitty]

It goes back and forth with Decoration Day as my favorite DBT album. It wouldn't be a toss-up if not for President's Penis, which is a skipper, but I can't imagine the album without it; on one hand it's horrible, but at the same time it's some kindof twisted masterpiece. Mrs. Dubose is the other skipper - it's actually not a bad song, just doesn't flow well with the album.

Any album with songs like "Tales Facing Up", "Company I Keep", "One of These Days", "Bulldozers" & "Love Like This" has to be a top-shelf album. Kudzu hit the nail on the head on the "life's dirty underbelly" points, which was the main selling point to me as I've always been attracted to that stuff.

[Clams]

Dig it out and listen a few times.

[heartbreaker1976]

Top notch songwriting on this record. Always enjoyed the live versions of many of these tunes much more than the recorded versions though.

[Tequila Cowboy]

This was my second obsession album with DBT after Decoration Day. I couldn't stop listening and felt an almost primal urge to crank Too Much Sex, Too Little Jesus with the windows down all the time. One time as I pulled into my driveway with it playing loud, after listening to nothing else for a week, StevieRay and my friend Matt held an intervention and made me listen to something else. Although I came to love the Cooley songs it was Patterson's songs that drew me in on this one. Aside from Too Much Sex, G.G. Allin was an early favorite. The conversational lyrics in both songs hooked me hard. Yes, President's Penis annoyed me but I pretty much worked my way through Patterson's songs one by one going through mini obsessions on all of them. Then Love Like This hooked me. Hot damn that's a song. On the right day I think I might call it my favorite Cooley tune (although it's hard to top WWW & Zip City). Uncle Frank took longer to take with me and it really took the Rock Show for that one but still it's a hell of a tune. When I finally started to recognize how good One of These Days was I couldn't believe I had just let it flow over me for the first couple dozen listens. Crunchy guitars, incredible lyrics.

I guess my overall thoughts on this one is that it's a low fi masterpiece. The songs are there, the heart and soul are there and the production is amazing for the budget. I've decided that for the most part I'm retiring my ranking machine as I've ceased to find a purpose in it, but this one is certainly one of DBT's best records.

[Gaetzi]

Bulldozers and Dirt
Nine Bullets
Uncle Frank
Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus)
Box of Spiders
One of These Days
Margo and Harold
Company I Keep

If you tack Love Like This on after the Company I Keep I would consider it among the best Truckers sequences ever recorded. It touches on everything that makes them the Truckers, and is more diverse in sound and style then subsiquent albums. Tough to beat this little run though:

Where the Devil Don't Stay
Tornadoes
The Day John Henry Died
Puttin' People on the Moon
Carl Perkins' Cadillac

That said, Pizza Deliverence is the Truckers album I listen to the most

[gutshot]

I tend to latch on to an "underdog" song or two as some of my favorites and Margo and Harold might be at the very top of that list for me, (followed closely by The Opening Act, Sandwiches For the Road, After The Scene Dies, and Self Destructive Zones.)

Uncle Frank has been a favorite of mine since I heard the acoustic version on the "Live At Cooley's House" session. I don't know why it happened that way because the rocking version is stellar, but it really took off for me after I heard the acoustic rendition. The best version of Love Like This is this original from PD. It just doesn't get any better than that.

[Iowan]

There are a lot of fucking brilliant songs on this album.

[RolanK]

Great album. Some very strong songs. As a few other have said already, I too was a bit late getting into the stuff from before SRO. I don't have the patience to rank the songs but both G.G. Allin and Love Like This really got me when they first clicked. Now they belong to some of my very favorites of both songwriters.

[Tyler]

Your're dead to me Clams...

Pretty much the ONLY song I agree with you on is President's.... for the rest, you could flip the rest of your list and it would be pretty close to mine...

Something like...

Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus)
Margo and Harold
Bulldozers and Dirt
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town
Tales Facing Up
Nine Bullets
Box of Spiders
Company I Keep
Zoloft
The President's Penis is Missing

[Clams]

Courtesy of the man who wrote them, here are the full liner notes from the 2005 reissue:

New PIZZA DELIVERANCE Liner Notes

This was DBT’s second album but was supposed to be the first. Pizza Deliverance was the end of an era, or was it the beginning of another? It was a joy to make and the final calm before a long violent storm. A few years, several albums and a million miles later, I still have a soft spot and extra fondness for this one.

Cooley and I formed DBT in 1996 after already playing together (off and mostly on) for eleven or so years. Since it was a new band, began with all new songs, most of which are on this album. When we went in to record our first album (Gangstabilly – 1998) we had just written a fresh new batch of songs, and as we’ve continued to do on several albums since, we ended up cutting the new ones instead, therefore we released an album that left off most of the “crowd favorites” that we had been cultivating for our first couple of years.

The original lineup of the band consisted of Cooley and I, along with several of my favorite local musicians from Athens Georgia’s amazing music scene. Most were already committed to several other bands in town. Matt Lane had been in The Possibilities since he was fifteen or so. John Neff played pedal steel in several bands, but was especially committed to the stellar old-school country band The Star Room Boys. Upon the release of “Gangstabilly”, the band hit the road, leading to numerous schedule conflicts, as the band became more and more a full-time commitment.

Around this time, Rob Malone, an old friend from back home in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, moved to Athens and was enlisted to play in a fill-in position for the band. Soon, however, Rob became a fulltime member of the band, greatly changing the general musical and personal dynamic of the band. This change also coincided with a major shift in the direction of mine and Cooley’s songwriting as we began writing “Southern Rock Opera”. Where the earlier songs tended to be based on or inspired by country and western (albeit somewhat deconstructed and revised, particularly in lyrical content) the newer songs leaned more towards seventies arena rock in structure and approach. We were all very enthusiastic about exploring this new territory, but I was concerned about not having documented “the other songs”. I really wanted to capture this sound before we completely abandoned it.

Earl Hicks came in and saved the day. Earl and I had been friends for ten years or so back home in Alabama. Like me, he had moved to Athens and been inspired by it’s diverse music scene. He also saw first hand, the situation that the band was in artistically. Earl had long been a DYI recorder and a big believer of “capturing the moment in time”; but had also spent a year doing “old-school” recording as an assistant to veteran producer / engineer Johnny Sandlin. He essentially took out a loan and purchased enough mobile recording equipment to make our album.

We began recording “Pizza Deliverance” in five days, on the second week in January, 1999 at the house I was living in. An old farm house (without the farm, due to development in the area) out old Jefferson Rd. in Athens. Earl, who was also my roommate at the time, had always thought that the house’s large rooms, plaster walls, and high ceilings would make it an ideal place to record our band. We recorded it virtually “Live” as we had the first album. We later overdubbed a few extra guitar parts and some harmonies, but most of the lead vocals were cut during the take. The “instrument bleed” in the vocal microphone certainly gives this album its unique sound.

The sessions for “Pizza Deliverance” were extremely fun and morale was at an all-time high. We were extremely united about the directions for the album and there was an emphasis on keeping it fun, articulated with a Sharpee written sign hanging on the door saying “NO STEELY DAN”, in reference to not letting the technical aspects become too important.

Despite Earl’s generosity, the making of the album coincided with a severe financial crises within the band. Our early attempts at touring had left us completely broke (as a band and individually) and we had no game plan for how to finance the finishing, mixing, mastering and pressing of the album.


One afternoon that week we were invited to lunch with Widespread Panic bassist David Schools. He took Cooley and I to The Grit (local Athens landmark eatery) and told us he’d heard we were having financial difficulties and offered to help us get our album finished and released. He then essentially wrote us a check for enough money to mix, properly master, and manufacture a first pressing of Pizza Deliverance. We’d probably still be trying to finish this album had he not gotten us over this hurdle with his belief and generosity.

We hired Andy LeMaster (who had co-produced Gangstabilly) to mix the sessions and legendary producer Rodney Mills to master it. Jim Stacy again did the artwork (his second album cover for us) and we released it in early may 1999.

When we finished the album, we were at a crossroads. We knew that the only way to take this band to the next level (and so on) was to get out there and hit the road full time. We also knew that we couldn’t make a living yet off of it. We essentially voted to quit our jobs and take off and “do what had to be done”. Matt, who would have had to quit The Possiblilities, which had been his band since High School, was left behind, replaced by Brad Morgan, who had been playing more and more shows as his replacement for the past six months. We ended up playing over 150 shows in about six months touring behind Pizza Deliverance. In the process, we wrote the majority of Southern Rock Opera and became a very different sounding band, but we’ll save all of that and it’s resulting fall-out for a later time.

Dedicated to Arthur Alexander, Sam Phillips and Jerry Wexler:

Arthur Alexander was a bellhop at a Florence AL. hotel when he wrote and recorded You Better Move On, the first Muscle Shoals soul hit to gain international prominence. His songs were covered by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. [The Stones later recorded Brown Sugar and Wild Horses in Muscle Shoals]. He died in 1993 while performing in Nashville TN.

Sam Phillips was born in my hometown and moved to Memphis where he recorded and produced some of the greatest records ever made. He grew up just down the road from the farm that my grandmother and great-uncle grew up on. Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Charlie Rich were all discovered by him.

Jerry Wexler came down to Muscle Shoals from New York City and helped transform a small underground recording scene into the one time "Hit Recording Capitol of the World". There, he produced legendary tracks on Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Etta James, Willie Nelson, and many others. He coined the phrase "Rhythm and Blues", which had previously been referred to as "Race Music".

Cooley, Rob, Earl, and I all come from the Muscle Shoals Area, and although some folks might sometimes think otherwise, we are fiercely proud of our hometown's musical heritage.

Enjoy this re-released Pizza Deliverance, with it’s greatly enhanced packaging, and as usual, PLAY IT LOUD.



Patterson Hood - October, 2004

[brett27295]

I wish Patterson would write an autobiography or his take on the history of DBT.

[docturk]

I had this summer a couple years back that i spent in Athens. After dropping my then girlfriend off at Classes downtown, I'd then take my Volvo station wagon out into the athens countryside and drive around in a bit of wanderlust. It was out there on old dirt roads surrounded by overgrown trees and brush that i really fell for Pizza Deliverance. Blasting it with the windows down while driving by abandoned farms and half-decade old cemeteries became the norm and created visuals that permanently stuck with several of the songs for me. While many of the mainstay songs from the album have been eclipsed by their own live performances in my mind it's the lesser heard songs like Mrs. Dubose and Box of Spiders that really bring me back to that summer. Something about Mrs. Dubose especially, with the off mic laughing in the beginning and the dogs barking halfway through. It's haunting.

A truly great lo-fi masterpiece. Horrible title though, lol.

[Cole Younger]

I had this summer a couple years back that i spent in Athens. After dropping my then girlfriend off at Classes downtown, I'd then take my Volvo station wagon out into the athens countryside and drive around in a bit of wanderlust. It was out there on old dirt roads surrounded by overgrown trees and brush that i really fell for Pizza Deliverance. Blasting it with the windows down while driving by abandoned farms and half-decade old cemeteries became the norm and created visuals that permanently stuck with several of the songs for me. While many of the mainstay songs from the album have been eclipsed by their own live performances in my mind it's the lesser heard songs like Mrs. Dubose and Box of Spiders that really bring me back to that summer. Something about Mrs. Dubose especially, with the off mic laughing in the beginning and the dogs barking halfway through. It's haunting.

A truly great lo-fi masterpiece. Horrible title though, lol.

man that's cool. I enjoyed reading that.

My experience was a little similar. We were living in an old Civil War era house that had been split up into three apartments. A weird thing about the place is that a whole bunch of members of my family have lived in that house at different points. Really random. Nobody eveer reccomended it to anybody but by chance like, six or seven different family members have lived there. It's weird, that place just keeps showing up in my family. A Confederate colonol lived there during the Civil War and I think after too.

Anyway, the place was great. Hardwood floors with wide planks. Really high ceilings. It was during the time that we lived there that I fell in love with PD. I would play my acoustic guitar and sing A Love Like This or Box of Spiders and had this really odd but not unpleasant feeling. Something about the subject matter/feel of the songs on PD coupled with the atmosphere of that old place was just really cool and lended to my enjoyment of the album. I'm not talking anything supernatural or paranormal here. Not at all. Just atmosphere.

One particular time, my buddy and I got out in the hall way that ran between my apartment and another one. My buddy plays the mandolin and we always wanted to get in that hall, shut the doors and record it and see what we got. We played Bulldozers and Dirt like that with him singing harmony vocals. My wife came hom while we were at it and stayed outside on the porch because she said she didn't want to walk in and cause us to stop.

We listened to the recording. I HATE the sound of my own voice on tape, especially singing, but that is the one time that I've ever enjoyed it with those sounds bouncing off that old wood and those high ceilings.

I still love PD, but since we moved out of there, I miss listening to it around that old place.

[beantownbubba]

I assume most fans would agree that the first 2 DBT albums are different from SRO and the following albums (leaving AAW out of the mix for this purpose). That is, GB and PD are more like each other than they are like any of the later albums and all the later albums are more like each other than they're like either of the first 2 albums.

I happen to be a bigger fan of the later period. That doesn't mean Pizza Deliverance isn't a good album, of course it is. But it's among my least favorite DBT albums probably in part because I came to it after I already had my own idea of what "the DBT sound" was from the later albums.

To me PD is about half a great album. Ain't nothing wrong w/ that. But between some of the songs not being quite up to par and almost all the songs sounding better in later live versions than they do on this album, it's hard to consider this to be a great album, nor is it the one I'll reach for when I want to hear some DBT.

All 3 Cooley songs are great. Tales Facing Up, The Company I Keep, Nine Bullets and maybe Bulldozers and Dirt are also first rate. I know that leaves out several fan favorites, but the rest don't do anything for me. Presumably most of us can agree that The President's Penis, Mrs. Dubose and Zoloft don't measure up. That leaves Margo and Harold (always "Harold & Maude" in my mind), Box of Spiders, Too Much Sex and GG Allin. I can see why people like them, and I'll grant that GG Allin comes alive in live performance, but to these ears those songs just don't measure up. I'd describe all 4 of the latter songs as being really good stories turned into ordinary songs.

Like I said, half a great album.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

I think the only reason Southern Rock Opera stands apart for me is because it's supposedly a "concept" album. Otherwise, I tend to think of it as part of the same trajectory as Gangstabilly and Pizza Deliverance. Part of that has to do with the rough around the edges quality I mentioned earlier, plus the line up, while not identical across all of those records, was pretty close to the same. I think the "point of entry" factor also plays a large role insofar as how much I love Gangstabilly and Pizza Deliverance since they were the first albums I ever heard by the Truckers. Sentimental attachment aside, I still love the instrumentation and songwriting qualities I mentioned earlier. The warts and all aspect of the production also lends a certain charm that I cannot deny.

The Truckers were still loose and often out of tune in concert once Jason came onboard but his studio contributions were more polished and accessible. This is covering a lot of old ground but I think that had a lot to do with broadening their fanbase. I had friends that would attend Truckers shows in the early days that weren't exactly big fans. That changed when Jason became a member since his songs were easier to digest. That's not a knock on Jason btw, just an observation. The live show still maintained a lot of the original spirit of those early records. Like anyone that works at it as hard as the Truckers have, it was only natural that they would eventually hone their craft to where the performances were more finely tuned and the subject matter matured along with the Truckers themselves.

I guess this is all just my way of saying those first two albums will always be my favorites, no matter what. I think someone mentioned it in one of the Heat Lightning Rumbles In the Distance threads but there are certain aspects of that record that remind me of the early Truckers albums. It probably has a lot to do with the stripped down quality as well as the sound of Cooley plucking away on a banjo in the background.

[Smitty]

I'm doing about ten different things at once, so forgive me if this comes off as rambling or unclear. I've never heard any record convey a certain kind of southern gothic as honestly as Pizza Deliverance & Gangstabilly. Most artists who attempt to document the darker side of rural white life either try too hard (Jim White, Sixteen Horsepower) or play it too ironically or tongue-in-cheek ;sure there's a bit of humor in PD/GB, but not to the point that comes off as hokey or condenscending.

I grew up in a comfortable, middle class family - but we still lived in a trailer. The area I come from is extremely economically depressed - the worst areas are hidden in plain sight, off little high-numbered county roads, most of them not even paved. I'm not gonna get into a bunch of personal shit, but spend a few years as an addict around here and you'll see a subset of people and places you'd never know existed otherwise (unless you were maybe a cop or a social worker). While some songs off DBT's first couple albums remind me of slightly brighter subjects (going to a southern baptist church, spending time with my grandaddy, etc.), they mostly remind me of the darker shit that goes on that most people don't know about. "Margo & Harold" brings to mind the couple who pay young women, mostly meth or pill addicts, to make homemade porn when they're not taking care of the audio/video duties at one of the biggest churches in the area. I love "The Company I Keep" and "Tales Facing Up" because I (partially) lived those stories. "Love Like This" describes my first marriage, verbatim. By and large that's why I hold "PD" and "GB" in such high esteem; there's very few albums that even hint at that side of life. Took some guts.

[Clams]

Good stuff last night!

Bubba - No question that GB and PD stand off in a corner by themselves. Each has its classics, but for the most part I view them as real fans' records. That is, the more casual fans will get into DD, TDS or even GGB or The Big To Do. But apart from songs like Living Bubba or Uncle Frank etc, casual fans aren't gonna dig deep into GB or PD. GG Allin and Margo and Harold and the "lower halves" of these records aren't easy songs to "get" and sometimes it takes a while for them to sink in. Most folks (other than die hards like us) won't bother 'cause it's much easier to listen to The Dirty South or Decoration Day.

Smitty - You are correct about how DBT digs deep and gets at that underbelly of American life (the dirt underneath, if you will). That might be the number 1 thing that drew me in.

docturk and CY - You guys nailed one of the great things I love about music and particularly a great record - hearing it can instantly take you back to the different places and times of your life. Amazing.

[John A Arkansawyer]

I had been a fan for a while when I finally worked my way around to Pizza Deliverance.

In some ways, when I first listened to it, it seemed like a different band to me. I had been ploughing through SRO-ABAAC and could not believe the volume of great songs.

I liked this from the beginning but it just seemed so different that I almost didn't know what to do with it. In a weird way that I can't quite explain, a counted SRO as their first record for a long time and treated this like some sort demo with really good songs on it.

This is almost exactly how I felt about both this and Gangstabilly, except that I also had Brighter than Creation's Dark in my mix of (what I thought of as "real") DBT records. I'm warming up to both of them now. They're different but not discontinuously so.

I always skip The President's Penis Is Missing. Don't hate me for it. I often skip Margo and Harold too and I'm not sure why. It's a good song. I love the rest of it.

It might be the same reason for both: Songs which resemble novelty songs don't wear well. The President's Penis Is Missing is a novelty song. (I dig it, actually, and usually play it.) Margo and Harold isn't, but it does have a novel (or at least unusual) subject. That makes it resemble a novelty song (it isn't), and it can wear in that one same way.

[Tequila Cowboy]

Presumably most of us can agree that The President's Penis, Mrs. Dubose and Zoloft don't measure up.

Despite the fact the we often come from different angles on records and end up liking different aspects and different songs on them you surprise me here with Zoloft, Bean. It's really a power pop song with a country accent isn't it? I like it quite a bit and am surprised you don't.

[cortez the killer]

it's much easier to listen to The Dirty South or Decoration Day.

I don't understand what this means. Do you mean it's easier to listen to those records because they are better records? Do they require less "effort" for the listener? Are the lyrics less challenging? Do they resonate with a larger demographic? How are these records easier to listen to, Clams?

[Clams]

it's much easier to listen to The Dirty South or Decoration Day.

I don't understand what this means. Do you mean it's easier to listen to those records because they are better records? Do they require less "effort" for the listener? Are the lyrics less challenging? Do they resonate with a larger demographic? How are these records easier to listen to, Clams?

They just have a more accessible sound that's easier for a more casual fan to latch onto. Or conversely, you could say PD and GB have a more weirdo, fringe alt-country sound that a more casual fan won't appreciate.

[Tequila Cowboy]

Or conversely, you could say PD and GB have a more weirdo, fringe alt-country sound that a more casual fan won't appreciate.

should I bring the yak riders back?

[beantownbubba]

Presumably most of us can agree that The President's Penis, Mrs. Dubose and Zoloft don't measure up.

Despite the fact the we often come from different angles on records and end up liking different aspects and different songs on them you surprise me here with Zoloft, Bean. It's really a power pop song with a country accent isn't it? I like it quite a bit and am surprised you don't.

I will defer to JohnA's excellent observation here: Zoloft either is or sounds a lot like a novelty or jokey song. And besides, I think you're just saying that so we'll have something to argue about

Clams, I think you're right. Except for a couple of songs, it even took me a while to get into the parts of GB and PD that I now love.

Smitty you're clearly right and maybe that's part of why the early albums are harder for someone like me to embrace as fully. I come to them in a very different way than you or KG or others here. I can and do get it, but not w/ the same immediacy or rawness and I guess for that reason I focus more on the, what would you call it?, purely musical qualities of the songs. In the same way, once you know these albums and understand the songs, the name of the band and the titles of the albums all click into place and one can truly get where this band is coming from and what they're about.