ten billion butterfly sneezes

I figure if the iTunes store can send me a “Music Tuesday” mail-o-gram, that I can highlight an album weekly here on the ol’ tbbs[1] blog.

I like a lot of different music genres, but if I had to give up all but one, I’d have to keep country music. Country is not this over-produced, diluted swill that so-called country stations play nowadays. It is music that has its roots deep in the American spirit, where you can hear roots of gospel, bluegrass, blues, and even occasionally Celtic strains. Yep, country has ‘em all. But we haven’t mentioned good old honky-tonk music, which brings us to this week’s pick:

Forever Always Ends, by Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys.

This album was made in 1999, even though I just came across it in the last few weeks. Absolutely some of the wry-est lyrics you’d want to hear, backed up by real steel guitar, dobro, and drums. The album’s review is available here. I’ll excerpt just a little snippet:

Man, oh man, will the embarrassing farce that is contemporary country music ever end? Today’s batch of interchangeable hunks and bimbos that are being Xeroxed out of Nashville have as much to do with what makes country music special as The Starland Vocal Band did with channeling the rebellious spirit of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

and later…

As a powerful antidote, we’d like to present you with Rex Hobart & the Misery Boys. Hailing from the Missouri side of Kansas City, Rex and the boys will remind one and all that true grit honky tonk is alive and well.

This review sums it up much better than my poor prose ever could, you can buy the album at the link above, or from the iTunes store. Buy from the website if you can, the artist gets a little more moola that way, I think.

The band’s website is at this Flash-enabled link. Flash isn’t my favorite thing, but as Flash goes, this is pretty good.

Any album that has a song called I Walked in While He Was Changing Your Mind has gotta be great.

Check ‘em out!

-k-

[1] tbbs = ten billion butterfly sneezes. But you knew that already.