Author: Eric Babcock
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #52 July-Aug 2004
Shrimp Boat – Something Grand
I have a theory about the perfect gift, which is basically this: The perfect gift is something that for the receiver has equal likelihood of being (a) warmly acknowledged then promptly discarded, or (b) cherished forever. And — critical in the process — either reaction is equally fine with the giver. Perfect gifts are often [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #49 Jan-Feb 2004
Various Artists – Angola Prison Spirituals
I’ll be honest: I have a hard time getting past the sociological here. I mean, this was recorded at the Angola “work farm,” widely known for its brutality and corruption (less so in the mid-1950s when this was recorded than at the turn of the century, but still…). How many of these guys were behind [...]
A Place to be - About a Place from Issue #47 Sept-Oct 2003
Down at the Crossroads
The Delta is too obstinate to care that it’s an alluvial plain, too poor to take its students off the critical needs list, too steeped in fabled funk to leave alone; even if, like Muddy Waters, come departure time one’s fondest wish is never to return. Could be it’s the devil or the cottonfields or [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #42 Nov-Dec 2002
Ramsay Midwood – Shoot Out at the OK Chinese Restaurant
I don’t know who Ramsay Midwood is or where he’s from, but if I had to guess from the clues on Shoot Out At The OK Chinese Restaurant, I’d say he’s Tony Joe White, busted flat along the road back to Oak Grove, Louisiana, after an ill-conceived trip to L.A., and these songs are his [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #42 Nov-Dec 2002
Precious Bryant – Station Inn (Nashville, TN)
If Nashville’s majestic Ryman Auditorium, with its long wooden pews and stained-glass windows, is country music’s mother church, then the Station Inn, with its dim lights, battered tables and Hatch Show Print-covered paneling, is that church’s funky basement rec room. And while the high-impact evangelists (Johnny & June, Emmylou et al.) understandably got the most [...]
A Place to be - About a Place from Issue #36 Nov-Dec 2001
Reborn on the bayou
Festivals Acadiens in Lafayette, Louisiana, is held annually over the third weekend in September. After the events of the 11th, organizers consulted with local police and clergy, then declared their intention to proceed with this year’s festival. Their press release included this quote: “Evil does not have the last word.” That was good to hear. [...]
Screen Door - Last Page Essay from Issue #33 May-June 2001
Springs by Southwest
Sometimes the best part of SXSW is those letters on the opposite edge of the compass: the trip home. I can cannonball from Chicago to Austin in 17 hours via expressways, but the trip back along the blue highways takes days, dedicated to languishing among folks who know little and care less about how CDs [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #31 Jan-Feb 2001
Hank Williams – Alone With His Guitar
Race on down to your local dry goods store, or haven’t you heard? — Hank Williams has a new record out! The pace has picked up again in the last decade (after an uncommonly dry spell in the 1980s), but thanks to the prescient ingenuity of the folks at MGM, and now the market attentiveness [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #28 July-Aug 2000
Willie Nelson – Red Headed Stranger
The language of myth is indirect, metaphorical, and narrative in structure.…The movement of mythic narrative, like that of any story, implies a theory of cause-and-effect, a theory of history; but these implications are only rarely articulated as objects of criticism, since their operation is masked by the traditional form of the narrative, its conformity to [...]
Screen Door - Last Page Essay from Issue #9 May-June 1997
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch… In Memory of the Sundowners
To describe The Ranch as unlike any other place on earth would be misleading, for it was in fact very much like a great many other places: It was a country music bar. Like every country bar, the Double-R Bar (which was its official name, printed like a cattle brand, a circle with two capital [...]
Shop Amazon by clicking through this logo to support NoDepression.com. We get a percentage of every purchase you make!
