{"id":547,"date":"2007-05-08T23:07:41","date_gmt":"2007-05-09T03:07:41","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-05-11T14:57:36","modified_gmt":"2007-05-11T14:57:36","slug":"hear-factor-the-drive-by-truckers-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/hear-factor-the-drive-by-truckers-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Hear Factor: The Drive-By Truckers and Me"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NEW:<\/ins> Sample tracks added!<\/strong>
\nAbout 6 years ago, I was sitting with friends in our usual Friday-night watering hole. Usually, most of us rarely ventured anywhere but home after drinks, but this time, a plan was hatched to head to The Bishop\u2019s Collar<\/strong> \u2013- a bar near the Philadelphia Art Museum at that time attempting to make itself the destination spot for alt-country bands. A band we\u2019d heard of, but not seen, called The Drive-By Truckers<\/strong> was playing that night, and if the local alt-weekly rag\u2019s words were worth believing, this bunch would provide some lean, mean trucker-rock -\u2013 perfect drinking music.<\/p>\n

A cab-drive and pizza-joint-stop later, a bunch of us were crowded into The Bishop\u2019s Collar\u2019s narrow space, not exactly an optimum area for a show. Not too much later, we were ready to go home. We had expected something tough, rowdy and Skynyrd-like. In truth, The Drive-By Truckers seemed like callow, if well-meaning youths. <\/p>\n

Several years later, I was back at The Bishop\u2019s Collar with a friend from out of town. The Collar\u2019s days as a live venue had been in the past tense for some time. Said friend shared with me an affinity for some lynchpins of alt-country: Gram Parsons, Wilco, Old 97\u2019s<\/strong>. I mentioned that I had seen The Drive-By Truckers here and how mediocre I found them, and my friend was enthused to find someone who shared his underwhelmed emotions regarding this band. Apparently, a coworker had long tried hard to convince him of the band\u2019s merits, to little avail.<\/p>\n

And so, I wryly smiled when I received my assigned Hear Factor<\/strong> CD. Who knew? I don\u2019t think I ever expressed my flatlined reaction to this band on RTH. Listening to the CD, my feelings are more or less confirmed. Granted, The Drive-By Truckers aren\u2019t receiving truckloads of plaudits, but I always felt like the press overrated this second- or third-tier band. Occasionally, you hear something about live prowess or literary and\/or conceptual ambitions, but I\u2019ve yet to see or hear concrete evidence. <\/p>\n

Apart from some occasional tasty slide-guitar playing (see – better yet, hear<\/em> \u201cWhere the Devil Don\u2019t Stay\u201d<\/a><\/strong>), there\u2019s little here to distinguished this from other alt-country bands. Maybe it\u2019s my Jeff Tweedy bias<\/strong>, but there\u2019s a lot here I\u2019ve heard before from Uncle Tupelo. It sounds like The Drive-By Truckers also have two lead singers: one to do the Jay Farrar-style stern-faced ruminations on hard livin\u2019 (\u201cWomen Without Whiskey\u201d<\/strong>) and another to handle Tweedy-esque sweet love songs (\u201cMy Sweet Annette\u201d<\/a><\/strong>). <\/p>\n

If I understand the Hear Factor concept correctly, I am supposed to get a sense of living inside someone else\u2019s musical world, or at least part of it. [Ed. – Hey, someone gets it!<\/em>] I\u2019m not sure who made this mix, though I have a culprit in mind. But this mix confirms that I cannot conceive one would want listen to nothing but certain genres<\/strong>. And alternative-country is one of these genres; others include techno, death-metal, and lo-fi indie rock. All these styles tend to the monochromatic to my ears \u2013 a lot of alt-county reminds me of that dusty, ill-flavored coffee you get on Amtrak trains. Mind you, I\u2019m not suggesting the maker of this mix listens only to Amtrak-coffee alt-country.<\/p>\n

But I generally need a palette-cleanser after even the best of this genre, perhaps The Beach Boys, John Coltrane, or Blur \u2013 something big, ambitious, and filled with colors. It probably says something that my favorite track on this disc is \u201cGoddamn Lonely Love\u201d<\/a><\/strong> which has this pretty chord \u2013 I\u2019m gonna guess it\u2019s diminished or something, anyway it\u2019s sounds like a Beatles chord<\/strong> to me. What can I say? I need chords like that. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW: Sample tracks added! About 6 years ago, I was sitting with friends in our usual Friday-night watering hole. Usually, most of us rarely ventured anywhere but home after drinks, but this time, a plan was hatched to head to The Bishop\u2019s Collar \u2013- a bar near the Philadelphia Art Museum at that time attempting […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}