{"id":907,"date":"2007-10-08T09:50:36","date_gmt":"2007-10-08T13:50:36","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-02-16T11:03:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T11:03:00","slug":"rush-to-judgement-steve-earle-s-lemgwash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rush-to-judgement-steve-earle-s-lemgwash\/","title":{"rendered":"Rush to Judgement: Steve Earle’s Washington Square Serenade<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/p>\n
Psssst…Hey kid, check out these beats!<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Driving into work this morning I heard a couple of tracks off the new Steve Earle<\/strong> album, Washington Square Serenade<\/a><\/em>. The DJ, perhaps my least-favorite local radio personality, provided the backstory that Earle and his fellow musician wife (I could look up this woman’s name and stick it in here, but I’d just be spitting out information insincerely and without regard to what’s really on my mind) now live in New York City<\/strong> and that the album was produced by Dust Brother John King<\/strong>. The two songs she was about to play were songs in which Earle was “looking back” on his life. I’ve noticed, since peeking around this morning, that one of the promotional themes of this album is that it’s more personal, less political. I can’t tell you if the “p” in personal is supposed to be upper or lower case, but the first song the DJ played was called “Oxycontin Blues”<\/strong>. It started with an Appalachian acoustic guitar hoedown that seemed ready made for Rene Zellwegger<\/strong>‘s character in that film with Nicole Kidman and Jude Law to take a swig from a bottle of moonshine, hike up her skirts, and do a little jig. It was promising alright until Mr. Dust Brother pressed Play<\/em> on the drum machine. From that point forward, the ominous canned beat made a mockery of the song’s Southern setting. The almighty beats<\/em>, in this song, these blessed beats<\/em> that critics will point to as a feature of this album, are the equivalent of that 3-note riff that signifies an “Asian” setting in bad ’60s movies and the cartoon Hong Kong Phooey<\/strong>. No wonder a Southerner still has trouble catching a break up north.<\/p>\n

Steve Earle, “Tennessee Blues”<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The next song was “Tennessee Blues”<\/strong>, a very pleasant look back at the Steve Earle of Guitar Town<\/em>. Not a difficult song to like, but there’s this nagging feeling that Dust Brother John King put about a 10th of the effort into the song’s beats<\/em> as did the guy who pressed Play<\/em> on Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia”<\/strong> all those years ago. Come on, man, it’s 2007. You’re telling me this simple Steve Earle song needs the whitewash of a drum machine in the background? Are people incapable of hearing a song without the gentle stroke, stroke, stroke of a drum machine beat? Christ, were electronics<\/em> also involved in the making of this album? <\/p>\n

Steve Earle, “Way Down in the Hole”<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Here’s another track from Washington Square Serenade<\/em>, a cover of Tom Waits’ “Way Down in the Hole”. One quick question: Is this necessary? <\/p>\n

If you go to Steve Earle’s MySpace page<\/a>, you can hear a couple more songs, “City of Immigrants”<\/strong> and “Satellite Radio”<\/strong>. Two more songs wiped clean of any potential personality by the producer’s beats<\/em>. Two more examples of a country boy getting dazzled and duped by his first extended taste of The Big Apple<\/strong>. Go ahead, Steve, bite the Big Apple. Don’t mind the maggots!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Psssst…Hey kid, check out these beats! Driving into work this morning I heard a couple of tracks off the new Steve Earle album, Washington Square Serenade. The DJ, perhaps my least-favorite local radio personality, provided the backstory that Earle and his fellow musician wife (I could look up this woman’s name and stick it in […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[65,227],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907"}],"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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}