if it makes you feel… somethin’
(or: february 7’s honey from the hive)
posted at 1:06 pm by brandon in sweet you rock and sweet you roll
Patty Loveless — “You Can Feel Bad”
(from The Trouble With the Truth
First of all, dreadful sorry for the erratic posting over the past few weeks; I have been battling a nasty sinus infection for what feels like years now, and the 875mg antibiotics-slash-horse-pills that my doctor prescribed ended up making me even sicker. (Blessedly, I seem now to be on the road to recovery, but if you see fit to pray for me anyhow, I’ll certainly take it.) Secondly, my online buddy Blake — a Nashville-based journalist who is as rabidly (and admirably) stubborn in the defense of his opinions as I am in mine, and with whom I have come to quite enjoy playfully sparring over music and more on this very website — has recently carved out his own acre of real estate in the blogosphere, and I heartily encourage you to check out his musings; he’s a very sharp writer, and his marvelous interviews often make me seethingly jealous (both because of the subjects with whom he gets to chat, and because of the smart questions that he thinks to ask them). (And if you require more incentive to steal a peek at Blake’s new baby: according to Blake himself, Brandon’s Buzz has apparently proven to be quite inspirational in the creation of certain features of his own site. (Color me honored, sir!)) Anyhoo, Blake requested some time ago that the Hive blast some Patty Loveless from its in-house boombox, and with this terrifically sassy tune — a colorfully canny twist on the classic he-done-me-wrong tale, written by the magnificently peerless Matraca Berg — I am at last happy to oblige. Welcome to your own comfy corner of cyberspace, Blake, and may you have every bit as much fun as I have over the past three years. (Incidentally, do you think Blake truly understands how lucky he is to have been born in what will most probably always stand as the single greatest year for music in the history of recorded sound? Who else thinks that he and I need to trade 1984 playlists, stat?)
February 7th, 2011 at 10:13 pm
First of all, I’m floored that this zippy little number isn’t picked by country radio programmers when they decide to play some classic Patty Loveless. I sometimes hear “I’m That Kind of Girl” or “Blame It On Your Heart,” but this one is oddly missing. Anyway, Loveless has always been at her best on tear-in-your-beer ballads, but her uptempo numbers show how much she learned while singing rock music on the North Carolina bar circuit in the Eighties. “You Can Feel Bad” is an excellent example.
The blog will mostly be updated with my professional writing, but I will have a little commentary now and then that doesn’t fit into my “work.” Thanks for the beautiful compliments.
February 8th, 2011 at 11:39 am
I’ve never been as massive and undying a fan of Patty’s work as others seem to have been — her contemporaries in that mid-’90s heyday almost always seemed to either write stronger songs (Mary Chapin Carpenter) or just turn over the right rocks and find them (Pam Tillis, Lorrie Morgan) — but there’s no denying her talent. Given that, I’ve always liked her uptempo, lighter stuff over the “deeper” material; “Lonely Too Long” remains an unheralded classic, but my beloved Laura Branigan wiped the floor with Patty on her so-called signature “How Can I Help You to Say Goodbye?” I think that “Feel Bad” runs neck and neck with “That’s the Kind of Mood I’m In” as my favorite Loveless tracks.
February 10th, 2011 at 8:47 pm
“That’s the Kind of Mood I’m In?” That’s one of my least favorite tracks from someone I consider one of the top five or six female singers in the genre’s history, in pure vocal talent if not popularity. She ranks just below Patsy Cline, Connie Smith and a handful of others in that regard. I have every one of albums sans Greatest Hits collections.
In that mid-90s there was such a wealth of women on country radio. It’s such a shame how things have changed. Chapin’s work with Don Schlitz in that time period is my favorite; I feel later albums trended towards schmaltz. Tillis and Morgan had their merits, no doubt, but I wouldn’t call their song selection superior. My top five Loveless songs: “Here I Am,” “On Your Way Home,” “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” “You Don’t Seem to Miss Me,” and “Blame It On Your Heart [ a tongue twister I perfected at the 9 years old! 🙂 ].