The A.V. Club - Nashville or Bust

Music: Nashville or Bust: Sin, Salvation, the Sacred, and the Sacrilegious: Nashville Or Bust Goes To Nashville

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Visiting Nashville as the climax of my two-year “Nashville Or Bust” journey, I oscillated between reverence and irreverence, and between wide-eyed wonder at the country’s legendary past and vague embarrassment at the kitschy excess of its present. Depending on the block and your disposition, Nashville is either sacred ground consecrated by sanctified sufferers like Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, or Nash-Vegas, a glitzy tourist trap peddling a cartoon caricature of country as the exclusive domain of moonshine-swilling hillbillies. Two years ago, I came to country music as an enthusiastic outsider hunting for the music’s immortal soul. It’s ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 52: Charley Pride, Mellow Fellow

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 12:00:00 -0600

In 2009, A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: Nashville Or Bust, a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. Charley Pride grew up with a seemingly impossible dream: He wanted to be part of the tiny subsection of talented baseball players who make it to the big leagues ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 51: Johnny Paycheck, job-shover

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:28:00 -0600

In 2009, A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. Well, friends, we are nearing the end of the ramshackle two-year journey that is Nashville Or Bust, and I am in an appropriately reflective mood. There is a whole ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 50: Porter Wagoner, Professional Peacock

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 12:00:00 -0600

In 2009, A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. About a decade ago, I traveled to Nashville for my cousin Jonathan’s wedding and visited the Grand Ole Opry with my dad and older sister. The Grand Ole ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 49: The Avett Brothers, Feelers of Feelings

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 12:00:00 -0600

In 2009, A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. A while back I had an idea for a future book that I probably will never write and perhaps should not: joy. Or rather joy! Surely an emotion ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 48: Brad Paisley, Guy’s Guy

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:00:00 -0600

In 2009, A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. Every year, my father puts on a Donovan McNabb jersey he won in a raffle, a knit cap, and jeans (an ensemble that makes him look like the world ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 47: Buck Owens, Baron Of Bakersfield

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 12:00:00 -0600

In 2009, A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: Nashville Or Bust, a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. If country music is still known in many quarters as the music of illiterate, moonshine-swilling hillbillies wearing backward overalls and Appalachian smiles, Hee Haw is at least partly to ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 46: The Eagles, The Crackers You Love To Hate

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:00:00 -0500

In 2009, A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. When it comes to the Eagles’ suitability for Nashville Or Bust, I am powerfully split. Part of me feels like I have to write about the Eagles, who became ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 45: Patsy Cline, Chanteuse

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 12:00:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. In previous columns I have written about how country’s iron songbirds of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s were forced by the attitudes of the time and the conventions of ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 44: Loretta Lynn, Coal Miner’s Daughter

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 12:00:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. At a crucial moment in Coal Miner’s Daughter, the Oscar-winning 1980 Loretta Lynn biopic, Lynn (played indelibly by Sissy Spacek) is more or less pushed onstage for the first ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 43: Lyle Lovett's Subtle Charms

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:00:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. In the 1980s, Lyle Lovett and k.d lang were posited as the contemporary exceptions to the rule that all country music was made by glamour girls, beefy rednecks in ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 42: Tammy Wynette, The Girl With The Teardrop In Her Voice

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. At the risk of generalizing, everyone has heard “Stand By Your Man.” It has penetrated pop culture on a deep, permanent level. It’s been maligned as the ultimate throwback ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 41: Hank Thompson, Swinger

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. I discovered Hank Thompson in a roundabout fashion. I become fascinated by the Kitty Wells song “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” when I watched Carrie Fisher ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 40: The Late, Great Townes Van Zandt

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:00:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. Steve Earle famously stated “Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the world, and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 39: Roy Acuff, King Of Country

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:00:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. Business is the Achilles’ heel of many a country great. Country legends, as a genus, tend to be trapped by contracts so stingy, they could have been negotiated by a ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 38: Waylon Jennings, Nashville Rebel

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:00:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. As some of you have noted, it is unusual bordering on willfully perverse that I am 38 entries into a column about discovering country music, yet until now, I have ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 37: Robbie Fulks, The Alternative

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:11:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. When asked by a disc jockey back in the day about the newfangled “progressive country,” Emmylou Harris famously quipped that her music with Gram Parsons was less progressive than regressive ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 36: Ray Stevens, Jester Of The Tea Party Set

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:05:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. I’ve been a comedy obsessive since my dad gave me a copy of Woody Allen’s Without Feathers when I was 10. “Weird Al” Yankovic was my first idol ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 35: The Dilettantes: Ween, Neil Hamburger, Rick Moranis, Elvis Costello, And Ray Charles Go Country

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:00:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. Elvis Costello & The Attractions’ 1981 album Almost Blue originally came with a tongue-in-cheek sticker screaming, “WARNING: This album contains country & western music and may offend narrow-minded listeners.” The sticker was ...

Music: Nashville or Bust: Week 34: David Allan Coe, The Self-Promoter

Tue, 18 May 2010 12:00:00 -0500

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. David Allan Coe is the closest thing to a hip-hop artist I’ve covered for this column. He spent many of his formative years in jail, then greatly exaggerated both ...