Hey guys, Fairweather back to do the egotistical-music-critic thing again—although I do truly love these songs!

8) "Take Me" by George Jones. Although Possum is perhaps best known and loved for his drinking songs, they aren’t all he has ever recorded. This one is a plea to a lover to be taken to, successively, a darkened room, a barren desert, and Siberia; all these places would "be just like spring in California/as long as I knew you were mine." Aside from the hushed intimate vocal, the instrumentation is the star of the song, consisting of nothing more than an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar in the background, a fiddle and an upright bass. Possum re-recorded this in the l970s as a duet with then-wife Tammy Wynette, but the duet is pallid by comparison.

7) "You’ve Got a Lover" by Ricky Skaggs. Bluegrass singer, songwriter and bandleader Skaggs spent
the l980s doing country music for Epic Records: electric instruments, steel guitar, drums, the works.
This song is about a man who keeps running into his ex and her new man. He wants her back bad;
he keeps insisting "he can’t love you like I can." Fairly banal lyrics, but there’s nothing banal about
Skaggs’s vocal. He’s got one of the purest tenors I’ve ever heard, and he uses it to stunning effect
here.

6) "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash. Awhile back, Willard was online looking for the lyrics of another song entirely when she ran across a highly cogent, explicitly sexual exegesis of "Ring of Fire." When she went back later to copy the exegesis and e-mail it to me, it had vanished into cyberspace. Just as well; I don’t have that literal a mind. This song is a l960s country version of "Hurts So Good," written by Merle Kilgore and June Carter (later Cash). What I hear in it is a sort of ecstatic agony, as much emotional as physical—and it burns, burns, burns—

5) "You Could Know as Much About a Stranger" by Gene Watson. Texas-born Gene Watson recorded one of the most slyly sexy post-"Behind Closed Doors" hits, Vince Matthews’s "Love in the Hot Afternoon," but I much prefer this one, written by Nadine Bryant. On one level it’s a simple song about marital boredom ("I can’t remember the last time that I really wanted you"), but what catches my ear is the angry energy in both the lyrics and in Watson’s performance. The hopeless rage and bewilderment of a failing relationship are perfectly summed up in the concluding couplet "you know the color of my eyes and you know the things that I despise/but you could know as much about a stranger."

Hang in there, guys, only four more to go! Till next time, fair thee well.

Hey, guys, Fairweather again. Our membership drive for the Ornery as Hellfire Club has not been the success we hoped for. We haven’t gotten responses from any of the celebrities we asked for endorsements; rumbles out toward Sacramento turned out to be a gripy quake fault instead of Ahnuld.

We have gotten some strange noises from people claiming either to be or to represent some of our rejected celebrities, though. For example, somebody claiming to be Anderson Cooper left a rude message on Willard’s voicemail. Unfortunately the voice was highpitched and nasal and sounded distinctly local. We suspect an out of work vocal impressionist, and after we heard that impression we know why he’s out of work.

SD answered the phone about l0:30 PM on Wed. and got a whispering weirdo who wanted to know if we’d prefer Joe Scarborough waxed or unwaxed. SD didn’t bat an eye; she told the caller we’d prefer Mike Rowe. Unwaxed.

Meanwhile I got an official-looking letter purporting to be from the law firm of Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel, who claimed to be representing Keith Olbermann in the matter of Tearjerker vs. Murder Ballad. Mr. Flywheel advised me that his client intends to plead not guilty by reason of ignorance. I was not fooled by the blurry letterhead; I recognized it as the work of Madame Sadie, our local psychic, channeling the late lamented Marx Bros. As Mme. Sadie’s channeling abilities are iffy at best, God knows when Mr. Flywheel will come through again, but when he does, I’m willing to cut a deal. (Anything to end the psychological and emotional trauma!) I’ll settle for a promise that KO will stick to baseball from now on.

And on that note, fair thee well.

Hey guys, Fairweather again. For all the great songs about adultery, lust and unrequited love in the archives, country music didn't become self-consciously sexy until l973, when Charlie Rich had a major major hit with "Behind Closed Doors," a tribute to a wife's prowess in bed. At the time it caused some outrage and more than a few raised eyebrows. After three decades it only sounds coy, lame, and dated. Rich gave an infinitely more nuanced and sensuous performance a few years later with a song called "All Over Me," which acknowledges that the loss of physical love is as painful as the emotional loss.

Guess you've figured out that I am not a fan of country songs that go out of their way to be "sexy." I prefer the indirect approach. Also, it's not always the lyrics that I find intriguing or enticing; it can also be the emotion of the singer's performance, the spareness or richness of the instrumentation, and the harmonic elements.

Over the years I've found an array of country songs that are seductive without being overtly sexual. Here are twelve of my favorites, Fairweather's Not-so-Dirty Dozen. In reverse order:

l2) "When You Say Nothin' at All," by Alison Krauss and Union Station. Alison Krauss is living proof that life's gifts are not always equally distributed. She looks like an angel, plays fiddle like an angel and sings like an angel, particularly on this track, originally a hit for the late Keith Whitley. I prefer the dreamy lightness of her version to Whitley's heavier, Lefty-Frizzellish vocal.

ll) "Lovin' Her Was Easier" by the Glaser Brothers. The Glaser Brothers are best known for providing backing vocals on many Marty Robbins records, but they were spectacular on their own. These guys had three of the silkiest voices ever to hit Nashville, and they never showed them to better advantage than on this Kris Kristofferson song. Their harmony gives me chills; they skim the notes with the ease of leaves riding the wind.

l0) "The Air I Breathe" by Hank Williams, Jr. This one comes dangerously close to the edge of Dr. Ruth country, but it's my favorite Bocephus recording, hands down. An early l980s cover of an old Hollies hit, it's a gorgeous, drowsy, romantic, unabashed celebration of postcoital contentment, a far far cry from his usual booze and testerone bombast. The way he floats the lyric "so sleep/hey baby let's just sleep" definitely shivers my middleaged timbers.

9) "Till I'm the Only One" by the Wilburn Brothers. My beloved Teddy and Doyle recorded this naive little gem on a budget label called Vocalion, a subsidiary of their major label Decca (now called MCA). The lyrics are more reminiscent of early Everly Brothers than of anything else the Wilburn Brothers ever did. It's a sweetly achy piece about a man in love with a woman who has an--ahem!--active social life, and his vow to "sit alone and wait/till I'm the only one."

These are fairly lightweight numbers but worth a listen. Till next time fair thee well.

Hey guys, Fairweather here. Now that spring's sprung Willard and I have decided to hold a membership drive for our loyal opposition group, the Ornery as Hellfire Club. So far, that we know of, we only have five members: me, Willard, a person out in cyberspace (you still interested, SD?), my artist friend Too Seriously (she answers to Too), and my niece Miss A. Miss A, who makes me look like a total right wingnut, suggested that prospective members be asked to submit at least one anti-Bush political cartoon, but we turned that requirement down because it would wipe out 80% of the current membership. Too and I can draw, but Willard and Miss A can't, and Too and I can't write captions to save our lives. (Maybe SD can.) We figure we're not the only ones whose lack of artistic or literary ability would disqualify us.
We asked my mom to join, but she's so ornery she'd scare off ordinary ornery people. Guess who my hero is.
More practically, we have decided that what we need is a celebrity endorsement. Can't be just any celeb, though; we'd like somebody who actually knows something about politics, which lets out most of the Hollywood crowd.
Among those we have considered asking for an endorsement but have already rejected:
Anderson Cooper, for having unnaturally good manners;
Tucker Carlson, for being sartorially challenged;
Wolf Blitzer, for pomposity;
Fox Noise's John Gibson, for bad hair (which also disqualified Donald Trump);
Ann Coulter, because we're ornery, not evil, and anyway I write the bad jokes around here;
Joe Scarborough, although I'm not sure exactly why. If he does full frontal nudity for May sweeps we'll reconsider;
and Keith Olbermann, for not knowing the difference between a tearjerker and an I-wanna-commit-murder ballad (see "Ruby (Don't Take Your Love to Town").
If we got all our happy birthday, merry Christmas and happy New Year wishes at once, we could get an endorsement from someone with a deep history of orneriness. The following names are up for consideration:
Chris Matthews, whose picture is beside "ornery" in the dictionary.
Pat Buchanan, because nobody's more ornery than an old Watergate thug;
Helen Thomas, for her long and meritorious harassment of those in power;
George Clooney, because an endorsement from the Sexiest Man Alive can't hurt;
Ahnuld Schwarzenegger, although the membership is presently engaged in a loud and acrimonious debate about whether the Mahn among Girly Men is genuinely ornery or just weird;
and, if we really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel, Bill O'Reilly; he's an a**hole, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
We may also have Too design a tee shirt we could all wear at cyber-rallies (best we can do till we have more members).
If y'all out there in the Ornery States of America have other celeb candidates in mind, let us know. It's democracy in action.
Tune in next time when we'll hear Cousin Fairweather say. . .

I’ve been accused of being way too picky about men. That, people tell me, accounts for my middleaged single status. Granted, as I’ve grown older, I’ve gotten more intransigent about settling for less than perfect, but my reasons go deeper than that. Long ago I gained insight into my own heart. I’ve tried for years to put that insight into a poem, but—with apologies to the great Dion DiMucci—this is the best I can do:

Hear my story, it’s sad but true
About a guy I wish I knew;
He has my love, but I resist—
Hell, he doesn’t even exist!

And that is the great tragedy of my life: I’m waiting for Heathcliff.

It was inevitable that I should be attracted to a gothic hero. I come from a hillbilly gothic family: wicked stepmothers, mad aunts, funny uncles, suicide, attempted murder, death by poison moonshine, dead sweethearts, incest, alcoholism, drug addiction, illegitimate births and near-misses, and gypsies. (Yes, there was a woman of the Traveling People in Mom’s family tree. And don’t laugh; Willard’s family is even worse.) Heathcliff, with his rage, possessiveness, and obsessive search for revenge, would fit right in with our wild bunch.

Would he make me happy? Nope, no more than he ever made Cathy Earnshaw happy. But I’m a drama queen myself, so being with him would be like riding an emotional and physical whirlwind, the purest adrenaline rush I can imagine..

The dying Cathy asks Heathcliff, "How many years do you mean to live after I am gone?" I could ask the same question. In WUTHERING HEIGHTS the answer is nineteen years, more or less. Like Cathy Earnshaw, I’ll go first: Heathcliff, thanks to Emily Bronte, is immortal, damn his eyes.

At least, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. Best I can do on short notice. Until next time, fair thee well.


Thanks to sylviasdaughter and cracker for the comments. Yes, SD, duck tape, apparently an innovation in reptile restraint Dr. Barr came up with himself. I can think of other uses myself, but I don't want to get kicked off here. Cracker, glad you like the old country songs. Got more blogs to come on the subject. Thanx both and to anybody else who wanders by. Fairweather