CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Country music is still a singles medium, disseminated in 150-second swatches on AM radio. Although country artists record as many as three or four albums a year, it’s rare indeedy for one to "make much show of working on them'. The standard formula is a single or two for bait, producer and/or artist connected compositions for royalties, and cover versions for filler.
CHRISTGNU CONSUMER GUIDE
Country music is still a singles medium, disseminated in 150-second swatches on AM radio. Although country artists record as many as three or four albums a year, it’s rare indeedyfor one to "make much show of working on them'. The standard formula is a single or two for bait, producer and/or artist connected compositions for royalties, and cover versions for filler. For those with a taste for the kind of tuneful honesty and cannily restated truism that only country music can provide—a taste which in my taste was sharpened by the phony imitations of such virtues that so many “rock ’n’ rollers” have been selling for the past decade—best-of albums are the way to go/There is one problem, though—country values are so alien to any real rock ’n’ roller that he or she is likely to prefer those few artists who t use the album formula to do something idiosyncratic (Tom T' Hall was once an excellent example), and these idiosyncrasies rarely make the cOrnpilations. All of the reviews below were written for my forthcoming Consumer Guide book, which is limited to the 70’s, and a few major artists are unrepresented because 1 pimply haven’t gotten to them yet. But there are a lot of wonderful records available to anyone who just likes songs the way I do. They stay in print, too, and in some cases are budget-priced. Worthy of investigation, believe me.
