I guess four CDs are not that much in the grand scheme of things, especially the grand scheme of my music collection, which should be somewhere north of 2.500 physical albums. But if someone would read along the labels of albums and go by 'R', they would say, hey this guy really likes Rascal Flatts. Which I kind of do, although I'm not some sort of super fan. I actually came into the posession of these four discs by happenstance. There was a used & new music store in the Paris city centre which I usually visited twice per year. Yes, you guessed it, during les soldes, the special sales weeks that are coming up next week I believe. That music store had this back room full of CDs that they really wanted to get rid of, and they really wanted to get rid of them during les soldes, so the deal was 'empty out these racks of crap, and to make sure you'll do, you'll get 15 CDs for ten bucks'. Which, for year, I happily obliged. These 15 CDs would often break down in about 3-4 that you would genuinely be happy to have 5-6 from artists that you'd know and might like and about 5 free agent/take a flyer albums that you took to make up the count.
It's been a couple of years, but during my - by that time probably only annual - visit, four of Rascal Flatts' albums fell in my hand during the 15 for 10 hunt. I had only heard the name, might've heard "Bop That Head" exactly once on the radio and knew that they were broadly classified as country music. So in the bag with those four! Clearly, the music store had drastically overestimated the Parisians' hunger for friendly coutry pop as clearly these discs were brand new. I guess the store had just quietly emptied out their Rascal Flatts section and moved these discs into the dreaded backroom purgatory, where Cds don't go to die, but to linger undead around for years. But no more! One Buck Guy to the rescue!
Having brought my big-ass plastic bags of treasures home - there was the same deal for DVDs, so I normally arrived with fifteen new CDs and fifteen new DVDs, much to the wife's happiness, no doubt - how to proceed with this band I somewhat barely knew. So I went with the chronological approach, taking the oldest disc, Feels Like Today. A mistake, as it was the worst of the four albums, by quite a bit, full of sappy ballads and not much else of interest. But things got better, once we hit Me And My Gang, Still Feels Good and Nothing Like This. Here's the thing about Rascal Flatts' music: It's not great music and it's not very profound. But it is fun, especially if you weed out all those sappy ballads, which was the trigger for today's One Buck record of the day.
Summer's Just Around The Bend - it's title taken from aline in kick-ass opener "Red Camaro" - is named as such, because that's what Rascal Flatts' midtempo and uptempo evokes: Rolling in a car with the windows down, fighting off the heat that comes right between the end of spring and the beginning of summer. There's tons of things Rascal Flatts' music is not good for - philosophizing for one thing - but this is great driving music. If only I could still have a car that accepts, you know, physical bearers of musical gifts. Not in the wife's Muskmobile, of course! Originally it was about fourteen tracks as a sort of best of of those four discs, but then I decided to go the whole hog, dropping two sappy-is numbers and filling it up with fun and uptempo numbers from throughout the band's career.
There's a reason why Rascal Flatts' music got better and more immediate with Me And My Gang, and that reason is named Dann Huff. The long-standing Nashville producer and former member of AOR/hard rock band Giant. It's obvious what Huff brings to the table: more guitars, more stadium-ready choruses, a lot more punch to the proceedings. Also included is "Backwards", one of the rare 'country humor' songs that I really like, and that are funny - the yodeling honky tonk intro that makes Gary LeVox sound like Garth Brooks giving way to a frenetic rock-based list of all the things that you get back, when you play a country record backwards. Fun stuff! And then I made room for exactly one (1) sappy ballad, their cover of Marcus Hummond's classic "Blesss The Broken Road" which is a wondeeful song, and as the closing number I'll allow it.
I haven't had time yet to make fun of the dudes' names. Gary LeVox and Jay Demarcus can at least claim royal lineage or Cajun kin or something with those names, but how great of a redneck name is Joe Don Rooney? His parents were seemingly big fans of Walking Tall, which makes it even better and more Redneck-y! At least they didn't name him Buford! This willl almost certainly be the only Rascal Flatts album around here, so allow me to make some good-natured fun of Joe Don while I can!
Anyway, let's cut the chit chat, and the mockery of poor Joe Don (...on second thought, let's not), and get down to business. Twenty Rascal Flatts tracks, one great comp to roll down the highways (or, you know, your diveway) and feel the sounds of the summer...
Summer's Just Around The Bend...It's Right Here
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/PKDk3mcLwba
Tell me about your favorite music or record store...
ReplyDeleteUnderground Records, a little hole-in-the-wall circa 1978, run by a sprightly little 70-year-old granny who had cats lounging on the rows and rows of albums - and in the back, if you were invited, you could browse (and listen on an ancient turntable) to an astonishing variety of boots. Eventually, she got raided and closed by the FBI for that backroom, but it was a magical place while it lasted.
Delete