Quite an amusing read I thought. Two extremes and both too extreme IMO.
The web site is at :
http://www.dallasobserver.com/1999/041599/music1.html
The Dixie Chicks
What's Not To Like?
By Michael Corcoran
I'm prone to hyperbole,
especially in situations
where alcohol is served, so
when I proclaimed,
in the presence of a certain
sports and music
editor for a Dallas weekly,
that the Dixie
Chicks' Nashville breakthrough
Wide Open
Spaces was the best country
album of 1998, a
good-natured yet heated
discussion ensued.
This assignment to defend the
Chicks is the
S&M editor's revenge, but I
have no problem
putting my byline where my
mouth is.
For years, while they dressed
like Annie
Oakley and warbled preciously
as though Nanci
Griffith were their Aretha,
the Dixie Chicks
were hard to take seriously.
The Erwin sisters,
Martie (now Seidel) and Emily,
could really rip
on the stringed instruments,
but the whole
presentation reeked of
gimmickry, or at least as
the punch line of a joke that
asked you to cross
Melrose Place and Appalachia.
They wanted
it so bad that they forged
ahead, playing every
gig like a showcase and
proving again and again
that there's nothing less
attractive than
unrequited ambition with a
banjo backing.
How can those same Dixie
Chicks, the scourge
of gritty Dallas hipsters,
suddenly be one of the
best things to happen to
country music? Well,
they're not the same Dixie
Chicks, for one
thing. In fact, I've heard the
band may change its
name to "Natalie Maines."
After years of
plugging away, looking for the
magic that would pull them out of the Perot party circuit,
Martie and Emily finally found
it three years ago when they hired Natalie, the
Lubbock-raised daughter of
producer-pedal steel guitarist Lloyd Maines. The Chicks got
their record deal without
Natalie, but then-singer Laura Lynch needn't kick herself for
quitting just before the
windfall. The Chicks would've sold nine records, instead of six
million, if Lynch were still
hopelessly trying to verify the rumor that everyone has a
soul.
This is not a Pete Best
situation, but more like Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham
replacing Bob Welch in
Fleetwood Mac. A million would-be Dollys have daydreamed in
song at the baggage claim area
of the Nashville airport, but it's been a long time since a
blonde bundle of spunk and
talent like Natalie Cool bounded through the gates.Foremost
is a buoyantly vibrating voice
that can, in the words of Graham Parker, "turn a cliché into
a sensation." Maines has quite
a few clichés to work with on Wide Open Spaces, but
listen to everything she
brings to a throwaway line like "It shoulda fit like a glove" on
"There's Your Trouble," the
song that vaulted them into Shania country. The video for
"There's Your Trouble" found
Maines moving like Lubbock got MTV right after Butch
Hancock, Joe Ely, and Jimmie
Dale Gilmore moved to Austin. For a glorious three
minutes and 13 seconds, it
looked and sounded as though Madonna had gone country
(which is, actually, not
scheduled until 2004).
There's also a bit of the
defiant, unsinkable attitude that the pre-Nat Chicks could never
quite muster. These girls can
make a party out of the party line, so even as they go
through the paces that country
stardom requires, they've been able to do it with a lot of
style and good humor. They
made all the execs at Sony Nashville carry them into their
platinum party
Cleopatra-style, for instance. At the Grammys on February 24, the
Chicks walked off with two
golden gramophones and looked spectacular in a bondage
Barbie kind of way, with their
barbed-wire belly wraps and safety-pinned blouses.
Maines, stepping out of her
high heels, told a press gathering backstage, "I know this
looks bad, but my feet are
killing me. Y'all are just print anyway, right?" Maines certainly
seems comfortable with the
limelight, which is great, because there's nothing more
frustrating than a shy diva.
Her gusto grab also helps to keep Erwin and Seidel from
milking the improbability that
someone so familiar with modern dentistry can play
bluegrass. The novelty has
been swallowed whole by an outfit whose members know
their roles. Rather than
having to be the main draw, the string sisters' instrumental
prowess is a great bonus to a
singer who could sell millions on her own.
Do people fall in love because
their mates are so perfect for them, or do they just happen
to intersect when it's time to
fall in love? It can go either way, just as can the question of
whether the Dixie Chicks have
sold millions of copies of Wide Open Spaces because it's
such a great album or because
the Chicks were just lucky enough to come around when
Nashville was desperate for a
new act to connect with young fans.
It happened all of a sudden,
when a decade of gigging condensed into an overnight
sensation. Dallas' favorite
high-dollar party band has gone national, and more than a few
people no doubt think of them
as the Spice Girls of country music. But let's see Scary
pull out a guitar solo worthy
of a top session player or witness Posh at the piano for
some barrelhouse playing.
Sometimes you need to get away from analyzing music — the
brain must chill — and just
let it do what it will do. Being able to sing and play well
should count for something,
even if that talent is aimed at getting 16-year-olds into the
record store and tuning their
radios to a "hot young new country" station. You certainly
can't knock them for making a
commercial record any more than you can take Groucho
Marx to task for wearing a
grease mustache. This is what the Dixie Chicks do, so dig
them while you can. The next
album is the one on which they insist on recording some of
their own songs.
Michael Corcoran is a music
critic for the Austin American-Statesman.
What's Not to Like.
By Robert Wilonsky
If Michael Corcoran's defense
of the Dixies is
funnier than what follows,
it's only because he
has the more laughable half of
this debate.
C'mon — liking the Dixie
Chicks? You know
Corcoran only likes Wide Open
Spaces
because ex-Chick Laura Lynch
referred to him
as an "oily, disheveled troll"
in Texas Monthly
a few weeks back. This is his
revenge, man — a
slap on Natalie Maines' back
is a punch in
Laura's chops. Then again,
Corcoran, bless him,
hasn't been right about a
record since Rubber
Soul. No, wait. He hasn't
listened to a record
since Rubber Soul.
Actually, there's nothing
wrong with Wide
Open Spaces that a little
deafness wouldn't
cure. It's not a horrible
record, just an innocuous
one — the kind that wins
Grammys and
convinces male critics it's
Serious Art just
because someone in the band
has breasts and
plays fiddle. Not to begrudge
the six million
who bought the record, but,
hey, they're also the same people who made Garth Brooks
the most famous gas-station
attendant in the world.
Part of this dislike for the
Chicks comes from having watched and listened to them pine
for stardom since their
inception almost a decade ago then act as though they have no
past. Theirs has long been a
most unattractive brand of cynicism: They were trying to
sell out even when they had
nothing to offer. Yet the women, especially sisters Emily
Erwin and Martie Seidel, now
insist theirs is an overnight stardom, even while they bury
in the back yard the
co-founding members who got them to this platinum place. It's hard
to listen to Wide Open Spaces.
Oh, sorry. Forgot to finish that sentence. It's hard to
listen to Wide Open Spaces
without hearing those inveterate echoes of a struggling band
trying to two-step in the
middle ground between art and commerce, trying to make it
without faking it. Maybe
that's why the first three records sound so beguiling and
charming now — like a boy
trying to speak when his voice begins to break.
Wide Open Spaces just sounds
like so much product, every note written on a computer
and stamped out on a bar code.
Worse, the Chicks keep insisting it's their first record, as
though the past decade never
happened. Too many times have they uttered such
nonsense in interviews or
onstage at the Country Music Foundation Academy Grand Ol'
Howdy Yeehah Awards and the
Grammys. "We can't wait to make our second record,"
Maines keeps repeating. It
looks kinda bad when the Sisters Erwin, Zeppo and Gummo,
nod and smile behind Maines in
their white-trash glamour togs, looking like the backup
singers and players they've
happily become. (This is called The Van Halen Syndrome...or
the New Bohemians.)
But, hey, what's a little
revisionist history among million-sellers? Ain't nothing but a
G-thing — a Grammy thing, that
is, and they have the bookends to prove it. It's all a
little unbecoming — the rot of
instant-but-not fame. Fact is, if the old records were
available to the public, the
sisters would have to split the leviathan profits with Lynch
and Robin Macy, co-founders
long since erased from the bio.
It's not as if the Chicks
weren't always up-front about their desire to be rich and famous,
even when they were playing
Joey Tomato's on Wednesday nights to the faithful who
washed down their bow-tie
pasta with a bluegrass sidecar. They wanted to be famous
more than John Hinkley, made
no apologies after firing Macy when she wanted to keep
riding Bill Monroe's jock
while the other girls were lookin' to sell out, even if Nashville
wasn't yet buying. In November
1993, Laura Lynch told the Dallas Observer that "this
time last year, we were all
hoping in the biggest way for a major label." Of course, Lynch
is long gone, and only the
Sisters Erwin and Lynch will know did she jump or was she
pushed.
The Chicks' first record,
1991's Thank Heavens for Dale Evans, sounds eight years later
like the Andrews Sisters
playing Asleep at the Wheel frontman Ray Benson's bar
mitzvah; shtick 'em up,
pardner. Yet the record featured a cavalcade of chops; them
sisters can play, make a banjo
sound like it really is a cool instrument. Only occasionally
did it smack of country music
for kiddies and their grandparents, bluegrass for blue-hairs.
There was just something
endearing about women honoring Patsy Montana and Bill
Monroe like anyone still gave
a damn. If they hadn't dressed it up in Western Warehouse
reduced-price frills, they
might have been taken seriously a whole lot quicker.
The follow-up, 1992's Little
Ol' Cowgirl, tempered the presentation just enough to
make their play for stardom a
bit more tenable. After all, Alison Krauss hadn't yet
proven there was an audience
willing to pay good money to be bored to death by one
more bluegrass breakdown. But
Shouldn't a Told You That, released in 1993, was the
record that proved the Chicks
could sell out without giving in — a smart, sexy disc that
played like it was made on
Music Row by professionals after business hours. Shouldn't
didn't sub out chops for
top-of-the-pops. The sisters are right there, sitting on your
shoulders as they play the
holy mother out of their respective instruments, while Lynch
does her Reba-Dolly-Mary
Chapin best — which was good enough to land the band a
deal with Sony, only without
Lynch as part of the deal.
Fact is, I half expect the
Chicks and Lauryn Hill to do a record together in the next couple
of years, when they're putting
the "over" in overrated. Till then, I've got a copy of
Thank Heavens for Dale Evans
I'm willing to part with for $50.
