Random Shuffle - Hank Williams, Bill Haley and His Comets, U2 & The Velvet Underground

"The First Fall of Snow" - Hank Williams
From Mother's Best Radio Transcriptions

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This comes from a Hank Williams boxed set of a radio show he used to do many years ago. The show was sponsored by Mother's Best flour. At the end of each song Hank and an announcer sit around talking about how wonderful that flour is. Sometimes their talking is longer than the song that preceded it. It is an obvious throwback to a time gone by. It is a bit annoying to hear the advertisements between songs, but also a little nostalgic (if something can be nostalgic when I wasn't even alive when it first came out.)

Listening to it I can't help but think of the current woes within the music industry. Millions of people simply don't pay for music anymore, radio hasn't played a good song in a decade and lots of great bands struggle to get heard by the masses. Maybe it is time for another Mother's Best Radio Hour with say, Ryan Adams, or Alejandro Escovedo.

Or maybe not.

Last year Wilco put their songs on a few VW commercials and many fans went nuts calling them sellouts. The band defended themselves by saying that there was no other way to get their music heard by lots of people. Who can blame them really? It's hard to make a buck in this new world.

Did anyone call Hank Williams a sellout back in the day, I wonder?

"Rock Around the Clock" - Bill Haley and His Comets
From 20th Century Masters
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For some reason when I was about 11 or 12 my cousin Jeff and I got completely into 1950's rock 'n' roll. We spent hours jamming out to guys like Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis. I can't begin to remember or imagine why we suddenly loved all that old stuff, but we surely did. I do remember scouring through my mom's record collection looking for the good stuff (unfortunately while my mom's collection was pretty large, she hit her stride in the later '60s which was just past the time frame that we had decided was really cool.) We'd also go to garage sales and flea markets looking for killer compilation tapes and I was always proud when I could find something with better songs than what Jeff had.

Article Author: Mat Brewster

Mat Brewster is a periodic ex-pat wondering if he'll ever find a home. You can find him musing on pop culture, and obsessing over concert bootlegs at The Midnight Cafe.

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