Yeah, this seemed gratuitous and mean.

And Jo from Facts of Life!

You fail to give due regard to that portion of country music that consists of truths so obvious you'd think they need not be stated at all but which are apparently so jaw-droppingly revelatory to the singer that he has to learn them over the course of three verses—the first verse recounting something his brain-dead…

I thought the same thing about "undisputed." In addition to the problems you point out, there's the issue of Atticus and the sheriff conspiring to protect Boo from prosecution. Nothing wrong with a little obstruction of justice when it's done by well-meaning white folks.

Bucky, I thought I got to use the brain this week.

Great call on Miller. There's a whole category of one-hit-literary wonders, of course, but I think that book qualifies for canonical status.

He's still alive, so I guess that disqualifies him, but it has been nearly 40 years since Willis Alan Ramsey recorded his first and so far only album. It was hugely influential at least in the Texas(ish) singer-songwriter world. That may be too narrow/regional for this category, but that world does include Guy Clark,…

The only other running back who came anywhere close to inspiring as much awe in me as a kid was Earl Campbell. They were both also really humble, decent guys whose careers (Earl's especially) ended sadly.

Loudon and Richard Thompson toured together a couple of years ago. I saw them at Crichton Theater in Conroe, Texas., forty miles north of Houston. The Crichton, a gorgeous old place, is theoretically a great venue to see an act like that, except that it's a small-town subscription type of deal and draws people who are…

Great songs, engaging performer, very disturbing guitar face.

You beat me to it. That's my go-to line any time I get in somebody's face.

I saw the Stats in an auditorium show in Wichita Falls in 1978 when I was 11. It was kind of my own personal Woodstock.

There's questions we're always hearing every where we go
Like how do I cut a record or get on a country show

You could fill a library with all the songs that reference Hank Williams—it's really its own genre. As far as that goes, there's probably a shelf full of songs that are solely about Hank Williams and/or have his name in the title. ("Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life," "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" "If You Don't…

All I did most of my life was read (mostly fiction) until a few years ago, when I discovered the internet, and I started reading just the internet. A few months ago I curtailed the internet, because I'd read most of it, and started reading books again, and I found that I'm just too old (44) to enjoy fiction by the…

He's got the Jonathan thing and the Brooklyn thing going for him. He comes white-people-likable right out of the gate.

I read an essay of his over twenty years ago (don't know when it was published; it was in an anthology) about driving through some small town in (I think) Pennsylvania in the middle of the night and stopping at its only traffic light and waiting for it to turn green despite there not being another soul awake for…

David Gray's "Babylon" seems a weird song to be a hit in 1999.  It sounds like it could have been released in 1974, and I don't recall it being a part of a broader "melancholy-70sish-singer-songwriter" craze.  And I don't think anything else of the guy's ever got on the radio.  I might be wrong—I didn't listen to the…

I can relate to your experience.  I'm from a podunk west Texas town (where we listened to "both kinds" of music).  A friend-girlfriend a year ahead of me came back from UT, unimaginable Austin, at Christmas of her freshman year and gave me Reckoning on tape.  She said something like "This a new band I think you'll…

I've never really detected an intellectual bent at Brazos, but you may be right.  I mostly buy fiction of the literary but not necessarily intellectual variety (I bought Lorrie Moore and George Saunders collections there and a couple of new novels on Saturday.) I think they're known for a big art and architecture…