Don't Drop Out - Dolly Parton

An early pop track from Dolly Parton in the style of George Shadow Morton's Shangri-Las. It's a 'stay-in-school-kids' teenage death ballad.

People ask me 'Why I Love Country Music' (which is the last time you'll ever see Lloyd Cole and the Commotions quoted on this site)... well, the next time some Rock star dullard is caught slapping a photographer outside some poncy French restaurant, remember how country singer Merle Haggard served time in San Quentin for armed robbery.

The next time you hear some anaemic white rock dirge about rivers and seas and the oceans of sadness in her eyes, turn to Country for songs about binge drinking, adultery and murder.

It's like Take a Break magazine set to steel guitars.

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Fist City - Loretta Lynn

I was sitting on my sofa bed, eating neopolitan ice cream and squirty cream from the Spar Savers range and leafing though the Argos catalogue (quickly flicking past the electronic handheld bridge games in order to get to the cheap gold chains), when it struck me how this tune is the perfect example of the classic Country and Western narrative: women fighting over a cheating man. Yes, in the Southern US women were pulling hair and shouting 'slag' long before the invention of the watermelon rum Breezer.

I love country music because I'm the son of a dinner lady, which beats being a Coal Miner's Daughter. I'm also from Plymouth, which in relative geographical terms is like Nashville.

I shot a man in ASDA just to watch him die.

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Manifesto & Book News

If it's ever been on K-Tel or Ronco, it's in. If it features hand claps, cow bells, syrupy orchestration, walls of sound, wrecking crews, sha-la-las, toothy teen idols, candy-based metaphors for carnal acts or lyrics about hugging, squeezing and rocking all night long, it's in.

I've ordered it from a catalogue



> Martin Lampen (latest book news, contact details and other stuff)

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