So, I use the Newsbreak app because it has articles from some local news sources, and I haven’t bothered to set up an RSS feed with those sources.

That said, the “Newsbreak Originals” are flaming hot garbage with AI-generated content, outdated news, insane religious or pseudoscience bunk, and other nonsense.

If possible, the mods of this community should consider automatically filtering out posts from this domain.

Ignoring the element of satire, I think that by today’s standards, Japanese Cowboy would be considered by most audiences to be racist, Piss Up a Rope to be sexist, and Mr. Richard Smoker to be homophobic.

From my experiences growing up in the rural south, I interpreted Mr. Richard Smoker as riffing on the obviously wrong-headed fear about gay men being “drug addled, cross-dressing dick smokers who want to ‘convert’ my teenage boy”.

Not to say that 12 Golden Country Greats isn’t an excellent album with an all-star ensemble of players and clever satirical takes on country music, just that it’s not something I’d recommend to people without a heads up lmao

I wrote almost all of my grad school work in Vim and Emacs/Evil, in a non-compsci field! It was fantastic for editing, and I used pandoc to automate proper formatting, citations, and bibliographies for my papers and thesis. 10/10 would recommend to someone who is tech savvy or has a tangential interest in programming.

This album doesn’t have 12 songs, but legend has it that the “12” refers to the session musicians recruited from Nashville to provide the excellent music.

However Ween being Ween, this album is likely to be very offensive, lyrically-speaking, to a lot of folks’ sensibilities in 2023 — just a heads up for folks not listening on headphones!

The Highwaymen — the ultimate country supergroup: Johnny, Willie, Waylon, and Kris. Highly recommend their live album, American Outlaws .

John R. Miller — his newest album, Heat Comes Down, is maybe a little less straight-up country, but it is excellent songwriting.

Colter Wall — Western Swing & Waltzes; Little Songs

Wilco - in the early years, they had some more “traditional” country sounds A.M.

As others have said, you can’t go wrong with John Prine or Townes van Zandt.

Bonus NRPS, Gram Parsons, and Merle Haggard

I grew up in a musical family and church environment where I had access to instruments and audio consoles and such.

Later, I was in a shitty high school rock and roll band, and did a little bit of guerilla home recording. I also organized some live events that were basically house shows.

In college (for an unrelated field), I worked the console for an easy, weekly show for a semester or two. After graduate school (in the same, unrelated field), I had some time to kill while figuring out my next move. My old neighbor was the audio engineer at a local venue, and after some work convincing that person, I was taken on as the intern. A short time later, I started working gigs around town and moving up the chain at the venue where I started.

So, I learned production the old-school way, like an apprentice. I had the benefit of picking up a weekly, low-stakes gig early on where I gained a lot of experience and got to make mistakes. I also had the benefit of a formal education that really helped out with the communication and organizational aspects.

Basically, through several twists of fate, I’m now a full-time, professional audio engineer/production manager. I’m now dipping my toes into the studio side, and doing some post-production work at home using the knowledge I’ve gained in the live sound world and, critically, with the help of friends and colleagues I’ve had the good fortune of meeting along the way.

TLDR: Sheer, dumb luck. Study hard and be kind to people. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and DIY.

A few years before Last Dance, but Runnin’ Down a Dream is the first rock song—and maybe the first song of any genre—that I can remember. Dancing on the bed while playing air guitar to Tom Petty is baked into my core childhood memories!

Feeling old indeed lmao

Going to vote out our welfare-thieving, shitbird governor. I don’t necessarily like the dem option, but he’s better than what we’ve got.

I’m excited to vote for the lady running against our flappy-headed, overgrown fratboy of a state house rep.

It’ll be a miracle if either of these races shake out the way I hope they do, but the odds are better than usual!

Someone else mentioned my favorite anthropologist, David Graeber, and I’m working through that book right now!

Another anthropologist, Eric Wolf, wrote Europe and the People Without History, which you might also find interesting.

It covers the time span you’re looking for, and focuses on how global, political-economic trajectories were shaped by the “people without history” (the colonized).

DOOM is like my Elvis — I know he’s gone, but being the supervillain that he was, I want to believe that he faked his own death.

Thanks for this, I don’t think I’ve heard this track before!

The first time I saw an advance question about merch splits, I was shocked that it was a thing. I knew the entertainment biz could be shady, but goddamn!

It was part of the slow realization of how good I have it at the venue where I work, and I’m always pleased to tell an artist “no split, merch is 100% yours”.

That’s a really cool solution with the Bluetooth receiver! I fortunately don’t have to play music from my own device too often — I was just shaking my fist at the clouds lol

Agreed about proprietary nonsense, for sure. I know I could have it much worse, since I’ve at least got a good ol’, normal USB-C port, and, as you mentioned, we aren’t living in the bad old days before at least some standardization came along.

I’m a live sound engineer, and whenever I need to play music from my phone over the PA, I now have to dig out yet another goddamn adapter to do so. A tour manager or road engineer with an apple device wants to play tunes over the house PA? Hope they have their own adapter, because my “universal” USB-C adapter won’t cut it.