Uncle Tupelo :: No Depression :: 1990

You know how people like to try to blend two types of music? Reach into a bag and pull out two of the following: Rap, Rock, Punk, Jazz, Classical, Country, Bluegrass, WorldBeat, Bavarian Folk Songs, That Weird Throat Singing Thing, Electronica. Put those two things together and i bet you there is a band that has tried to combine them and make something new. Most likely what they actually made was a CD-shaped turd. Most music genres exist independently from other genres because they're just too drastically different to be successfully combined. That's what makes it its own genre. But every once in a while somebody pulls it off. It seems that attempts to blend Rock & Pop with other genres have been the most successful. Miles Davis & John McLaughlin (along with others) changed the world of Jazz by bringing Rock into its fold. A Myriad of bands in the late 60's/early 70's combined Rock with Folk, Country & Bluegrass. David Byrne & Paul Simon blended African and South American beats into Pop Music. Of course when you try to blend Rock with Classical, you get Trans-Siberian Orchestra and when Rock met Rap... well, that Anthrax/Public Enemy version of "Bring the Noise" is kinda cool.

But the greatest Rap-Rock band of all time was Uncle Tupelo. Jeff Tweedy's beat-boxing skills alone set them apart from the rest of the imitators.

Wait, i think i got that wrong. Uncle Tupelo started, under another name, as a Punk band. These were high school kids in the mid-80's who were listening to The Minutemen, Husker Du & The Replacements. When they decided to try their hand at traditional American music, they did it as a punk band. Blending Punk and Country wasn't a brand new idea. It had been tried throughout the 80's, most notably by The Gun Club, Meat Puppets and Jason & The Scorchers. But this was something different. The Gun Club was from L.A. and represented the dark side of Country overwhelmed by the dark side of L.A. Jason & The Scorchers were from Nashville and while they didn't sound like the drivel being pumped out of Music Row, they still sounded too much like Nashville, to the point of sounding a bit like a farce. Meat Puppets did a lot of acid...

Uncle Tupelo did things differently. Those other two bands mixed the genres while remaining 20-somethings living in the late 20th century and took a few cues from popular country music. Uncle Tupelo tried to forget their time and place and go way back to the beginning of American Folk music. They took the album's title from--and covered--a song written by A.P. Carter, first recorded in 1936. When they dug into this old music, they didn't just copy the words and the sounds. They grabbed the essence of the music. These are folk songs; songs of the people. They're songs of those times that were both simpler and harder. Songs about drinkin', workin', lovin', fightin' and other various apostraph-ied verbs. Now we know these songs were written by 20-somethings in the late 20th century and while the lyrics might not be purely autobiographical, the themes are broad and can often apply to anyone at anytime. And that's the sign of a well-written song; the kind they used to write.

This band and this album's influence has reached farther than anyone could have predicted. During the 90's, "Alternative Country" became a legitimate musical genre. It gave rise to new bands like Whisekytown (and of course Uncle Tupelo offshoots Wilco & Son Volt), revived the careers of folks like Steve Earle & Lucinda Williams (who'd been at this for a long time) and helped the young kids discover past artists like Gram Parsons and The Band. It became big enough for a publication dedicated solely to the "Alt-Country" or "Americana" music to become a major seller. The name of that magazine--which would also become another moniker for the genre itself--is "No Depression." It's a fitting choice. It's a magazine that links the music of the past to the music of today. Because the latter could not exist without the former. And that's what Uncle Tupelo understood as much as anyone.
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I really couldn't find a very good video but here's one anyway

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After this one, listen to Still Feel Gone