90s NIT (Alt-Country)- CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS PAGE 5

[EStreetJoe]

I'm going to attempt to do this for all the alt-country fans like myself on this board.
However, before I attempt to make regions or do seeding, I need to make sure I haven't left anyone out.
I'm going to limit it to a 32-team tournament (for the sake of simplicity).

Here's a 32-album list that I've come up with as a foundation.
Your job, should you choose to accept it is to give me up to 4 nominations that should be added to the list AND a list of up to 4 that should be dropped from the list. You can post OR PM me your votes (just don't do both). Top vote-getters will be added and eliminated and then I'll make the brackets.
Deadline for voting will be 5 a.m. Eastern Wednesday, so I can spend time Wednesday putting the brackets together.

In no particular order, here are the albums I've come up with:
Old 97s - Too Far to Care
The Jayhawks - Hollywood Town Hall
Dan Bern - Dan Bern
Waco Brothers - Cowboy In Flames
Son Volt - Trace
Son Volt - Straightaways
Lucinda Williams - Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Whiskeytown - Strangers' Almanac
Wilco - AM
Wilco - Being There
Billy Bragg & Wilco - Mermaid Avenue
Uncle Tupelo - No Depression
Uncle Tupelo - Anodynne
Iris DeMent - The Way I Should
Joe Ely - Love & Danger
Joe Ely - Letter to Laredo
Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers - Honky Tonk Union
Allison Kraus & Union Station - Forget About It
Steve Earle - I Feel Alright
Emmylou Harris - Wrecking Ball
Roseann Cash - Interiors
Robert Earl Keene - Gringo Honeymoon
Slaid Cleaves - No Angel Knows
Ray Wylie Hubbard - Crusades of the Restless Knights
Patti Griffin - Flaming Red
John Prine - The Missing Years
John Hiatt - Walk On
The Pistoleros - Hang On To Nothing
My Morning Jacket - Tennessee Fire
Pinkerton - Live Through This
Slobberbone - Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today

 

[YGBFKM]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

We counting the Truckers?

 

[Piotr Rasputin]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

I was under the impression that these brackets had to have at least a majority of albums that were actually good.

I must have been mistaken.

 

[EStreetJoe]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

We counting the Truckers?

Thought the Truckers first good album - Southern Rock Opera came out in the 2000s. If they had something good in the 90s that I obviously am unaware of, by all means, vote for it.
That's why I'm soliciting input. I had no list to go off for getting nominees.

Alt-country is a wide-open genre, that's why I'm soliciting nominees because I know there's band and albums I might not have heard of or don't know about.

 

[EStreetJoe]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

I was under the impression that these brackets had to have at least a majority of albums that were actually good.

I must have been mistaken.

That's why I'm looking for albums to get voted off the island and replacements to get voted onto the island before I set up the brackets

 

[YGBFKM]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

Two albums by the Truckers in the late '90s -- Gangstabilly and Pizza Deliverance. They're not SRO, Decoration Day or Dirty South, but what is? As a whole, I'd take them over their last album, which relatively sucked.

 

[spikechiquet]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

I might vote on this...but I am pretty limited on 90s alt-country stuff other than what's been listed.

The only nominee I can think of is
Vigilantes of Love - Welcome to Struggleville

 

[bigpern23]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

I'm not asking this to be a contrarian douche, because I recognize country's popularity, but I'm wondering what alt-country is compared to regular country and are the above mentions strictly in the alt-country category, or do they include "regular" country?

I'm genuinely curious. My knowledge of country doesn't extend far beyond the occasional Garth Brooks, Dixie Chicks (when covering Smashing Pumpkins who covered Fleetwood, etc.), Sugarland or Faith Hill (she had a song in Pearl Harbor).

 

[YGBFKM]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

To add:

Pizza Deliverance, DBT
Down by the old Mainstream, Golden Smog
The Brooklyn Side, Bottle Rockets
Dog Days, Blue Mountain

 

[YGBFKM]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

I'm not asking this to be a contrarian douche, because I recognize country's popularity, but I'm wondering what alt-country is compared to regular country and are the above mentions strictly in the alt-country category, or do they include "regular" country?

I'm genuinely curious. My knowledge of country doesn't extend far beyond the occasional Garth Brooks, Dixie Chicks (when covering Smashing Pumpkins who covered Fleetwood, etc.), Sugarland or Faith Hill (she had a song in Pearl Harbor).

Stick to comic books, son.

 

[X-Hack]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

A Night of Reckoning by the Dead Reckoners

 

[bigpern23]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

I'm not asking this to be a contrarian douche, because I recognize country's popularity, but I'm wondering what alt-country is compared to regular country and are the above mentions strictly in the alt-country category, or do they include "regular" country?

I'm genuinely curious. My knowledge of country doesn't extend far beyond the occasional Garth Brooks, Dixie Chicks (when covering Smashing Pumpkins who covered Fleetwood, etc.), Sugarland or Faith Hill (she had a song in Pearl Harbor).

Stick to comic books, son.

Noted.

 

[Bubbler]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

Cheri Knight, Northeast Kingdom.

Steve Earle produced it and plays a bit on it. I think I'm the only one who owns it, but it's very good.

 

[Zeke12]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

Pretty sure Whiskeytown's Pneumonia sneaks in in 1999.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

Todd Snider - "Songs for the Daily Planet"
Todd Snider - "Step Right Up"
Steve Earle - "Train a Comin'"
Jack Ingram - "Hey You"

I know Ingram might seem a weird addition to anybody who only knows him after "Wherever You Are," but I swear he used to be good.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

I'm not asking this to be a contrarian douche, because I recognize country's popularity, but I'm wondering what alt-country is compared to regular country and are the above mentions strictly in the alt-country category, or do they include "regular" country?

I'm genuinely curious. My knowledge of country doesn't extend far beyond the occasional Garth Brooks, Dixie Chicks (when covering Smashing Pumpkins who covered Fleetwood, etc.), Sugarland or Faith Hill (she had a song in Pearl Harbor).

It has the same DNA as country, but it's almost a different genre entirely. I hate to say more authentic, because that seems like a value judgment. But it's definitely rawer. Vocally less twang, at least as you probably know it. Less baritone, as well. The kind of embarrassingly earnest lyrics that you find in mainstream country are not to be found. I've heard it called "country music for college graduates," and while that's an elitist way to describe it, it's not that far off, really. Instead of dancing around it, I'll say it: It's a lot more politically liberal, both in content and in the artists themselves. Geographically, it derives more from Texas and Appalachia than it does Nashville.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

I already used up my four, but I would not be opposed if someone wanted to add John Fogerty's "Blue Moon Swamp."

 

[joe]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

Second Bottle Rockets "The Brooklyn Side." I've seen them in concert numerous times, the last time at an in-store the night after a concert. They were a little worse for wear after staying up till 4 a.m. drinking tequila. "The Brooklyn Side" is consistently their best album I've heard.

I'd boot Billy Bragg and Wilco's "Mermaid Avenue." California Stars and Hesitating Beauty are fine songs when Wilco does them in concert, but Bragg just grates on my nerves after a few songs. Besides, I don't know that Woody Guthrie can be called alt-country anyway.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

Love "Welfare Music" from the Bottle Rockets.

Can you imagine the following lyrics on a mainstream country album: "Angry fat man on the radio/Wants to keep his taxes way down low/Says there ought to be a law/Angriest man you ever saw."

If Garth Brooks or Big & Rich wrote those lines about mainstream country fandom's biggest non-music, non-Reagan hero, they'd be Dixie Chick-ed.

 

[EStreetJoe]

Re: Best albums of the 90s NIT (Alt-Country bracket)

The comments so far explain some of my dilemma in trying to set up the bracket. ... what's alt-country and what's not?

* Are folks like Prine, Kraus, Griffin, Harris, Cleaves and Cash alt-country or folk?

* With Mermaid Ave. although it's alt-country artists performing the songs, it's still the folk songs of Woody Guthrie. So like Joe said, should it get the boot or stay in?

* Then there's the other side of the coin -- are albums by rock artists like Fogerty's "Blue Moon Swamp" and Springsteen's "Ghost of Tom Joad" alt-country or are they rock and folk respectively?