For safety's sake, please consider all links herein either nsfw or potentially offensive*
Let's Have a Shambles! with the
Country Teasers!
Formed somewhere in Scotland in 1993 around one
Ben Wallers, the Country Teasers forged an unusual contrast between
acerbic lyrics, trash punk twang, and
honest affect(at)ion of
country-western tropes and
sounds. They were also equal opportunity offenders, their songs frequently featuring seemingly
misanthropic, misogynistic, and even
racist lyrics. But despite their affrontive controversy, perhaps
they aren't quite so easy to dismiss.
Though rarely does he give in-person interviews, Mr. Wallers will, when confronted,
defend his "schlock tease," though not without
characteristic aplomb.
Although the Country Teasers are pretty much dead,
their extensive discography has plenty of
noteworthy diversions.
Some albums to start with are 1996's
Satan Is Real Again or Feeling Good About Bad Thoughts, 1999's
Destroy All Human Life, and 2006's
Back to the Future.
Mr. Wallers continues to release new records under the moniker
The Rebel. A number of Teaser records were released on
In The Red records.
*Although if you do find it offensive, I'd simply request considering if that is perhaps the point.
posted by SomaSoda
on Nov 9, 2011 -
5 comments
Having worked as a philosophy teacher in a Scottish primary school and a domestic and child abuse worker with Scottish Women's Aid, perhaps it comes as little surprise that
Karine Polwart's music often dwells on the darker side of life.
[more inside]
posted by aihal
on Feb 19, 2008 -
9 comments
...Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the country’s western and northern fringes. But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans. The implication that the Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh have a great deal in common with each other, at least from the geneticist’s point of view, seems likely to please no one.
A United Kingdom? Maybe
See also
Myths of British ancestry
In the words of one well known Basque cultural
icon:
HA Ha!
posted by y2karl
on Mar 9, 2007 -
40 comments
The Streets of Laredo: The Cowboy's Lament was originally written as the Irish drover balled
Bard of Armaugh (or
Armagh), which later mutated into
A Handful of Laurel, about a young man dying of syphilis in a London hospital, musing back on his days in the alehouses and whorehouses. Immigrants settling in the Appalachians brought their own version,
The Unfortunate Rake, sung as early as 1790, about a young soldier dying of mercury poisoning, a result of treatment for venereal disease, who requests a military funeral - a slight but important evolution from the previous version. The current lyrics are most popularly attributed to cowboy
Frances Henry "Frank" Maynard, who copyrighted them in 1879. While various
versions of the song were popular in the US before Maynard took pen to paper and needle to wax cylinder (under such titles as
Locke Hospital,
St. James Infirmary Blues,
Tom Sherman's Bar and
Way Down in Lodorra), his version is the one with which we are most familiar today.
beat the drum slowly, play the fife lowly / sound the death march as you carry me along / cover my body in sweet-smelling posies / for I'm the young (rake, soldier, man, girl, lass, etc)
cut down in (his/her)
prime (or
and I know I've done wrong)
The song has been recorded by pretty much every country, western and folk-identified musical artist since recording music became practical, although the most popular versions must be those by
Arlo Guthrie (who once said it was "the saddest song I know," and who sings it on his album
Son of the Wind) and
Johnny Cash (who added
a few verses to his 1965 version, improving the song a bit and making it more emotionally complex).
Roger McGuinn's creative commons-licensed version is one of my personal favorites, as is Bobby Sutliff's
version.
posted by luriete
on Aug 3, 2005 -
27 comments
Dictionary of the Scots Language. The two major historical dictionaries of the Scots language, the
Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) and the
Scottish National Dictionary (SND), have been combined into one searchable online edition:
Thus, information on the earliest uses of Scots words can be presented alongside examples of the later development and, in some cases, current usage of the same words. In this way, we hope that the DSL will allow users to appreciate the continuity and historical development of the Scots language. By making the DSL freely available on the Internet, we also aim to widen access to the source dictionaries and to open up these rich lexicographic resources to anyone with an interest in Scots language and culture.
posted by languagehat
on Apr 2, 2004 -
13 comments
Xenophobia at its best! " The British and the North Americans are often said to be divided by a common language. Now it seems this linguistic split may apply to the natural world too. [¶]
A pair of Canadian otters brought to Britain a year ago are under 24-hour guard at the National Sea-life Sanctuary, near Oban in Scotland, because of fears they will be attacked by indigenous cousins unable to understand their "foreign accents". "
YES!!11 GO CANADIAN OTTERS!!!
posted by ( .)(. )
on Jul 4, 2002 -
9 comments
