Chet Atkins The Living Stereo, I Mean Guitar Genius

Once upon a time, a man decided his thumb should do one thing while some of his other fingers Ministry of Silly Walked their way through the surrounding neighborhood. That man was Merle Travis, and everyone agreed to name his new style "grrr [thunk] screw it, i give up!" Well, everyone except Chet Atkins. Sweet mother of Christmas albums, i've got 7 of these damned things! Go ahead and count 'em, if i'm lyin' i'm dyin'. Sorry, sorry, alls i'm trying to say is i've got 27 albums here, so even if i tried to just wad him up into a brain-melting 7-album listening session, we've still got like 2 weeks (at my speed) of listening material to get through, and that's not counting all the country records i already had but never reviewed. What's a boy named Sue to do? We could just shuffle 'em back into the rotation, i suppose. Or, i could do like a proper forward chronology of all the ones i have, like i did with Bowie or Nirvana. I dunno, maybe i'll just point out that Chet Atkins might just be the most pos extremophile-elitist guitarist i can think of (a between the buried and me reference in a Chet Atkins review?). Tommy Emmanuel is good enough to get a mention, but everyone else was crap to his mind. Many people loved him, so i can honestly say he sadly died in 2001. 

Think i'm being too harsh? Of course i am, but the earliest album i possess is his 22nd, entitled The Guitar Genius. He lets his brother sing on it, so that's something, i guess. 

Hate me yet? Yeah, i'm being a jerk on purpose. We're going to give these albums as fair a listen as any, and i mean it. Now, we all know this project could have me veering off onto how happy i am that the Supreme Court chose to uphold the legal precedent of Roe v Wade instead of lighting their pogo sticks on fire and hop-hopping the whole country back to when women were essentially slaves. Let's be brutally honest, the phrase "women's work" was created as a replacement for a way worse phrase, and the fact that you're cringing right now says you know it. See, i gotta play dumb to get through this, so don't tell me this isn't hard work. 

The opening instrumental version of Heartbreak Hotel is phenomenally bizarre, with its enormous tremolo, and the ponderous weight of being awesome. 

Jim sounds pretty much like any other crooner, and i love those. The Swanee River crosses the Florida-Georgia Line, because that's hilarious (you're so purdy you make me want to ignore established traffic conventions 'cause i'm distracted driving). 'Scuse me while i don't exactly swoon. 

Well then, Blackjack is especially bizarre; a jaunty little ditty accompanying what appears to be a Reservoir Dogs style violent interrogation complete with chain rattles and punching. It's sort of like that one track from El-P's Cancer 4 Cure, but completely lacking in sexual innuendo. Definitely not complaining about said lack, just trying to make it a little more relevant to my peculiar network of mental associations. The punchline, of course, is that if you pull out a gun he'll confess. What choice does he have? The same one Samuel L. Jackson had in whatever stupid movie that was where he played Russian Roulette with one of his students and lost. Congratulations on not teaching him any lesson at all? 

Do you have any idea how much Library of Congress research work it took to track down the actual songwriter for Daar's 'n Wind Wat Waai? A lot. It was South African white guy Malcom Watson, better known by his D&D alias Die Kavalier. I only bring it up because Apartheid. Not Chatty's fault, but i'm trying to really give you the tug of war i'm participating in here. As an album of pieces of music for guitar this is phenomenal. As a cultural artifact, however, it makes Yacht Rock look positively worldly-wise and contemplatively caring, or Dionne Warwick a down-to-earth people person. [Lewis Black wiggle-pointing] WHICH IS EXACTLY THE MENTAL GYMNASTICS ROUTINE I HAVE TO DO TO APPRECIATE YACHT ROCK OR DIONNE WARWICK. 

I sincerely complement you on reading this far, but we all know it's going to get worse. It's time for side 2! 

It's Now or Never is sadly not Gary Puckett's Lady Willpower, but those Lawrence Welk style background oohs and aaahs are lovely. 

Side 2 really is a Light Jazz kind of EP in its own right. 

Jim, dear, you also came out of nowhere. If you wish Sinatra had Dean Martin's voice, then you will love Jim as much as the junior vice president of sandwich acquisition who wrote the back blurb for this album, and as i already pointed out, me 

Hidden Charm is what you think of when you think of Travis Picking. It's freakin' awesome, and i have every reason to expect that the next 6 Chet Atkins albums will be just as lovely. It's Not the "Nashville Sound" i think of as the "Nashville Sound," more the "Nashville Sound" i imagine when i remember how Skrugged-off everyone got over Bob Dylan's two Nashville albums. This sounds like proto-Vegas to me, or Branson with actual booze. 15 more before we get to Glenn Campbell and Tennessee Ernie Ford; who's in it for the long haul? Maybe tomorrow we'll listen to something totally different, i shuffled the whole stack so it's anybody's guess. 

So, to clear up any confusion: A) i enjoyed this particular album immensely, B) i fully expect to not hate anything we listen to in the coming days and weeks, but Poseidon's Trident) the bubble this stuff exists in is so slick and waxy it makes the public perception of Huey Lewis look like karaoke night at the Shriner's temple. Fun fact, you can't join the Shriner frat unless you're already a Mason, and any club of masons that doesn't actually stack bricks for fun is hardly truth in advertising. You wanna build a community pizza oven i'm all in, but i hardly think it requires a secret handshake, let alone a fez and membership dues.

Interlude