Oh sure, even the top names of the movement such as Black Flag, DK, and Bad Brains obviously sounded nothing alike. Let alone that groups like Flipper and the Sun City Girls were considered part of hardcore. Still, many of the best groups of the movement, from the Minutemen to NoMeansNo, got regularly spat on and bottles thrown at them from audience members pissed off that the bands didn't embrace the same cliches as them.

I like some straight up stuff to be sure. "Rise Above" will always be a classic rock song for me, and in the right mood I could listen to any Minor Threat tune and totally love it.

However, I tend to like artists who break out of whatever genre most. The Sun City Girls going in front of a hardcore audience and not even bringing instruments along for the set - that's fucking genius (of course because they had the raw talent as well as balls to pull it off.)

That said, the odd thing about country, is that it tends to be the opposite of that - there really is some sort of "purity" that makes the best stuff be the most country. As in as far from the glittery pop shit on the cable networks as possible. The reason we look to Hank Williams as the best is not that he was the first, he really wasn't, just that he was the most pure. I know there's something to that in punk and garage rock too, and I can totally get into Dead Moon or the like on a similar level. Still my favorite punk or hardcore stuff tends to be pretty damn experimental - as in pushing outside the boundaries of what defines it in the genre to begin with. Experimental country isn't even a bad idea - it's not an idea at all.

actually all of the butthole surfers lived in athens. apparently they moved there so they could be nearby, and make fun of REM (at least thats what Our Band Could be Your Life said...)

"factory girl" by the rolling stones on flashpoint

this is a good thread, we indeed never discuss country. i have no one to add that hasnt been mentioned, but people always think of the early punk rockers to be a buncha sid vicious maniacal junkies. but the early punks had nothin on the early country dudes, merle, hank, johnny, those guys gobbled up more drugs in one sitting than most of us could think of doing in our entire lives!

i don't think anyone's mentioned Johnny Paycheck yet.

I've not much of merit to add to this thread [did anyone mention Gene Autry?], but it's a curious phenomenon that I can think of only one country artist who didn't, at some point, churn out dross. That's Hank Williams, whose Luke the Drifter era stands just slightly under the Fall in my estimations of the pinnacle of Western (pop-)art in the 20th-Century.

Dolly has done a handful of pretty good albums after the 70s, by the by. She has done some crippling drivel, but there are glimpses of former glories.

I think the early Sun-era Elvis country sides get unfairly passed over in favour of his 'black' sides.

lambchop.

Everybody's about covered the artists...
But I can reccomend the albums Harvest Moon by Neil Young
and Snow by Curt Kirkwood (yes, it is that curt kirkwood)