Why is Southern Culture on the Skids’ Dirt Track Date on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
Loose, fun, and fresh sounds from SCotS… down at the dirt track.
Some stats & info about Southern Culture on the Skids – Dirt Track Date
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock, Rock Music, Alternative Rock, Rockabilly, Alt Country
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Dirt Track Date released? 1995
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #834 out of 1,000
Southern Culture on the Skids’ Dirt Track Date on Spotify
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective take on what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.
What does Southern Culture on the Skids’ Dirt Track Date mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
I love how loose, effortlessly fun, and fresh Dirt Track Date still sounds over a quarter century(!) after it was produced. “White Trash” kind of sums up the band’s… ethos (I guess?) as well as anything else. Most importantly, it’s fun, kind of funny, and rocks with a unique rockabilly meets southern boogie rock flair.
The much more earnest-sounding “Firefly” is my favorite song on the album though. It too has a fun boogie rock feel but is much more pop at its core, and flows into a gorgeous sounding chorus thanks to expertly deployed female backing vocals.
The mid-tempo southern-fried blues rock of “Fried Chicken and Gasoline” is hitting my sweet spot as I get a little bit older.
Pop culture stuff that’s somehow related to Southern Culture on the Skids’ Dirt Track Date
The band Brother Meat is mentioned in the (long) story below that ties into SCotS a bit. Brother Meat, as it turns out, has a song called “Dumb White Trash,” so it’s a little ironic that Dirt Track Date includes “White Trash.”
Personal stuff that’s somehow related to Southern Culture on the Skids’ Dirt Track Date
I almost saw Southern Culture on the Skids live once, at a small venue in New York City.
Almost.
There was a strange period of my life of perhaps six months or so when I lived with my parents after I graduated from college. Living at “home” meant Long Island, New York, a solid hour to hour plus outside of Manhattan, depending on traffic.
I had started dating a young woman named… let’s call her Leslie. I can’t quite recall how we met but I’m positive that we went out exactly twice in total. On the second date, which would turn out to be our final date, I was excited to take her to a SCotS show. Fun, right?
Well… not right. We were about to head into the show, and Leslie decided that SCotS-as-date-night was not happening. Instead, she pointed out a very classy-looking restaurant down the street and decided that the date was happening there. I wasn’t really crushed or anything, but I recognized that maybe she and I were at slightly different places in our lives. I was still in a live music shows and dive bars phase whereas she was classy restaurants and looking (maybe) for a serious relationship phase.
In any event, nothing else about that date is memorable. But I remember that we went out a total of two times because of what went down with regard to our anticipated third date. She lived in “the city,” but her parents lived a few towns away from where I was currently shacked up out in East Northport.
Her parents were going to be out of town, and she invited me to hang out for Date #3. This was pre-Netflix but Blockbuster was still at its peak. Romance surely awaited, yes?
Well, not yes.
A few days before date night, my man Adam and I hatched a ludicrous scheme to make a five-hour drive up to Ithaca, New York as we heard that our favorite local upstate New York band, Brother Meat, were recording their highly anticipated (by us, at any rate) follow up to their debut, Extraordinary Moist and Delicious.
Looking back, I’m not even sure what our plan was once we got up to Ithaca. Stalk these local musicians, maybe? Not much pops up in my memory about the brief trip – which was most likely a flimsy excuse for a short road trip more than anything.
What I do recall is that I returned home on the very day of Date Night #3. I called Leslie to make final arrangements for that night… but got the Hard No signal. Turned out I had made the Final Arrangements call too late, by a factor of a few days by her reckoning. And I’m pretty sure she thought I was (at least) half out of my mind for driving from Long Island to Ithaca, New York for a day and a half for pretty close to No Reason.
I gamely tried to make a Big Save by offering to bring her flowers, but she wasn’t having it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even have her parents’ address at that point so making the Say Anything-type gesture wasn’t even on the table.
After writing all of the above and lo these many years later, it occurs to me for the first time that my love for music was as big a factor of any kind of real relationship with Leslie taking shape than anything else.