How much can one fan of OKOM (Our Kind Of Music) accomplish in just a couple of years?
Plenty, if it's Rockzilla, aka photographer Michael Johnson.
From 2003 to 2005, rockzilla.net was a chronicle of the alt.country scene from a uniquely Texan perspective.
But all good things must end, and Rockzilla has retired from the online 'zine scene.
This mirror site was copied from the rockzilla.net site with the express permission of
Rockzilla hisself. If you don't believe me, go to the
KHYI-Fans email list and ask him! Buddy will back me up, too.
Laura Freeman Laura Freeman's Greatest Hits from her 20s and 30s
Independent
by Reid Mitchell
Don't mind kissing--it don't mean anything
Don't mind hugging--it don't imply no loving
Don't mind me leaving--it don't mean anything
Don't mind me leaving--I never intended to stay
I'm tired of this town, I ain't going to stick around
I'll find some way to leave it some day
So unless you can keep up, unless you can swim, run, or fly
You best be saying good-bye
-----Laura Freeman, "Don't Mind Kissin'"
If Dorothy Parker
had a lovechild by Jimmie Rodgers, the baby might have sounded
a lot like Laura Freeman. Half-cowgirl, half-disillusioned flapper,
living in the perpetual ragtime hangover that followed the Jazz
Age, Laura combines honky-tonk blues with Old World Weltzschmerz.
Something about Laura Freeman invites hyperbole--hell, demands
it. I've seen her play live and can tell you she is a great
singer -- with one of those Texas voices that near-rips your
ears off your head -- and a wonderful songwriter. And for you
who don't take the word of Total Strangers on the Internet as
gospel, the non-believers amongst us can listen to her CD Greatest
Hits from her 20s and 30s.
The CD is another example of what I call the New Vaudeville
Sound: contemporary performers emulating recordings of the 1920s,
mixing ragtime, country blues, early jazz, and hokum. On most
cuts, Laura is backed by string bands made up of some of the
musicians who steadily work at New Orleans's 9th Ward Pickin'
Parlor.
There's a persona (can I say persona on Rockzillaworld?),
a sensibility that unites Laura Freeman's Greatest Hits from
her 20s and 30s. I have no idea what Laura Freeman is really
like off-stage, but the person singing "Don't Mind Kissin'"
and the rest of the tunes is sassy, funny, stand-offish, and
afraid of getting hurt again -- the singer as Cynical Cowgirl
Chanteuse. She comes at almost everything through her sometimes
wry, sometimes outlandish sense of humor.
Consider her as Texas-girl-in-France.
France, it sure ain't like Texas, no, my, no
Ain't got no 7-11, no all night grocery stores
When you want to say "howdy," you've got to say "Bon-jour."
No, France ain't nothing like Texas, that's for sure
They ain't got no sliced white bread, it's all in baguettes
And most times they got bidets in their toilettes
And the beer they got here it sure ain't no Lone Star
No, France ain't nothing like Texas, not by far
I've been looking a long time for a Dairy Queen
But Mont St. Michel, Paris, and Versailles is all that I've seen
Cuz the boys all play football with a soccer ball
No, France ain't nothing like Texas, not at all
At first, the relatively unadorned love song "Dancin' Lesson"
seems a touch out-of-place. For once the singer is stepping
forward instead of stepping back. But talking about dancing
seems to be the only way she can talk about falling in love.
I can't two-step in Texas, I can't zydeco in Baton Rouge
I get out there on the dance floor
My feet get so confused
My mama always tried to teach me
But I never could get it right
So tell me darling why is it so easy
To dance with you tonight
By the end of the song she's confessing
My mama always tried to tell me
That I'd know when it was true
That must be darling why it's so easy
To fall in love with you
Naturally. It's the little girls whose mothers tell them
they'll know when love is true that grow up to be disillusioned
romantics, with hearts that are all the time screaming "this
time it's true" and brains screaming back, "Oh no,
not again."
One song later, on the 1920s jug band "Radio,"
she's warning her new lover:
Don't turn me on like a radio anytime of the day or night
Don't expect me to sing your favorite song
You just don't have the right
Unlike way too many "sensitive singer-songwriters,"
(and come to think of it, a lot of honky-tonk singers too; most
of us when you come right down to it), Laura Freeman doesn't
pretend that the lover is always wrong and the singer is always
right, if perhaps just a touch too long-suffering. Consider
the one-minute-long song "The Truth" she wrote (with
perhaps a little help from Edina "Ab-Fab" Monsoon):
Sometimes when I'm talking I tell the truth
It's too late now, and sorry's no use
Hold on baby I can explain
Whole lotta trouble and a whole lotta pain
I didn't mean nothing when I said I might
Buy me a train ticket, hop the next flight
Sweetie, baby, darling, if you look in my eyes
I'll make it all better with a little white lie
There's a little genius peeping out amidst the novelty songs
on Laura Freeman's Greatest Hits from her 20s and 30s.
And wait till you hear the ones she hasn't yet recorded, such
as "Angels With Harmonicas." I'm looking forward to
the ones she hasn't even written yet.
If Dorothy Parker
had a lovechild by Jimmie Rodgers, the baby might have sounded
a lot like Laura Freeman. Half-cowgirl, half-disillusioned flapper,
living in the perpetual ragtime hangover that followed the Jazz
Age, Laura combines honky-tonk blues with Old World Weltzschmerz.
