Rate-A-Record: What Score Would You Give These Two Songs?
A Plethora of Pop Series
Given the number of times I’ve hit Terry Barr with a music challenge/prompt over the past year, it’s only fair that he would return the favor with a unique vengeance. He reached way back to the days before YouTube and MTV to a time when the only rock music you saw on TV was Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and resurrected a feature called Rate-A-Record. Rate-A-Record was not complicated; a panel of teens would listen to part of two songs and then rate each one on a numeric scale between 35 and 98 (don’t ask where the number range came from; no one knows).
The segment spawned classic quotes like “it’s got a great beat” and “you can dance to it.” Below is a video of one such Rate-A-Record segment from 1964.
Terry took the same premise but expanded it beyond just a snippet of each song. Following his lead, below I give you two songs that are probably unfamiliar to most here. Give each one a listen and then rate them in the comments.
“Gravity’s Gone” by Drive-By Truckers.
If you don’t know this Southern rock band from Athens, Georgia, this track from their 2006 album A Blessing and a Curse is a fine place to start. Hardcore fans are often divided over this album (it was the last to feature Jason Isbell on guitar before he went solo), but without trying to influence your rating at all, I will say I love it.
“Straight To Hell” by Drivin’ N’ Cryin’.
This band started out in Atlanta, just down the road from Drive-By Truckers, and like the boys from Athens they straddle the line between Southern rock and country rock; if you know them at all, it’s probably for the song “Fly Me Courageous.” If you only know “Straight To Hell” from the horrific 2017 cover version by Darius Rucker, Jason Aldean, and Luke Bryan, I’m sorry; listen to the original below and purge that abomination from your memory.
Give each one a rating in the comments; you can use the Bandstand system of 35–98 or a scale of your own making. Here is the original prompt from Terry as well as Steven Hale’s offering. Join in and post it to the Plethora of Pop pub.
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