Carpenter Yearns For Values Of ‘60s
The title song of Mary Chapin Carpenter’s current million-selling, critically acclaimed “Stones in the Road” album cites a memory of the political and social heroes of the 1960s, but it is no sappy nostalgia trip. Rather, it indicts the people of Carpenter’s own generation who remember those heroes without trying to emulate - even in small ways - their lives of self-sacrifice.
“I remember this phrase, and I don’t know where it came from, but I believe there was this phrase whose idea was, if you follow the stones in the road, they’ll take you back where you need to be if you’re lost,” Carpenter says.
“I feel that, growing up in the ‘60s, we had these role models, these people who have for better or worse become sort of martyrs in our history. They embodied the values of working for the betterment of our society and for each other and for breaking down the divisive things about our society.”
The song is from the viewpoint of Carpenter, who as a young girl watched the explosions of the ‘60s from an idyllic spot on the sidelines. She says she feels “personally that I came late in my life to this reality that you can really can make a difference for people. And I feel, and there are other people I’ve talked to and things I’ve read that indicate, that there’s a lack of that (impulse) in our generation. It’s as if we forgot about those ideals.”
Faith Hill recovering
Presently off the road for what a Warner Bros. spokesman terms “preventive throat surgery” some time in February, young Faith Hill is looking forward to the issuance of her second album in early summer and, in April, a return to gracing the big-drawing tours of Alan Jackson and George Strait.
Hill can rest assured that she has an imposing popularity to return to. The Mississippi native’s debut album, “Take Me as I Am,” has sold more than a million copies.
Foxworthy sells a million
Comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s album, “You Might Be a Redneck If …,” also was recently certified a millionseller. A stand-up comedian, Foxworthy says his recording career got its start after a Warner Bros. Records executive saw him perform.
Foxworthy says that despite the fact that he himself “bought everything that Bill Cosby ever did when I was a kid,” he “didn’t think people still bought comedy albums. So when they contacted us about doing it, I said, `I don’t know - I don’t think anybody buys ‘em.’ I figured we’d sell 20 of ‘em and my mama’d buy 10 or 12. I just giggle now. I’m amazed.”
Mavericks thank luck
Sailing along at certified gold (sales in excess of 500,000) with their second album, “What a Crying Shame,” after their critically acclaimed initial effort barely made a ripple in the marketplace, The Mavericks consider themselves lucky to be around, let alone go gold.
“Too many labels put out a single - or a video, not even a single - and if it doesn’t click, that act is dropped,” says lead singer Raul Malo. He adds that The Mavericks’ first album, “From Hell to Paradise,” “would not have been put out” by most Nashville record companies because some of the themes were too controversial.
”`Hell to Paradise,’ the title song of the album, is a song pretty much about oppression and what my family had to go through to come to America,” notes the Cuban-rooted Malo.