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whole buncha hillbilly music.
9 Mar 2006, 16:19
i've been listening to a bunch of The Carter Family, Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs as well as The Flatlanders, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Merle Haggard, George Jones, and other stuff on the hillbilly-to-honkytonk spectrum.
i beg those who 'hate country' to reflect a minute on this: The Clash toured extensively with Joe Ely in the opening slot in 1979/1980 both in the US and back in the UK. This was back when he was still pretty purely honkytonk/country/spaceranger-songwriter.
Even if you hate the clash, i hope you'll try to see that the best of 'country' music appeals across genre lines, just like the best of almost any genre does. the best of any genre tends to transcend the bounds of the 'genre' limitation.
so, for those 'anything but country' people out there... maybe you should try some before you continue to piss on it. eh?
i beg those who 'hate country' to reflect a minute on this: The Clash toured extensively with Joe Ely in the opening slot in 1979/1980 both in the US and back in the UK. This was back when he was still pretty purely honkytonk/country/spaceranger-songwriter.
Even if you hate the clash, i hope you'll try to see that the best of 'country' music appeals across genre lines, just like the best of almost any genre does. the best of any genre tends to transcend the bounds of the 'genre' limitation.
so, for those 'anything but country' people out there... maybe you should try some before you continue to piss on it. eh?
Comments
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thewilyfilipino wrote:
There is an awful lot of anything but country folks out there indeed. Whenever I ask my students -- usually the ones in anthropology, since I almost always toss in an ethnography about music for them to read -- what music they couldn't stand hearing, and almost always the answer would be country. (I live and teach in San Francisco.) It isn't hard to see why: the Twang-und-Drawl gets in the way, for starters, and I can't see how suburban kids would ever be enamored of the whole jacket / boots / hat image. It's a tough sell, and I'm sure they have visions of line-dancers whenever they hear country music. (That or Toby Keith.) And I usually respond with How about Patsy Cline? and most of them have no idea what I'm talking about. But I suspect there's a strong classist element, intermixed with race, that comes into play... certainly something deeper than just the music sucks.
As for me I'm not entirely sure how I got into it. I was born and raised in the Philippines, where I heard none of this when I was growing up. Perhaps it's because country/bluegrass/folk may be the least-disseminated American musical genre around the world? You certainly hardly get it on MTV or VH1! -
NordicByNature wrote:
You just like old timey country music because you like to reminisce with your close friend President McKinley about cotton gins and victrolas and steam locomotives.
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tarbox wrote:
wilyfilipino, maybe you should show them the photo from the jacket of billy joe shaver's 'salt of the earth' and ask 'em what kind of music they figure he plays. no one gets much more country than billy joe shaver, in one way of looking at it, but...
and there are the anomolies. 'well, except johnny cash.' while johnny cash is an outstanding artist, why is it they believe that he is the ONLY one who can play country and appeal to a wider audience?
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tarbox wrote:
and boots and hats and twang were probably harder for me to get by than for san fransisco kids. raised in LA, i was moved to the fetid steaming swamp called Houston. i hated EVERYTHING about houston. and the cowboys and the so-called cowboys - any dick wearing a redneck costume - hated me. and then i was a punk rocker, on top of it.
if anyone had reason to resist things that looked like twang and boots and hats, it was me. but the music wins. -
jcshepard wrote:
You say Filipino and Twang in the same sentence, I think Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel out of Chicago.
[url=http://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/gifSack/031219_fermin.jpg nofollow=yes]http://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/gifSack/031219_fermin.jpg[/url][/img}
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jcshepard wrote:
You say Filipino and Twang in the same sentence, I think Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel out of Chicago.
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atmidnight wrote:
Almost all of my high school peers fall into that bunch of people who list their tastes as everything except country music, which gets on my nerves when I try to push (what I think are) accessible country-rock bands and albums like Neil Young, The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Gram Parsons, and so forth. I find it incredulous that people are willing to blacklist Johnny Cash and Hank Williams because they think it's for rednecks and so forth. In conclusion, right on.
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ArcticCorsair wrote:
I'm anything but an Anything but Country listener. I love Country Music. I grew up listening to it and even though i'm not American i'm steeped in it.
My father was and still is a big country fan. He got the bug from my grandfather who was a trawlerman and used to listen to country music on broadcasts from AFN Keflavik and AFN Langanes at Iceland.
Although i'd always listened to Johnny Cash, Waylon, Willie, Dolly, George Jones etc whilst growing up. I became a big country music listener in the early 90s when I saw a Garth Brooks concert on the TV. That got me into the whole 'New Country' thing. These days i'm very much a fan of Bluegrass and Western Swing but always pick up LPs from George Jones and all the other classic country artists when possible. One of biggest country artists in my collection is George Strait with over 20 different full releases being represented.
You know I find it sad that so many people dismiss country music out of hand but will then go on to listen to some 3rd rate Karaoke singer like Ronan Keating go on to mangle a classic song like When You Say Nothing At All and then have the gall to say that it's not country.
You know, you can have my original RCA Victor JIM REEVES LPs when you can pry them from my cold dead hands! -
ArcticCorsair wrote:
Just another word. Jimmie Dale Gilmore wrote what I consider to be some of the best lyrics ever.
Did you ever see Dallas from a DC-9 at night?
Dallas is a jewel
Yeah, Dallas is a beautiful sight
Dallas is a jungle
But Dallas gives a beautiful light
Did you ever see Dallas from a DC-9 at night?
Now Dallas is a woman who will walk on you when you're down
But when you are up she's the kind you wanna take around
Now Dallas ain't a woman to help you get your feet on the ground
And Dallas is a woman who will walk on you when you're down
Oh, I came into Dallas with the bright lights on my mind
I came into Dallas with a dollar and a dime
Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes
A steel concrete soul with a warm-hearted love in disguise
A rich man who tends to believe in his own lies
I say, Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his yes
Oh, I came into Dallas with the brights lights on my mind
I came into Dallas with a dollar and a dime
When did the Beatles ever write anything as soulful as that? Never that's when. -
Duelist wrote:
I also grew up as an anything but country type, and mostly a jazz fanatic. One morning on the swing show on the local Houston public radio station (not on any more) I heard Bob Wills for the first time. I was blown away, this was happy music, and it is almost impossible to be anything but happy listening to it.
Over the next couple of years I got hooked on the local (Texas) music. It may be country, but you won't hear any of it on your local country station. I still tune in to KPFT (on line) every Saturday to hear what is coming out of the area now. My wife got so hooked that someone looked at her CD collection and wondered if she had any artists without 3 names (think Ray Wiley Hubbard, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Robert Earle Keen etc). What is played on mainstream country radio is predigested pap, but the alt country hard core honkey tonk has real impact.
