Re: Country Music

Date: 25 Jun 2003 10:21:45 -0700
Newsgroups: rec.music.artists.springsteen
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email-address-deleted (Kyle Pucciarello) wrote in message news:<email-address-deleted>...
> My favorite country artists are all mentioned in this group:
>
> - Johnny Cash
> - Dwight Yoakam
> - Willie Nelson
>
> But I think there are two more to add:
>
> - Elvis Presley
> - Bruce Springsteen
>
> I would consider a lot of their stuff to border on country.
>
> Used to be my favorite genre until I discovered Bruce, but then I went back
> into his catalog and realized that quite a bit is country, and even the folk
> rock and rock n roll aspect borders on it.
Reading this thread, I have been thinking about the nature of the
marketing categories that we use to divide music. I guess it's good
for a listener to know what to expect when he or she dials into a
radio station and I know that "If you like this, you will also like
THIS" helps us find our way around literature and music. And other
things. However, these boundaries are largely artificial. All of the
terms: country, rock, folk, etc. are arbitrary and musically
meaningless. There IS a technical definition of blues but that is
about the only one of these categories that is anything but opinion
and lots of blues artists deviate from the strict definition. Mostly,
it just pays to listen and decide what you like and worry about how to
categorize it later.
"If you like Bruce you will probably like, almost certainly like,
Steve Earl," is fairly accurate, I think. "Bruce is country," is an
oddball thing to say but there is material on Bruce's albums that will
back it up. "Bruce is folk," which I hate to say, isn't totally
innacurate either. When they play "Sweet Baby James" on the country
video channel, some people don't like it. Not even because they don't
like the song but because they think 'country music' has a meaning and
that they understand the limits of that meaning. I can't wait for the
reaction when that station plays "Cheap is how I feel."
--
Will in New Haven
"It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black."