Re: Country Commentary

Date: 23 May 2003 04:07:08 GMT
Newsgroups: rec.music.country.western
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>Bearing titles such as "Knoxville Girl" and "Your Cheatin' Heart," these
>decades-old songs are the bedrock of country music..."
>
>Which isn't true.
They *are* a significant part of country's past. There was a great compilation
CD a few years back I had that I think was called "Outlaw Country" that was all
about these kinds of songs. Under the CD tray was the infamous picture of Cash
giving you the finger. My brother took it. I haven't seen it since.
>See the contradiction? Where is the "Sunday morning" in the first
>proposition's "bedrock of country music?"
He never says that one is all there is to country music; he acknowledges that
both were major parts of country's origins and evolution. One does not exclude
or contradict the other.
>What's the "Sunday morning" part of gangsta rap?
Gangsta rap is akin to the more "Saturday night" part, not the "Sunday morning"
part. It's the presence of both that gives country its depth and
variety--something conspicuously absent in gangsta rap.
>What makes you think that the audience for the "pop-flavored sanitized
>stuff" doesn't see it as reflective of real life? And who are you to say
>what's more real to them?
Easy, killer. I never said they don't. I just observed what the industry
assigned demographic has generally expressed about each genre. And I certainly
have not nor would say what's more real to anyone. But it's a fact that the
majority of urban listeners identify with voices that "keep it real" and it's a
fact that the majority of country fans respect that country "sings about real
life."
>Um, how about "Have You Forgotten?" Or "Courtesy Of The Red, White And
>Blue?" Those aren't controversial?
Oh, please. Those songs just irritated idealogists and anyone who actually has
a working knowledge of how the government is supposed to operate. They're more
pep rally tunes than controversial songs. When someone records another "The
Pill," let me know.
And just how many controversial songs
>do you think there were in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s,
>anyhow - assuming that's what the guy means, which is risky given that he
>doesn't use the word.
Plenty. And plenty that would cause more of a controversy today than most of
what actually gets public exposure.
>I see no reason not to take what he says at face
>value instead of trying to spin it into something *you* mean.
I'm not spinnin' 'nothin' here. I freely admitted I was projecting and could
have been entirely off base from the writer. I was working on the fact I've
reached the same conclusions he did and offered to fill in the gaps you've
questioned.
>I assume that the guy has enough of a command of the English language to
>have said "there's not enough of them" if that's what he meant - but he
>didn't. Instead, he pretended they don't exist at all.
A lack of acknowledgement in a compressed article isn't tantamount to
pretending they don't exist at all.
And why should they
>be as "soft" as country gets - I mean, from an historical point of view?
Music, as with all art, attempts to entertain us, but also to affect our
emotions. When it focuses on being entertaining and causing knee-jerk
emotional reactions, it has lost its strength and become watered down. This,
I'm afraid, describes much of contemporary mainstream country radio.
>You think the history of country music is the history of murder ballads and
>cheating songs?
No, but if you think murder ballads and cheating songs were insignificant to
country music, then you and I clearly interpret historical impact differently.
Think again, Min; the dialectic between hard-core and
>soft-shell has always been there, and *that* is the history of country
>music, not just the one part. Porter touches on it correctly in the
>"Saturday night/Sunday morning" but he can't, so to speak, keep it up, and
>instead slides into an ignorant, tendentious rant of a sort that's all too
>common in the press these days. Which is why I say it's a dumb piece.
The "Saturday/Sunday" concept is very much the dichotomy of which you speak;
which is why I have a hard time understanding your insistance that murder
ballads and gospel influences negate one another and can't both have been
present.
I've read better writing, to be sure, but I thought he drew an effective enough
conclusion with it. There's a major difference between songs like, for
instance, "Fall Into Me," (to pick on the ACM winners) and "Cocaine Blues."
Frankly, I've listened to about all the "Fall Into Me"s I care to in the last
several years. "...I can't forget the day I shot that bad bitch down."
*There's* a lyric you won't be hearing on radio again.