Re: OT Country music was Re: Help, Child porn in my email!!!!!

Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 12:30:17 +1000
Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
Size: 2,215 bytes

Bart:
> > > I have yet to download my first movie, have snagged a few mp3s
however,
> > > mostly old public domain country music from my youth
Form:
> > Any recommendations?
> >
> > In the mood for some new tunes,
> >
Boo:
> Oh yuck! I really had a better opinion of the both of you. Every country
> song I've ever heard sounds like some tale about a guy convincing his
> girlfriend or wife that he was really just helping that pig over the
> fence...
>
> Bo Raxo
> Note: exception for Johhny Cash. His music speaks of and to the
downtrodden.
Well Bo, let me tell you a little story. Until I was about 30 or so, I too
detested "country music." My exposure to it was confined to Olivia
Newton-John and Kenny Rogers, pretty much, and I thought it was some kind of
joke. My ear had been tuned to classical music and c1977 punk & after-style
music, and while I could happily listen over and over to pretty challenging
stuff, I couldn't stand the country caterwauling.
I was very, very wrong. It wasn't until I moved in with someone who was a
great fan of country that I learnt that this was really the music of the
Gods, in my opinion one of the only venues for sheer vocal virtuosity and
feelingful musicality, at the same time speaking of and to the downtrodden,
as you say. Johnny Cash, God bless him, remains a spokesman for a huge
repetoire of musical genuises, as do some other contemporary artists.
Forget Billy Ray Cyrus, Reba MacIntyre, and the rest of it. Tune your ear
to the Louvin Bros., Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam, Dolly Parton (early and
late, not necessarily middle period), Loretta Lynn, Lucinda Williams,
Gillian Welch, The Carter Family, Jimmy Rogers, Willie Nelson, Iris Dement.
I could go on, but you get the idea. We're not talking line dancing.
In my twenties there were two kinds of music I found unbearable: country and
opera. They are now my favourite listening (along with some others, but not
previously detested by me), and I'll go so far as to say that if I were ever
to believe in God it would be because something really BIG is needed to
explain the virtuosity, beauty and "movingness" of the human voice in these
traditions. Truly.
Passionately fond of things,
Form.