Why I Love Country Music

i like many things in all these categories but would betray them and sneer at them like a shot if anyone accused me of having grown up

strangely enough this has nevah happened

Now, Hank Williams surely wanted to sell a bunch of records, and most of the now-revered "heritage" country artists would no doubt go along with that program. And trad Nashville still turns out great records now and then, or at least they still did up to the point I stopped checking, several years ago. But ever since the countrypolitan movement started taking country more pop and making it more broadly marketable in the '60s (Patsy Cline being the pinnacle of artistic achievement and crossover marketability there), the country music factory has had its efficiency experts working overtime, squeezing that wild-hair country je ne sais quoi into widgets. Why do you think that artists periodically rage against the Music Row machine every few years (the "Outlaws" in the '70s, Dwight Yoakum and Steve Earle in the '80s, take your pick in the '90s)? Yes, the stuff institutional Nashville pumps out by the truckload every year is technically "country," but it has little to do with the roots or the finest qualities of country music.

So, most people probably don't like country music because most of it sucks. Why the rest don't like it is likely small-mindedness or merely a matter of taste.

There's a number by Dale Watson, a 1990s new boy who harks back to Merle Haggard, called Nashville Rag, with the lyrics "I'm too country now for country / Just like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, George Jones..." and so on. He's right - many notionally country stations don't play any of these people.

Bob Dylan's music (especially that with the "The Band") has always been rooted in Traditional American music, albeit dressed up for a contemporary era using traditional rock instruments.

On Tour in 1992 Dylan had a slide guitar player replete with country hat and tassles who sat on stage plucking and sliding next to Dylan's maniac drummer who thrased the drums so hard his sticks shattered and flew across the stage.

Eclectic!

If it aint country it aint music
Have ya see bubba lately?

Sorry, but this is utter horseshit. And I'm not even gonna get on my why pop-country is so much better than alt-country horse this time; by now, anybody who's still spouting that old purist-assed anti-Garth/Shania line is so clueless they're not worth arguing with.

..And point me to your writings on pop country being better than alt country.. I'm genuinely interested.. I guess it depends on what constitutes "alt".

xpost

Why would you listen to something simply because it's offensive and challenging, other than as an exercise? I mean, I do this, too, and I completely agree with you that Travis Tritt is more challenging to ILM-dom than Merzbow. People don't listen to noisefuck-style music because it actually challenges them; they listen because they think it sounds good or exciting or exhilarating or whatever. I enjoy subjecting myself to stuff that I find aesthetically revolting from time to time, but it's not what I want from music.

Anthony Hamilton's
album is just as "country"
as anything else

It isn't, really. But somehow it's more annoying... Maybe because real twang is slightly annoying in the first place.. ?

how people MAYBE used to talk in the south 40 fucking years ago
I'm not sure what you mean there (except maybe Wilco or Gillian Welch, I guess..) I don't see any of the others as trying to imitate the old style (lyrically, that is.) Seems to me that they're trying to be poetic and , OK, maybe a little sappily pessimistic .. but that's artist (or "artist" if you prefer) -vs- popstar, which you'll find in any genre.

Have you been to the rural South lately? SCOTS seems pretty genuine to me, even though they're sort of a novelty act.

I never said anybody should. (Though sometimes the exercise can be fun, or enlightening, or whatever.)

well there's your issue right there. argh.

Maybe because real twang is slightly annoying in the first place.. ?

Please tell me you didn't say this.

Also, I'm not begrudging country music anything. I'm really trying to examine why I just don't care for it.

Maybe because real twang is slightly annoying in the first place.. ?
Oh, I said it! Don't hang me for it.. It's a prejudice I live with every day. I'll try to change, Mr. Raggett - honest.

No, they try to do it *musically*, and they fail at it.

in fact I will say
that that is the overall
theme there throughout time

and since hip-hop is
largely concerned with that too
(not every song)

I submit my theme:
country music is hip-hop
and vice versa too

I think you do ...! I mean "artist" .. meaning, trying (& sometimes forcing) introspective lyrics, rather than bubbly, happy-go-lucky lyrics. (Not that each don't venture into the other's territory...) You know what I mean, you just don't want to acknowledge it, because it's bullshit. (And I mean bullshit from the lyricists' point of view, not my own.)
Morrisey versus Bobby Sherman .. you can't tell me they don't approach songwriting differently.

Lots of people find Southern suburbanites nauseating, though

Heck, lots of people find suburbanites in general nauseating! But I've always been a suburban person, so I really can't complain much.

ha next year when I
move to North Carolina
I'll be one of 'em!

Which is what is really interesting to me! It's this strange but involving dynamic that you can present yourself as a representative of something 'real' when...well, not fake, just another level of reality, if you like. The reality of a now that is trying to be colored up as a reality of a then.

I remember Tico Ewing saying this somewhere as well. The problem is I don't really hear this danceability in popular country either. And GIllian Welch is a pretty extreme example of alt.country being backward looking. I hear punk and folk and rock in alt. country, meaning I think it can be appreciated on its own terms without being proclaimed as "real country" or some such nonsense.

I didn't mean to say it was - I was saying that alt-county ISN'T. and pop (of any genre) tends to be more often (but as I said, they each venture in to the other's territory.) And pop-country seems to me to be a little less than genuine when it tries to be pessimistic. It's either maudlin or a cartoon (as you say) of what country is "supposed to be". Not that alt-country isn't guilty of the same thing.. Getting back to the original question, I don't know why I don't like modern country. I still haven't figured that out.

Regarding Morrisey vs Bobby Sherman... Morrisey always frowns. Bobby always smiles. I didn't mean that one's approach was superior to the other - I meant that one thinks he's a tortured soul and the other is just writing songs that he thinks people will like.

i always assumed morrissey was writing songs that he thinks people will like.

As soon as I realized that the main reason for me hating it is because I grew up with a lot of people who loved it uncritically and was being a corny-ass "rebel" for all these years, I opened up to country radio a lot. Just listen to it during drive-time or something. You'll like some stuff and not-like other stuff. It won't have anything to do with fake twang or sociology or anything.

...and might a i also site the likes of:

Waylon Jennings
Connie Smith
Ernest Tubb

also see, What is Country?

i think nearly all artists of all stripes do it for both reasons.

xpost

on the fucking money!

I've said this before, but what I like about mainstream, radio-friendly country music is the songcraft (Nashville still has a stable of mighty fine writers) and the subject matter.

This is music for the masses, buy it at wal-mart, dance to it every saturday night (dancing culture is HUGE in country, by the way) and it's addressing some really intense subject matter in a very adult way. It's talking about the emotions and issues that come with being married and having kids and growing older, and I don't get that anywhere else in pop music and rarely anywhere else either.

Here are a couple from the top 20 Country chart last week.

http://www.countrylyrics.circularmoney.com/kennychesneytheregoesmylifelyrics.html.html
http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/atkins-rodney/honestly-write-me-a-list-10202.html

----

There's a war going on and shit, so I don't have time to argue with y'all much, so I'm just going to cut and paste a couple things I posted on other threads a few months ago and leave it at that. First:
Best Tim McGraw Album: Place in the Sun.
Best songs on Tim McGraw's new album: Comfort Me, Tickin' Away, Red Ragtop, That's Why God Made Mexico, Illegal, Sing Me Home, Who Are They, Tiny Dancer.
Best Tim McGraw song to mention the Village Voice: Who Are They.
Best Tim McGraw song mentioned by My Name is Kenny: Where The Green Grass Grows
Second-Best Tim McGraw song mentioned by My Name is Kenny: Refried Dreams
Best Tim McGraw song to rewrite "Indian Reservation" by the Raiders:
Indian Outlaw
Best recent song by Tim McGraw's wife: One
Best early song by Tim McGraw's wife: Wild One
Another song by Tim McGraw's wife that's just as good: The Secret of Life
One Album which would be immeasurably better if Tim McGraw was the singer: 69 Love Songs
Best songs on Kenny Chesney's most recent album: Young, Big Star
Best song on Kenny Chesney's Greatest Hits album: How Forever Feels
Best country album of 2002: Toby Keith, *Unleashed
Best country single of 2002: Ty Herndon, "Heather's Wall"
Best Taylor Dayne single of 2002: LeAnn Rimes, "Life Goes On"
Best country album of 2001: Montgomery Gentry, *Carrying On
Best rock album of 2001: Montgomery Gentry, *Carrying On
Best anything album of 2001: Montgomery Gentry, *Carrying On
Best songs on Montgomery Gentry's current album: Break My Heart Again, Free Fall
One band that *might* rock harder than Montgomery Gentry: Turbonegro

-- chuck (cedd...), March 28th, 2003.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And now this (from my Pazz and Jop ballot of a couple months back):
In Nashville country, there are producers (Mutt Lange, most obviously) as enamored of middle-eastern modes as Timbaland is, and other boundaries are being exploded left and right. Faith Hill and Toby Keith are singing what amounts to soul music, and Montgomery Gentry are rocking as hard as any garage-revival band in Detroit, and LeAnn Rimes is making full-fledged disco albums, and Brooks and Dunn are collaborating on stage with Sheila E. Most rock critics can't hear any of it, of course, but they still think Wilco are brave for tip-toeing outside of alt-country, which may well be the blandest, most conservative, most whitebread-anal-compulsive sub-genre in rock history. How come when alt-country bores stretch a little it's considered godhead, but when Nashville types, who've been doing it unabashedly for years, do it, it's considered the essence of cheese? How come rock critics never fully embraced the Dixie Chicks, who I often love (the album rocks fine until it slows down halfway in), until they retreated back into acoustic *O Brother* bluegrass? I considered voting for "Long Time Gone" as a single, but its stupid pandering line about Haggard and Cash pisses me off. You don't hear rock people whining in their songs about how modern rock music doesn't sound like Elvis and Chuck Berry, do you?

-- chuck (cedd...), March 28th, 2003.

Ringo Starr must be the connection.

oh this would make me
so happy; especially
Justin or Pharrell!

Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton "Islands in the Stream"

or maybe

Terri Gibbs "Somebody's Knockin" (same rhythm as Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" or Lou Gramm's "Midnight Blue," not to mention Robert Johnson style devil words. And the singer is a blind woman, no less.)

Here in the UK, I'd never heard of Tim McGraw until Will Oldham did a fantastic cover of one of his songs on a covers ep. Oldham also led me to David Allen Coe and Dick Gaughin. His song 'I See A Darkness' works like a dream on the third Johnny Cash 'American' alb. I'm not sure these divisions between alt. and mainstream country are as set in stone as all that - Oldham, Wilco, whoever, seem to stand in relation to today's country music in the same way that Dylan, the Band, the Byrds etc. stood in relation to the contemporary country of their day - a wary, parasitic, mostly one-way relationship, but some kind of relationship nonetheless

so actually i'm agreeing w/you and going you one further.

There's also the whole question of how it's always really funny to hear Brits talk about country; I loved looking at the NME's country end of the year lists back in the '80s -- it's like they were on another planet or something. (Australians, too, though one of the weird things in recent years is how many new country stars actually COME from Australia. It's like the new Canada. Or something.)

"I like Van Halen and I like George Jones
Charlie Daniels and the Rollin' Stones
Bocephus when he rocks and rolls still kills me
There oughtta be a law against cowboy rap, (you're right)
And all that boy band crap, a little sissy in a cowboy hat in country
No

That's a good way, that's a real good way
That's a good way to get on my bad side"

But where does that leave Bubbba Sparxxx, David Banner, Kid Rock, Nappy Roots, Toby Keith, and all of those kind of people who do both?

Except maybe for Field Mob. Or Woody Guthrie. Or somebody.

see it's these kind of "provocative" but slightly disingenuous things that annoy me...oh well...

>i mean like their brains haven't always caught up with their...<

I don't get how this is truer for country guys than for anybody else.

i'm just saying that "rap" isn't just some musical quality that you happen to pick up on it's a genre! defined by a range of musical and other qualities! of which charlie daniels isn't a part!

never mind though, i don't want to get into another fight.

Here's Charlie's best rap song, for what it's worth:

Artist: Charlie Daniels Band

Buy Charlie Daniels Band's CD

THE UNEASY RIDER
Charlie Daniels

SPOKEN:
[C] I was takin' a trip out to L.A.
[F] Toolin' along in my Chevrolet
[G7] Tokin' on a number and diggin' on the radi-[C] o ...
[C] Just as I crossed the Mississippi line
[F] I heard that highway start to whine
[G7] And I knew that left rear tire was about to [C] go.

Well, the spare was flat and I got uptight
'Cause there wasn't a fillin' station in sight
So I just limped on down the shoulder on the rim
I went as far as I could and when I stopped the car
It was right in front of this little bar
Kind of redneck lookin' joint, called the Dew Drop Inn.

Well, I stuffed my hair up under my hat
And told the bartender that I had a flat
And would he be kind enough to give me change for a one
There was one thing I was sure proud to see
There wasn't a soul in the place, 'cept for him and me
And he just looked disgusted and pointed toward the telephone.

I called up the station down the road a ways
And he said he wasn't very busy today
And he could have somebody there in just 'bout ten minutes or so
He said now you just stay right where you're at
And I didn't bother tellin' the durn fool
I sure as hell didn't have anyplace else to go.

I just ordered up a beer and sat down at the bar
When some guy walked in and said; "Who owns this car?
With the peace sign, the mag wheels and four on the floor?"
Well, he looked at me and I damn near died
And I decided that I'd just wait outside
So I layed a dollar on the bar and headed for the door.

Just when I thought I'd get outta there with my skin
These five big dudes come strollin' in
With this one old drunk chick and some fella with green teeth
And I was almost to the door when the biggest one
Said; "You tip your hat to this lady, son."
And when I did all that hair fell out from underneath.

Now the last thing I wanted was to get into a fight
In Jackson, Mississippi on a Saturday night
'Specially when there was three of them and only one of me
They all started laughin' and I felt kinda sick
And I knew I'd better think of somethin' pretty quick
So I just reached out and kicked old green-teeth right in the knee.

He let out a yell that'd curl your hair
But before he could move, I grabbed me a chair
And said; "Watch him folks, 'cause he's a thouroughly dangerous man."
"Well, you may not know it, but this man's a spy
He's an undercover agent for the FBI
And he's been sent down here to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan."

He was still bent over, holdin' on to his knee
But everyone else was lookin' and listenin' to me
And I layed it on thicker and heavier as I went
I said; "Would you beleive this man has gone as far
As tearin' Wallace stickers off the bumpers of cars
And he voted for George McGovern for president."

"He's a friend of them long-haired, hippie type, pinko fags
I betcha he's even got a Commie flag
Tacked up on the wall, inside of his garage
He's a snake in the grass, I tell ya guys
He may look dumb, but that's just a disguise
He's a mastermind in the ways of espionage."

They all started lookin' real suspicious at him
And he jumped up an' said; "Now, just wait a minute, Jim
You know he's lyin' I've been livin' here all of my life."
"I'm a faithfull follower of Brother John Birch
And I belong to the Antioch Baptist Church
And I ain't even got a garage, you can call home and ask my wife."

Then he started sayin' somethin' 'bout the way I was dressed
But I didn't wait around to hear the rest
I was too busy movin' and hopin' I didn't run outta luck
And when I hit the ground, I was makin' tracks
And they were just takin' my car down off the jacks
So I threw the man a twenty an' jumped in an' fired that mother up.

Mario Andretti woulda sure been proud
Of the way I was movin' when I passed that crowd
Comin' out the door and headin' toward me in a trot
And I guess I should-a gone ahead and run
But somehow I couldn't resist the fun
Of chasin' them all just once around the parkin' lot.

Well, they're headin' for their car, but I hit the gas
And spun around and headed them off at the pass
I was slingin' gravel and puttin' a ton of dust in the air
Ha Ha, well, I had 'em all out there steppin' and fetchin'
Like their heads were on fire and their asses was catchin'
But I figured I oughta go ahead an split before the cops got there.

When I hit the road I was really wheelin'
Had gravel flyin' and rubber squeelin'
And I didn't slow down 'til I was almost to Arkansas
Well, I think I'm gonna re-route my trip
I wonder if anybody'd think I'd flipped
If I went to L.A. - via Omaha.

i'm fascinated by how tracy byrd not only sings about what he likes; he also feels the need to delineate what he doesn't like. a lot of rappers have done that, too.

there are a lot of indie rock songs in the same vein (e.g. helen love's "rollercoasting") that namecheck all the bands they love, but that generally don't go on to diss the ones they hate. the indie way seems to be, "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything."

is it that rappers and country singers have a tough-guy thing in common, where fightin' is part of livin', while indie rockers are twee wimps who don't have the balls to put up a fight? or is it something else altogether? or am i making this all up? i'm not sure which approach i like better, but it does seem to me like there's a clear difference.

Rapping is something people DO. Genres don't come out of nowhere; they have prehistories as well as histories. And talking blues, like prison dozens and scats and squardance calls and reggae toasts and auctioneer barking and Blowfly and Pigmeat Markham and "They're Coming to Take Me Away Ha Ha," are part of rap music's prehistory. I just don't get why you find that idea so offensive; obviously, there's no right or wrong answer about what "is" rap (or metal or country or ??) or "isn.t." And you're welcome to disagree about this record or that one. I just think it's hilarious that you pretend that the borders are completely clear cut. They NEVER are. That's part of what makes music FUN. It DOESN'T neatly fit into little boxes.

Did you READ the lyrics?? Okay, let me isolate this part:

>>Now the last thing I wanted was to get into a fight
In Jackson, Mississippi on a Saturday night
'Specially when there was three of them and only one of me
They all started laughin' and I felt kinda sick
And I knew I'd better think of somethin' pretty quick
So I just reached out and kicked old green-teeth right in the knee.
He let out a yell that'd curl your hair
But before he could move, I grabbed me a chair
And said; "Watch him folks, 'cause he's a thouroughly dangerous man."
"Well, you may not know it, but this man's a spy
He's an undercover agent for the FBI
And he's been sent down here to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan."<<

The racist southern rednecks are attacking HIM, do you get it???

Blowfly did, since he used the exact same cadence in "Blowfly's Rap" a few years later (just like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five took part of "The Message" from "Subterranean Homesick Blues"!)

And besides, as Fact Checking Cuz wisely just pointed out (and as Kid Rock has been sayinig to deah for years), the fact is that outlaw country guys and gangsta rappers often have very SIMILAR worldviews.

by the way, I often call that worldview they share "Punk Rock."

Though there are many other names for it, as well.

(And some metal guys often share more than some punk guys do.)

But how much has Nashiville country really changed since countrypolitan and Billy Sherill? Sure, the production values have changed and the sensibilities have grown with pop sensibilities, but Clint Black sounds a lot more like Jim Reeves or Glen Campbell than Wilco sounds like Roy Acuff. You're way more familiar with modern pop country than I am, so I could be way off but alt-country (save for a few purely throwback artists) dedication to tradtion seems as much lipservice as Nashville's. I understand your frustration with bullshit alt-country elitism, but I think you make Nashville out to be a little more progressive than it really is.

oddly, this is precisely the kind of thing you say all the time.

I hear this motto all the time, but I don't hear it in the music. It work for Ms. Welch and for the O Brother bluegrass types, but Neko Case, Richard Buckner, Uncle Tupelo, Freakwater... I don't really hear it there. The influence is there, but they are far from attempts at "what country used to be." Which makes the criticism of "isn't country music allowed to evolve?" seem unfair, because what you're really objecting to is one of the directions it has evolved.

Not enough. But you're right, that was a horrible match and you're right that that dissmissing production values and sensibility, I was dissmissing what generally constitutes change in music. What I guess I was trying to say, in a muddled, roundabout way is that, in my mind anyway, despite additional influences, there's a much clearer lineage between 60s Nashville and 00s Nashville than there is between pre-Nashville legends in most alt-country. You said it in a way when you noted that r&b and dance influences that were so pervasive in Honky Tonk or Western Swing are almost completely absent from the Bloodshot crew.
The problem that arises throughout this thread, I think, though, is not "what do we mean by 'country'?", but "what do we mean by 'alt-country?" Is it Bloodshot stuff or is it Laura Cantrell or is it Will Oldham or Blue Rodeo or Tarnation or the Old 97s or Lucinda or the Scud Mountain Boys or Lambchop (and Pernice and Wagner opens up the issue of alt stuff paying homage to Nashville). Some of them are now, like Wilco, far removed from Hank worship and the ones that are more clearly nostalgia acts are repping different parts of country's pretty varied history. The Will Oldham stuff that recheas for older-sounding authenticity sounds nothing like Bob Wills or Hank Thompson. I really like Andrew's definition of alt-country as "a wary, parasitic, mostly one-way relationship, but some kind of relationship nonetheless" with "true" industry country.

Probably contradicting myself (like I probably already have 50 times earlier in this thread), but I'm guessing that's not an especially NEW thing, Haikunym; i.e., "Indian Outlaw" (McGraw's first hit) blatanly sampling "Indian Reservation" in the early '90s. Seems there's probably a zillion other examples out there. But honestly, I probably have been being too dogmatic about some of this stuff -- like you said, pop-country's changing and not changing, acknowledging its past even as it forgets what its past really sounded like. Just like hip hop. Just like ALL music probably. Maybe even alt country, I dunno. (I wish people would give me examples of alt country that don't sound so WHITE, though. It reminds me of powerpop and indie rock, just really bashful and arhythmic and anal-compulsive. But probably I'm totally generalizing, and maybe there are examples to the contrary. The new Bottle Rockets CD totally devolves into corn and kitsch and obviousness, and never rocks half as hard as Brooks and Dunn or Montgomery Gentry even though people tell me they're the hardest rocking alt country guys out there, but there are still two great songs on it and a couple more good ones. The Cactus Brothers did an amazing cover of "16 Tons" about five years ago where the guitars got real punk and raunchy, Count Bishops raunchy. But from Jason and the Scorchers and Rank and File to the Uncle Tupelo and the Jayhawks, I've never heard that happen anywhere else in music that I *think* would be called alt-country. So what exactly am I missing???)

My father went to Ethiopia a year or so ago and on the way to the hotel from the airport he was talking to the cab driver until the guy suddenly turned and said "Shh! It's Shania Twain!" and turned up the radio.

to Colin: talk to H in Addis about African people's love for Jim Reeves, dude's like a god all over Africa

Nothing, I guess. Alt-country "white" tendancies with indie rock and power pop. If you're averse to those things, you're going to enjoy pretty limited range alt-country.

one of the questions in the poll is: "We’d like to know whether you think Shania Twain, Jay Farrar, Nickel Creek, Kenny Chesney, Gillian Welch, Faith Hill, David Grisman, Keith Urban, the Bottle Rockets or the like should be considered a country music act in 2003." so there are questions even among the country critics about people like Chesney and Urban and Hill as well as the others; notice the lack of Wilco or Drive-By Truckers there?

but they do say that we get to choose who WE think is country in all the categories. wonder what they'll say when I vote for Anthony Hamilton for best album? (I probably won't...but I might.)

And you can pinpoint obsession with the past and dismisal of country pop on 70s country-rock canon faves like Gram Parsons, country-era Dylan, Doug Sahm et al. Haha, blame the 70s all around.

"So why try to fit them into funny-looking, wittily designed ones?" would be a possible response.

The new Bottle Rockets CD totally devolves into corn and kitsch and obviousness, and never rocks half as hard as Brooks and Dunn or Montgomery Gentry even though people tell me they're the hardest rocking alt country guys out there

By "rocking harder" you just mean "I like it better" though, right?

Re Alt country sensibility:

I like songs here and there, like I've said. But as genres go, it's way the hell down there. It just sounds really really dull to me.

It's interesting, actually, my dad's a fairly constant country lover in the sense that he's always tuned into the top 40 country station wherever he's at and from what I can tell hears how the music is different without specifically remarking on it -- ie, he finds new acts as they get popular and when inspired gets a CD of theirs but rarely have I ever heard him say that a group brings something new or different to the table, even though he actually picks up quite a slew of different releases across the mainstream. I've regularly gotten him birthday or Christmas gifts of various new and old country folks that he might not otherwise have heard of, usually shading into an alt country/adult album alternative [remember that?] sense -- Iris DiMent, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Dale Watson among others. He's loved them all and sees no trouble in listening to Watson -- a declared hater of the Nashville machine and pop country -- next to a Garth Brooks compilation.

Another random thought -- is another parallel to rap the fact that there's a notable range of different high profile female performers in country? The whole 'women of rock' critical canard couldn't be played in either rap OR country because people would laugh.

"Fire and Rain" is pretty undeniable, too. I just hate their SENSIBILITY, I guess.

I always enjoyed your term 'semensmarm' for Taylor myself.

Do you also think the word "danceable" is meaningless, since different music might two different people dance? That's just bizarre.

That said, best thing on it by a mile is "Hillybilly Stomp," which is pure Devil-style Kid Rock. So maybe the Kid shouldn't completely abandon that which done brung him. On the song tip, the Seger cover (wow!) and the Crow duet come closest to matching.

The new album may wind up scaling the bottom of my top 10

Re: your last post, "sad" and "awkward" are very different descriptors than "quiet" and "noisy." I'm not as anal as I'm coming across here, honestly!

My point was that all of them are OPINIONS, not FACTS. And so what?

if you can dance to something, it IS dance music, and if music rocks, it IS rock music.

I see what you're saying here, but my linguist side wants to resist it. I just don't feel like that's the way language works! That's not the way people use those terms! However, I think it's important to play around with the terms like you do, if only to effect that perspectival shift.

x-post... It's not like they actually stop being heavy metal or dance music! It's that people don't call them that anymore! So in a very real sense -- insofar as meaning is gleaned from usage -- they stop being those things!

And you seem to want to strain against this inevitability, whereas I accept it and want to explore why. I'm certainly not saying that new fans are smarter -- people don't change their terminology because they think they're better than the people who used those old terms. They use the terms *differently*, just like you said. The words aren't betraying themselves, they're being used in new ways to describe new things. A fact of language and of life.

So you basically think that the majority of people are always right? Wow.

There's no right or wrong involved, isn't that what you're trying to say? I'm agreeing with you there, so stop trying to make it seem like I believe in the existence of tangible genre boundaries.

It would also make my writing a lot more boring than it now is. It would REMOVE me from the mess and fight of the genre world. I don't WANT to be removed from it, or stand above it. I want to be IN it.

The pleasure I get from music has nothing to do with whether or not I can muster up the courage to call it one thing rather than another. The pleasure I get from your *writing* has a lot to do with your courage to do so. But these are two different though related kinds of pleasure, and I find it funny that you imply I'm not as much a part of the world of listeners as you because of what I say about the *discourse* surrounding music. I have plenty of opinions about music; having an opinion about music is completely different from having an opinion on what genre it belongs to. It's as though as a writer you can't separate your enjoyment of music from your enjoyment of the discourse. Not that I can, either, but to imply that because I resist using a term in a completely different way than it is usually used that I don't have any opinions about music or don't enjoy music is unfair and just wrong!

Okay, phew, I think we're finally coming to an understanding. I see what you're trying to say here, and it's admirable.

In 1986, I called "Walk This Way" a rap song in an Aerosmith review in the Voice, people told me I was being perverse, Rick Rubim read my article, and six months later Run DMC covered the song; a couple years later, in 1988 or so, I was reviewing obscure indie art-punk noise bands like White Zombie and Soundgarden in Creem's heavy metal magazine, and it pissed both Metallica fans AND Poison fans off, but a few years later, guess whose records they were buying?

You still never answered my Poison/Garth/Vanilla question, though...

>>That's part of what makes music FUN. It DOESN'T neatly fit into little boxes.
"So why try to fit them into funny-looking, wittily designed ones?" would be a possible response.<<

And my response would be, what the hell do you have against funny looking wittily desigined boxes? I'm not saying YOU have to invent them yourself, okay, Clarke? But if you tell me I shouldn't, I hereby promise I'm going to come at you with all barrels blazing, okay?

Re: Poison/Garth/Ice, I already said I don't think it's an issue of right or wrong. I think playing with genre-labeling is fun, too -- I don't think I'd enjoy your writing as much if I didn't -- I'm just arguing against the "rightness" or "wrongness" of genre claims. Which is what you're doing, too, so we agree!

Besides, funny looking boxes seem more like REAL LIFE to me when the question is classifying music. Especially if the boxes have lots of holes and trap doors in them, and maybe a couple missing flaps on top.

As long as your boxes have Zep III-style spinny contraptions and stuff, too, because that's what makes them interesting. Stuff that you as a writer and a critic add to the boxes. The appeal of your style of writing is not that it merely observes the sloppiness of genre boundaries, but that it *forces* such sloppiness, and in so doing it shows the fragility and arbitrariness of those boundaries. In that sense you're a sci-fi/fantasy critic, when most critics want to be realists or Romantics.

what if the beatles liked country

they did...at least, buck owens and the country side of rockabilly.

i like the point about country and rap both being, largely, quite macho genres and their (oft) mutual ostentatious dislike having much to do with this.

Amateurist, you rank with the most pathetic literalist sheep around. That the way I use genre names isn't useful to *your* understanding doesn't bother me much. But many people *have* found it useful, somehow -- including, as I pointed out, many people who bought Run DMC's "Walk This Way" and many metal fans who enjoy Rob Zombie.

Clarke -- I'm very flattered by your compliments, honestly. But there's another thing I'm curious about: If you prefer using words like "metal" or "dance music" or "rock" the way you assume most people out there do, why not use the word "rocking" the same way? Why does THAT particular word bother you so much? I mean, I'm guessing most people with any consciousness of both acts wouldn't think it meaningless at all to say that, say, Motorhead rocks harder than Clay Aiken. And they probably wouldn't think there was anything subjective about it, either. But you're suggesting you'd disagree with them on both counts; you'd hear them say "Motorhead rocks harder than Clay Aiken," and you'd ask "So, by rocking harder you just mean you like them more, right?" Which of course is not what they'd mean at all. So again, what is it about that word that makes you zero in on it?

Of course, I can extend the same argument to 99% of hip-hop as well.

what ideas anyway chuck? that charlie daniels is rap?

the jungle gym btw is just past the basketball courts on the right.

Some of the lyrics are interesting though, when juxtaposed next to Chuck's earlier comments:

Yes, I've been to the South -- it's largely SUBURBAN these days. Or a LOT of it is. The region is not only populated by hillbillies with stills who've never left their hills or their farms (or, you know, Klansmen with gun racks and Confederate flags on their pickups). It's pretty cosmopolitan. Why shouldn't country reflect that? And the artist-vs.popstar dichotomy is a false one; it means nothing to me, in this or any other kinda music. I have no idea what you mean by it.
-- chuck (cedd...), December 5th, 2003 2:03 PM.

Put against:

"Some kids grew up on mean streets
Dealin' with the crips and bloods
But me I was born on a back road
In a 4X4 rollin' through the mud

The street kid deals with the dealer
And he's always watchin' his back
Me, I'm watchin' a line, with a woman of mine
Down by the creek bank shack

Give me .308 and a shotgun
And a gallon of homemade wine
Drop me off on a mountainside
Where the bear and the deer reside
I'll spend my nights sittin' round the fire
Makin' this guitar ring
I'll be doin' fine underneath the pines
While the world goes down the drain

Just to dwell on life in the city
Is makin' my blood run cold
'Cause miles and miles of concrete
Eats away at the human soul

When you live and die in the country
There's a little that your heart can mourn
With your hands in the dirt and a little work
You can weather out any storm

Give me .308 and a shotgun
And a gallon of homemade wine
Drop me off on a mountainside
Where the bear and the deer reside
I'll spend my nights sittin' round the fire
Makin' this guitar ring
I'll be doin' fine underneath the pines
While the world goes down the drain

I'll be doin' fine underneath the pines
While the world goes down the drain "

..Anyway, should I continue trying to find reasons to listen to Montgomery Gentry? I was expecting them to "challenge" me. And they're just kinda ... there.

More inspirational lyrics:
"And no one's gonna tell me
How to live my life
'Cause it's my life
And it ain't nobody's business
What kind of flag I fly
'Cause that's my right "

..yawn.

..OK Too Hard to Handle .. Too Free To Hold rocks out at the end.. Kind of a long wait though...

>>>Hot-shit duo Montgomery Gentry are more traditionally manly—on Carrying On (Columbia), they work a hybrid variation on the demented wildass abandon of Hank Jr. and the compulsively regretful hell-raisin' of Waylon. "She Couldn't Change Me" is about an uppity honey what gets sick of Montgomery "sittin' on the porch in my overalls" and hits the road. But the pull of his scruffy country charisma is just too strong—she turns around and heads back in the end. Just to be fair, though, the second-catchiest thing here, four tracks later, turns the tables. When Montgomery hooks up with a gal who's "Hellbent on Saving Me," he winds up on his knees, asking the Lord to change him "just enough" (rhymes with "to keep her love").

Being a tough redneck in the New South means never having to crack a joke, but the guitars here clang hard enough to propel MG past the tight-assedness of their models. The title track is as hard a Skynyrd shuffle to make it past Today's Country's squeamish quality control. (Protests Gentry, "It ain't nobody's business what kind of flag I fly." " 'Cause that's my right," Montgomery chimes in.) Granted, "Ramblin' Man" isn't an Allmans cover and wouldn't necessarily be any more welcome if it were, but "My Father's Son" is a dynamite sequel of sorts to last year's class-conscious hit "Daddy Won't Sell the Farm." Now that Paw has literally bought the farm, Gentry's got to fight off the foreclosure. And "Cold One Comin' On" tweaks a great trope, referring to either a barroom brew or an empty bed, and to heartbreak either way.<<<

Here's Frank Kogan on the followup album (like me, he named *Carrying On* his album of the year in 2001; I believe that like me, too, he now thinks he underrated the followup):

>>On the first track of Montgomery Gentry's first album, these c&w whiners instructed us not to judge them until we'd walked in their shoes, while showing no interest themselves in what it's like to walk in anyone else's. On the title track of the new Our Town they tell us significantly that their local Church of Christ is well attended, but they make no mention of any mosques or synagogues and presumably wouldn't want to know the Mideast ancestry of their twang. But their music isn't content to just rock back on its reactionary haunches; instead, it filches rock 'n' roll "na-na-nas" and AOR harmonies and Mexican melodies and wicked slide guitars from near anybody's palette. Montgomery Gentry are not as rambunctious and obnoxious this time, to their musical if not moral detriment, but nonetheless they rock harder than you do.<<

Here's Joshua Clover/Jane Dark on a song from their FIRST album:

>>Daddy Won't Sell the Farm," by rawhide traditionalists Montgomery Gentry—one of whom is the brother of c&w softie John Michael Montgomery—is rilly a lovely vision of how Papa bought this farm back in 1968 and won't sell to the big concerns, so he struggles on with his rustic lifestyle in the shadow of minimalls and burger joints. It nestles comfortably in the tradition of Small Farmer vs. Big Corporation songs, and the larger tale of the Indomitable Rube vs. Evil Modernization/Urbanization—it even quotes Hank Jr.'s "A Country Boy Can Survive," the genre's demented flag-bearer.

And yet, how bizarre. This isn't one of those "We been here since the Civil War and we were born rebels" tales. Cuz daddy "worked and slaved" for the man, till he had enough to leave the system and cop some rustic peace in the very year that students and workers were tearing up paving stones from Paris to Iowa.

There are no coincidences in country music (check that cloying chain-of-life song about a guy who stops to change some lady's flat). Daddy is the first country hero as far as I know who's an openly political hippie. Cuz you just don't choose '68 when writing this song unless the guy's part of the Back to the Land movement. Pop's a folk hero alright, but not a hero for the Dukes of Hazzard so much as the Woodstock nation. This is akin to a hip-hop song making common cause with cops. Except cops actually are dirty and antisocial.<<

Those may or may not help; I'm not sure. I hope they do, though.

>>>MONTGOMERY GENTRY Carryin' On (Columbia) A tuneful, hard-hitting case study in the conservatism of the "rock" claimed by studio hotshots wherever popular music is manufactured in our once-great land. It's possible to imagine the identical beats and licks vitalized by, say, a younger John Anderson. But mixing them with male chauvinist reaction makes more sense, and turns them rancid. At a time when female spunk has become a Nashville cliché, these two putative roadhouse rats, one the brother of cowboy-hat millionaire John Michael Montgomery, inhabit a world where women are either saintly or compliant. They "rock" because they're "rebels," only what they rebel against is the present, in male-specific terms: "They say this way of life is done/But not for my father's son." Like their antecedent Charlie Daniels, they beg the question of whether they're also that kind of rebel. But attention ought be paid another high-profile couplet: "It ain't nobody's business what kind of flag I fly/'Cause that's my right." Uh-uh, stupid. The way flags work is that they're the business of everybody who sees them. That's why you fly them high—and why the other side tears them down. B MINUS<<

And musically challenging - I guess it's a matter of taste/preference - but I'm just not hearing a lot of surprises .... (read: dissonance, I think.)

So while they wouldn't send me running out of a BBQ in Georgia, they aren't likely to sell me any records either...

But thanks for the recommendation...

(Xpost)
"incidentally, speaking of alt-country, did you ever hear of Elizabeth McQueen and the Fire Brands? They come from Austin, and say they're doing "pub rock," but I like THEIR new album a lot. It's got a real rock'n'roll throb to it -- reminds me of early new wave rockabilly era Carlene Carter or Rosanne Cash. Nice"

..Thanks for that recommendation too..

I don't like the way that upthread he attacks Lloyd Cole and lots of country singers. LC is not really a country singer, of course, but I am tickled by the premise of the thread which is that he is.

I like some of the country singers that chuck attacked, plus some that he didn't, eg. Shania Twain whose recent 45s have excited me.

HOW does the kind of lyrical imagery you're referring to challenge you
.. I don't like it just for the sake of it being there - I like it because if you have to think about the lyrics a little bit, you can interpret the lyrics to mean different things, many things. Sometimes that's not a good thing, if the artist wants to convey something specific - but most of the time, I get more out of a song where I'm able to personalize it to the way I visualize it.

Dissonance is hardly the point
..By dissonance, I mean (mostly) cognitive dissonance - i.e. something unexpected or unnatural.. but also musically dissonant - but that's just my personal preference.. That doesn't mean Slipknot...? (The chords in Louie Louie seem pretty dissonant to me.)

>i coulda explained that being tracky is something music DOES.<<

Yeah, Sterl, but it's something ALL music does. That was my point!!

the beatles may not have been palling around with george jones, but they were much much much into the everly brothers and carl perkins, both of whom had a lot of country running through their veins.

Obviously a lot of people seem to go for it. I just don't demand that much creativity from a critic.)

(Though I guess railroads are kinda tracky in the first place, maybe.)

Hardest rocking tracky country song ever:
"Train Kept a Rollin," Johnny Burnette and the Rock 'n' Roll Trio

But that's obviously because everybody traded in their copies for this album, which has all the dance mixes!:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDCASS80311061622542118&sql=Awt9fs33la39g

So for an alt-country example.. I hate to use it because I'm not really a fan of Gillian Welch .. But the first time I heard "Paper Wings" the guitar verse caught my ear...

..And I kind of hate to use the term alt-country - because, honestly, I'm not really a fan of alt-country so much.. I mean, it isn't a genre I usually seek.. But this thread started because I find it more listenable than Garth Brooks. My original thinking/point was going to be that Lloyd Cole and Robert Forster write some great country songs, but they don't really conform to all of the traditional or modern country aspects and would not make it on country radio unless they were remade by Travis Tritt or Clint Black.

hmmm... I think I just talked in circles ..

When I go out, I'm gonna go out shooting.

I don't mean when I die, I mean when I go out to the club, stupid.

I have some opinions on how y'all could have avoided fighting, but you'll have to work it out for yourselves. Suggestion, though: Don't assume that the other guy is trying to say something stupid.

Haikunym wrote (in reference to the latest Montgomery Gentry single): "'Hell Yeah' is one of the best rap records of the year." Well, if it's rap, it's rap that's absorbed nothing from any hip-hop of the last 30 years - which is to say that it's absorbed nothing from the rap/hip-hop genre, even if it shares some ancestry with hip-hop, and has some similarities. (FYI, "Hell Yeah" is the latest single from Montgomery Gentry.)

A point that Chuck was making, and that got lost in the hubbub, is that not very much contemporary country music is using black dance rhythms from beyond the '70s, whereas previous country music used rhythms from their r&b contemporaries.

(Question for the musicologically inclined: Are there any rhythmic developments in today's country that don't come from previous developments in some other genre? Is country still evolving its own rhythms, or is it all hand-me-downs? LeAnn Rimes and Brooks & Dunn might be test cases, in different ways.)

This fits in with Amateurist's point (which isn't a huge exaggeration):

i love how half the country is like "i like everything but country and rap", a quarter is like "i like country fuck rap" and the last quarter is like "i like rap fuck country" (cf. de la soul track where rednecks talk stupid shit as george jones plays in the background)...

And Chuck's question doesn't really challenge it:

But where does that leave Bubbba Sparxxx, David Banner, Kid Rock, Nappy Roots, Toby Keith, and all of those kind of people who do both?

As far as social signifiers go, it leaves Banner clearly in hip-hop, Keith clearly in country, I haven't heard the new Nappy Roots, but I'd say clearly in hip-hop on the basis of their previous LP, Kid Rock jumping from hip-hop to country (and I haven't heard his latest either, so I don't know if he's mixing the signifiers anymore or not), and Sparxxx conducting an interesting social experiment if - but only if - "Comin' Round" becomes a huge pop hit. And even then, I predict the result will be that he doesn't get played on country radio.

One might want to confute or defy the social map, but a feature of the map is that, no matter what the contortions and convolutions of the use of the word "country" and "rap," or the battles over whether Shania or Clouddead or Jay-Z or Sage Francis is really real, there's a barrier that says that if a song is in country it's not in hip-hop, and if it's in hip-hop it's not country. And we have no choice but to perceive this barrier (whether or not we buy into it), no more than we have a choice not to perceive gender. (And we don't perceive gender with 100% agreement, but nonetheless we almost always perceive it.) Play "Hell Yeah" and Jay-Z's "Takeover" (chosen because they each not only rock, but because each moves me in an emotionally similar way), and 100 out of 100 know which one is classed as country and which as hip-hop.

Maybe not all Toby fans think that hip-hop sucks; nonetheless, Toby doesn't play hip-hop (as his fans would perceive it) and wouldn't be allowed to - wouldn't even be allowed to incorporate any particular feature that signified hip-hop. Whereas Bubba can be perceived as hip-hop as long as he incorporates some feature that signifies hip-hop strongly, even if he incorporates lots of country features. And the fact that David Banner's black southern drawl resembles white southern drawls, and the fact that "Cadillac on 22's" uses the chords to "Lay Lady Lay," justify my voting for it in the country music poll, but these facts don't put him in "country" on most people's social maps.

Anyway, that there's a barrier between hip-hop and country raises lots of questions, since there's no comparable barrier between pop and country, and rock sounds have been pouring into country wholesale (yet the rock and country audiences remain distinct, whereas the "adult" pop and the country audiences don't).

So you could start the discussion from here. (I don't see where any of the fighting actually addressed the issues.)

With genre terms, the phrase "what they normally mean" is problematic, since using such a term in the way that other people use it does not necessarily entail using it to designate the same things that other people use it to designate. In fact, such terms demand that you sometimes use them to designate something different from what at least some other people designate by it.

This is because genre names do double duty as both value judgments and descriptions. No one who knows how to speak expects everyone to agree on what movies the term "good movie" refers to. That's because the term not only differentiates movies from other movies, it differentiates your tastes and your values from other people's. On the other hand, most people who use the word "tree" don't expect a lot of disagreement over what's a tree and what isn't (and don't get worked up on the subject in any case: "What! You call 'elms' trees? Come look at my oaks! I'll show you some real trees").

So anyway, "country" and "hip-hop" and "pop" and so on are battle words because they're value judgments that we use to differentiate ourselves from some of our fellows and identify with others, and our differing usages and designations move us around in relation to each other. Yet we also believe in our social maps, believe that they're right, or at least good in some socioemotional way.

I probably said this better on other threads, about sociology of pop and controversy words/Superwords, but don't have time right now to look for the links.

Anyway, ignoring the sociology - of who is using the term to designate what - is not an option, not a possibility; nor is failing to defy (some) other people's designations. You do both, just by speaking.

The appeal of your style of writing is not that it merely observes the sloppiness of genre boundaries, but that it *forces* such sloppiness, and in so doing it shows the fragility and arbitrariness of those boundaries. In that sense you're a sci-fi/fantasy critic, when most critics want to be realists or Romantics.

Well, what I'm saying is that we're all such sci-fi'ers, simply by using the language normally. (So it's not sci-fi.) But Clarke, I don't think I agree with your four major terms here: sloppiness, fragility, arbitrariness, and boundaries. But I don't have time to go into this. Another facet of genre titles is that they not only designate genres but sounds. So an alternative-rock song can have a pop melody without being a pop song, but sometimes having such a melody might make it "pop," even if it doesn't make it popular.

As a possible counterexample to the point that hip hop that borrows from country will be identified as hip hop not country, what about Velvet Crush's version of 'Why Not Your Baby' by Gene Clark? I think the drumming borrows from hip hop and the background singers sound like rhythm and blues, but as a whole the song still sounds country/folk to me. Of course, Velvet Crush is not hip hop.

OK, one more shot at this:

If you were to ask me "What's your favorite punk album of 2003?" I could give you four different answers.

(1) Transplants Transplants (because it's the best of the albums that sound stereotypically "punk rock," especially after the hardcore punks hijacked the term and restricted it to themselves).

(2) Clone Defects Shapes of Venus (because it's the postpunk/alternative-rock album, and is messy and gung-ho and all those punk things) (also because it sounds like the music I was making in 1982).

(3) David Banner Mississippi (because it's ferocious and destructive and self-destructive and idealistic and can run at you and smash you [when it isn't crashing over its own heaviness], as punk use to do).

(4) There were no punk albums in 2003 (because so far the only punk album this decade has been The Marshall Mathers LP, and if you don't have the brains and the self-challenge of that album, you're just not doing it).

I'm perfectly capable of resorting to all four usages (as well as others) in close proximity. And the usages aren't unrelated - 1 and 2 are musical vocabularies/traditions, 3 is effect, 4 is an ideal of what I want the music to do; obviously, those vocabularies had helped produce those effects and create those ideals, though they rarely do now, which doesn't necessarily mean they fail to do something else worthwhile. But my heart is with usage 4.

I wonder what equivalent usages you guys use with country. My intuition is to look down on the purists, but that's because if I were a country musician chafing at the genre's limits, I wouldn't do so in the name of "real country" but in the name of better music that didn't give a fuck about being country. But I'd never be a country musician in the first place.

Yet purism isn't reactionary by definition. It depends on how it's used. (Just as I don't think I'm reactionary for thinking that hardcore punk isn't real punk, since it's about group solidarity and my punk isn't.) (Of course, I've also written that punk is better as a tendency than a genre, and better as an impulse than as an identity.)

No one is consistent in how they use genre terms, but people will frequently try to lay down narrow rules for how other people should use terms, though this laying down is usually ad hoc, mainly to discredit someone else and to win arguments.

Hm, I always knew I wasn't punk!

And Shapes of Venus was the best postpunk/alternative album of the year. (There were a number of good ones. If you just take the albums I heard from Detroit, for instance, possible-P&J-winner Elephant was the fourth-best. And there must have been scores of such albums from Detroit that I didn't hear.)

Yeah, Ned, you're about the last person I'd call a punk. (And don't be offended by that.)

better than Groovski? say it ain't so. i quite enjoyed that clone defects album though.

I'm not! :-)

But anyway, there's enough interesting tension in country for it to fling itself to unexpected territory. And the rap barrier may break.

Well, first off, even thinking of just commercial country, it does claim a lot of sounds that it wouldn't have in years past (loud guitar rock is one of its options; death metal singing isn't). And it's not just incorporating pop, it's helping to shape it, albeit in the "adult contemporary" category.

And it's too big to call "marginalized." But it tends to be left out of the general cultural discussion. That is, the people who don't listen to it barely know it's there (except in the way that they know that, say, Mexican music is there), and few feel the need to educate themselves in it. Not only does it tend to be absent in Pazz and Jop, its absence isn't even an issue. (And Wilco and Lucinda Williams and Magnetic Fields are never discussed there in relation to country.) Whereas the people who listen to country sure know that rock and hip-hop are there.

But I wouldn't say it's more left out now than in 1948 (for instance). But it defines itself differently from how it did in 1948. Christianity and social conservativism weren't absent from the music in 1948, but they weren't defining characteristics in the way that they are now (not that the genre is locked into those characteristics, or that all the performers promulgate them, but they're in your face a lot, aggressive rather than matter of fact). And this will have some effect on what signifiers it's willing to take in. It won't think of itself as containing vanguard elements, or musical innovation, even when it does.

The last time I was in Knoxville I got my hair cut in Vestal, and the TV was on and it was some kind of "my boyfriend got a sex change" show ... inbetwee segments, the ads came on, and of cours they're basically the same ads I get in New York. I was struck by how loud, how abrasive, and how alien to the pace and feel of that barber shop the TV was (though I may have felt the same way at a sleepy barbership in Midwood, Brooklyn, too) and it came home to me - again - how television lays this vast same-ing blanket over the country, where what goes in New York and L.A. is what goes for everybody, and a lot of that shit is scary and not that pleasant and is liable to give you the feeling that things are frankly a little out of control, that the freaks are multiplying. I think there is plenty of country that very consciously sets out to counteract that feeling of anxiety and insecurity, and I don't see anything wrong with that per se.

Rolling Country 2006 Thread