The Countrification of America

1945. Rock is an aberration, not the norm.

send eddy an email, already. (xpost)

...

WHOOOOO ARE YOU? WHO WHO? WHO WHO?

ROCK. RO-BOT ROCK. ROCK. RO-BOT ROCK.

WE COULD BE HEROES, JUST FOR ONE DAY

Now when they start playing "John, I'm Only Dancing" during slow motion replays of penalty calls, I'll be impressed. I can settle for some cheese-eating surrender glam for the time being, though.

You're saying country is never ironic and rock by default is always?

Lord, that's how I remember them...

Oakridge Boys
Alabama
Kenny Rogers
Conway Twitty
Anne Murray
Crystal Gayle
Gordon Lightfoot
Willie Nelson
Waylon Jennings
Tanya Tucker

etc, etc... that's what was in my folks record cabinet, maybe you're folks were into Seals & Croft.

I think the country/blues perspective is more naturally and comfortably ironic than the rock perspective. It has to do with somehow managing to live in a basically absurd and inhospitable world. Not that any of them exclude sincerity, so it's really a false dichotomy, but something like "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" seems to me like a deep appreciation of irony.

The Country section uses ribbed condoms inside out, so he gets the pleasure.

Since 1940, the year the Country section was born, roundhouse kick related deaths have increased 13,000 percent.

There are no disabled people. Only people who have met the Country section.

There is no chin behind the Country section's beard. There is only another fist.

It was once believed that the Country section actually lost a fight to a pirate, but that is a lie, created by the Country section himself to lure more pirates to him.

The Country section once lined up to kick the winning field goal of a high school football game. When the football went flat, he persuaded the referees to let him kick the field goal with a 3 month old child. The Country section roundhouse kicked the baby 60 yards through the uprights and then proceeded to bang every girl in the stadium.

When the Country section's wife burned the turkey one Thanksgiving, the Country section said, "Don't worry about it honey," and went into his backyard. He came back five minutes later with a live turkey, ate it whole, and when he threw up a few seconds later the turkey was fully cooked and came with cranberry sauce. When his wife asked him how he had done it, he gave her a roundhouse kick to the face and said, "Never question the Country section."

xxpost

Well, heck-a-roonie people! If I'm wrong, then what can I say? I'm wrong!

Any generalization about music genres can be proved wrong by judicious selection of examples, because every genre blurs into every other genre and almost anything that can be imagined has already been done at least once by someone. The only way out is to qualify each general statement so heavily that it loses all impact and most of its meaning.

But, on the whole it appears to me from my own limited and faulty point of view that there are tendencies in country music that might be construed in ways somewhat similar to those which I earlier stated, although I admit that any of what I said could possibly be wrong and could easily be useless in specific applications. And I stand firmly by that!

????

For intstance, Glen Campbell's "Galveston" is about vietnam.

All of the 911 tributes.

And, Tim McGraw's Red Rag Top was a strangely compelling song about abortion... banned in many stations:

"Well the very first time her mother met me,
Her green eyed girl was a mother to be for 2 weeks
I was out of a job and she was in school,
Life was fast and the world was cruel
We were young and wild, we decided not to have a child
So we did what we did and we tried to forget
And we swore up and down there would be no regrets
In the morning light,
But on the way home that night

"On the back of that red rag top
She said please don’t stop..
Lovin’ me..."

from All Music:

"Eventually, the group signed a lucrative radio contract with XERF in Del Rio, TX, which led to contracts at a few other stations along the Mexican and Texas border. Because of their locations, these stations could broadcast at levels that were far stronger than other American radio stations, so the Carters' radio performances could be heard throughout the nation, either in their live form or as radio transcriptions. As a result, the band's popularity increased dramatically, and their Decca records became extremely popular."