Gateway Artists

What makes a good gateway artist? Do gateway acts tend to be appreciated more/less as time goes by, and you become more familiar with the stuff beyond the gates, so to speak? What do gateway artists say about our own tastes?

Some of mine:
Beatles -- the ultimate gateway, because it was the first band I ever loved. Hard to pinpoint the number of directions I took after getting into them, but suffice to say, they hold more sway over my aesthetic and artistic taste than any other band.

Debussy -- gateway to classical music for me, and in hindsight, opened a number of doors for classical music that both predated him (Schumann, Schubert for example), and was inspired by him (Messiaen, Ligeti for example). He may even be my gateway to ambient music in general.

Darkthrone -- my gateway to metal. I already liked Black Sabbath, but Darkthrone opened my eyes not just to black metal, but to modern metal in general. It didn't hurt the guys themselves are such metal historians, and also that they released a death metal album, and then much later went into punkier, older school sounding stuff. Huge breadth of options to investigate after Darkthrone.

Yours?

Animal Collective - noise & experimental music

Weird Al - for a kid it's tough to relate to the romantic content of pop music, but the music itself reaches further. Al flips or at least joshes with the romance & renders a lot of songs open, particularly to nerdy pre-ados.

Surprised you didn't mention XTC - along with The Cure (who are less gatewayish and more singular IMO) the first band I loved, and the gateway to everything else, really - I suppose you found the Beatles first but owing to the vagaries of stuff my parents played me when I was 7, I skipped that step.

Later, obv yer Radioheads, yer Blurs and yer Mogwais opened up more vistas. But it all comes from XTC, really.

My gateway to metal was like uh idk Isis or Oceansize or something lol

(My gateway to hip-hop was Cannibal Ox, lol)

yeah that's the thing imago -- I basically found XTC looking for stuff like the Beatles. And now that you mention it, though I love them and am certainly influenced by them, I consider XTC a particularly BAD gateway band, because of the simple fact that hardly anything else sounds like them.

Spring Heel Jack > European free improv via Masses/Amassed etc? Not my personal gateway because I was already into that stuff, but I can imagine someone hearing the SHJ records and picking up Evan Parker.

So many more of my discoveries came about more through reading than listening.

Animal Collective - noise & experimental music

this is interesting to me, because I bet they acted as that gateway to a lot of people. I think John Zorn was mine, but AC illustrates something about gateways that I think is integral to the idea. Not really sure how to explain tho...

I attribute getting very hard into prog, industrial & weird indie (like, say, The Fiery Furnaces, or Beck haha) at a young age TO being such a massive XTC fan as a kid! There's little that sounds like them but being a fan of theirs means one has certain standards for one's pop music, and is possibly prepared to listen to quite a lot of weird stuff to get that fix back

Orbital as gateway to electronic music. Miles Davis and jazz. De La Soul and hip hop, maybe.

The Who - led directly to Albert Ayler, Pierre Henry, Cecil Taylor, Fushitsusha/Keiji Haino, Xenakis, Coltrane, tons of others.

Orbital as gateway to electronic music.

Throw in the Chems and The Prodigy and yeah p much

There's little that sounds like them but being a fan of theirs means one has certain standards for one's pop music, and is possibly prepared to listen to quite a lot of weird stuff to get that fix back

yeah, this makes a lot of sense. A good gateway band has a ton of influence about how we conduct our life-long search for music. The best possible scenario is that we still love the original gateway act, though I can think of instances where that isn't the case for me as well.

Animal Collective - noise & experimental music

this is interesting to me, because I bet they acted as that gateway to a lot of people. I think John Zorn was mine, but AC illustrates something about gateways that I think is integral to the idea. Not really sure how to explain tho...

― Dominique, Wednesday, September 30, 2015 1:01 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, the first record i heard was feels, and that's basically a rock record with familiar song forms. ditto with sung tongs, it's a weird acoustic record. i flipped out, loved it, never heard anything like it, etc. and then i devoured every interview and searched out every artist they mentioned as influences and peers - so that led to black dice, sun city girls, sun ra, boredoms, lightning bolt, prurient, arab on radar, can, gastr del sol, arthur russell, vashti bunyan, incredible string band, gang gang dance, penderecki, silver apples - a very rich vein!

Animal Collective are analogous to Nirvana in that way - as much as I dig the artists i listed above, and most of Cobain's influences, none of them come close to my love of AC or Nirvana. They're capstone bands

REM : my gateway to country & "roots" music but also to garage rock, 80s alt rock, 60s pop. I'd hear their covers, read interviews, see who they played with live, & unwound a world. plus they were heroes of my Atlanta so they'd be involved in organizing shows & producing records that I'd attend/hear, even if I couldn't see them live b/c they didn't play locally much by the time I was old enough to get involved.

Duran Duran - introduced me to literally everything. Lead directly to Bowie, which lead to Iggy and the Stooges; Andy Warhol, which lead to the Velvet Underground and all of drone; lead to Chic, lead to Kraftwerk, lead to New Order and Joy Division; lead directly or indirectly to probably 2/3 of the music I listen to today. But not only lead me to music, but taught me to think about pop music as a gestalt, to be attached to visual art, design, style, film, fashion, like, Nick Rhodes probably literally taught me how to read and interact with pop culture. I would not be the person I am today without Duran Duran.

I know so many people who had that experience. And that band *never* get the credit for it.

Men Without Hats led me into synthpop

They're capstone bands

yeah, this is definitely one kind of gateway band. I might argue the Beatles are the same for me. Hard to argue I've ever loved a band like that, and may not ever again.

However, other kinds of gateways aren't like that. I think Rush was my gateway for prog and avant-rock in general, and though I guess I have a soft spot for them still, they simply don't hold a candle for me in the way that bands like Magma, Cardiacs, This Heat, etc do. I can trace my looking for weird, tech-y rock music back to Rush, with nothing really occupying that need before -- but I don't go back to that gate much.

herbie hancock : the rockit/sound-system albums

as well as introducing me to hip hop/DJ scratching, lead me to bill laswell/Material, which then opened many many doors incl. pete namlook/FAX, dub, PiL, Axiom releases etc etc.
all stemming from one album.
similar to how one 12" remix in the early 80s has dominated my listening needs ever since :
depeche mode - master and servant (the on-u sound science fiction dancehall classic remix).
rather than following depeche mode, following this 12" i dived into the world of on-u sound system, which again opened many doors given that adrian sherwood was producing/remixing so many artists at the time.
in both cases, it became the production, laswell/adrian sherwood, as opposed to the actual artist that became my gateway.

simon and garfunkel > john fahey > jack rose > pelt > drone/noise music, no joke

My other "gateway" bands were probably the Jesus and Mary Chain and Spacemen 3. And if we're going to be technical about it, I got to Spacemen 3 through the Jazz Butcher through Bauhaus, so maybe Bauhaus should get the credit there.

JAMC -> 60s girlgroups, bubblegum pop, Can, shoegaze etc.
Spacemen 3 -> Silver Apples, Suicide, NEU!, a ton of slithery experimental synth stuff
Bauhaus -> Brian Eno, William S Burroughs, Rimbaud, Dub, a ton of a Brutalist German architects, oh god teenage me was so impressionable...

Still think Duran Duran were more "gateway"-y in terms of I wouldn't have been attracted to those bands unless Duran Duran had pre-wired my head that way.

xps

yeah, this is definitely one kind of gateway band. I might argue the Beatles are the same for me. Hard to argue I've ever loved a band like that, and may not ever again.

However, other kinds of gateways aren't like that. I think Rush was my gateway for prog and avant-rock in general, and though I guess I have a soft spot for them still, they simply don't hold a candle for me in the way that bands like Magma, Cardiacs, This Heat, etc do. I can trace my looking for weird, tech-y rock music back to Rush, with nothing really occupying that need before -- but I don't go back to that gate much.

― Dominique, Wednesday, September 30, 2015 1:23 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Radiohead was one of those gateway bands for me. I rarely listen to them anymore, but still regularly play Boards of Canada & Aphex Twin & Kraftwerk...

Oh, I was played a double cassette with Duran Duran's Rio (and I think Joe Jackson's I'm The Man) on it as a young kid - very formative of course and still one of my favourite albums of all time

the microphones were probably my gateway into lo-fi/bedroom pop stuff

Oh, and Dominique's prog experience more or less corresponds to my own - I got there via Floyd, Yes and a very little Crimson, but the gateways are no longer held in remotely the same esteem as, say, VdGG, quite a lot of prog-metal or a whole host of modern art-rock astronauts

I've said this before, but the first Sneaker Pimps album was so important to my listening: discovered the Bristol trinity, Portishead and Tricky first, and then a chance introduction to Massive Attack via "Teardrop" led to all things Liz (Cocteaus, TMC) and some 4AD, and along with Orbital, probably primed me to accepting electronic music (techno, IDM).

I can actually pinpoint the thread in which I got into Bardo Pond (which of course led to my ongoing psych/drone affair), but that was in turn prompted by Aoife Ni Fhearraigh's "The Best is Yet to Come" (end title theme to "Metal Gear Solid") and "Mogwai Fear Satan."

with prog and experimental music, I think gateways are particularly important. I mean, without a significant Rush phase, I don't think I would have been *ready* to hear, say, Ruins or Magma, or any of that. Mr. Bungle also a huge gateway. The first time I heard Boredoms, I thought it was just noise, couldn't even listen to it. Three years later, after obsessing over Disco Volante (and Naked City), and all of a sudden, Boredoms are the best band on the planet.

Radiohead was one of those gateway bands for me.

same here, but that probably has more to do with where i was when i first heard them rather then their music. i was 17-18 at the tail-end of the okc cycle, just before kid a, and was mainly getting music tips from spin and borrowed issues of Q. so when everyone suddenly started referencing afx+autechre+can+alice coltrane in their reviews of kid a, all that was exciting new directions to me - probably to no one else.

i guess you could say the same about the microphones, who i just mentioned. it's not like his music is the first or necessarily the most outstanding in the genre (though i dig him a lot), it's just what i found first.

The Residents were a gateway into Rock in Opposition type stuff and then 'avant-garde' music in general. I got into The Residents via They Might Be Giants, so maybe they should be the gateway band though?

trying to work out degrees of separation between They Might Be Giants and Arnold Schoenberg

it's not like his music is the first or necessarily the most outstanding in the genre (though i dig him a lot), it's just what i found first.

this is important tho, because in a lot of cases, what we end up thinking is "best" is more like a fine wine -- one that even if we had heard first, may not have liked as much as that gateway that prepared us

The first time I heard Boredoms, I thought it was just noise, couldn't even listen to it. Three years later, after obsessing over Disco Volante (and Naked City), and all of a sudden, Boredoms are the best band on the planet.

I was lucky - a schoolmate of mine threw Boredoms at me aged about 16 or 17 - Pop Tatari, Super Ae AND VCN - I was able to devour the lot, but I was just about ready coz a) I'd been getting into fairly weird stuff at the time and b) he egged me on something rotten

he was 2 years younger than me. kept making me listen to shit like wolf eyes and autechre, introduced me to the fieries. i remember us sitting and listening to earth's 'extra-capsular extraction' together in hushed awe. this was a 14 year-old posh kid from englande. how did he do it? where is he now? i've never found out.

It's funny because there's such a weird overlap between "gateway band" and "record collection rock" in my mind. Like, Spacemen 3 I would probably put into Record Collection Rock while Duran Duran I would definitely call Gateway Band. But the Jesus and Mary Chain are in this weird hole where, what they were doing could so very easily have become Record Collection Rock (in a way Primal Scream went all out Record Collection Rock) but I think the JAMC, it wasn't that they were doing brilliant syntheses of popular things like Duran Duran were, it was more like the JAMC were not capable of being any other band but their own sullen selves.

So I don't know if it's a question of how fine the grain is or how thoroughly the influences are digested, or just having such a distinctive musical personality that they can swallow whole genres whole and still just sound like themselves.

I guess the most gateway-y thing that Duran Duran did for me was making me pay attention to basslines though. Like, realising that the bass was the most important ingredient in music, I blame John Taylor for that.

You guys (including myself here) all seem to find "gateways" into such a limited and particular kind of music though.

Did anyone ever have a gateway band into *pop*?

Which Duran Duran was so formative? Nothing else lives up to Rio for me nowadays, but then again I never listened to anything else but Rio as a kid, so it's coded in.

Is this for our personal gateways? (Nirvana, Stone Roses, LFO for metal and indie and dance music)

or for people in general?
I think Nirvana and Stone Roses were big bands for this in general for people my age.
Slipknot seem to have been a gateway to metal for a lot of younger people.

Stone roses and the verve were my gateway to funkadelic, can, tim buckley , miles davis simply by those bands mentioning them.

I could go on but I'd bore people even more than normal so I'll shut up.

Did anyone ever have a gateway band into *pop*?

Madness.

simple as that.

anyone ever have a gateway band into *pop*?

hard to pinpoint, because it wasn't something I had to seek, or even had an interest in -- it was just there, whether I wanted it or not. The first song I can remember liking is "Magic" by Olivia Newton-John. There's tritons in that, so haha yeah, it did end up influencing me quite a bit.

Madness were the first pop band I bought singles of a lot. Others like adam and the ants or duran duran i only had maybe 2/3 7"s by

I bought mainly singles until i got a cd player aged 14. Tho i probably mostly only played singles off them with a few exceptions.

I mean, if this were Old Skool ILX and we were talking about gateway drugs into Poptimism, like, the moment that I dug myself out of my own indie arse and realised that POP was pretty damn amazing, I could talk about Sugababes or Destiny's Child as a Gateway Band back to pop music. Because that was an experience of unlearning prejudices, whereas the first set of Gateway Bands were about acquiring them!

Because that was an experience of unlearning prejudices, whereas the first set of Gateway Bands were about acquiring them!

this is interesting, because your "first set" seems contrary to what gateway bands actually do -- open doors to more music. but it is a kind of honing of biases, or even realizing that you have biases, and they're ok. I think in the best cases, we come full circle on some of this stuff (metal, for me, as I certainly didn't grow up liking it).

You guys (including myself here) all seem to find "gateways" into such a limited and particular kind of music though.

Did anyone ever have a gateway band into *pop*?

― Dröhn Rock (Branwell with an N), Wednesday, September 30, 2015 1:44 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno...first CDs i ever bought myself were backstreet boys, spice girls, n*sync... no gateway necessary!

through madness : specials/2-tone of course which then drew me to the source material, jazz/lounge (bedders/butterfield 8), indie guitar pop (woody/voice of the beehive), cut up electro (fink bros), elvis costello (shipbuilding cover), mad extended 12" versions, collector scum addiction, etc
they really were my gateway to so much more.

(metal, for me, as I certainly didn't grow up liking it).

― Dominique,

its a recent thing for you, right? was ilx a part of it? As ILM seems a gateway to other music for a lot of people here

Yeah I dunno if we're talking personal gateways or artists who function well as gateways. In my case ELP was my gateway band to prog and I've never looked back. Though I would think something like Fragile by Yes would be a much better choice if you were just starting out.

Then you've got groups like Yellow Magic Orchestra, not really emblematic of a genre or even a certain style, but are popular enough and can lead you down a rabbit hole that includes an entire scene of little-known Japanese electronic pop, most of which would appeal to YMO fans.

Cardiacs kinda in the same boat as that btw

a lot of the "gateway artists" took me a long time to get into personally. for a long time i hated the velvet underground, for instance, and only got into them long after i'd gotten into, say, faust and the fall and whatever else. i was kind of an elitist snob when i was younger. (still am now, but i hide it better)

I wonder what current/newish bands will be a gateway ?

Deafheaven

my gateways:

bela bartok- classical
king crimson- prog
the beach boys- pop
arthur russell- disco
metallica- metal
tatsuro yamashita- city pop

Gram Parsons is a good entry to old country music like Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, George Jones, etc.

you mean, for people that didn't grow up listening to it? That's so weird to me.

not everyone grows up in the USA

Hank Williams and Johnny Cash gateway to not hating country

yeah, but the music is very accessible, it's like recommending a gateway to Madonna.

My intro into rap was Chronic 2001.

What is accessible to some can be inaccessible to others. Sometimes the leap is just giving the music the time of day. The artist doesn't need to be obscure or difficult.

A Tribe Called Quest was my rap gateway.

Some of my most important gateways have not been artists; they've been record-company sampler discs. I'd routinely pick those up at used-CD stores (cheap!) if I'd heard of one or two artists on the disc but had never heard what they sounded like.

Lots of them led nowhere, but some of them, oh, some of them.

otm

also getting into classic country via parsons is not weird at all! like that is thing that parsons is famous for, bringing country influences into 60s rock

What is accessible to some can be inaccessible to others. Sometimes the leap is just giving the music the time of day. The artist doesn't need to be obscure or difficult.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, September 30, 2015 7:27 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm was directed at this btw, typing on a mobile device here

No offense taken.

xp - it's weird if you grew up somewhere where people grew up hearing classic country before they ever knew who gram parsons was.

I got into classic country from Cash, and alt-country from Drive-By Truckers. Can't say I'm into modern radio-friendly country.

Yes I wish I had heard classic country growing up instead of "Achy Breaky Heart".

i wish i could get into record samplers! i mean, there are some good ones that i've gone back to (the first edition sampler on eg is cool if you're into eno & friends, rough trade's wanna buy a bridge) but for the most part i'm usually left feeling a little empty inside.

I graduated from high school the year Achy Breaky Heart came out. It was like a toss up between that and Smells Like Teen Spirit as my high school class' favorite song of the year.

xpost:
The gold-to-dross ratio in samplers can be dispiriting, but when they're good they're good because they open many, many doors to individual artists.

(Two of my favorites: Gramavision's "Jazz, Funk & Composers of Distinction" and Big Deal's "Big Deal Corporate Annual Vol. 2".)

having an older (by 10 years) brother helps in this. pop punk stuff (dillinger four-esque) helped me understand abrasive music and radiohead and mbv helped me understand the ethereal. i feel like mbv are in the center of that axis tho. didn't kevin shields love the ramones?

sublime

lmao sublime is total garbage but I did dig them when I was 12 and that one tune on 40oz to freedom where he namechecks like a billion artists did open some doors for me as a teenager

yup

seconding sublime. my bro came of age in 90s and i listened to krs one and i think minutemen because of them. also, slightly embarassing but ween. i was a collegiate stoner and they helped me put my parent's music into context because so much of their work is referential. although horrid mpls jam band wookiefoot are apparently a doing a hallo-'ween' so i don't think i can ever listen again, as not surprised by that as i am

i could probably still sing along to every word of 40 oz to freedom today. i actually suspect some of those songs hold up. maybe not like "date rape," i actually heard that recently and i remember so vividly loving it as a 13 yo and listening to it on repeat, yet its so fucking awful lol. i remember discovering that most of the songs on the album were covers and being kind of chagrined

ween are good

It was actually rock criticism that led me, directly or otherwise, to a lot of favorites. I liked Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads when I was first presented with the Trouser Press Record Guide at age 13... and since the guide approved of those artists, I figured I must be doing something "right" and went on to explore much of what was written about there (Bowie, Velvets, Can, punk and post punk in general). It's kind of remarkable how formative that book was in establishing my musical tastes: it really was my "bible" for a couple of years. For their link to Eno and the CBGBs scene, though, Talking Heads would probably have been the most important predecessor.

I graduated from high school the year Achy Breaky Heart came out. It was like a toss up between that and Smells Like Teen Spirit as my high school class' favorite song of the year.

― sarahell, Wednesday, September 30, 2015 7:55 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes definitely

ween are good
― flopson, Wednesday, September 30, 2015 8:04 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks

A Tribe Called Quest was my rap gateway.

― self-clowning oven (Murgatroid), Wednesday, September 30, 2015

^^^ this. Plus an amazing solo Wu-Tang mix tape a friend compiled not long after Forever. I still own that tape.

My family is from another part of the country or maybe are all weird fringe art hipsters or something cos we never heard the classic stuff. So I heard Hank Williams after I heard Stereopathetic Soul Manure.

I guess Beck helped get me into classic country.

My friends were playing "Stereopathetic Soul Manure" in the car on the way to a show or house party or something and they played a Hank Williams CD next. It was a life changing moment. Hank Williams is one of the greatest singers of all time. The tempo he sings at is always PERFECT. The lyrics ... here come the waterworks folks. The music ..... simple, rhythm-based, uncomplicated, always on the mark. His backup band is KILLING IT every song. You are digging this really warm firey violin line and some glowy orange slide guitar butters on in and Hank laughs about a dog or a fly or some other problem. His songs are devastating stone cold classics.

I got some records by his son Hank Williams Jr. from thrift stores. Those are good too sometimes. Maybe in a different class but he is a great singer and songwriter like his father. I found Willie Nelson's "Hello Walls" LP and fell in love with that. I had a Loretta Lynn 8-track tape and an 8-track player when I used to live in this one place in what used to be a laundry room. It had amazing acoustics and I painted the walls green while listening to this tape loop back and forth. The classic country sound is so beautiful. I started grabbing cheap 60s country compilations and discovered so many great things there.

There is a clip of Hank Williams on the Kate Smith Evening Hour (actually the whole thing is on youtube) where he's singing "Cold Cold Heart". He's been told to smile because it's TV so he's doing these weird things with his mouth, trying to look happy, when in reality he's crotchety from untreated back pain and alcoholism. His skin is stretched over his body, he's tall and lean, he looks like a scarecrow. The way the video was shot some kind of video artifact creates a drop shadow underneath him. He looks like a cardboard cutcout. It's astounding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71BUPcHKLbI?t=11m18s

Closest to classic country I got as a kid was the Rolling Stones.

maybe are all weird fringe art hipsters or something classic rock diehards

awesome post

(guitar solo)

whoa, rock me tonight,
for old time's sake,
whoa-ohh

sorry, i was just looking through sublime lyrics to try to find the song that namechecks everyone and saw that bit

wtf is this date rape song/video

(sorry to be tuomas about sublime but i don't think i've ever heard more than one or two songs and this is bonkers)

who the hell is embarrassed by Ween. Ween are great. Long live Ween.

Billy Corgan was my gateway to every classic rock band that my parents hated: Zeppelin, Sabbath, Cheap Trick, Boston, ELO, Fleetwood Mac... I heard Houses of the Holy for the first time three weeks ago.

When I was a teenager, Faust ("You Know Us") and Herbie Hancock ("Sextant") rewired the way my brain processes music and got me into longform experimental stuff.

Arthur Russell led me to drop my prejudices against "dance"/house music and was partly responsible for my getting into disco in a big way (I was already a fan of soul/funk on the other end).

phish did a ween cover and there's an awkward jam band crossover fanbase thats easy to be embarassed by. and some later ween albums are not the best. i still love them though

I second the Clash. They have songs that get played on classic rock radio, but they covered a lot of ground - dub, hip hop, punk, and opened my white suburban ears up a lot.

Peter Gabriel -> world music, via Real World records and his Passion Sources and Plus From Us compilations

The Cramps are really great, there are even fan comps of their influences. "Songs the Cramps Taught Us". Link Wray, the Ventures, Joe Meek, Hasil Adkins, The Sonics, Elvis deep cuts, etc.

a lot of the "gateway artists" took me a long time to get into personally. for a long time i hated the velvet underground, for instance, and only got into them long after i'd gotten into, say, faust and the fall and whatever else. i was kind of an elitist snob when i was younger. (still am now, but i hide it better)

― rushomancy, Wednesday, September 30, 2015 6:32 PM (4 hours ago)

my listening habits are also somewhat backwards. typically I'll get into a (semi-)obscure act, and upon realizing that the act has been influenced by a more popular, more canonical act (whose music I had previously ignored despite a longtime passing familiarity), I'll make a serious effort to listen to the more popular act. this is partly due to my own snobbishness/obscurantism (with the influencer gaining credibility due to its association with the hipper influencee), but I mostly just feel like I'm paying my dues — I've spent so much time listening to the marginal act that I feel a certain obligation to check out its primary influence(s), especially if the former has a reputation for being a clone/soundalike of the latter. thus my love for the Olivia Tremor Control (whose music I first heard when I was 17) led me to "discover" such obvious acts as the Beach Boys and the Beatles and the Byrds, none of which I had ever listened to in great depth.

"xp - it's weird if you grew up somewhere where people grew up hearing classic country before they ever knew who gram parsons was.

― sarahell, Wednesday, September 30, 2015 7:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

people where i lived who listened to classic country also tended to be a little bit racist and more than a little convinced that i was going to hell. took me a while before i could listen to, say, the louvin brothers on their artistic merits.

heh, same here, although it also applied to new country. i've long since come around on the old country sound but i can't listen to 1980-present country without getting terrible flashbacks to being spit on by cowboys