The Gaming Den

For many years, indeed since childhood, I have hated country music. For the last decade or so I've been more ambivalent towards it, especially since I took a few courses on the history of popular music to get a better grasp of it. Now I stand firm in my belief that I do not hate all country music.

Now, if you go really really far back, country & western music just sort of emerges from the folk music stylings of way back when - and the old school folk music, where you're as likely to see a washboard played with spoons as an honest banjo or Spanish guitar, is sort of timeless and eternal backwoods/pioneer stuff. Not something I would regularly listen to, but also not particularly ear-bleeding either.

Then it got popular, and things got shit. Then they improved, and got shit again. It's a cyclical thing. Basically, any effort to commercialize and sterilize country & western just results in a very bad parody of the original thing, with a four-on-the-floor drumbeat, backing vocals in four-part harmony, and as few black people on stage as possible during live performances.

Now, this doesn't mean all modern country & western is shit, but it also means that anyone that tries to stick rigorously to what country & western used to be is often shit. It is much more agreeable to listen to a piece where soemone is informed by country music but takes it somewhere else. I'm not prepared to jam out to Conway Twitty anytime soon, but I can appreciate at least a few of his songs. Johnny Cash borrowed from blues and rock 'n roll for his stylings, and is fantastic. I can unabashedly enjoy the soundtrack to Crazy Heart, which eschews the majority of trappings of pop-country. Rockabilly is dead cool, and Kenny Rogers is a nice addition to a mixtape. And so on.

Because, and I think this is important, I have come to realize I hate the message of country music. I dislike the spectacle of men and women with ten-gallon hats and boots who are more likely to eat or fuck a horse than ride one; I am instinctively repulsed by the over-the-top supernationalist jingoism, Christian Born Again mantra and military fervor - really, there are many times when a country music concert seems only half a step away from a KKK meeting.

But that's not what the music is about, that's the pagentry that the big acts and artists wraps themselves up in. That's country music like the way the Beatles' "Revolution no. 9" is rock 'n roll. You can't imagine a garage band putting on those kind of airs and being taken seriously, even if they could manage it. So what is it musically that I like or dislike about country music?

Basically, I hate the lingering saccharine remnants of the Nashville Sound. The artificial twangy accent is absolutely insufferable.

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Wishing death, including describing how you would kill them, is forbidden.
[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]

I will say I prefer country music that is subdued, personal, rock-and-blues-influenced, and relatively simple. There is something nice about a man with a gravelly voice and a guitar, with the rest of the band (if there is one) shadowed in the background. I vastly prefer tales of revenge, suffering, and stoicism to another fucking rendition of how much you love/lost America/your wife/kids/truck/dog. I absolutely detest the pop country music scene. But, I don't hate country music in toto.

Ancient History wrote:I vastly prefer tales of revenge, suffering, and stoicism to another fucking rendition of how much you love/lost America/your wife/kids/truck/dog.

I think this is ultimately the problem with Nashville country right now. It's all about the latter feelgood bullshit, when classically country has really been about the former.

It's not even like Garth Brooks, of all people, hasn't done some really respectable songs in the former, too. There's just way too much of the latter hanging around and choking the genre.

For a while, it seemed like country music was the only genre allowed to even try to be funny. Johnny Cash's A Boy Named Sue is something I play every now and then. There was also some song about a guy receiving can ultimatum from his girlfriend--telling him he has to choice between her or fishing. The title was "I'm Gonna Miss Her". It's pretty dumb, but at least they made the attempt.

On the other end of the spectrum, Cash's cover of Hurt...well, okay, everyone knows about that one. Lynyrd Skynyrd's Four Walls of Raiford is also pretty soul crushing.

I admire the genre's flexibility, and when a song's good, it's really damn good. Finding those particular fish in the sea of bad is the problem.

The jingoism has turned me off country a lot. These days, I listen to classic rock as much as anything else. Even if Led Zeppelin does sound like they wrote their songs when Robert Plant slammed his hand in the car door.

I love Sting, especially Ten Summoners Tales. Favorite album ever. I also love Jimmy Bryant, too, but his music leans more in the direction of straight-out rock n' roll/beach bum music. Danny Gatton shows what you can do with straight instrumentals.

Ancient History wrote:Because, and I think this is important, I have come to realize I hate the message of country music. I dislike the spectacle of men and women with ten-gallon hats and boots who are more likely to eat or fuck a horse than ride one; I am instinctively repulsed by the over-the-top supernationalist jingoism, Christian Born Again mantra and military fervor - really, there are many times when a country music concert seems only half a step away from a KKK meeting.

This is incidentally much the same reason why I can't watch professional wrestling anymore -- which is a pity, because the Nexus thing sounded REALLY REALLY COOL. I mean, the whole Owen Hart/Eddie Guerrero thing or TNA losing its mind or Brock Lesnar assholery or Katie Vick or Chris Benoit (shhh) are things I can overlook. But I just can't abide by a hobby that makes me cringe when I admit to myself that I liked it.

Ancient History wrote: Because, and I think this is important, I have come to realize I hate the message of country music.

Yeah, sometimes I have to remind myself not to hold shit against musicians when the problem is manifestly a larger cultural issue as opposed to anything they are explicitly espousing. Take Taylor Swift, for example. In a vacuum there is nothing particularly malicious about her terrible, terrible music. But unfortunately we do live in a culture where people often grade the integrity of a woman based on a bullshit madonna/whore dichotomy rather than anything important, and so Swift's lyrical fascination with girly girl faux juvenilia reads to me as pandering regardless of her intent. So more than a few times I have ended up feeling deeply annoyed when some asshole can't express appreciation of Taylor Swift without gushing something to the effect of "And she's not like those other pop skanks." Again, not entirely Swift's fault, but between that and the blandness of the music I really wish Walgreens would quit playing her shit.


TLDR: Yeezy was on point.

Walgreens is playing it. That's pretty much reason enough to hate it.

Now, my knowledge of country music is superficial at best, and my affection for it extends to a handful of songs that everybody likes, but an impression given to me by Walk The Line was that country music used to be somewhat subversive?

edit: Found something relevant: Outlaw Country

Johnny Cash = oh hell yes. "Walk the Line" was pretty much insulting to those of us who weren't born in 1969 and discovered his music through his later works and then worked backwards.

Willie Nelson did some interesting things back in the outlaw country day.

I really like a lot of country-ish tracks laid down by people who are not country artists.

I also really like the Bluegrass side/roots of Country - but most Bluegrass bands are small and local to regional and the genre gets no radio airplay or Idol exposure so you kinda have to catch local-ish acts, know what you're looking for or luck into it.

Garth Brooks is sort of in the middle for me - he's part of the big manufactured sound influences and his fans are full of that disturbing jingoism, but dammit "Friends in Low Places" is fun and a lot of his songs have messages that subtly try to steer his fans' "American, Fuck Yeah!" attitudes towards noble pursuits

My hate of Lee Greenwood's music know no limit! And the Charlie Daniels band reaction to 9/11/01 is an outright act of war, even if it does include a line about the Stillerz. That sort of thing is the mob mentality / jingoism / quast-kkk crap that is to country what misogyny and glorifying violence is to hip-hop.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I love Sting, especially Ten Summoners Tales. Favorite album ever.

I fail to see how Sting counts as country. Okay, "I Hung my Head" is one of those country tracks laid down by a non-country artist I mentioned above, but the rest of the album isn't really country.
And while Ten Summoner's Tales is scary good, Sting's The Soul Cages is better. While this is getting even further off topic; here's the bullet points for why:

• The overarching narrative of the album is explicit rather than implicit.
• There's a clear socioeconomic message instead of just general empathy
• The Soul Cages contains a song which condemns the failures of organized religion while Ten Summoner's Tales has a song that reinforces parts of Church Doctrine.
• The incorporation of structures out of fable and fairy tail into the narrative and imagery of shipbuilding and fishing is especially appealing to myself and others into fantasy works (ie D&D players)
• It's informed by the artist's personal grief and more importantly the accompanying realization that his success resulted in alienation between his world and his father's world - thus his own inability to identify with his roots stands as a personal counterpoint which reinforces the album's overall examination of work and class issues.

I have only one problem with a large chunk of Country music.

I REALLY don't want to hear a millionaire musician sing to me about what a "hard workin' blue collar man" he is. Dude, you snort lines of coke off no fewer than 3 hookers' asses every night. No. No you do NOT work hard. You don't fucking work AT ALL.

I can honestly buy gangster rap better, because you CAN in fact be a millionaire musician and still be a terrible person and a criminal (See: Ol' Dirty Bastard)

Other than that, I don't have an issue with it. And occasionally, you find some musicians that really "get" it.

As far as Johnny Cash goes: He lived the rock and roll lifestyle before people who sang rock and roll lived it. That should count for something.

Josh: What would you classify Sting as, then?

Also, you've made a very convincing argument for me to get The Soul Cages like RIGHT MEOW. I will as soon as the check clear.

Ted the Flayer wrote:I REALLY don't want to hear a millionaire musician sing to me about what a "hard workin' blue collar man" he is. Dude, you snort lines of coke off no fewer than 3 hookers' asses every night. No. No you do NOT work hard. You don't fucking work AT ALL.

If this were true, it might go a long way towards making modern country music more tolerable. I can't help but think that Taylor Swift would be immensely improved by a heroin addiction.

Sting is very much 80s pop/rock. You can throw in a little bit of experimental.

I would agree, but I wouldn't limit my perspective on this to just Country music. I dislike all music that needs fireworks, nearly naked people, big groups dancing in sync, and any of a thousand other gimmicks to draw in an audience. I don't need a laser light show, a lady in a plastic bubble, or a bunch of poser pageantry to enjoy a concert.

I have far more respect for artists who write their own songs and music, rather than having it fed to them by the label's in-house pop music regurgitation machine.

Remember the Super Bowl show the Black Eyed Peas did a year or two ago? Ridiculous. The costumes with the LED lights in them and stuff? The kind of music I enjoy speaks for itself.

I'm not a big George Strait fan, but I went to one of his shows in Vegas about ten years ago. It was him on stage with a guitar. His band was in the background. That's it. No wardrobe malfunctions, no smoke machines, no jets of phosphorous flame, and none of that other nonsense. Just the guy singing some songs. I respected that even though I know he probably didn't write any of them.

By contrast, I'm completely fine with performers being performers.

A degree of spectacle is fine - Howlin' Wolf used to climb the curtains at his shows - it's the rhetoric of such performances that annoys and repels me.

TBH, I've never been able to relate to all the bile directed at in-house writers and producers, either, since aside from making attribution more complicated there isn't really anything that inherently shady about such collaborations. Cynicism and autotune jokes aside* it's not like music is being created by autonomous knowbots somewhere in a dark lab. For example, there was a lot of shady promotional and business practices going down in Motown back in the day but I fail to see how that diminishes the songwriting talents of Holland–Dozier–Holland, The Clan or The Corporation. At the end of the day someone still had to write I Want You Back and clearly they knew what they were doing; any moral quandaries you want to bring up have more to do with money than anything else.

And weirdly enough, country is a genre where there's some really odd dynamics at play with attribution vs. how the music is actually presented to people. For example, George Strait may go on stage and impress everyone by standing as a man alone but that's actually kind of deceptive when you consider that he, you know, has a backing band and has described his songwriting style as lazy and often dependent on contributing writers in interviews. I don't really mean that as a knock on the guy, mind you, since stage presentation aside he's honest about it and in any case I don't mind performers largely just being performers. But it does hit me as weird that value is attributed to his man alone on stage shtick when music is inherently collaborative more often than not. I mean, aesthetically I get it--less is more and all-- but I'm super suspicious of using that criteria to judge music in general.

*Besides, the authenticity obsessed line of reasoning I'm talking about rather predates a lot of electronic music practices anyway.

I'm glad Josh Kablack mentioned "The Soul Cages". It's one of the best albums ever, for many reasons of which most he already listed.

Also, no mention of David Allan Coe's "Underground" albums? They're pretty offensive on the level of... 2 Live Crew, I guess. The music is great- that rock-informed slick 70s country that wouldn't be too out of place on a ZZ Top or Neil Young album. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPNX9WBw1rs