"Yer cheatin' heart will tell on you..."
Jesus, how scary. Heipel blogging about music.
As the old line goes, there are only two types of music -- country & western.
When my brother used to paint houses for a living -- in that interim period of his life when he skipped classes on the way to flunking out of high school and finally getting a good public service job with a fat pension plan -- his boss was a country music fanatic. My brother and his co-workers would get hell when the boss would drive onto a job site, stand at the bottom of the ladder and scream, "Who fuckin' changed the station on the truck radio!" The boys would also wait until the boss was way up a ladder or on scaffolding painting and then change the portable radio sitting on the grass to a station away from the local country station (jeebus, I even remember the station letters: CKNX -- "Swingin' Wingham" we used to call it, as Wingham was the town from which it originated).
Anyway, the boss in his country music fanaticism had the last laugh -- he soldered the radios in such a way that they were forever tuned to Swingin' Wingham. Within a year both my brother and his two co-workers were rabid country & western music fans.
And I know how it works. I've been mostly indifferent to music all my life, except when it's bad and unavoidable, then I tend to get an opinion (FM rock anyone?). It was hard to remain indifferent though, once immersed in torch and twang.
The first radio station I worked at was a country station and I became hooked in very short order. This was just before commercial country music finished its transformation into the bloody, heartless, mindless, homogeneous pile of steaming shit it has for the most part become. In the early '80s Waylon, Willy, Merle, Loretta, Tom T. Hall, Hank Jrn, et al, were still getting air for their new work, and their predecessors (Hank Srn, Kitty Wells, Eddy Arnold, etc) were still getting airplay. There were new singers still of that tradition too -- poets set to a steel guitar, but all were getting crowded out by the drive to bring country to the masses. (And thus, too, the Urban Cowboy thing popped up.) All that was good about C&W changed with Achey Breaky Heart I think -- the worst country song ever written. Oh, there'd been lots of cute novelty songs in country music, of course, but with irony, not schlock filled stupidity. And I noted recently, with shock and sadness, that the marketing generated guy who made that damn song a hit continues to be a massively popular country "star." Maybe he should drink a few Jim Beams too many and take Garth Brooks for a car ride...
I was thinking all this as my iPod continues to shuffle me country tunes. THE greatest country song ever written must surely be George Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today." A song about a man's funeral -- the day he finally stopped loving the woman who left him years before. "First time I've seen him smile in years..." God, love that song. Also love the shuffle feature as I can go from Johnny Cash to Mozart and it tain't disconcerting at all. Now to go from Mozart to Celine Dion -- thank you Apple for the skip feature.
Merle Haggard has an old song with somewhat cryptic lyrics, but with a close listen one realizes the narrator is in a mental hospital; crazy from a broken heart. Somthing like, "My doctors brought me new crayons today..."
When you work at a country music station you learn these things -- a British study found that the young, for the most part, don't like country music because it is too real. That surely will not be the case anymore -- it's a study now at least 20 years old. What once often formed the foundation of a refrain in country music -- a witty play on words -- and was a hallmark of many country songs, is now the very empty essence of modern country music and it is tired, tired, tired and bland. If the turns of phrase were any good it might be different. But they aren't (the only criterion seems to be that a rhyme is achieved) and the songs ain't about hurtin' anymore they're about failed attempts to write songs around a single, cute line of lyrics.
I understand Loretta Lynn has scored a hit off her new album. An album I scorned after a couple listens, but that I now think brilliant. All I heard those first couple of listens was the rock producer's influence and it was jarring. But in the end the country takes control. There is a cut on the album where Loretti (if I may be so bold as to call her that) just talks about when she was a kid and her momma steals a pair of red shoes for her daughter (Loretta). Amazing how fame and fortune can't erase Butcher Holler from that woman. A splendid two minutes. By gawd, what a delightful backwoods redneck. As an aside, Sissy Spacek (sp?) is wonderful as Loretta in the movie Coal Miner's Daughter.
Merle's new album a couple years back was brilliant too. One particular song about watching old friends get drunk and do cocaine is a particularly painful and poignant song of post-addiction and aging. It got no airplay, of any consequence. I emailed a good friend who programs two country radio stations in Alberta and asked him his opinion of that album. The response was not encouraging -- "Hey, I'd heard Merle has a new album..." This is a man I used to drink myself blind with (before work), the whine of steel guitars filling his brown-shag-carpeted, fake-wood-paneled basement as, with booze prompted maudlin tears further blinding us, we bemoaned the death of real country music even then.
Randy Travis - give me a fucking break. His was the last country concert I attended (someone else bought the tickets). Hmmm, might not have been him, but another of his clones. I fell fast asleep in the concert. My friends literally had to wake me up to take me home when it was over.
As the old line goes, there are only two types of music -- country & western.
When my brother used to paint houses for a living -- in that interim period of his life when he skipped classes on the way to flunking out of high school and finally getting a good public service job with a fat pension plan -- his boss was a country music fanatic. My brother and his co-workers would get hell when the boss would drive onto a job site, stand at the bottom of the ladder and scream, "Who fuckin' changed the station on the truck radio!" The boys would also wait until the boss was way up a ladder or on scaffolding painting and then change the portable radio sitting on the grass to a station away from the local country station (jeebus, I even remember the station letters: CKNX -- "Swingin' Wingham" we used to call it, as Wingham was the town from which it originated).
Anyway, the boss in his country music fanaticism had the last laugh -- he soldered the radios in such a way that they were forever tuned to Swingin' Wingham. Within a year both my brother and his two co-workers were rabid country & western music fans.
And I know how it works. I've been mostly indifferent to music all my life, except when it's bad and unavoidable, then I tend to get an opinion (FM rock anyone?). It was hard to remain indifferent though, once immersed in torch and twang.
The first radio station I worked at was a country station and I became hooked in very short order. This was just before commercial country music finished its transformation into the bloody, heartless, mindless, homogeneous pile of steaming shit it has for the most part become. In the early '80s Waylon, Willy, Merle, Loretta, Tom T. Hall, Hank Jrn, et al, were still getting air for their new work, and their predecessors (Hank Srn, Kitty Wells, Eddy Arnold, etc) were still getting airplay. There were new singers still of that tradition too -- poets set to a steel guitar, but all were getting crowded out by the drive to bring country to the masses. (And thus, too, the Urban Cowboy thing popped up.) All that was good about C&W changed with Achey Breaky Heart I think -- the worst country song ever written. Oh, there'd been lots of cute novelty songs in country music, of course, but with irony, not schlock filled stupidity. And I noted recently, with shock and sadness, that the marketing generated guy who made that damn song a hit continues to be a massively popular country "star." Maybe he should drink a few Jim Beams too many and take Garth Brooks for a car ride...
I was thinking all this as my iPod continues to shuffle me country tunes. THE greatest country song ever written must surely be George Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today." A song about a man's funeral -- the day he finally stopped loving the woman who left him years before. "First time I've seen him smile in years..." God, love that song. Also love the shuffle feature as I can go from Johnny Cash to Mozart and it tain't disconcerting at all. Now to go from Mozart to Celine Dion -- thank you Apple for the skip feature.
Merle Haggard has an old song with somewhat cryptic lyrics, but with a close listen one realizes the narrator is in a mental hospital; crazy from a broken heart. Somthing like, "My doctors brought me new crayons today..."
When you work at a country music station you learn these things -- a British study found that the young, for the most part, don't like country music because it is too real. That surely will not be the case anymore -- it's a study now at least 20 years old. What once often formed the foundation of a refrain in country music -- a witty play on words -- and was a hallmark of many country songs, is now the very empty essence of modern country music and it is tired, tired, tired and bland. If the turns of phrase were any good it might be different. But they aren't (the only criterion seems to be that a rhyme is achieved) and the songs ain't about hurtin' anymore they're about failed attempts to write songs around a single, cute line of lyrics.
I understand Loretta Lynn has scored a hit off her new album. An album I scorned after a couple listens, but that I now think brilliant. All I heard those first couple of listens was the rock producer's influence and it was jarring. But in the end the country takes control. There is a cut on the album where Loretti (if I may be so bold as to call her that) just talks about when she was a kid and her momma steals a pair of red shoes for her daughter (Loretta). Amazing how fame and fortune can't erase Butcher Holler from that woman. A splendid two minutes. By gawd, what a delightful backwoods redneck. As an aside, Sissy Spacek (sp?) is wonderful as Loretta in the movie Coal Miner's Daughter.
Merle's new album a couple years back was brilliant too. One particular song about watching old friends get drunk and do cocaine is a particularly painful and poignant song of post-addiction and aging. It got no airplay, of any consequence. I emailed a good friend who programs two country radio stations in Alberta and asked him his opinion of that album. The response was not encouraging -- "Hey, I'd heard Merle has a new album..." This is a man I used to drink myself blind with (before work), the whine of steel guitars filling his brown-shag-carpeted, fake-wood-paneled basement as, with booze prompted maudlin tears further blinding us, we bemoaned the death of real country music even then.
Randy Travis - give me a fucking break. His was the last country concert I attended (someone else bought the tickets). Hmmm, might not have been him, but another of his clones. I fell fast asleep in the concert. My friends literally had to wake me up to take me home when it was over.
posted by Heipel at
10:28 AM
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