Parisians Never Visit the Eiffel Tower
December 9th, 2007And folks from Tokyo never visit the Tokyo Tower.
In a similar vein, lately (in the past several years sense, not the past several weeks sense), I’ve been getting into the music that I took for granted living in Texas. My last boom was Tejano music, which I actually listened to proactively when I lived in Texas, but not enough to know a single artist’s name or buy any albums.
And now, of all things, considering I used to be Mr. I Like All Music Except Hip Hop and Country, I’ve got a hankerin’ for country music. Not the new pop country, but the violin, steel guitar, played in the background in bars type country music. Stuff I could have listened to anytime I wanted in Houston (where the main rock station got turned into a country station), but never did.
I also sincerely regret never having been to a rodeo (15 years in Texas, and I never went, not even once), or having been to a monster truck rally. Gotta rectify those sometime soon.
December 11th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
speaking as an Austinite, i will posit that the Tejano music might be one of those things that you only miss when it’s not around, but i can’t say for sure, since it’s *totally inescapable*
December 11th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Actually, it turns out that Tejano stands the test of proactive listening, and country music doesn’t. I found a bunch of Tejano music which I just plain like, but the country music I downloaded…hrm. Sounds good playing in the background of a BBQ joint, but on my ipod, not so great.
Oh, and random trivia for the day: I played some Tejano music for my wife, and her impression was “it sounds like Disneyland”. Turns out the only place she’s heard that polka-like music are in the Americana-themed parts of Disneyland, and since Tejano is strongly polka influenced, she just thinks of the entire “oom-pah” sound as being Disneylike.
December 13th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Johnny Cash, man. The video for Trent’s ‘Hurt’ makes my eyes get things in them that I need to wipe out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go
December 26th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I think sometime in the 70s, the old-school country family line mostly got sucked into rock (Skynard, etc), folk/blugrass, or went underground. During the late 70s / early 80s, country (like you might find in country bars) became more gimmicky. I think this happened around the same time that Dukes of Hazard and Smokey and the Bandit were big. You have “Devil went down to Georgia” and “The Gambler” which are kinda catchy and cute. This slowly transformed into more gimicky and poppy country, which slowly became the crap that is country music today. I think the history of Jazz is similar. There are some minor non-mainstream Jazz musicians keeping the tradition alive, but most mainstream Jazz (while not so Kenny G-ish anymore) is mostly from the Miles Davis fusion tradition, which I personally don’t appreciate. Perhaps, this is a more general musical trend of pumping out catchy, gimmicky, poppy music because it sells. Ultimately, what gets played in bars is the “hits” from yesterday.
December 27th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
I went into Cavender’s Boot City yesterday, and they were just playing pop music by people with southern accents. I’m guessing that at this rate, country as a genre will disappear entirely in about 5 years or so.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
During the late 90’s-early 2000’s I noticed the odd popping up of mainstream pop songs (such as Fields of Gold, “I Swear”, or whatever, etc.) being covered by both Nashville groups and R$B artists, usually at the same time. It happened a few times, probably more than I noticed, and always seemed really weird to me since I’d already been watching both those genres become stereotypically bland and xerox-y.