I referred to the Lefsetz letter in a previous post. In it he aoso talked about the rise of country music and predicts its continued ascendance.
I will post an extract in the comments.
I had my late twenties daughter down. What to play ?
Easy – country. Stadium country is the go but it is a short walk to real roots country.
Everyone happy.
Country music – the bridge to your kids
by 57 Comments
Lefsetz comments: Country will grow and grow. Country is the new hip-hop, but the northern elite controlled media continues to look down upon it, hating the same people who they believe are ignorant and voted for Trump. Country is rock in sheep’s clothing. Rock devolved into Active Rock, a marginalized format that you need a decoder and a deep knowledge of history to understand while country took the big guitars of rock anthems, added choruses and gained mindshare. Furthermore, to this day country acts, unlike pop acts, are not dependent upon hits, they are building careers, and careers are forever.
Tonight’s bridge:
‘bin the same story for some time now. I read Lefsetz all the time, and he’s on the money here, though country’s ongoing ascendency is not a risky prediction. Bluegrass has been gradually building a huge upswell of players and listeners over here in Europe for decades. The Tape With No Name was put out in 1987, already slightly behind the curve in fact but all the same laudably unafraid to shout its wares at a time that seemed swamped by huge rock bands. These days the number of acoustic gigs in the tour calendar has never been better, as far as I can see. Call it country, call it folk, it’s the same thread; anyone can play it, anyone can sing it, anyone can dance to it, it’s older than rock and it’ll be played around post-apocalyptic campfires long after the last Les Paul has been burnt for firewood.
Through no encouragement of mine, the Offsprings (late teen & early 20s) are going through a phase of 1980s classic pop. I’ve heard a lot of George Michael and Hall & Oates recently.
I have – mostly – resisted the urge to say “I’ve got that on 12 inch” and the like.
At a recent cafe vinyl afternoon, a young lady – mid-30s at a guess – asked me for some Lionel Richie.
Me: “I don’t have any with me, but I have the Commodores”.
Her: “Was he in a band, then?”
Most wouldn’t know that
Junior is right. We know all this interesting stuff, fentonsteve, because we lived through it. and we’re music nerds.
Lionel Richie left the Commodores in 1982, which was a decade before the poor lass was born.
How much do I know about the music of the 1940s? Not a lot!
Glenn Miller was a GOD.
But Paddy McGinty was the GOAT.
Arf!
It does seem there’s a new conservatism abroad. Young women want to stay at home with their children, young people don’t want to drink or take drugs, there’s a greater interest in the church, the right are gaining power. I’m not saying country has to be conservative necessarily but the big selling acts have that association. Sometimes things are just trendy but I do wonder. Something seemingly comforting in it’s more wholesome connotations, as compared with hiphop and general raunch and wilder carrying-ons.
Country music is big on singalong melody. That’s pretty irresistible.
Also generally the songs tell stories that most people can relate to.
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store.
@Vulpes-Vulpes my dad wasn’t big into music but he absolutely loved that song and would sing it to us on family car outings to the Cotswolds.
In these days of indigestion it is oftentimes a question
As to what to eat and what to leave alone.
Every microbe and bacillus has a different way to kill us
And in time they all will claim us for their own.
There are germs of every kind in every food that you can find
In the market or upon the bill of fare.
Drinking water’s just as risky as the so-called “deadly” whiskey
And it’s often a mistake to breathe the air.
I hear you, Diddley but it’s also true that people have always loved a tune & a story & when they’re combined well it can be hard to beat.
Apparently Charlie Parker ( surely the personification of uber cool in any era) castigated his acolytes for snorting at ‘corny’ Hank Williams on jukeboxes, pointing out that the stories Hank told were universal & timeless.
Country has always wrestled with its veneer of God fearing, conservative conformity & the actuality of many of its biggest stars living lives of hell raising train wreckery – Hank, George, Waylon, Willie etc or being far more radical than a 1st glance may suggest- the amazing support Dolly has given to education programmes that being an obvious example – not to mention a fair sprinkling of left leaning types like Steve Earl or more recently Jason Isbell.
The giant acts will invariably be going for the widest possible market & therefore won’t rock any boats, yet the biggest of them all – Ms T Swift makes no bones about her affiliation & doesn’t seem to have suffered.
Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of country, especially when it’s an influence in rock like The Byrds or Neil Young. I just wonder about why now, why it’s growing and is big. I don’t necessarily know the full answer but it feels like it’s part of a trend in society, a conservative one. Just pondering really. I do like Taylor Swift too. But not the big, bland, new, cheesier country acts around today. I like older hit tunes here and there, the likes of Dolly. It’s everywhere in music so there’s something for everyone.
It certainly channels a set of values more liberal listeners don’t like. This caused massive debate last year which completely passed me by until I heard Dorian Lynsky mention it as a rare example of a right wing protest song. A reductive comment it its own right but I know what he means. Banned on many platforms, it was a huge hit.
If they’re anything like 21st Century RnB’s bastardized dilution of the genre from which it took its name, “new” country releases hold little interest for me.
For me, the prospect of exploring older sub-genres such as – say – Texas honky tonk seems far more appealing than checking out “modern day” takes on country such as Beyonce’s Coach Carter.
Doubt if Beyonce or her record company will be losing any sleep of my doing so as I’m not really the target audience for that sort of record
Cowboy Carter, y’all.
Yee – and indeed – Hah!
Country or Americana or Folk or whatever is my favourite genre for years. It probably started with Emmylou Harris with her Hot band, it certainly took root with Costello covering George Jones and others and really branched out with Steve Earle and his Guitar Town album.
Although not necessarily a fan Taylor Swift deserves huge credit for passing the baton to a younger audience.
If credit for starting it all should go to anyone, it should surely be
Gram Parsons…
Hmm, possibly, given he managed to steer an existing chart band further toward classic country, but the bluegrass background of Chris Hillman was very much part the catalyst Parsons alighted on.
Time to dig out my copy of Pete Frame’s Rock Family Trees and take a deep dive into his huge Byrds spread…
The cover of History of the Byrds reprints this and has led me down and up many a rabbit warren over the years. Almost as many as the cover of History of Fairport Convention, another double album purchased much around the same time, when I was about 14. Both bands and their entangled offshoots continue to feed much my listening today.
There was a Fairport 12″ of Meet on the Ledge which had an updated version of Pete Frame’s Fairport’Tree as an insert.
@Jaygee I was referring to my own start.
I discovered Emmylou first and then to Gram afterwards.
And, to be fair, without Emmylou championing his songbook posthumously, would he have been much more than one of many ex-Byrds? He would still be a giant here, but elsewhere? (Indeed, how well known is he, even amongst the so-called new country renaissance artists with their pappy derivatives?)
@retropath2
@SteveT
Had GP not discovered and nurtured her, EH would never have got to champion his songbook, retro.
@SteveT, know you and I attended quite a few of the same early-/mid-70s concerts in Brum. Were you by any chance at the one EH and the Hot Band did in support of Elite Hotel at the Odeon in – IIRC – Spring or Summer of 1975.
Read somewhere years later that EH’s support on that tour was Guy Clark although have no recollection of seeing him that night
That’s true, of course it is, but she then was able to take those same songs to a wider audience than had Gram, with or without her.
I saw Emmylou at Hammy Odeon on that tour, early 1976. Here’s, apparently, the setlist:
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/emmylou-harris-and-the-hot-band/1976/hammersmith-odeon-london-england-73f54259.html
I saw them at the New Victoria in November 1975. According to setlist.fm she came over and did just that gig and one in Amsterdam and then went back again. Odd. Anyway, it was a magical evening. Here she is rocking out at that gig.
Shit-eating grin time. That is f*ckin’ brilliant.
His record company certainly understood Gram’s importance. Here’s my copy of Grievous Angel, complete with the Warner’s press pack that went out with this re-issue. Hope you can read the print:
Record company bigging up a potential bacon bringer home? There’s a first!
(Even if I agree the broad thrust of their argument.)
Guitar Town was the thing that really made my ears prick up, and I’ve been listening to music in that general area a lot, ever since. I would say that ‘my’ era is the Uncle Tupelo-Wilco-Son Volt-Jayhawks one, aka. No Depression.
My Dad had Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and I knew every note so I was in from an early age.
Same here – and …at San Quentin.
Not a fan of all these New Country “hat acts”*.
Old-school Country can give hip-hop a run for it’s money with stories of infidelity, revenge, prison, addiction, mayhem, poverty and murder.
* Lily-white Soft Rock tripe, mostly. Performed wearing big hats and with Southern accents, some of which are not genuine.
This is the right approach. I quite enjoyed hearing country music when driving long distances in the USA, especially if the lyrics were interesting, but on the M6, no thank you.
Big hats which are “not genuine”?
Too big.
Bigly big.
Weren’t “hat acts” the wave of identikit blue collar balladeers of the 1990s, yacht rock with pedal steel and stetsons?
Lefsetz , above, is right “ Country is rock in sheeps clothing …….. country took the big guitars of rock anthems, added choruses.
Those bigly big hats are classic rock with a twang.
Inspired by this thread, I’ve been skipping through an Apple Music playlist called Country Risers, allegedly made up of trailblazers and risk-takers. What’s weird is that nearly all the males have the same voice – that whiny high tenor and overdone Southern accent wearily familiar from big hat stadium country.
Bring back Waylon Jennings, I say.
Somewhere up there, Gram is workin’ up a version of this:
Love me some Dwight.
The other pivotal figure in the development of Country Rock who often gets overlooked is Mike Nesmith. His First and/or Second National Band line ups included Elvis Presley luminaries like James Burton and Ronnie Tutt, who later went on to play with either or both Gram P and Elvis C
Yes, indeed. Always seems to be forgotten in these discussions…
Yet whenever anyone recites that truism, I go back again, for another listen and, um, no. Not a patch. Many individuals played country music, few kicked off a fresh new slice of inspiration into it.
You say tomato…
I say who cares whether he’s country or not, he’s still absolutely brilliant. You don’t get lyrics like this in country music, steel guitars or not:
There was an element of majesty
In the way the lady said that she
Was leaving in the morning for the coast
Pivotal might be overstating it. Wrote some good songs and his brand visibility wouldn’t have done the genre any harm .
If Papa Nes had stuck with his Monkees’ era wooly hat, the future of country would have looked very different
Expand?
May well have ended up killing the trend for acts wearing big hats in its crib
Good point.