Noise We Enjoys

[Thad]

Okay, frog, I'll bite. So many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side? Name two that aren't Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

[Mongrel]

I don't know that these songs were intended to dovetail so neatly (or that any connection was intended at all), but when they randomly played so near to each other I couldn't help but notice how well they fit together.

[Thad]

I'm generally not terribly interested in awards, but Tracy Chapman winning best song at the CMAs is pretty fucking cool.

I've spent the last couple of decades specifying that "I like old country", but if this is what new country is, it may finally be time to drop the qualifier.

Maybe. I mean, it is a cover of a song from 1988.

Anyway, here's the Luke Combs version of Fast Car



and here's the Chapman original.

[Mongrel]

Tracy Chapman's win is indeed nice, but I'm not sure I see country reinventing itself once more.

When you say "old country" IMO you're talking about a profound shift that was both musical and topical. In the late 70's through most of the 80's you see a great shift. The old traditionalists - The Osborne Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, or other bluegrass acts - as well as the socially-conscious Outlaw Country singers - Johnny Cash, Kris Kristoffersen, etc. - who had dominated country in the 60's were almost universally struggling. 1980's Johnny Cash material is some real desperation fare.

So, looking at the two shifts, musically we saw the adoption of much stronger pop-rock elements by many artists, which made country less distinguishable from those genres. When I grew up my understanding of country was as a supposedly-dying genre with jokes about old country musicians struggling to reinvent themselves or even to find work, and even with new artists like Garth Brooks rising to popularity in the 90's I found it hard to understand what made country compelling, since to my ears it was just very twangy pop.

Which leads into the second shift, the subject matter of songs. Singers began to shy away from deeper moral messaging in favour of a shallower (for lack of a better term) "lifestyle reinforcement". This is a broad generalization but I feel country songs had drifted into speaking about all the most superficial elements of country, boots and trucks and horses or going to church, without the emotional depth or empathy country was formerly as capable of as any other genre. Conservatives increasingly adopted country music as a dogwhistle and a sleazy shortcut to populist appeal; this phenomenon is perhaps best summed up by any image of Ronald Regan in cowboy boots.

The thing which links those two shifts is folk music. IMO, "true" country has a significant folk element and in the 80's country almost entirely turned away from its folk heritage and didn't really replace it with anything substantial, either musically or spiritually.

There have been fits and spurts of artists readopting the older folk elements and producing some great music, even as they mix with new musical forms - Old Town Road was a huge hit for example! But I'm still waiting to see the genre turn the corner in a bigger way. I think the most recent example of this I've seen was to a recent song and artist which came out of nowhere, Rich Men North of Richmond, by Oliver Anthony. It's a magnificent yet horrifically torn song:



It's from the heart, as real as anything - worthy of the country label in the truest sense and bears its musical folk (and blues!) heritage proudly. The whole album is easily worth listening to. And yet... the right-wing elements are there. Anthony has repeatedly said he has no political affiliation and isn't trying to take a "side", but at the same time he's begun to appear on conservative shows. He's not used to fame, and I believe he honestly thinks in his own mind that he's speaking from an "impartial" point of view, but the pervasive poison of GOP nonsense is still in there, in the deeply heartfelt songs of a man struggling to understand a world which bewilders and tortures him.

I don't mean that true country music must always be from a left-wing point of view. A good country singer is a preacher in many ways, but a preacher on puppet strings, even unawares, is just a mouthpiece, a tool. Country artists have no obligation to be progressive, but I do think they have to tell the truth - and not just their "personal" truth - because art which lies only serves fascists, and there's few things I can think of which are less "country" than fascism.

It's in there, country music trying to find itself again. I don't know if it will or not.

[Grath]

Or, put more succinctly to a country-esque backing track,

[nosimpleway]

"If you don't respect our troops I will shit myself and cry" has been a chart-topper for the last 22 years

[Mongrel]

Speaking of country, I'd heard the name Roy Clark mentioned with a sort of awe before but never watched any videos - I only knew him as a goofball on Hee Haw, which isn't exactly a show I watched much of.

Well, now I have and JFC, this picking and showmanship is absolutely insane. This is some Hardware Store-levels of madness.

[Büge]

[Niku]

[Büge]

I just learned this was a thing

[Mongrel]

There's no way that album's not some kind of a wink at Shatner.

[Friday]

country

I grew up loving pop music (probably mostly thanks to all my mom's old 80s records she played all the time, Thriller, Annie Lennox) and still love it to this day. I don't even care what fucking country it comes from, I'll listen to Kpop (though I am not an insane person) and Jpop and fucking, I don't know, whatever autotuned horseshit that only has two keys or whatever. I don't give a single fuck that all the music elitists shit on pop music and call it simple or vapid or lacking message. You can sit in your tweed jacket and your ivory tower and fucking puff on your expensive pipe all you want while you listen to jazz, but only a specific kind of jazz. Your life is as uninspiring and empty and vapid to me as you think "the masses" are, thanks anyway. Have fun never watching television.

All that being said I actually enjoyed the more "pop" country that was becoming popular growing up as a teen. All around me country fans bitched endlessly about it while I secretly enjoyed having more music to listen to that I liked. And I maintained that I didn't like country.

Then I neared thirty and listened to Johnny Cash for the first time.

Holy shit, was that an eye-opening experience. Ear-opening, whatever.

I realized suddenly that it wasn't that I hated country, it was that I hadn't listened to the right country. To this day I maintain that if you don't like Johnny Cash, you are some sort of soulless husk.

anyway, then I dove right into "classic" country or whatever you want to call it, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson especially, and never looked back.

Meanwhile, that pop country I used to love as a teen has slowly morphed into a diseased propaganda mouthpiece for fascist psychopaths, so that's cool.

[Mongrel]

Annie Lennox has an amazing voice.

Pop doesn't get credit for this as often as it should but a shitload of it is carried by plain fantastic singers singing to whatever backing tune someone slapped together, be a corpo writer or the label's house band, or whatever, and that's just fine.

I don't think there's a genre I don't listen to anymore. There's ones I need more of, but really the only thing that is broadly missing from my music collection is foreign artists who're not singing primarily in English. I have bits and pieces here and there, like say, for Africa I have a few songs by Miriam Makeba of South Africa and a few more by Fela Kuti of Nigeria* but that's basically it; it's really thin. There's so much out there it's insane.

Except for Europe (including Eastern Europe), which has maintained only two genres since roughly 1990: Eurovision competitors and whatever the local flavour of House/Techno/EDM is. Well, and Scandinavia basically owns all of metal now. So I guess that's three.

*In being emblematic of their country's respective popular musical genres the conversation usually goes "Fela Kuti is basically the Nigerian Bob Marley.""Well, no, Bob Marley is actually like the Jamaican Fela Kuti."

[nosimpleway]

[KingRoyal]

Someone finally released the OST for classic game Rat Taxi

[Mongrel]

Someone finally released the OST for classic game Rat Taxi

Hottest game soundtrack of 2002.

Dude has quite a lot of fun stuff.

[Mongrel]

It was inevitable that I would in fact seek this song out.



It's not entirely ironic either, they are in fact a furry band.



Comments also great:

@dean7005: How do i book them for my wedding
@lewis3497: How do I book them for my funeral
@zeapsin186: How do I book them for my daughter's 16th birthday
@arctic_shadow578: If pepper isint at my funeral singing this i aint dying

[Thad]

Just put baby to bed in their own room for the first time.

I sang this as a goodnight song.



Baby screamed for half an hour and then passed out. Which...actually went easier than I expected, but it's still early.

[Büge]

[Mongrel]

I was fairly confused for a moment, expecting a parody of