Contemporary country is pure BS

In my opinion, the best place to look for real country music these days is Robert Earl Keen. Check him out, you will not be disappointed. His live shows are legendary.

 

Risking a (probably small) chance of outing myself, I lived the first 19 years of my life in the the town home to The Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, the town that's the birthplace of Tex Ritter and Jim Reeves. Heck, my high school alma mater's baseball field is Jim Reeves Memorial Field.

Legends such as Willie, Billy Joe Shaver, and many others are enshrined in the TCMHOF . (Don't get the wrong idea - the town's county borders Louisiana, so envision thick woods, rivers, creeks, bayous, pines and cypresses, so pretty much the Deep South. In other words, nothing like the rest of Texas, but that's a different soapbox issue.)

That said, I'm more of a blues/southern rock guy, but still, I've more than dabbled in great country such as the afforementioned beasts: Willie, Waylon, Cash, Merle, George, Hank Jr., David Allan Coe, Mel McDaniel, and others.

Garth Brooks was the beginning of the end of country music. The only tolerable songs he ever made were "Friends in Low Places" and "Callin' Baton Rouge."

And George Strait is respected as a legit country artist. I make the parallel of him to his favorite basketball team - the Spurs. Everybody that's not them hates 'em, calls them boring, plain, vanilla. But the Spurs have four titles in nine years, and Strait has 56 No. 1s in the past three decades, so they must be doing something right. In fact, one of my best friends once said, "Talking bad about George Strait is almost as bad as talking bad about Jesus." That friends icons are George Jones, Conway Twitty, Willie, Waylon, and Merle.

The new wave has really made country music awful: Keith Urban and Dierks Bentley, and other feathered-haired posers, Kenny Chesney, Craig Morgan, and other party-time posers; and Montgomery Gentry, Toby Keith, and other patriotism-first posers.

And don't forget the country boy band, Rascal Flatts. Horrid. There's nothing country about that, except the bad fake country accent the lead singer tries to execute.

Anyway, contemporary country is indeed pure BS. Trace Adkins and Toby Keith should never be able to make another song the rest of their lives. And I know plenty of people who call this new "Texas Country" of Pat Green, Cross Canadian Ragweed, and groups of the like posers themselves, and I agree. It's just alt-country-pop.

Steve Earle, Kris Kristofferson, and all the other outlaws are the real country artists. With a few exceptions, such as Strait. The jury's still out on Alan Jackson.

Two personal favorites are Jerry Reed and Tony Joe White. White's "Poke Salad Annie" is a must for Yankees wanting a little Southern culture.

 

I guess if we're looking for someone to blame we can blame the record companies who imported execs from the coasts and figured the only way to sell more records is to broaden or water-down the product and make it more "poppy." I also blame Dan Snyder who now owns the ACM awards (which explains the TV and sports folks) and heck, I'm surprised Reba got away with taking a shot at Roger Clemens in front of a country music crowd.
And to be honest, I've been listening to a lot more bluegrass than country in recent years.

 

This might be a simplistic way of looking at it, but I've long considered 1990/2000s contemporary country as Top 40 with a twang. Same sappy lyric, catchy hook, song structure, lowest common denominator factor ... there's really not much difference.

That said, I'm not a fan. I like my artists to take risks, even if it blows up in their face.

 

"Sunday Morning Coming Down" has one of the greatest backstories of any country song.

Kris Kristofferson was working as a janitor at Columbia records. He had been warned about pitching songs to any of the artists.

He had a song he wanted to get to Cash, so he stole a National Guard helicopter and landed it in Cash's yard early one Sunday morning. He handed Cash some stuff, he liked it, wanted to record it, and from that pile of music, "Sunday Morning Coming Down" was born.

 

Polk Salad Annie is indeed a great, great song, but I've never considered it country.

 

Trey owns this album ...

 

Admittedly, I do.

 

Don't beat yourself up too much. I own a copy as well.

 

I can understand that, but in today's musical world where everything has to be categorized specifically, what else would you call it? Maybe southern rock? Folk rock?

It doesn't really matter what it is. It's pure gold ...

"Poke Salad Annie ... Gator's got your granny ... chomp ... chomp chomp."

So is "Willie and Laura Mae Jones." Shelby Lynne does a good new cover of it.

 

That Chris Gaines thing is still unbelievable.

I'm not gonna hate, though. I own the single of "Make 'Em Say Uggghhh" by Master P.

 

Country music today is '80s hair metal with a twang. A good chunk of the songwriters and producers in Nashville right now were involved in hair metal.