The Steel Guitar Forum

It's fun reading all the posts about the "sad state" of country music these days. I think it says a lot about the average age of the posters on this Forum. We're sounding like our parents. I used to tell my folks to stop living in the past and get over it. I told them they weren't going to change the way things were by complaining. Of course, I think they got a certain amount of enjoyment by complaining! It won't be long before the next generation will be complaining about tomorrow's music.

Most of the music of nashville today is just plain bad. It has nothing to do with generations. My kids are young and they think it is bad as well. When I hear Sugarland I am about to throw up. Her nasal twang makes me sick. Taylor Swift sings out of tune. etc. You think that is a generational thing, I think you are wrong...My opinion

Ron I agree.
I heard a new country song that the words made sense,
but the man singing it had no feeling. I said Porter Wagoner could take this song and put feeling in it.

On the other hand Lee, My daddy didnt care for my
era music when Faron Young and Ray Price came in.
He probably liked Jimmy Rodgers and Floyd Tilman.
But today's stuff is what Ron says.

My question is why does anybody even care enough about new country to waste so much time bitching about it? Why do you put yourself through the agony of watching these ridiculous awards shows anyway? I assume most people have ready access to both their music collection and/or satellite radio, where you can subject yourself to Hank and Lefty until the cows come home. Is it the lack of a unified public listening experience that has you longing for a time when music brought people together? That could be it.

I too prefer the older stuff, where the lyrics had substance and the music was well performed and arranged with feeling and sensibility. But unfortunately, the new generation (or at least the lemmings segment of it) is more focused on the beat, the image, the perfume, etc. There's not much to be done about it, really. But as far as being bugged about it, I'm not sure why you let yourself. If today's country is so bad, tune it out. You do have a choice. It's called the "off" button.

Lee does have a point about the generational thing, though. Imagine what Walt Whitman would think about the "artistry" of a Merle Haggard lyric, or what Charlie Christian would think of a Hendrix lighter fluid solo. For better or worse, popular music of today is a reflection of the larger mindset of the younger generation - as it has always been. I guess that back in the 50s and 60s people had less gadgets to distract themselves; therefore, it was more important to have a sensible lyric ("Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies, for example).

"Yabba dabba do, the king is gone - and so are you." George Jones.

Chris LeDrew wrote:My question is why does anybody even care enough about new country to waste so much time bitching about it? Why do you put yourself through the agony of watching these ridiculous awards shows anyway?

Exactly. I haven't had a TV for a couple of years now, but when I had, and accidentally found myself tuned in to some glitzy 'awards show' where the silicone boobs where only outnumbered by the silicone brains, I simply turned it off.

The good music is out there - whether it's country, jazz, blues, classical, rock - but you have to make an effort to find it!!
If you don't, and simply turn on the same lame show that almost gave you an ulcer last year, then you've only got yourselves to blame.

The industrial music business is obviously desperate and willing to do anything to make money,- "quality" has left the building.
So do some research, check out the struggling indie artists still making good music, and support them by buying their stuff instead of wasting time and energy on the most cynically fabricated and marketed products around.

Want classic country? Here's 414 titles I found by writing "classic country" in CD Baby's search field:
http://www.cdbaby.com/Search/Y2xhc3NpYyBjb3VudHJ5/3

"Old time country"? Here's 140 titles for you:
http://www.cdbaby.com/Search/b2xkIHRpbW ... eQ%3d%3d/3

It's all out there, but don't expect to find it by tuning in to the commercial mainstream media..

Amen, Steinar. When you're faced with a problem (bad commercial country), solve it by looking for quality country (as you've done with the above links) instead of lamenting the time when a lot of commercial country was actually good (face it, some classic country was as bad as what's there now). Complaining about it can be fun, but when 5-6 threads in this section are all focused on the same complaint, it starts to get pathetic.

I'm 48, and I consider myself too young to be of the 'classic country' generation. My parents listened to singers like Ray Price, Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Jean Shepherd, Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline, Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves, Faron Young, etc., etc., etc. I was exposed to some of that stuff when I was young, and I do like to listen to it, but it's not exactly music I grew up with. So I can't be a geezer who reminisces about the 'good old days' when country music was country.

When I reached my thirties I became one of those geezers who griped and complained about the state of rock music (the trend toward grunge, nu metal, and pop punk). Actually, the griping and complaining started at a much younger age, when I was about 16 and disco and corporate rock took hold in the late 1970s. But when I hit my thirties I was convinced that rock music died around 1975 and nothing good has come out since then.

Nowadays I really don't care what goes on in popular music - rock, country, or whatever. Music has become just a hobby for me, so I need not worry about following current trends.

Chris, I had a novelette about half written in another thread when i moved back and read your post before your last. I think that nails it pretty good. I am fortunate that I get to play in a classic country band that I love and a couple of great alt country bands that arent anything like the current commercial trend but they have what i think are some of the positive elements from it. Commercial/pop music is just that and always has been. Sometimes gold nuggets slip through the cracks and find the charts. There were crappy songs and crappy singers 40 years ago and there are now. Sometimes it's really great songs by crappy singers sometimes reverse sometimes obverse inverse and every combination. We remember the classics from the good ol days and we forget the junk from those times. I try not to listen to music that i dont like very much.

There's still some good musik out there
might be hard to find in the fog tho'
i'll agree w: sounding like our parents : in my time, it was better
each generation lives in it's past when they were at their zenith
what's to be considered is how can one sing w: conviction about these hard times ? when we're stuffed w: vittles, ridin' in an air conditioned shorts, & sittin' pretty in comfort on easy street
it was decades ago when we moved out of the country to settle in cities
many have lost their roots to urban living, times might still be cold as charity but mostly imo we've become a leisure society & we've got it too good
so what's left to sing about ?
Satire of the times, society & humanity have always been a mainstay

CrowBear I agree but I think that could start a whole new thread about responsibility and the work ethic that doesn't exist as it did in the past.
I don't dislike all of todays music, I just don't think there will be to many Ray Prices or Frank Sinatras.....from recent and current generations.
Some of the new "country" music is OK but it should be given a name for what it is and not lumped in with real country music.
Disco & rap are to music what etch-a-sketch is to art.

But... Chris LeDrew and Steinar, if you try to find work in a band and you go though their set- list, and all you can find is "why does everybody want to kick my ass" and/ or other "masterpieces", and therefore choose not to join them?
I'm just a back- up musician and non- pro, and I am depending on others if I want to play. I just can't find people anymore with a half decent repertoire.
I'm not lamenting, it just makes me sad.
Joachim

My two youngest are 30 and 32. They like the old music and agree that "county" is no longer county. CMA started prostituting its self back in the 90s big time. I was a member of the CMA for several years and my big dream was to go to the CMA awards show. Not too long after, they made it to where the musician part of the membership were not a part of the list to be able to buy tickets before they gave them out to the radio stations to be handed out to those that set in the back and scream. I dropped my membership and stopped watching the show. I will admit that this year, just for kicks, I watched till they gave the first award. I shut it off and threw up. Well not really but most of you will understand what I mean.
I want to move to Texas............

My gripe is not so much today's country, but the outragious way it's being presented. It's nothing short of heavey metal and getting worse. I want my country to sound country.If the truth be known, most of these artist feel the same. If you look close you can see the buttons on their back's.
BD

Her nasal twang makes me sick. Taylor Swift sings out of tune. etc.

Hey Ron, I'm not nuts about 'modern radio country' either, but I had to laugh when I read that. It's a good thing we've got old ET records to listen to... he never did any of that.. (I'm a huge ET fan BTW, no slam intended, he did what he did, and I like it)

I'm not jumping your case by any means, and I know what you're saying, but those are the very sentiments that lots of folks have about what we call traditional country, i.e. nasally twang, etc.

I think Chris makes a good point, I just don't watch what I don't like..

Chris and Steinar -

We are, once again, all in the same camp of thought.

I oft times wonder why this thread is resurrected time and time again. Its' almost as if some were fervently wishing that - by some magical mutation - country rock would be supplanted by "the good old days" or "classic country". It should have been quite evident some time ago that the past was just that - the past - and that we now had a choice to accept or reject the current edition of music under the guise of "country". It ain't gonna happen, folks, and I - most certainly - am not going to spend my valuable time wringing my hands and suffering under the "woe is me" syndrome.

Steinar alludes to the fact that our choice in music is in abundance - that all we have to do is to exert a little bit of effort in order to unearth it. It doesn't matter whether it's the local VFW or our CD collection. These are things well within our control - as is the knob on the TV. Knowing what to expect, I didn't bother tuning in to the CMA's.

Am I living in the past? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The certainty of it is that I govern what goes into these aged ears - a selective filter, if you will, which satisfies my personal sensibilities, desires, tastes. I dismiss - with impunity - that which is not to my liking or which offends me. The net result is to surround myself with beautiful music - regardless of genre - and to drown in the magic of it all while not squandering time attempting to change the unchangeable.

As I write this, I have a Ray Price CD playing in the background. Tends to make life good - to me. Isn't that what it's all about?

Respectfully,

Richard

Wow, we have CD Baby, mail order catalogues and our own ecclectic record collection. We even have a knob to turn off the radio! Thanks for the info!
But the public is left out.

As a baby boomer I have most all the stuff from my generation I want and when I look to further my collection of worthwhile music it greatly leans to stuff before my listening time. Rarely does anything from today pop my cork. But as always, you gotta sift thru the mountain of muck to find the few nuggets.

Joachim Kettner wrote: But the public is left out.

5.5 million CDs sold and $111 million paid to independent artists at CD Baby, currently over 250.000 CD titles in stock.
Only people "left out" are the ones who don't do their own research and choose to depend on the mainstream media to tell them what to buy.

CrowBear Schmitt wrote:we've become a leisure society & we've got it too good, so what's left to sing about ?

Some have it good, some don't. You are making a hasty generalization.

Ben Lawson wrote:responsibility and the work ethic that doesn't exist as it did in the past.

Things that were necessary in an industrial society that relied more on manual labour.

My Dad didn't like most of the rock music I listened to, but we agreed on Merle Haggard and Buck Owens.

Bill Dobkins wrote:My gripe is not so much today's country, but the outragious way it's being presented. It's nothing short of heavey metal and getting worse.
BD

You must not listen to much heavy metal.

This is most definitely a generational thing. Every generation, as it gets older, laments the passing of the good old days of music - subjectively, not objectively. We latch onto the era that appeals most to us, and dismiss what comes after.

Country music has changed dramatically. So has rock, so has pop, so has hiphop and rap, so has punk, so has jazz. And for every single genre, there's an older generation saying the younger folks aren't doing it right or as well.

Overall, music is getting more homogenized. So country has crossed into pop/rock. Why? the younger artists who grew up on country also grew up on pop & rock. If you don't like pop and/or rock, of course you aren't going to like the country music that draws from those. That doesn't mean it's bad, it just means you don't like it.

It may be that it's easier to make a good buck without trying too hard, and since money talks, who cares about quality? Used to be you couldn't get to first base if you didn't have the goods. Now with modern payola everywhere you just have to fit the niche that allows mediocre talent to flourish.

The flipside, that ease works in a positive way as well, allowing the home brewed artist to get their product out worldwide and those that really are good will attain at least a sufficient audience.

Back in the 1960's, Dr. Eric Berne, the founder of Transactional Analysis, wrote a book entitled "Games People Play." The book describes various "games" people play with one another; confrontational, supportive, reassuring, parental/childlike, etc.

One of the games is entitled "Ain't It Awful," in which the players support each others opinion of how the world is basically going to hell in a handbasket, reassuring all the players that their worldview is the correct one.

This, I believe, is the reason why complaints like the one now being discussed keep surfacing. It's reassuring to know you're not the only one who thinks Ernest Tubb sang in tune and Garth Brooks didn't.

My #2 son has a band. They play Los Angeles, Frisco, Los Vegas etc. They just got a record deal. He's 37. It's punk music. The band is called Dirty Filthy Mugs.
What can I say? Not my kind of music.