Posted on 05/20/2014 8:58:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I vaguely remember late night AM radio, we didn’t get anything lower on the dial due to Cuban stations interfering (I’m in NC). The ones I recall were WLS Chicago, WOWO Fort Wayne, Indiana and there was a big one in New York but can’t recall the call letters. This is from my early childhood, by the time I entered my teens, FM had taken over for most music stations.
WWL,New Orleans, WBAP, Dallas, KVOO, Tulsa, talking of late night radio, all of these played all night country music, they billed themselves as Trucker’s radio. I loved WWL always having on every hour “a song of inspiration”. It was great.
http://www.virtualtruckroute.com/radio_personalities.html
There is still some of this. One show even went local but it’s ads, some talk radio and some music.
ping
But the new country is not the historical country, by my reckoning, I prefer the old days (that's the name of one of my songs (I Prefer the Old Days).
It’s really nice to hear someone mention Steve Young’s name. In my opinion one of the best songwriters & pickers who’ve ever held a pen or picked up a guitar. Steve was probably best known for his songwriting...’Seven Bridges Road’, Lonesome Ornery & Mean’ and too many other great songs to mention. Country lore has it that Waylon once said “ if Steve Young got any better, he might just have to kill him” All in jest of course... If you really want to hear some vintage Young, check out ‘My Oklahoma’, or his absolute chilling cover of ‘The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down”. If you truly love country music, it’s not too likely you’ll be disappointed.
Now you’re talking.
It’s always one thing or another, in the ‘80s, I think a lot of people were critical of country for being too “sexually suggestive”, does anyone remember that?
There was that song “Love is just a sin away” and other songs like Conway Twitty’s “Baby’s got her bluejeans on” and maybe Barbara Mandrell singing “Sleeping Single in a double bed”. So it goes.
Make that “Heaven’s just a sin away”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL49I1CBHmc
Rules!
Still like Austin country, Nashville country is too corporate astroturf now.
Dale Watson is as close to real country as they come. Love his music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2B85PyZr0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sduE-NDCFI
I really like his "Over the Rainbow" where he makes the guitar sound like a harp with the harmonics. He's a true legend and I'm so lucky to have heard him and listened to his conversations with fans. A nice guy.
Andy McKee and Calum Graham are also two that you might want to listen to if you like Tommy Emmanuel. They do some really neat arrangements of songs on the Candyrat label.
Yeah, you are right about Garth. Some of the others I can see, but even though Reba is very good I never did like her music. Sorry bout that, but the only recent one I like is Josh Turner.
Good country, IMHO is “three chords and the truth, it deals with honest raw emotion. There's always been crap country; I mean all due respect to Chet Atkins, but it's with him that the commercial crap started..
Pandora can be great for discovering new bands - put in a few you like and see what similar artists are out there.
There's a LOT of good music being made now, but we ain't going to hear any of it on the radio. Even here in Northern California, there are great songwriters who drink deeply from the well of Hank and Merle; I think both of us have realized that it's a different game if your going to play professionally, but I think there were people who regarded everything after the Carter family as being downhill.
Bakersfield Sound, no better... and those guys wrote their own tunes for the most part, Tommy Collins, one of their leaders, same with Dwight Yoakam, even HW Jr. writes his own music, some of those songs aren’t that great, his ‘60s/’70s Cajun Baby is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edvHv34NRRY
Didn’t know he got in an auto accident hurting his face. A young Bocephus.
“Stand by Your Man” became “You can Hear Me on the Radio” and “Tell the grave digger that he better dig two”.
In the grocery stores (and cable tv) I refer to it as the illusion of choice.
They may stock the brand I want of condiment or shampoo, but they may not have the (basic grade) product I want. And the majority of the cable channels are pwned by a few monopolistic companies (Disney, NBC, Viacom, etc). True choice is not on display there.
Same with radio, if it isn't Clear Channel, then it's probably (Viacom) Infinity Broadcasting.
And to carry on your point, yeah, everything is niche marketed now/fragmented/balkanized, that it has become a tower of babel/babble. Whether that is in music or even in "credible" news reporting. You know what not to trust, but where do you turn FOR something?
Yes, other than Coldplay, I don’t see any “new” group that has a chance to reach a Sgt. pepper-like level. They have some truly brilliant lyrics.
“You can’t see nudity on the radio...” < /National Lampoon Radio Hour >
Scene from the movie Lizstomania...
While not everyone (even of the same side of the "generation gap") liked the same artists, there USED to be stations that played ALL of the contemporary hits of the day (and programs like Ed Sullivan's that booked the contemporary hit artists of the day, regardless of Ed's support for their music).
There is no more "something for everyone".
But radio already started to fragment sharply at the introduction of rock and roll into the music charts. There is the famous clip of the DJ smashing a stack of 78s making a pledge to never again play rock music on his station. He claims in the clip that the top charts used to be a good indicator of music but "no more". There have been several such schisms.
Even "classic rock" (the album oriented rock AOR format) stations of old "broke" with adding any more artists (and eventually even adding new recordings by the canon artists) when MTV ushered in a lot of new wave, new romantic, etc. bands into the charts. I recall one such station playing the Go Go's on their station (Our Lipped Are Sealed?) on a smash or trash segment and asking if listeners thought they wanted things like this added to the rotation.
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