Posted on 12/30/2005 4:00:58 AM PST by Nasty McPhilthy
Country music is the nation's most popular genre--with nearly twice as many stations devoted to it than any other--and perhaps its most political. These days, the jingle jangle jingoism from Music Row seems to only be getting louder.
Consider these lyrics from a few recent chart-toppers:
"Some say this country's just out looking for a fight / After 9/11 man, I'd have to say that's right." "You can stay behind or you can get out of the way / But our troops take out the garbage for the good old U.S.A." "You'll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A / 'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way." Subtle they ain't. Whatever you think of the work of Daryl Worley, Clint Black and Toby Keith, they have plenty to tell us about the state of the union. We may not always like what we hear, but as Chris Willman suggests in Rednecks & Bluenecks, country music is "a window into every aspect of lower- and middle-class life, the civic by no means excluded."
You can't spell Grand Ole Opry without the G-O-P. But country hasn't always been the official soundtrack of the Republican Party. Back in 1964--when Democrats still held 22 of 26 Senate seats in the South--Lawton Williams even cracked the country Top 40 with a song called "Everything's OK on the LBJ." Of course, that was also the year of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
Since then the South's political polarity has completely reversed: By 2004, Republicans filled 22 of the 26 southern Senate slots. The impact of the "Southern strategy" has been as bad for music as politics. Willman notes that in a genre that once spoke directly to the working class, "You don't hear many songs ... anymore about the bottom rung."
Rednecks & Bluenecks is no polemic; it's more of a breezy tour of the country landscape that reads like Entertainment Weekly (where Willman is a senior editor). Willman interviews nearly everyone who's anyone in country music, from Merle Haggard and Loretta Lynn to current superstars like Ronnie Dunn--who offers a bizarre sermon on the dangers of Wahhabism--and alt-country icon Buddy Miller. A better music critic than political analyst, Willman still has his insightful moments.
He describes President Bush as "the ultimate hat act," a scion of the establishment made over into a brush-clearin' good-ol'-boy. As alt-country gadfly Robbie Fulks once put it: "You went to Andover / What's the banjo fer?"
Such incongruity doesn't faze the Nashville cognoscenti. "Country singers talk about [Bush] in nearly the same terms that their fans talk about them," Willman writes. "As somebody who is larger than life and yet simultaneously approachable, who doesn't put on the airs that he clearly has rights to."
But not everyone in the South is on the bandwagon. "I'd say to Travis Tritt and Lee Ann Womack and the rest of 'em that the one thing they better understand is that their core constituency is getting fucked out here," says Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, a political consultant who's trying to help Democrats reconnect with Red state voters. "In job loss, health care, everywhere you look, rural America's getting screwed."
Mudcat, though, is having a hard time finding musicians to spread his message: Nobody in Nashville wants to be the next Natalie Maines.
The downfall of the Dixie Chicks is the watershed moment of Rednecks & Bluenecks. On March 10, 2003--just days before the invasion of Iraq--lead singer Maines told a London audience she was "ashamed" that Bush hailed from her home state of Texas. At the time, the Chicks were the top act in country music, and their album Home was the top U.S. album in any genre, with more than 6 million copies already sold.
But once Maines' quip hit the Internet, the Republican noise machine went nuts. Talk radio hosts and right-wing Web sites urged their minions to demand that local stations take the Dixie Chicks off the air. Citing the "public outcry," Cox and Cumulus quickly issued a directive to local programmers not to play the band on their hundreds of stations; Clear Channel "advised" its 1,200 affiliates to "pay attention to their listeners." Before long, DJs were holding events where listeners could throw their old albums in a bonfire or run them over with a tractor.
Blacklisting the Chicks was an easy way for the media behemoths--run by some of Bush's biggest financial backers--to demonstrate their patriotism on the eve of the war. But the Chicks are still feeling the aftershocks. Two years after the incident, Home hadn't yet moved 7 million copies, and the band was reinventing itself as a pop act. For the rest of the industry, the message was clear: Shut up if you want to sing.
The censoring of the Dixie Chicks was only the most extreme example of how media consolidation is killing country music. The Telecom Act of 1996--which abolished nationwide radio ownership caps and spawned the mega-chains--further constricted already limited playlists, abolished local programmers and imposed a homogenized, cookie-cutter sound to better court suburban soccer moms (which admittedly served the Dixie Chicks well for a while).
This "brought home in a graphic way how profoundly one piece of legislation can affect our world," says Bob Titley, a former manager of Brooks & Dunn, who helped found a group called Music Row Democrats.
Fortunately, there is another side of Nashville, where performers are carrying on a "discordant duet" with the music factories down the road. Unlikely to get airplay anyway, liberal politics and old melodies mingle freely among the alt-country crowd, offering a ray of hope that progressive values and pedal steel aren't totally incompatible.
Unfortunately, the protest music of these "Bluenecks" is often just as shrill as that of the right. With a few exceptions--like Steve Earle's "Home to Houston" or James McMurtry's "We Can't Make It Here"--the topical songs too often feel like novelty records, no less ephemeral than reactionary ditties like Ray Stevens' "Osama Yo' Mama (You in a Heap o' Trouble Boy)."
Grant Alden, editor of the alt-country bible No Depression, tells Willman "there isn't very much lasting art to be created by addressing current events--some, but not much." I hate to agree, especially since the antiwar movement could use a little twang. But by the end of Rednecks & Bluenecks, I was longing for a day when troubadours like Earle could go back to singing about outlaws, infidelity and trains.
There's something else, too. His article implies that all country music all over the country is the same. Due to a bad-weather airplane flight re-routed to Atlanta, I had to drive through Georgia and Alabama to get to Destin, Florida in the middle of the night. I listed to country music as the stations faded in and out. Every play list was completely different. And I didn't hear any of the songs I regularly heard on my country stations in New England. Media giants? Consolidation? I didn't hear it.
No bias here...
Citing the "public outcry," Cox and Cumulus quickly issued a directive to local programmers not to play the band on their hundreds of stations; Clear Channel "advised" its 1,200 affiliates to "pay attention to their listeners." Before long, DJs were holding events where listeners could throw their old albums in a bonfire or run them over with a tractor.
First, "Paying attention to your listeners" is not the same as "directing" them to take the band off the rotation. Second, since when is pleasing your consumers "censorship"?
Blacklisting the Chicks was an easy way for the media behemoths--run by some of Bush's biggest financial backers--to demonstrate their patriotism on the eve of the war.
Huh? Who in the heck are they talking about?
But the Chicks are still feeling the aftershocks. Two years after the incident, Home hadn't yet moved 7 million copies, and the band was reinventing itself as a pop act. For the rest of the industry, the message was clear: Shut up if you want to sing.
The actual message is: Do not piss off your paying audience if you want to continue to make money. As far as "Home" not selling anymore, the Chicks have released a couple more albums since then. One would assume the record label would put it's marketing dollars towards selling the new product.
Honestly, I bought "Home" before all this crap happened. It was good music with tight harmonies. I didn't buy any subsequent DC recordings mostly because they sucked in comparison. The fact that I don't listen to them at all now is the result of Maines' big mouth.
Hey, everybody, listen up. This post came from _In These Times_ , a journal of opinion once associated with the Communist Party, U.S.A. With no more Soviet Union to cozy up to, In These Times has evolved into a kind of soft Marxism, like The Nation magazine. They believe that class determines one's politics, and are permanently baffled that working class and country folks tend to be overwhelmingly conservative and pro-American. They are always searching for `progressives' among the proletariat, just like this writer.
I live near Nashville, so the article is truly hilarious. These people actually think that The Revolution is just over the horizon, if we will all just try to `build a better world'.
Hey `comrades'! Marx, Lenin, and Mao are still dead!
Interestingly enough, the term "jingoism" was coined by the early 20th century author John Dos Passos, who was at the time, a dedicated socialist and Communist sympathizer. Later in life, he became a Conservative, and a frequent contributor to National Review.
I'm a minion.
You're a minion.
Wouldn't you like to be a minion, too?
J. D.'s Words of wisdom:
Country Rocks......
But, Bluegrass Rules!
In These Times is a real far-left publication. I'm sorry, "progressive". In short anything that slanders the U.S.and paints a rosy picture of our enemies is just fine with these Marxist losers. Their motto should be : "9/11?- we deserved it".
Damnitboy!
No Way!
This idiot must moonlight as a consultant for the DNC. What a biased piece of garbage.
Listen to more "Asleep At The Wheel".
Excellent!
HA!
If I owned my own radio station, I would play:
Bob Wills
Ray Price
Johnny Bush
Buck Owens
Merle Haggard
George Jones
Willie Nelson (Everything Before "On the Road Again")
Faron Young
Louvin Bros.
Webb Pierce
Red Steagall
Earnest Tubb
That is Country Music.
It doesn't? I thought Tequila was a universal solvent for garments of all kinds! :-)
"In these times" is probably the most red rag of all times. Wasn't it recently privately funded from oblivion? Still it's always amusing to read what serious leftists believe to be true.
"The "boot in your ass" song is crass."
Crass perhaps but very effective and hits the nail right on the head. Whenever this comes on in the car, the windows get rolled down and the volume turned up loud and that's with my husband in the car. If it's the kids we sing at the top of our lungs. Nothing wrong with showing your patriotism even if it is "crass". Do the same thing when the noonhour National Anthem is played only I don't sing because I'm crying.
Patriotism is civilized and polite, knowing that emphasizing "ass-kicking" is hardly the best way to love one's country. Nationalism, however...
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