Posted on 08/24/2007 2:13:12 PM PDT by mojito
On a recent sunny weekend in the usually sleepy town of Craponne-sur-Arzon, American flags festooned the streets, country music blared amid the sidewalk cafés, and hundreds of people milled about in cowboy hats or even top-to-toe Wild West get-ups. Dozens of folks turned local squares in this town in the Haute-Loire region of southern France into impromptu, western-style dance floors.
The catalyst for all this was the annual Country Rendez-Vous, a three-day festival of country-western music and bluegrass that takes place here each summer in late July.
Over the past two decades, country and western festivals have sprung up in many parts of France, sparked by an abiding fascination with the trappings of the American frontier as well as by a craze for line dancing.
(snip)
Founded in 1988, the Craponne Country Rendez-Vous is the oldest French country festival. In its first year it drew just 250 spectators. This year marked the festival's 20th year, and the crowd was estimated at about 30,000 men, women and children. They included country music addicts, Wild West and "American lifestyle" enthusiasts, line dancers, bikers and families out for a day of open-air entertainment.
"For us, 'American' represents the westerns, Texas, the Indians, freedom," said Dominique, who lived near Dijon and was dressed in jeans, boots, a shirt emblazoned with American flags, a cowboy hat and carried a pistol strapped to her hips. Her husband, a retired railway worker, was outfitted in similar garb. "For decades we've only listened to country music," she added. "No French music, only country music and bluegrass."
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
Craponne Country?
It’s near Horse Apple Falls.
—Craponne-sur-Arzon—
Crap on southern Arizona?
Just took a trip to Lukenbach, Texas. Now there’s some real country for ya.
ping.
What’s nice about luckenbach, is that there’s really nothing near there. It’s a bar in nowhere, connected by a road, to elsewhere.
But let me differentiate this one thing. LINE DANCING AIN’T TEXAS.
Line dancing is what you do when leaving a bar falling down drunk if the chicks won’t catch you.
Marriage is between a man and a woman.
Dancing is between a man and a woman.
In dancing, if there’s space between a man and a woman, somebody damn well better be spinning and headed back to an embrace for a big finish.
I actually observed once a French travel bus tour that was at Broken Spoke in Austin when Dale Watson was playing.
Wow. We explained these rules to them. They were confused, but adapted to the culture.
Europe pinglist ping.
There are quite a few French firearms owners getting into cowboy action shooting check this out:
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=297651
Thank you for that explanation. I always felt that line dancing seemed rather “urban cowboy nu country”, but didn’t know it as a fact. What about square dancing and clogging? I remember clogging from growing up watching “Hee Haw” (the old version, not that later awful version) with my grandmother.
(Back to the Basics of Love)
There only two things in life that make it worth livin’
That’s guitars that tune good and firm feelin’ women
I don’t need my name in the marquis lights
I got my song and I got you with me tonight
Maybe it’s time we got back to the basics of love
Chorus:
Let’s go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we’re livin’ got us fueding
like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams pain songs, Newberry’s train songs
and blue eyes cryin’ in the rain out in Luckenbach Texas
ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain
So baby let’s sell your diamond ring
Buy some boots and faded jeans and go away
This coat and tie is choking me
In your high socitey you cry all day
We’ve been so busy keepin’ up with the Jones
Four car garage and we’re still building on
Maby it’s time we got back to the basics of love
Chorus:
Let’s go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we’re livin’ got us fueding
like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams pain songs, Newberry’s train songs
and blue eyes cryin’ in the rain out in Luckenbach Texas
ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain
Let’s go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we’re livin’ got us fueding
like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams pain songs, Newberry’s train songs
and blue eyes cryin’ in the rain out in Luckenbach Texas
ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain
My French ex-brother-in-law and his family came out here for a visit last year. First trip to the US. Got hooked on country music while traveling around the SouthWest and now listens to it constantly back in Paris.
Maybe we should export country music instead of McDonalds!
“Seems that foreigners like our old west lore.”
Yep. IIRC, even the sister of one A. Hitler said her brother was
a nut for American wild-west books.
And the Italians sure do make plenty of good replica Western-era
pistols and rifles.
Line dancing allows women to dance by themselves...that's not good for 'us.'
So while I say, "It ain't Texas," really, it just doesn't even make sense for dancing.
Line dancing is calesthenics for isolating folks at a bar.
Square dancing is ok, as you're always touching a girl within a few milliseconds, and there's no gayness.
Clogging sounds Kentucky drunk or Irish drunk.
Anyway. Just ask the ladies to dance, they say yes...how the hell hard is that? Why'd somebody even bother inventing line dancing?
I was at the Grand Canyon on a cold day in January once, and the only othe people in the restaurant or whatever at the visitor’s center were a dozen German guys in black cowboy hats, boots, spurs, etc.
When I went to Kings Canyon in California in Sept. 1995...
about half the conversation I heard at the shops and biggest sights
was...in German.
Aaahhhh-I keep forgetting the distinctions between Texan/Western country (Bob Wills et al), and Southern country (Bill Monroe et al). I was raised on the latter, but I LOOOOVE Bob Wills. He’s stiil The King! (of country swing)
stiil=still. Sheesh!
ahhhhh haaaaaaaw!
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