Archive for the ‘Country Music’ Category

Shopping with a Seven Year Old

Posted on December 19, 2008

My daughter. Beautiful, but about as calm as a your average robo-hampster.

Nice coat, you say? Yeah, grandparents are good for that sort of thing.

Bona-fide “Hannah Montana” merchandise, the coat signifies Sam’s enthusiastic endorsement of a fictional persona adopted by a real manufactured celebrity who is herself the offspring of a manufactured country “star”.

Miley and her alter-ego, the only slightly less real Hannah.

The 90% synthetic pop-country singer Billy-Ray Cirus.
As of this posting there is no direct evidence that he has an alter-ego named “Harvey Montana”.

For further reading on the topic of Country Music, please see
Toxic Equivalency
Friday Night at the Pops Country

Comments (7)

Friday Night at the Pops (country)

Posted on October 12, 2007

Country Music

One Friday a while back Heather dragged me to a country music concert. It was Brooks & Dunn with “special guests” Big & Rich.
There are, perhaps, two songs from Brooks & Dunn that I like, and one of them is a cover tune (My Maria). Hated it. Wanted to leave the moment the “music” started to play.

It wasn’t helped by the fact that the sold-out crowd of mouth-breathers knew every friggin’ word to every gimmicky, boring, predictable song and acted as if they were all recitations of divine revelation. (”Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” makes a nice bumper sticker, but if you repeat it twenty to thirty times it becomes a hit country song! Same thing with “Weee-oooo! Play Somethin’ Country!”)

Big and Rich, however, were quite entertaining in ways they certainly didn’t intend. Their touring carnival side-show was complete with multi-ethnic backup singers, what appeared to be a 13-year-old guitar player, a miniscule dwarf with crutches named “Two Foot Freddy” and a large black rappin’ cowboy named “Cowboy Troy”.

I once wrote a piece on how today’s country fulfills the same cultural niche as the hair-band rock of the late-1980’s. Big and Rich validated my claims by wearing Tom Petty style head-wear, and with far more electric guitar than twang. I’m all for fusion, if it has some merit, but this stuff was little better than Poison or Bon Jovi at its most vapid.

Meh.

Comments (1)

Toxic Equivalence

Posted on June 28, 2005

Country Music

Pop country music sucks.
     There, I said it. Not really going out on a limb, but I feel as if I’m taking at least a slight risk making such a judgemental statement.
     Some ass in a stetson, already angry because there’s no naked women on this page (not counting Milla Jovovich), with his pants around his ankles, a bottle in one hand and his johnson in the other, is even now spitting a mouthfull of Milwaukee’s finest all over his monitor and cursing me for questioning the quality of his chosen musical pursuit.
     Sorry, Marlboro man, but pop country is musically boring, with songs that are virtually indistinguishable from one another, seem to always center on drinking, sexual bravado or sappy Hallmark Card sentimentality, and with an audience so white I gotta wear shades.

But whilst watching a bit of CMT (Country Music Television, for those without American cable TV), I began having a strange feeling of deja-suck-vu. This suckiness happened to me before, didn’t it? I really think I’ve had this much suck on my TV once before…

     I hereby posit that the current despicable pop-country music crop is socially equivalent to the pop-rock of the late 1980’s.
     The same quality white-trash girlies throw themselves at the men, the same level of sexual bravado and hard-drinking is sung about and lived by the artists. The same trite, contrived songs are popularized and are often based on a single clever phrase or pun. (She’s My Cherry Pie = It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere)
     There’s a few differences, and I’ve tried to provide you with an equivalence chart here. Please tell me if I’ve missed anything.

Equivalence Chart (scroll down to view)

1988 Hair Bands	2005 Country Bands
Slutty Girls Screaming in Torn Jeans	Slutty Girls Screaming in Boot Cut Jeans
Music Videos are Overdramatic Mini-Movies	Overdramatic Music Videos Are Mini-Movies
90% White Fan Base	99% White Fan Base
All Lead Singers Required to Wear Randomly Placed Bandanas On Legs And Expose Their Chests/Stomachs	All Lead Singers Required to Wear Boots On Legs And Expose Large Belt Buckles
All Lead Singers Required to Grow Long Hair On Head	All Lead Singers Required to Wear Cowboy Hats On Head
All Band Members Drink Heavily, Smoke Dope	All Band Members Drink Heavily, Smoke Marlboros
Disinterested Observers Cannot Differentiate Between Bands’ Formulaic Music	Disinterested Observers Cannot Differentiate Between Bands’ Formulaic Music
Annoying Screechy Guitar Solo	Silly-Ass Slide Guitar or Screechy Fiddle Solo
Songs Either Brag About Band Member’s Sexual Prowess Or Complain About Romantic Misfortune. Sometimes They Tell An Inspirational Coming-Of-Age Story.	Songs Either Brag About Band Member’s Sexual Prowess Or Complain About Romantic Misfortune. Sometimes They Tell A Patriotic/Hallmark Card.
Hedonism, Mysogeny	Jingoism, Mysogeny
$Money$	$Money$