Just watched the ACM awards

Pilgrim · April 03, 2016, 10:05:16 PM

The Academy of Country Music awards show had some really good music - including Trombone Shorty and Billy Gibbons. (Miranda Lambert singing Tush was a bit different, but still a great tune.) Much of the music was closer to blues, R&B and rock than country, and it sounded great.

"Country" music ain't what it used to be, and that's a good thing!

4stringer77 · April 04, 2016, 07:35:32 AM

I didn't catch it. Did this guy win anything? He's one of those rocking country guys of which you speak. Is it or me, or doesn't this bass intro sound like some kind of Gibson being picked?

uwe · April 04, 2016, 08:20:11 AM

Could be!

So The Cult do New Country now?

Pilgrim · April 04, 2016, 09:59:31 AM

Quote from: 4stringer77 on April 04, 2016, 07:35:32 AM
I didn't catch it. Did this guy win anything? He's one of those rocking country guys of which you speak. Is it or me, or doesn't this bass intro sound like some kind of Gibson being picked?

That reminds me of Jack Black and "It's a long way to the top..." Good cut, also not very country at all.

Church was shown on camera a lot but I don't recall him winning an award.

uwe · April 04, 2016, 10:18:27 AM

I don't mind New Country at all. It's a new amalgam of older music forms and kind of took up the torch from AOR/melodic rock.

No knockin' Aussie-Roick, I like him! He p(o)uts me in a good mood.

Dave W · April 04, 2016, 12:36:39 PM

You mean the ANCM awards? The Academy of Not Country Music Awards?

Whether you like it or not is a matter of taste, but it's not real country music.

I'll let Dale Watson speak for me.

Pilgrim · April 04, 2016, 02:21:45 PM

There's always someone around to lament the departure of country from Roy Acuff singing "The Great Speckled Bird." I would not be that person, nor have I ever been.

I could pretty easily do one of those "fill in the blanks to write a country song" deals....including such phrases as:

I'm down and out because: ________
a) My dog died
b) My baby left me
c) My pickup broke down
d) I'm broke

...and I'm walking home: _______
a) Drunk
b) Knee-walkin' drunk
c) In the rain
d) Down a dark lonely road

Etc., etc....

As far as I'm concerned, most of what I heard was a considerable improvement on popular top 40 radio now, and I'm not even a country fan. If it's "Not Country", then IMO that's a feature, not a bug.

Highlander · April 04, 2016, 02:51:36 PM

Jackie likes country... and western...

(she's also rather keen on that "Nashville" thing too)

New Country...? I believe she's heard of it...

Pilgrim · April 04, 2016, 03:12:08 PM

Dave W · April 04, 2016, 03:51:47 PM

Quote from: Pilgrim on April 04, 2016, 02:21:45 PM
There's always someone around to lament the departure of country from Roy Acuff singing "The Great Speckled Bird." I would not be that person, nor have I ever been.

I could pretty easily do one of those "fill in the blanks to write a country song" deals....including such phrases as:

I'm down and out because: ________
a) My dog died
b) My baby left me
c) My pickup broke down
d) I'm broke

...and I'm walking home: _______
a) Drunk
b) Knee-walkin' drunk
c) In the rain
d) Down a dark lonely road

Etc., etc....

As far as I'm concerned, most of what I heard was a considerable improvement on popular top 40 radio now, and I'm not even a country fan. If it's "Not Country", then IMO that's a feature, not a bug.

Al, Al, Al. There's no disputing taste, you can like whatever you wish, but don't misrepresent traditional country.

The Great Speckled Bird is a hymn, not a country song. I know we've been over this before. Nokie Edwards did an instrumental cover of it. Does that make it a surf song?

I own well over 1,000 country songs, CDs, 45s and songfiles. Plenty of songs about love, life, heartaches, good times and bad, and yes, drinking and honky tonk songs. Not a single one about "my dog died" or "my pickup broke down". Can't think of any about walking home drunk in the rain. What you're imagining is actually much closer to what's played now. The playlists are full of raunchy songs about getting drunk and getting it on with drunk girls in the bed of your pickup truck down some country road. All written in Nashville's version of Tin Pan Alley. Frat boy rock sung by guys with phony accents.

Psycho Bass Guy · April 04, 2016, 10:12:55 PM

This:

Quote from: Dave W on April 04, 2016, 03:51:47 PMThe playlists are full of raunchy songs about getting drunk and getting it on with drunk girls in the bed of your pickup truck down some country road. All written in Nashville's version of Tin Pan Alley. Frat boy rock sung by guys with phony accents.

Being the forum's token crazy redneck, I'm with Dave. My accent is so bad that people at work often cannot understand me and both by birthright and design (and carrying around SVT's) I am a walking, talking hillbilly/pro-wrestling looking caricature that seems to have stepped out of central casting. Hank Williams died close to where I was born and the Carter family are first cousins to my late grandfather. My first words were "John Deere" and I was driving tractors at age 5. I can go on, but I digress. In short, I'm the real f$ckin' deal when it comes to being a country boy.

I grew up hating the AOR rock of the Eagles and late 70's Nashville pop. My mother had a single Waylon Jennings record (I think she "got religion" and destroyed all her other records) that I wore out and my father listened to WIVK constantly, which is the #1 radio station in the country (has to be market share) for 50 years. Out of that, I became a bass player (seriously, Nashville in the 70's seemed to be competing with disco funk for low end) and I HATED anything faux or popular (except 80's radio pop), all while growing up on farms and working doing things that the old country songs I DID like talked about. I remember when the 90's brought us the abomination that is Billy Ray Cyrus and 90's "new country," it confirmed every cynical anti-establishment musical impulse I ever had.

In the interim, I had discovered metal, so I stuck with that, got angrier at life over various things and joined a band which unbeknownst to me, was "punk," another genre I sneered at after having dismissed the Sex Pistols (the Supersuckers fixed that for me, so thank them.) With my band, it was funny because in between "Ball and Chain," "53rd and 3rd," "Cherry Bomb" and "Bloodstains" covers, we also played "Wildwood Flower" and "Folsom Prison Blues" when Johnny Cash was still making the first of his "comeback" albums with Rick Rubin ( IOW, 10 years before it was trendy to cover Cash) ...because it was the music we had grown up learning how to play. We were ignored in out hometown, but in Knoxville, the nearest city, we were revered and feared as outlaw cowpunk, and stories of our exploits spread which far outstripped anything we ever actually did (except my bachelor party- that shit happened). Had the guitar player/singer/main guy not quit when we were offered a touring deal, I'd be a road dog right now. At my most virulent anti-everything, I played music which was light years more country than what's coming out of Nashville now, by accident, just because it's what I am.

...but... that's not to say that I hate everything Nashville. Much genre-challenged Nash pop usually has some redeeming value simply because it is a haven for unemployed rockers who haven't changed what they ever played and there is stellar musicianship as the norm. Sure, most of the calories are empty, but then again, so are most Foo Fighters songs, but country? Country isn't what is being branded and sold as "country" and that's OK. It just means I get to keep the good stuff for myself. In meantime, let Eric Church pose to pretend that he even knows a Mötörhead song outside of "Ace of Spades" and Justin Timberlake plays the Grand Ol' Opry. What wets the panties of vapid teenage girls ain't no concern of mine until I'm the one trying to inspire that reaction myself.

uwe · April 05, 2016, 04:45:51 AM

I'm not obsessed about the differences. Blues recordings did not stop in the 1930ies and neither did recorded country music die a death in the 1950ies. Things change, progress, regress, mix, whatever. When I hear a Rick Springfield power pop with a banjo in it and a country licks solo guitar, that a country influence for me right there.

The discussions here sometimes remind me of the Newport Folk Festival and some Jewish kid having the nerve to strap on an electric guitar which all of the sudden was supposed to turn his music from folk into something that had allegedly nothing to with folk anymore.

nofi · April 05, 2016, 07:04:26 AM

psycho bass guy, pics or you don't exist.

nofi · April 05, 2016, 07:18:55 AM

country cliche's abound with these clowns. pretty intense 'southern' accent for a guy from baltimore. you betcha'.

Dave W · April 05, 2016, 08:52:05 AM

Quote from: uwe on April 05, 2016, 04:45:51 AM
I'm not obsessed about the differences. Blues recordings did not stop in the 1930ies and neither did recorded country music die a death in the 1950ies. Things change, progress, regress, mix, whatever. When I hear a Rick Springfield power pop with a banjo in it and a country licks solo guitar, that a country influence for me right there.

The discussions here sometimes remind me of the Newport Folk Festival and some Jewish kid having the nerve to strap on an electric guitar which all of the sudden was supposed to turn his music from folk into something that had allegedly nothing to with folk anymore.

Of course genres influence one another, they always have. Of course things change. But rock with phony twangy accents will never be country music no matter how many mainstream "country" stations play it.

One of these innumerable "country" awards shows -- there seems to be a different one every month -- advertises itself as "country's night to rock!" If it's a night to rock, then it's not country music.