The Young: Are they Ruining Country Music?

Jeff A. Smith · Post by **Jeff A. Smith** » 24 Aug 2003 6:26 pm

Maybe for different reasons, not necessarily having to do with money?

Eric West · Post by **Eric West** » 24 Aug 2003 6:39 pm

Well, the bills are all due, and the babies need shoes.....

I think there's a song about that...

EJL
[This message was edited by Eric West on 24 August 2003 at 09:56 PM.]

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 24 Aug 2003 7:06 pm

This is a music forum, folks. Let's stay on topic, okay?

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Brandon Housewright · Post by **Brandon Housewright** » 30 Aug 2003 6:32 am

I didn't read all the posts to this, but I would like to give another possibly overlooked reason country music and music in general is going downhill...no music education in schools. Not meaning that everyone should be in band, but I believe a small understanding of what's going on in the music by the general public wouldn't hurt, either. Just look at musicians in most forms of popular music...most don't play above 1st or 2nd year level on their instruments. And you could teach a 3 year old to program the keyboards on most Pop junk. I think people buy this crap because they don't know any better. I believe the more you know, the better choices you will make. I'm I off the mark?

Gene Jones · Post by **Gene Jones** » 30 Aug 2003 9:29 am

When I was 16 I bought a Sears steel-guitar because everyone else played a fiddle or a standard guitar and I wanted to be different...no one took my efforts to play the steel seriously...but I'm still around and they are all dead....so I don't know what that means about the young ruining country music!
www.genejones.com

Jussi Huhtakangas · Post by **Jussi Huhtakangas** » 30 Aug 2003 9:54 am

Brandon, you are so very right!!!

Eric West · Post by **Eric West** » 30 Aug 2003 3:53 pm

Gene.

What killed 'em?

EJL

Gene Jones · Post by **Gene Jones** » 30 Aug 2003 4:28 pm

Bootleg whisky from the mountain before prohibition was repealed in Oklahoma

....and refusal to play any music except Bob Wills! [This message was edited by Gene Jones on 30 August 2003 at 05:34 PM.]

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 30 Aug 2003 4:41 pm

The vast majority of younger acts are not ruining Country Music, because (generally), you have to get close to something to ruin it! (LOL!)

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 30 Aug 2003 6:16 pm

There is a thing that keeps repeating itself in music, as in other areas of life. Some talented young innovator starts a new trend. A lot of other talented hardworking people start doing the same thing, maybe better. They get older and better and slicker. Pretty soon there is no room for fresh young people in the field, the seasoned old guys have it all sewed up. No one starting out can approach them.

So the young ones start something different that is easier for them to do, to express themselves. Other young people like it because it is new and it is theirs. The slick old pros can't understand how these young upstarts from nowhere, who can't play half as good as they can, and haven't paid any dues, can be so successful, while their careers are drying up. Eventually these newbies will become the slick old guys, and will get bypassed by something else new and different.

When country got boring, and jazz got slick, Elvis et al. started rock'n'roll. When folk music was dominated by slick pros like Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary, along came Bob Dylan. When rock'n'roll became canned, along came the Beatles and the Stones. When rock was dominated in the '70s by slick pros like the Eagles, the punk rockers brought things back to two or three chords in a garage. When R&B got really slick, along came the rappers (all rythmn, and hardly any playing on actual instruments). In recent decades young players infused country music with southern rock. Now that has gotten pretty slick and stale. I'm not sure what will happen with country, but the commercial stuff is getting really slick and pop-like, and there are a bunch of young retro groups playing a raucous mix of rockabilly and retro-country with a bit of a punk feel. If they have a steel, it might be a no-peddler. Watch out.

Edward Efira · Post by **Edward Efira** » 30 Aug 2003 10:09 pm

Let's get real, folks. we all got into music to get laid...

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Joey Ace · Post by **Joey Ace** » 31 Aug 2003 5:11 am

Great point about changes, David.

The labels always want the artists to produce product in the cookie-cutter style of the current hit, but the inovators do the opposite.

Dwight Yoakham dropped his Lead Guitar and Steel for the new tour. I thought this was due to finances, but maybe it's evolution (or retro-lution).

Charles French · Post by **Charles French** » 31 Aug 2003 7:36 am

About the younguns ruining country music. Anyone has the right to play or like whatever style of music. I have the right to like or dislike it. The problem we have here is Too many types of music and not enough genre. This is easily noticed when I try and organize my music according to artist and genre. Was I to put Robin Ford next to Robert Johnson in the blues genre? It seemed like a sacrilege. So Robin lost out to the rock section for lack of a better place to go. It was simple back when music fitted it's genre. R & B = Wilson Pickett, Rock = Chuck Berry, Blues = Muddy Waters, Country = Ernest Tubb. So it's not so much the young ruining country music, it's the fact that if I go to a hoedown I don't expect to hear Kid Rock and if I go to a blues concert I certainly don't want to hear Kenny Wayne Shepard. All we need is about a thousand new music genre's for all the stuff that don't quiet fit in.

Eric West · Post by **Eric West** » 31 Aug 2003 8:36 am

The DY comment reminds me of Neil Young.

I was a "Tin Soldiers and Nixon" fan and wore out a dozen CSNY tapes, 8 track and otherwise.

Then it came time for the concerts.

Neil's records all had PSG and lots of great instrumentation.

His concerts were, and probably still are, crap. He'll show up with a guitar and harmonica or a beat up piano. I'm sure he stuck the extra money in his pocket.

I'll bet he's over 60.

"Time will tell us, who has tried to sell us."

EJL[This message was edited by Eric West on 31 August 2003 at 09:39 AM.]

Ray Montee (RIP) · Post by **Ray Montee (RIP)** » 31 Aug 2003 9:29 am

With respect to STYLE, Is that not a very small WINDOW in which one can expect to see/hear another's musical originality/style?

When an individual, is content to sit down and hammer out a LOUD, DISCONNECTED BUNCH of RACKET, using a host of different colored NOISE MAKERS..........with minimal musical education and/or practice.......who tosses in a bunch of non music related physical girations, smoke and flame off in one corner of the stage, etc........is that truly STYLE?

Is there not a dividing line........between that which a true professional plays with class and style...........and much of that that is put forth by players who want to be
"something special" but haven't or might never reach the heights of their dreams for any number of reasons?

Today, it seems like "style" is tossed into conversation where even talent and/or professional performance capabilities is seriously lacking.

Have I missed the boat?

Eric West · Post by **Eric West** » 31 Aug 2003 3:18 pm

Question:

"With respect to STYLE, Is that not a very small WINDOW in which one can expect to see/hear another's musical originality/style?"

Answer: Yes it is not a very small window, and yes we have no bananas.

Question:

"When an individual, is content to sit down and hammer out a LOUD, DISCONNECTED BUNCH of RACKET, using a host of different colored NOISE MAKERS..........with minimal musical education and/or practice.......who tosses in a bunch of non music related physical girations, smoke and flame off in one corner of the stage, etc........is that truly STYLE?"

Answer:

Yes. Truly.

Question:

"Is there not a dividing line........between that which a true professional plays with class and style...........and much of that that is put forth by players who want to be
"something special" but haven't or might never reach the heights of their dreams for any number of reasons?"

Answer:

Yes, there is not, for, or not for a limited number of reasons.

Counter Question:

Ray have you been drinking again?

Summation:

"Today, it seems like "style" is tossed into conversation where even talent and/or professional performance capabilities is seriously lacking."

Dissenting Opinon:

It seems to me like "Professionalism" is tossed about too freely, when there is no "Profession".In referral to an earlier point, I think professionalism is not so much being "content", as being "paid".

Last Question:

"Have I missed the boat?"

Answer:

Yes, but it's not a boat, it's a train.

If you're not on it, You're probably under it.

Final clarification: I can't guess who you went to see this weekend. The one of four bands I play with is indeed excruciatingly loud, and raucuos, with non musical gYrations, and different colored noise makers, but alas we have no FLAME MACHINE. It must have been Lonesome Road. I didn't know they were playing anywhere in town this weekend. They have one of those silly silk bag flame simulators. I wanna get one.

I did manage to take two years of music at a community college including arrangement, music history, production, rythym training, and theory, but seldom if ever, when I'm wearing multicolored underwear on my head and dancing around half naked and thrashing about frantically bending my pedal rods, am I called apon to do much transposition.

I could I suppose of the job called for it..

Is this a great Profession, or WHAT?

Verily I say unto thee:

Music, like Life, goes on within you, and without you.

EJL[This message was edited by Eric West on 31 August 2003 at 10:57 PM.]

Eric West · Post by **Eric West** » 31 Aug 2003 3:27 pm

Jeff S.

Undoubtedly there is someone inside me who lives precisely according to those "values" or lack thereof. Maybe I haven't spent enough time learning to get to know him.

I've gotten to know him pretty well over the last coupe decades. He's not harmless, that's for damn sure..

I still haven't come up with a name for him.

Like the little boy in "The Shining", sometimes I call him "Tony"..

EJL

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 31 Aug 2003 5:36 pm

Ray, I've said this before. There's music and there's entertainment. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don't.

Jason Odd · Post by **Jason Odd** » 1 Sep 2003 10:22 am

Sticking to the topic:

"The Young: Are they Ruining Country Music?"
Is most likely the question asked by a spectator when the new Opry act Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys hit the stage in 1938, the bands wild speedy take on old timey music.

Eric West · Post by **Eric West** » 1 Sep 2003 10:27 am

Yup. Wild Gyrations for sure. They might have even had a kerosene flame machine... The Stone Still Stanleys were the other side of the coin I suppose for "purists".

EJL

Again, I reiterate, it's the Young that tend to save the things that the Old have tried their best to ruin. Musically or otherwise.

Theresa Galbraith · Post by **Theresa Galbraith** » 1 Sep 2003 11:25 am

Thank God for Young ones to keep it alive!
Theresa

Andy Alford · Post by **Andy Alford** » 2 Sep 2003 4:08 am

Country music has changed.How did bad rock and roll become country music?The steel is no longer a popular part of todays country music that you hear on the radio and tv.There have been other major movements away from hillbilly music.When Eddy Arnold went pop this was a major change in country music along with the creation of the Nash.sound of the 60s.Inspite of the pop direction country still was big with many great stars singing country music.Today traditional country has very few well known stars that the masses link to country music.The opry has changed.I do not belive that country music will ever recover its glory days with stars like Hank,Little Jimmy and E.T.There will continue to be followers of traditional country who will keep it alive,but much of what was country is gone forever.

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 2 Sep 2003 9:29 am

But, Andy, that's like saying that jazz is gone forever just because Dixieland went out of style, or that classical music is gone forever just because nobody writes like Bach anymore. If country music is dead, then what do you call what they play and sing on the Opry, CMT and country music radio stations all over North America? In spite of what you say it is not rock, and is not played in rock clubs or on rock or pop radio stations, or R&B and Hip-Hop stations, or on jazz or classical stations. There's something that everybody calls country music that is still very much there. Yes it has changed. Every other type of music changes over the years, why shouldn't country music?

Eric Myers · Post by **Eric Myers** » 2 Sep 2003 10:35 am

I took my family to a blugrass festival the other day. The average age of the crowd was about 75-80, I am not lying. if country doesnt bring in the young uns it very soon may be gone forever. [This message was edited by Eric Myers on 02 September 2003 at 11:36 AM.]

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 2 Sep 2003 11:18 am

How many of us went out and bought the car that was advertised as "America's best selling car"?

How many of us went out and bought the beer that was advertised as "America's best selling beer"?

Does anybody buy/consume a product just 'cause they think other people do? I'm beginning to think so.

KISS (the group/band) was a classic example of a media hyped performance that convinced the kids of that day that everybody liked them and that you were "weird" if you thought they stunk.

I was a DJ in a nightclub for 10 years in the late '70's early '80s. Had to play the stuff to keep the crowd. Really ticked 'em off once in a while when after "Jumping Jack Flash" & "Macho Man" I threw on Linda Ronstadt's "Silver Threads & Golden Needles" just to hear a little B.E. to break the monotony.