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Somebody keeps killing Alt Country...

Before I lay my latest Top 100 on you, I wanted to get his off my chest.

Where did Country Music go?

If you're one of those people who believes that you're listening to Country Music when you turn on KEEY, K102, America's worst Country Station, then don't read any further. It has always been my chief premise that 90% of what's played on that station is not Country Music; it's jingles designed to sell tampons. So, if you disagree with me on that theory, everything that follows will either be wrong or an insult to your concept of your own intelligence.

To answer my own question, I guess I need to figure out when Country went wherever it went. I think Alabama had a lot to do with it, somewhere around 1980. I don't think it was any one song, group, album or year...rather, I think the idea of the band Alabama and who they appealed to started a kind of wave that led to the cookie cutter environment you have in Nashville now.

In my mind there's a continuum of what I call Country, starting with Jimmie Rodgers going to Hank Williams going to Buck Owens and Johnny Cash going to the genesis of Country Rock in LA (not necessarily the whole scene) going to the Outlaws and then Alabama came along and everything went to shit. Along the way a bunch of important writers moved to Nashville to prop up the whole Countrypolitan shit that Billy Sherrill and Chet Atkins produced; these writers would later create the backend authenticity that spurred the Outlaws and especially a lot of today's "alt country" acts.

The douche jingles they play on KEEY, K102, America's worst Country Station, are some kind of tortured mixture of Billy Joel, Elton John, John Mellenkcamp and Def Leppard. It's pop music, with smalltown language and 80's hair band hair, except a lot of the peacocks are bald, so they wear some sort of hat instead. That's probably not fair to Joel or John or even Mellenkcamp...they had no idea their sounds and schticks would get co-opted this way. And, let's not engage in the argument that what's going on is some kind of organic product of musical influence. A bunch of greedy bastards who don't know a G chord from a G-string have sat around in a number of different rooms, wringing their hands and formulating combinations of sight and sound and theme to produce this shit. "What we need is John Mellenkcamp in a cowboy hat singing a "Tiny Dancer" type song without all the symbolism and metaphor, Def Leppard loud..." Ladies, I give you Kenny Chesney.

So where did Country go when Alabama unwittingly helped to run it underground?

I think it's hard to argue against Austin, Texas as the center of authenticity for Country Music since 1980 or so. I don't want that to sound like some sort of musically arrogant statement. Rather, I think its station as a gathering point for live performance and alternate recording in the face of mainstream rejection made it a very natural rebel base. Certainly Nashville housed its own rebellions (Jason & the Scorchers), and a number of towns worked as jumping off points for the twang: Athens, Georgia, Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, Denver, etc.

But who held on to Country, who preserved it for us, in the face of the cynical and insulting commercialism of Nashville? I think it's important with this argument to get the truck rally replies out of the way, early. Everyone has their favorite Country performer, and, many of the classic, authentic artists are still alive and recording and touring, so I'm not going to include them in this piece. The focus of this thought revolves around the people involved, but is more centered on the type of music made. Johnny Cash's American Recordings are real landmarks of Country Music, especially the first two. And, Cash simply cannot be impugned for his body of work: it's thoughtful, honest, tender, and mean, all at the same time. But, in the context of this idea, it's important because it brought together a man sliding sideways into his grave with a man of almost futuristic musical sensibilities. The mixture of Cash and Rubin and their seemingly opposite musical backgrounds is a terribly important road stop along this highway.

The spectrum, in my head, swims along something like this: EmmyLou Harris saved Country...and in parallel to her, men like Jason Ringenberg, Alejandro Escovedo, Ray Wylie Hubbard, and Robert Earl Keen kind of dragged it through the punk and new wave years, up to the point where the congruent "alt country" / grunge explosion took over with the Jayhawks, Uncle Tupelo, Freakwater, BR5-49 and others. Of course, what you have with all of this is music that doesn't exactly sound like traditional Country absent all context. However, I think I demonstrated repeatedly on my defunct radio program that you can play much of this music in a string with what is regarded as Classic Country, and come away with something you can load your dog into your truck with your shotgun in your hand and feel good about it.

The inbox of my email is full of articles sent to me by Al Kunz about the death of alt country. But, the ugly little truth in all of this is that alt country has always been real Country. It's where Country went, when Nashville went cash register. If you don't think that "Sister Cry" is a Country song, a real Country song, a pure Country song, you're ignoring about 50 years of thematic and musical development. Songs like "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" and "Honkytonkbadonkadonk" are sold as fun, poppy, little throwaway numbers, designed to appeal to the neon lit imp in all of us; but they're really the products of a very sinister and cynical Madison Avenue approach to music...they're pretty pictures that anesthetize us against certain realities.

I'll be the LAST person to say that all music has to be serious. What I'm arguing is that it has to be music...it has to come from someone, somewhere, and be about something, even the fun songs. Todd Snider's "Iron Mike's Last Request" is an example of a song full of ironic subject matter, that has an extra layer silliness to it because its author's voice is that of the stoner reject sitting around his house dreaming about palling around with Tyson. Whatever IT is, there's something behind that song. "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" is just hollow bullshit peddled by a two-bit giggolo in comparison.

It's important that I end this thought by saying everyone leading up to this, and everyone after, who writes an article about how "alt country" is dead, is a fucking moron. The point is not that alt country is dead, the point is that Mainstream Country, which these mainstream hack writers constantly compare alt country to, is a walking zombie of shallow musical and artistic value, that has been a commercial juggernaut due to the overwhelming force brought to it by increasingly jaded and greedy business and marketing types. The true Country music of alt country never died, it's just in the process of actual artistic flux and influence that cannot be easily quantified or qualified, and certainly can't be sold at Wal-Mart for 12.99 a piece in a greatest hits collection.

Posted by Jack Sparks at July 27, 2006 11:53 AM

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