Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Brendan Calling
I discovered a great blog by Brendan Skwire. Brendan is, and I quote:
[Brendan Skwire] I’m a writer, musician, beer-drinker, politics maven, and loudmouth living in Philadelphia.
I love music. I'm a mediocre guitar player and a pretty good vocalist who never pursued a music career because a.) I'm too stage-shy to actually sing anything alone, and b.) I have about a thousand and thirty-seven kids that I am supporting so I can't be "partying like a rock star" all the damn time.
Brendan is an absolutely addictive writer who also used to play in "the worlds first (and only) Bluegrass Thrashmetal Punk band" called "UncleFucker". UncleFucker was the band that opened for Courtney Love the night she got arrested for beaning some guy with another band's guitar player's borrowed guitar.
The thing that hooked me with Brendan is his take on country music. like me, Brendan is a country music aficionado, and a bluegrass fan.
Weird, huh? It blew me away too. I love bluegrass, and more often than not, my station is tuned to a country music station.
In any case, the following post turned me into a Brendan fan:
[Brendan Skwire] All country music is addictive if you ask me, from the bluegrass and old time I first fell in love with, to 1950s honky tonk, western swing, the Nashville sounds, Bakersfield, the Outlaws. Even some of the stuff I turned up my nose at during the punk rock 80s now actually sounds OK in retrospect. As I've made clear earlier, I like a lot of the contemporary songs out there too. I just can't understand why a station like WXTU, which has a monopoly on the country fan's ear can't squeeze a little George Jones in there with the Shania. Is it too much to ask for even a 10-midnight Sunday night Classic Country slot?
And this gets to I really believe. Classic country doesn't deserve to be shunted to a Sunday night ghetto. Everything needs to be jumbled together in a mishmosh, Flatt and Scruggs following Lonestar following Toby Keth following Waylon following Shania. There's a fine station, 101.3 near Syracuse NY that plays a fine mix of classic and contemporary country.
There is no comparing dreck like "Mr Mom" to Patsy Cline's "Crazy", but you never hear Patsy on WXTU. NEVER. "Crazy" is a damn classic song; it should be getting played every day, in the regular mix. Same with Hank Williams (all 3 of them), George Jones, Bill Monroe. In short, play all of it, everything from Alan Jackson to the Stanley Brothers. And the Louvin Brothers. God bless the Louvin Brothers.
Regardless of it's drenched-in-god-talk reputation, I still love country music. Even the new artists at least try and express themselves in real ways, with real emotions, and lyrics that you can fucking understand. I love acoustic guitar music, and country music is rich with an acoustic tradition that the rock genre can't touch. Bluegrass music has the ability to make me cry sometimes. I can sit and listen to Alison Krauss or Nickel Creek for hours. I like the harmonies and the acoustic feel to the music. It lifts me up and makes me happy when I listen to it. I even have the Bluegrass station on my Sirius radio programmed into one of my presets.
Don't get me wrong, I listen to a lot of metal, hard rock, classic rock, and alternative rock too - but I'll always have my country music to fall back on.
Check out Brendan Calling - especially his "Geatest Hits" section in the right-hand sidebar which features selections from his now-defunct Blogspot blog. You'll most likely get hooked by his great, evocative writing, and his eclectic musical tastes, just like I was. This is what blogging is all about, in my opinion.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Two Words
Corey freakin Smith
However you get your music, get online and check out Corey Smith, "I can't help myself", or "If That's Country"
Or, "Drinkin Again", or "The Basement", or "Where's the Love", or "A Better Place" or "Fuck the Po' Po'" or...
You get the idea. This guy is straight-up talented. Younger guy (28ish ?) from Georgia. Cool sound, and cool style. (Yeah, he's got some churchy-stuff in some of his songs. Deal with it. He can play and he can sing.)
I actually contacted his agent to see if there's a way I could promote him. I don't know shit about promoting, but damn...this kid would make even a shitty promoter a lot of money.
And now you know how I *really* feel!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Smith_(musician)
Wordiness
Jeez. I keep a file on my computer into which I copy all my blog comments. I just did a Word Count on it. Since the middle of last year, I've posted almost 80,000 words -- a mid-sized book's worth of comments.
Someday really soon, I have to get a life. :D
Argh.
Just in case this seems like a witless non sequitur, the post ABOVE was an absent-minded followup to the post BELOW.
Often?
Hank, do you often talk to yourself this way? Just curious... ;)
Someone recent made note of the volume of material that flows by dKos (where I hang out a fair amount). It was something on the order of 300,000 words - *daily*. Yeesh, no wonder I never feel like I know what's going on over there...
Jim Downey
"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
Drenched in god talk
Boy, you hit THAT nail on the head.
Growing up in Texas, I listened to country western music from the 1950s on. I was also a big rodeo fan from the mid-1960s on. And -- whew! -- today there's more blatant goddiness in both communities than ever before. I've watched (listened to?) the slow transition to goddiness in CW music, and I'm still mystified at how it happened, and how far it's gone.
I've thought more than once that, emotionally, CW music is a more mature art form than some other musical genres, because it can treat the entire range of human emotions. You can hear CW songs about love, hate, anger, lust, humor, tenderness, revenge, gentle regret, and a lot of other stuff. Can't think of a good example right this second, but many times I've listened to a CW song and thought "Boy, you'd never hear a song like THIS on any rock station."
Yet it seems something of that maturity has been compromised in the past few years as the level of goddy preachiness has sharply increased, compressing down the range of CW music.
The local country station is one of the most frequent buttons pushed on my truck radio. Yet I also frequently switch the radio off because some of the songs these days are such pandering Christian bullshit that I can no longer stand it. And *I* lived through "Becky's Christmas Wish."
...
Sideways comment: I went to a cowboy wedding some years back in which the presiding official was a "cowboy preacher." Having worked as a cowboy, mule packer and draft horse teamster, I'm somewhat of a purist when it comes to authenticity -- I watched his guy prancing around in his extremely overdone cowpoke gear (knee-high high-heeled red boots, leather wrist cuffs, braided horsehair hat keeper, 6-inch hat brim, wildrag, etc.), stroking his mustache and talking to "The Boss," and it truly gave me the creeps.
...
Sideways comment Number 2: I had a happy thought a few days ago: What if the current upsurge in religion we're all witnessing in the U.S. is a mere demographic bubble? Think about it: The Baby Boomer generation is getting old enough to care about their immortality, and maybe the weight of their money and attention has shifted the social balance in that direction. I've been convinced for other reasons that all this godding is temporary, but this gave me a believable mechanism for a coming ebb in religiosity.
Another happy thought is that, given the backlash growing in the scientific and secular communities, people who have become alarmed and active about religious triumphalism in the U.S., this may be the LAST such upsurge.
I’m eagerly observing the phenomenon of mega-churches, interested to see where it leads. I don’t have any profound thoughts on the matter yet, but I’m started to get a feeling that mega-churches are a sign of the end times – not for the world, but for genuine religiosity itself. Having watched businesses like coffee shops and sporting goods stores go from the mom-and-pop phase to the international mega-business franchise model, I think we’re seeing the same consolidation and removal-from-local-control in churches.
Mega-churches will certainly gain in political power as churches, but something tells me they will lose political market share overall as the personal, neighborhood church element gets marginalized in favor of a more impersonal corporate environment. When religion turns into just another corporate product, with hype and advertising and a necessity for constant next-new-thing excitement, it becomes just another video game searching for buyers, just another stage for the religious equivalent of rock stars and hit CDs. (Can you say “competition,” boys and girls? Shelf life? Consolidation? Outsourcing? Obsolescence? Downsizing? Buyouts? Bankruptcies?)
That “corporate product” model is playing out in a rapid flow of pop Christian books and movies too. This overexposure can’t help but dilute the basic message. Once people catch on that religion is just the latest McDonald’s Happy Meal toy – Goddy Barbie – it seems to me that it will begin to permanently lose the personal impact ... and the national power.
I don't know about that
I saw an article on the news about how podcast surmans are becoming more popular, because kids think it's more personal than going to church (how downloading a pre-recorded message and listening to it on your ipod is personal I'm not sure). Thing is, churches are pretty outdated compared to what kids have access to (internet which allows you to see what you want when you want it, On Demand and Tivo which let you watch your favorite shows when you have time rather than when they are suppose to be on, there has never been a time before there was access to prerecorded videos and the player for them), it's getting to the point where anything that forces you to be at a specific place at a specific time is becoming outdated (with the exception of school and most jobs, but how long will that last I wonder?). As such I would expect most churches to dissappear as time goes by, but that doesn't mean religion itself will vanish (mores the pity).
Unfortunately two of religion's prime functions in today's society; offering an answer to the question "what happens to me when I die?" that sounds pleasant, and offering people a sense of superiority that is completely unrelated to anything they've actually done are not so easy to get rid of.