A little bit Country....

[dvandom]

Just killing a few minutes before I have to go down and do some administrative stuff (waiting to make sure everyone who's gonna be showing up for the class is there). Figured I'd ramble about a recent slight shift in my listening habits.

From the time I got my first radio around age 8-9 until hitting puberty, I listened to country music. Not really sure why, I mean, I'm from Wisconsin, so it's not like it's what everyone does. Around age 12-13, however, I got bored with country. Mind you, it was a period of some stagnation in the form, there wasn't exactly a flood of new material. I ended up drifting into the usual rock/pop/top40 stuff at that point.

Then the New Country revolution hit in the mid 80s. Labels were slow to get back catalogs onto CD, and a whole new crop of artists was exploiting this. Stations generally didn't want to play vinyl and CD next to each other, since it made the vinyl sound like crap, so the new stuff got heavy rotation and the older stuff got forgotten. Thing is, I did not (and still do not) like New Country, nor have I cared for much of any Country music made in the past 20 years. So, when I started getting bored of Pop-40 in college, I had absolutely zero incentive to go back to Country. I'd occasionally listen to the early "is it rock or country or what?" stuff on oldies stations, but that was about it.

But recently, a Classic Country station started up in the area (all those old catalogs eventually got onto CD), and I've been listening to it more and more. 20 years of absence does a lot to reduce boredom, plus there's lots of songs that were before my time (i.e. not played on a pop-country station in the 70s or early 80s). Of course, I also listen to an 80s pop station, a 60s/70s rock station, and the local college alternative station, plus a station that mixes classic rock and top 40.

So...when I describe my musical tastes as eclectic, it just got more emphatically so. :)

Comments

[z4nd4r.livejournal.com]

The oldies "is it rock or country" stuff? Would you be refering to what I tend to lump into "Southern Rock"?

Charlie Daniels Band is a prime example...

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

I think he's talking about rockabilly and that kind of stuff. Carl Perkins, early Elvis, Jimmy Lloyd - from back in the '50s, when rock and country were still in the process of defining themselves apart from southern blues and each other.

I got a rocket in my pocket and a roll in my walk
Aw baby don't buzz me with that north-forty talk
There ain't nothin' you can tell me I don't already know
I got a rocket in my pocket and I'm rarin' to go

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Yep. Elvis in particular gets claimed by both country and rock. I tend to think of "southern rock" as being a later development, stuff ranging from Skynyrd to Kid Rock (which, admittedly, is a pretty wide swath in both time and style). Rock grew out of a mix of country and R&B...the core was "race records" stuff, but it sucked in all sorts of influences in the 50s and 60s before the Billboard charts started more rigidly stratifying styles.

[z4nd4r.livejournal.com]

Ah. Ok, I can't say I really know much of that, but I have a wide appreciation of music...most people hop in my car and look at my cd collection amazed at the smatterings of Southern Rock, 80s Pop, New Wave, Punk, Alternative, Hip-Hop, Ska, Techno, Industrial, Glam, Nu Metal and probably some more....

[recharge138.livejournal.com]

Dude, EVERYONE says their musical taste is "eclectic."

I wait for someone to come up with the genre of "Eclectic" that gets real popular on MTV and such.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Just everyone you know. Most people are staunch genre-pigeonhole fans, which is how the stuff keeps selling.

[recharge138.livejournal.com]

To be fair, everyone I know is stupid.

[z4nd4r.livejournal.com]

WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

BTW, my most recent CD purchases have been (probably forgetting a few, and not in order): Robots and Sky High soundtracks, tATu's second US album, Dev2.0, Johnny Cash's Greatest Hits, several They Might Be Giants discs, Conjure One, some old Nelories I found on eBay, and the new album by The Darkness. I also got given a country western cover of The Wall by Luther Wright and the Wrongs, which I quite enjoyed.

So, yeah. Eclectic.