Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
My musical Achilles’ heel
I will be the first to admit that my musical tastes are not for everyone. Even I find the Swans’ Michael Gira’s baritone to be deadly, and the best thing I can say about Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon is that she out-Courtney Loves Courtney Love. And while I can’t understand why anyone would dislike the swanging accordion riffs of Gogol Bordello, my wife and son both do, and since I love them, I’m honor-bound to concede there is a viable worldview that does not elevate GB to the level of, say, Devo, B-52s, or Talking Heads.
But I can’t take more than a half hour of country music TV. I discovered that today in the gym. Here I was doing my best to strain my back on the lat pulldown when some young buck with his trendy li’l soul patch turns the TV on to the country music station.
It’s not the music that bugs me. I know this because I’ve been in restaurants where country music plays in the background, and I don’t lose my appetite. It’s the musicians. It’s this nagging hunch I have that they’re all posers. That their cowboy hats and vocal twangs are props, and if I could see them in the privacy of their own livingrooms, I’d find them sipping sherry and speaking perfect William Powell-esque English. That if I tugged on their beards I would discover just how well Krazy Glue binds to skin.
Country music also tweaks me because it’s yet another member of the set, Things That Are Immensely Popular That I Don’t Get. Like football, for example. A couple of weeks ago, Jake and I went to a pizza parlor after our workout. While we were waiting for our pizza, we had a good thirty minutes to observe the American couch jock in one of his favored habitats: in a restaurant with beer in one hand, pizza in the other, surrounded by fellow couch jocks. I don’t understand all the yelling and hooting and whistling. If I tried to mimic the behavior, I would yell, hoot, or whistle at inappropriate times. The best I can do is exclaim “OH!” a few hundred milliseconds after everyone else reacts.
Perhaps football fans bother me because I can’t seem to work up that degree of enthusiasm over anything.
D.
Walnut – Seriously, Man. You’re hurtin’ me where it hurts. I’m sitting here in Nashville minding my own business and WHAM, I feel the slap of your glove across my face. You don’t know much about country music, so it may all sound the same to you, but it doesn’t to me because I know EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW about country music, and that’s a lot more than what you see at the Grammy’s. To your point, the hats, boots, beards and rhinestones are indeed show business, but the music is real. Poseurs are everywhere. Here we just call ’em phonies.
You even got the disgruntled gravatar 🙂 Sorry, Lucie, I should know better than to complain about country music stars when I figure at least half my readership are probably big big fans.
I’m with you! As a Damned Yankee the twanging sounds of country music burn my ear holes. Not to mention the torture inflicted upon me as a child by a father who loved Boxcar Willie and Slim Whitman. The soundtrack to Smokey & The Bandit ARG!!! Although I do like Patsy Cline’s vocals. No, I’m in full agreement. C&W is toxic. Of course, as an ENT you’ll be most knowledgeable about what is good for the ear.
Over the years, I have learned that the best way to deal with football fans is to simply agree with them. Nothing seems to shut them up faster. Any kind of banter will become an argument and, if you don’t follow football, you end up in a debate you just can’t win because (a) you don’t know all the details and (b) you don’t really care that much anyway. So, just agree. And they’ll change topics because they’re looking for a fight.
I like some country music, mostly the old stuff (Ring of Fire, Patsy Cline) and Western Swing, as well as classics like Johnny Cash. I’m also hugely fond of Dwight Yoakum (love the accent!), who has lost his lean hungry look. I used to live in the tiny hamlet of Grit (not kidding – so small it doesn’t even have a post office) that is the home of Ricky van Shelton (known in downstate Virginia as Ricky Van). I’m not into mainstream stuff, more the periphery of country music – rockabilly, folk music, big band…
Coastal people are pretty far from the world of cowboy hats, but it’s definitely there. When I lived in Dallas, I was impressed to see that people really do wear the full gear without a drop of irony.
Listening to country music makes me homesick for the U.S. – not DC or Cali, but more the idea of the U.S. (les Etats-Unis profonde), which sort of blends with my now idealized memories of grad school in Urbana.
Many you aren’t melancholy enough for country music…
i can’t stand (most) country music. probably because i do not like the sound of southern accents (with VERY few exceptions). i will listen to just about anything else, except maybe death metal and the stupid hardcore rap that’s all about bitches and hos. i don’t *like* other kinds, like trance/techno/jonas brothers, but i’ll listen to them without cringing (much).
but if i get a choice, i stick to an oldies’ station or my ipod full of a capella and ben folds and guster and opera and yeah.
now, football i get. i’m not crazy into it, but i will happily watch and yell because after a year in marching band plus watching games with my dad, i pretty much understand it. i yell at umass hockey, and major league baseball, and occasionally some basketball too. 🙂
I used to dislike country music, but there is so much “crossover” these days, my ears are no longer offended. I like Taylor Swift. Is Lady Antebellum country? I like them too. Oh, and Carrie Underwood…definitely. I even sing along with Carrie’s “Jesus Take the Wheel”.
Oh, hey, I forgot about Johnny Cash. I do like Johnny Cash, especially Ring of Fire. And how about Roy Orbison — is he considered C&W? Hmm. Now I am in the mood for Roy Orbison.
The blog was down a moment ago. I wonder WTF? So anyway I posted over at The Other Place, where I haven’t posted since last August. If y’all don’t remember where The Other Place is, email me at malmerkin at gmail dot com, and I’ll send you the link. I’m still trying to keep it semi-anonymous, or at least difficult to trace to me (unlike this blog), hence the secrecy.
So I guess I wasn’t hacked?
I popped over there when this blog was down, but you hadn’t posted there yet. So, I might have been one of the two hits you had over there today. Assuming that by “hits” you mean page visits.
I think it was probably a server error here. I don’t remember the message, but it seems like it was server error-ish.
Country music is like all other forms of popular music, in that it has some genuine good stuff buried in mountains of sterile styrofoam crap.
Football, now… sorry I can’t help you there. It bores me to tears. I can turn on a baseball game and watch it, or go see a live game. If hockey is on I can follow it, being Canadian and all, and even enjoy it if it’s a good game. But football and basketball elude me.
Most country music — especially the current pop country — I’m most profoundly meh about.
Corb Lund, though, you gotta check him out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeEyAt4Ewhg — Counterfeiter’s Blues
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8KYxtWhdV0 — Family Reunion
There’s a bunch more on YouTube too.