On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Jon Weisberger wrote:
> I'll be interested to see what folks who are more peripherally involved
> in/interested in bluegrass - enough to have run into some of the folks
> Phil's talking about - have to say on the subject.
A couple summers ago I was at a bar in San Francisco watching Wayne
Hancock with a good friend and he admitted that he wasnt that into
country music -- mostly because he hated the sound of a steel guitar.
Now how someone could dislike a steel guitar when they wouldnt blink at
the dead sound of a synthesizer is beyond me, but I think his way of
thinking is more common than mine.
I have the same problem with the singing when I try and play more
traditional records, like the Carter Family or the Stanley Brothers.
Sara's singing on "Wildwood Flower" sounds like heaven to me, but to an
awful lot of people -- people I might otherwise consider friends -- it
sounds like screeching. Sometimes I'm having a transcendent experience
listening to "Jacob's Vision" and people ask me to please turn it off
because it's driving them nuts.
There's a similar repellant quotient to a lot of country instruments: the
mandolin, the fiddle, the banjo, even the dobro. And for a lot of
different reasons. For some people the sound is just grating. Then there
were people, when I was at school in Berkeley, who would, upon hearing a
song with a banjo or a fiddle, start mimicking the mentally retarded
inbred people they assumed made it.
So the problem with bluegrass for the masses is that it's got not just
one or two of these elements but they pretty much make up what it is. So
it's pretty near guaranteed to drive away all but the most twang savvy.
Will Miner
Denver, CO
