JG Roll said:
>I think that the bottom line is that Alt-Country is the commercial kiss of
>death. Nobody has really broken thru (Lucinda not excepted), and the
>radio format is a complete commercial wasteland. When you consider that
>these people (Wilco, etc.) are on major labels, and have been at this a
>long time, and want to keep their jobs, it shouldn't be such a mystery
>that they are very defensive when they seemingly cannot distance
>themselves from their past.
Your first sentence sparked a few thoughts - alt.country seems to be music
for we aging baby boomers as opposed to alt.rock or new country which seems
to target the teen to twenties crowd. In a sense, alt.country is our
nostalgia as much as a repackaging of "70's Metal Greats" or any of those
compilations you can see advertised on TV. New ground isn't really broken
inasmuch as being a crow pie sampling of styles which in some cases would
not spark the interest of the primary album-buying public; not looking at
statistics here, but I would say in general is the 16-30 aged crowd. There
just isn't enough adrenaline to spark that interest. You can go back
through the twentieth century and see that the predominating influential
music of an era was rather high-speed frantic, sexually charged rhythms and
lyrically suggestive
vocals which seemed to "speak" to the adrenaline-laced, sexually confused,
frustrated and seemingly manic-depressive alter states which is adolescence
and partly the spirit which follows the freedom-as-adult concept.. Does
alt.country at this point, speak to that audience? From flapper to big
band swing to rockabilly to hard rock to alt.rock, it is a beat/style which
is in keeping with the internal energy of a particular age group. Such
that, at sixteen you may have worshipped at the altar of heavy metal,
however at 35 or forty, you recognize that influence, smile a bit while
still liking a good metal tune but you go on as you've grown with the myriad
of transforming experiences encountered in your twenties, thirties and so
on. At this point, we're ready for a mixture of nostalgia woven into our
favorite rock and country artists and all the subgenres inbetween. Our
internal systems have slowed (matured) a bit, craving substance over a quick
fix. Alt.country is that musical balance for the baby boomer crowd, but it
is not one which will enrapture or be embraced by the primary record buying
public. Alt.country has to find a relevant "hook" with the teen to twenties
crowd,
"find" a breakout artist or just be content with receiving it's due in about
twenty years. That, in my opinion is why Tweedy and others do not wish to
be associated with an alt. labeling. "Music your mom and dad would like" to
quote something else is not what platinum sales are all about.
Tera
