Cheryl Cline wrote:
>What DO we call this stuff?
I know you're being semi-sarcastic but: Having a country influence and
not being on country radio doesn't seem to me to make this stuff all
of a genre, even though the same people will often like most of it.
"Rootsy stuff" usually does in conversation. It'd behoove writers to
call things by more specific and evocative terms. The Old 97s should
be called "Dallas Calling pop-punk roots" while Dale Watson should be
called "stubbornly retrograde hard country," the Geraldine Fibbers
should be called "AIDS-era sonic twang," etc. etc. Delineating the
relationship to the alt-country media/marketing/social-scene should be
done in a separate sentence. ("Tweedy hates being called alt-country,
even though most everyone blames him for the movement;" "Hadacol is a
bit of an alt-country bandwagon band"; "Don Walser isn't quite sure
what the kids mean by alt-country.")
All in the spirit of your rules-for-critics.
Cheryl also wrote:
>P.S.: Coming Soon: Boomers and Gen X, Tailbusters and Teenagers: Pfui.
Um, just to forestall being torn to well-chewed chunks by the sharp
incisors of the Cline wit - and knowing that I was waxing purple and
puffy in some of my previous contributions to this - I would like to
state for the record that generational distinctions only have very
very general application and that one's place in cultural chronology
is no more or less important than one's place in cultural geography,
gender, race, class and smarts, among other elements of life. *Of
course* age has no necessary relation to, for instance, being a
utopian hippie, or a cynical slacker, or whatever. These are all
contingent generalities.
I was addressing demographics in the frame of Jake's essay, but I too
hated the Gen-X shit when it was coming down the pipe fast and furious
in the early nineties. However: in retrospect, I have to say the best
of the commentary it generated was more accurate than I wanted to
admit. And I don't think it's foolish to say that the particular
cultural moment you grew up in, along with the economic conditions and
prevailing politics, is an important influence on who you become. We
don't question that when we talk about people who grew up in the
Depression and in the Jazz Age, so it seems fair to speculate about it
in terms of the eighties boom, the eighties-nineties recession, David
Letterman and grunge.
Any overblown claims of explanatory power are hereby dampened down.
But I'd still like to hear what Cheryl thinks.
Carl W.
