Terry says:
> As for rock influences on country, Jon's made this point before, and it's
> well documented, but I'd argue that there's rock influences and then
> there's rock influences. The sort of rock influences that's "corrupting"
> commercial country music these days is, for the most part, banal,
> done-a-million-times bar-band type junk that was cliched when the
> Doobies were hacking away at it in the Seventies. Take Shania [and] Garth
> Brooks. Viewed from a rock perspective, these folks are
> living and breathing cliches.
Could be, but I'll bet there are plenty of rock fans who would disagree from
their rock perspectives, eh? I mean, about what qualifies as rock junk and
what doesn't. Not that those are arguments I'm especially invested in <g>.
In any event, I don't know that the idea of "cliche" has the same content
across different musical styles or listeners' backgrounds. A huge number of
country shuffles start off with the same two-note fiddle pickup, and a huge
number of mid- and up-tempo bluegrass tunes start with the same 3-note banjo
pickup. Are those cliches? By most stabs at an objective definition of the
term, I'd guess so, but I, at least, not only don't get tired of and bored
with them, I'm usually disappointed if they're not there. Maybe this kind
of stuff is only cliched if you don't like it <g>. I don't know a lot about
rock/pop, but even I can recognize that the passage in, say, "Bye Bye Baby"
that follows the bridge, where Messina is singing the first part of the
chorus over a stripped-down backing that comes crashing back in for the
second part of the chorus is a technique that's been used in a gazillion
pop/rock songs; even so, it doesn't bother me. To my ears, it works, it
sounds good, it fits the song (in a pop/rock kind of way <g>), and so the
question of whether it's a cliche or not is just plain irrelevant. YMMV,
etc., but I wonder if it can't be said that, at least in one sense, country
listeners have a higher tolerance in general for recycling musical material
(not meaning songs, but licks, riffs, arrangements, etc.).
Jon Weisberger Kenton County, KY [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://home.fuse.net/jonweisberger/
