Evan's point is well-taken.
Mind you, these days I don't spend much time listening to the local
college stations, largely because too often I tune in to find people
rambling incoherently about politics or -- much worse -- a dj
"interviewing" a local musician which sounds like a 2 am bar
discussion of "what were your teachers like in high school?" "oh man,
i remember mrs. stipocolloki would come in drunk to english class"
"yeah, yeah, man, that was like - it made me question authority. what
high school did you go to?..." (this is an almost literal quote from a
15-minute conversation i heard on air today.) And this was on CKLN,
one of the largest, best-transmitted college stations in Canada, with
full-time paid staff... Is the program director on vacation? Didn't
they know the mic was on?
That rant aside - there's definitely a stigmatization of rootsy stuff
as uncool among the alterna-indie cognoscenti, which is a big change
since the 80s. Good friends of mine run the (*very* professional -
much more so than commercial radio) all-night CBC Radio 2 new-music
program Brave New Waves, and while they have very eclectic tastes, not
much country-flavoured music is permitted into the mix. While the host
and I have had long conversations about the shortage of great
songwriting among new bands, when I mentioned a couple of examples
from the twangy side of town she said, "Yeah, sure, but I don't want
to have to go that route." As though it were something you'd only do
in desperation in your old age. Besides the indie-experimental rock
(her staple, but which is not in great supply) she'd rather play the
most mediocre electronica than the best of independent twangy stuff -
some of which I think much more innovative in its way, for instance
the Bad Livers.
Unfortunately I think the fences have been raised higher because the
consensus "cool" independent bands now (in the year 5 A.G. (After
Grunge)) are ones that are very far from rock - not a bad thing in
itself, perhaps even necessary. But with the side-effect that f your
standard-bearer is, say, Stereolab, then twangy music is going to be a
lot less close to your golden mean than it was when the
standard-bearer was the Replacements or the Meat Puppets. If they're
going to listen to acoustic music it's either free improv or lo-fi, or
it's international folk music of some kind.
Mind you, in circles just slightly less hipper-than-thou you will find
young Johnny Cash or Emmylou or Steve Earle fans who also listen to
Massive Attack and Gastr del Sol. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to
extend up to the gatekeepers and tastemakers, but perhaps in time
(again, just get us through the year 2000 and who knows).
Carl W.
