At 8:30 PM -0500 on 1/19/99, Tom Moran wrote:
>"Alt country"(which are the worst two words in the English language to mass
>market anything) or whatever you want to call it covers such a wide
>spectrum of musical tastes that I don't think there can ever be the kind of
>general consensus
>needed to raise one band or one sub-genre to any kind of Nirvana-like
>stature. So far, the numbers just ain't adding up to any kind of
>"breakthrough" for "alt-what-ever-it-is". The fact is that most people just
>plain and simple don't like it. You would have to do one hell of a PR job
>to foist it off on the public. Some country version of Marilyn Manson or
>Rob Zombie might be able to briefly pull it off and we could ride on their
>coattails. More sex and drugs! For the most part, we're all a pretty
>conservative lot, and I doubt our "ethics" would ever allow us to go the
>route of Marilyn Manson. We need to get used to the fact that "alt country"
>is always going to be a sub-genre and turn that to our advantage through
>reciprocity and good old pre-CMJ DIY ethics. I'm done now.
I dunno, Tom. I still see a pretty remarkable swing revival going on
and you can't say that there's anything particularly alternative going
on there, and as I said before, the Squirrel Nut Zippers are riding
that crest pretty well these days. Every downside discussed in this
thread so far for country applies to swing as well. It's old people's
music, it's conservative, and so on.
I'm not saying it's inevitable by any means. But so far, every claim
that it can't ignores the fact that right now it *is* happening in
another genre, and every reason for the claim that it can't happen is
countered by that swing revival. A lot of things have to come together,
but obviously it *can* happen with alt-country.
Bob
