> Two observations about this Jim vs. Don and Jon debate (a side issue: when
> the hell do we get Don vs. Jon?).
Whenever the subject of the original alt.country comes up.
> Anyhow, first thing, aren't a lot of the
> sensitive ballad weiners coming out of Nashville not doing that well
> either? So it's evidently not just material that's "too country" that's
> having a difficult time...
I didn't say it was, but it's certainly a big category of stuff that has had
a hard time getting airplay, regardless of what label it's on. Furthermore,
all the stuff you're referring to, and a lot of the light-weight New Country
stuff in general is on what Jim calls Nashville-based labels, so the
difficulty some of these acts are having argues against his pay=play
equation too.
> ...which comes first,
> lousy record sales and then radio play falls off, or the other way around?
The truism is that airplay drives sales (that's why labels send stuff to
radio for free, eh?), and there's a lot of evidence to support that as a
general proposition. On the other hand, you can get pretty decent sales
without airplay; recent examples would include Kelly Willis, Steve Earle &
The Del McCoury Band and Trio II, all of which are or got pretty high on
Billboard's sales chart without benefit of mainstream (country or otherwise)
airplay. Alison Krauss & Union Station's So Long, So Wrong went gold
without benefit of mainstream airplay, too, to take a somewhat earlier
example.
> Second thing, I'm not convinced by Don and Jon's example of Vince Gill's
> "The Key." It's one record, and I think we need some more examples.
> There's other factors that may have contributed to its lack of success
> (incidentally, a "lack of success" that very many performers in and out of
> Nashville envy greatly). But basically, until you've provided some more
> examples, you're vulnerable to the "exception that proves the
> rule" argument.
Barnett's first album. Dawn Sears' second album. Daryle Singletary, who
had a couple of big hits and then went nowhere on account of being too
country. Rhonda Vincent. Junior Brown has gotten video airplay up the
wazoo - won mainstream awards for his videos - and can't get airplay, and
he's on Curb. Allison Moorer's not getting airplay, and she's on MCA and
has been a personal project of Tony Brown's. Danni Leigh's basically gone
nowhere airplay-wise. Skaggs' pre-bluegrass albums of the 90s. George
Jones (when he went from MCA to Asylum, Evelyn Shriver said that as far as
they were concerned, they were writing radio off up front). Those are off
the top of my head, and I'll bet it wouldn't take long to come up with other
examples.
Jon Weisberger, Kenton County, KY [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://home.fuse.net/jonweisberger
