Let’s put the “O” back in C_untry!

To quote Shooter Jennings, son of the late great Waylon Jennings “Let’s put the “O” back in C_untry!”

I was watching CMC the other day and Tim McGraw came on in his latest big budget slick ass music video and all I kept thinking was, a Stetson and a manicured goatee don’t make it country! What the hell are folks doing in the name of Country? Hank, Jimmy, Johnny and Waylon would be spinning in their respective graves, Hell! Old George Jones is spinning and he ain’t even dead yet.

Country Music use to be described as 3 chords and the truth, songs about love, loss, heartbreak, community and overcoming it all, today’s POP Country has very little resemblance to the Country Music of yore. It’s just too clean, too slick and too contrived, there’s nothing earthy or real to it, it’s become more concerned with beautiful people with perfect skin and teeth. Nashville has a lot to answer for, we now have Bon Jovi, Jessica Simpson and Kid “Fuckin” Rock in the Country charts, what a joke!

Just as an experiment, I tried to request a Drive-By Truckers video via the CMC website and the site didn’t even recognise their existence, granted things move a tad slower down here in Aus, but for a COUNTRY MUSIC TV CHANNEL in any country not to acknowledge the significance of this band is yet another travesty, I didn’t even have the heart to try Elliott Brood.

I’m not “Anti POP”, I love Pop Music, as long as it’s honestly Pop, Mika is a true talent as too are P!nk, Christina and Duffy, they’re Pop and honest about it and that makes them great, they’re honest about their Popness. Every genre has a place in this wonderful world of music, without POP we would never have had The Beatles, Elton, Bowie or The Beach Boys and the world would be a lot worse off without their collective contributions to the world’s wondrous soundscape.

So for all those “Country fans” out there, give Keith, Tim, Toby, Dirks, Brooks and Dunn a miss and check out Drive-By Truckers, Old Crow Medicine Show, Elliott Brood, Hank Williams III, and Wayne “The Train” Hancock, you will hear real Country Music, created by real musicians, not the next Music Row Lemming. And in Aus. we have incredible artists like Halfway, Mexico City, LJ Hill, The Orphans and Chucks Wagon just to name a few, there are a plethora of wonderful “Real” Country Music acts out there, you just need to dig and look beyond Nashville and Tamworth.

Till next time… Leave The Dirt On!

W