< PREVIOUS ] [ 1992 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
At first I thought it was a media conglomerate's sick and twisted notion of an April Fool's Day joke, but when I read the cover story in last week's Time, it gradually dawned on me that they were dead serious. According to the pundits of Time, country music is now the hot trend among middle-aged baby boomers like me.
That's scary. I thought I'd managed to resist the stuff.
Resistance came naturally. My parents were major country
fans (their records were Hank Williams and Eddy Arnold),
and still are (they've worn out several VCR's taping
Nashville Network programs), but any remotely normal kid
finds it simple, almost imperative, to rebel against his
parents' musical tastes. Especially when the country hits
were kill all the long-haired hippie commie perverts
anthems like Okie from Muskogee.
That resistance was fortified 20 years ago when Martha
waited tables in a restaurant and bar which featured live
country music. You have never heard truly wretched music
until you hear Somewhere my Love
played on a
pedal-steel guitar. Even the memories hurt like a
toothache.
Then came four years in Grand County, where I learned that cowboy bars were excellent places to receive unlicensed dental work and plastic surgery from pointy-toed boots and broken bottles. The more mud-splattered gun-rack pickups you see parked outside a honky-tonk, the less reason to enter, unless you suffer from severe masochistic impulses.
But as a baby-boomer in good standing, can I resist a Time-proclaimed trend?
The answer involved some soul-searching. Rock 'n' roll is essentially the offspring of country and blues. White music from the hollows of Appalachia joins with black music from the Mississippi Delta. Some snobs don't like the result, but it's as American as anything can be -- where else could strains from Scotland and west Africa ever meet?
Upon further reflection, I realized that I like a lot of music which, by any fair analysis, is country music: some Bob Dylan, recent stuff from the Traveling Wilburys, old Rolling Stones cuts, humor from the Rev. Billy C. Wirtz, an occasional George Thorogood song, John Prine, Bonnie Raitt -- the list could continue indefinitely.
None of this, however, was packaged as country music. They've been sneaking this stuff in on us unsuspecting rock 'n' roll fans. I didn't even know the Kentucky Headhunters were a country act until Time told me so.
But to be a country-music fan? When George Bush professes to be one?
Sorry, pundits. This is one trend I'll have to skip. It
may not be easy, but it won't be nearly as bad as missing
out on the baby boomers make lots of money
trend in
the '80s.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1992 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >