"I don't like country music at all".

[41132n]

There are only two types of music I hate:

Fucking Country and Fucking Western.

When I were a lad, my mother would play either the above or Opera.

I preferred Opera............

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Well, I have to admit that I have always hated the rigidity of genres. I know they have to exist, but I just am not comfortable with fitting stuff into neat boundaries. There's always too much bleeding around the edges

That's all true, I don't really see how it matters though. Some things are obviously country, some things might sound a bit country. Get far enough away and I might even like it, who knows. I still don't like country.

 

[Dubversion]

Things like bluegrass are ok because it's folk music really.

as is a lot of the best country. in the states especially, trying to draw any distinct lines between folk, country, bluegrass, old blues etc is kinda foolish.

As for UK country bands - I just don't get it. Do they not feel like complete plonkers?

Why on earth should they? Should UK blues bands feel awkward? Should an American band covering an English folk song feel like plonkers? Should an English folk duo covering a song written by an American singer / songwriter feel like plonkers?

Sure, if they're wearing stetsons and shouting 'yeehaw', then they need a slap. But there are songwriters like Alan Tyler (The Rockinbirds), Steve Tree (The Arlenes), The Broken Family Band, even Larry Love's Showband who are anything but plonkers.

 

[marty21]

i listen to some

lucinda williams, jeff finlin, a bit of steve earle, johnny cash, there was a great compliation that was on the cover of uncut a few years ago, which is chokka full of great country music

 

[Dubversion]

Surely if you're talking about a genre of music it makes sense to have some idea of what that genre is. Or there's no point.

And I don't like 'Walk the Line.' I think it's actually one of Dubversion's pet rants, that some people are convinced that if they can get people to 'really listen' to the music they like, or to some of it they haven't heard, then they'll suddenly see the same thing in it. It doesn't really happen IMO.

ABsolutely, if i ever used that argument, kill me.

It's one thing to suggest strands of a genre, or tracks by an artist, and say "look, you might be surprised by this - give it a go". To say, "well if you don't like XX you obviously haven't heard XXX' is just ridiculous.

 

[camouflage]

There's only one form of music I hate, but it ain't Country.

 

[libragirl]

i don't like country and i don't think i ever will.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I have here Frank Zappa's testimony to congress during the 'let's censor rock music' moral panic of the 80's. Here he's talking about country music.

Shouldn't the ladies be warning everyone that inside those Country albums with the American Flags, the big trucks, and the atomic pompadours there lurks a fascinating variety of songs about sex, violence, alcohol, and the devil, recorded in a way that lets you hear every word, sung for you by people who have been to prison and are proud of it.

source

 

[subversplat]

I'm white trash

I don't like that blinged up country though - the sorts they sell on late night "Not available in the shops" programmes. Much too plastickey and toothy. I like my country with a clapped out old pickup and a bottle of moonshine

 

[sojourner]

I have here Frank Zappa's testimony to congress during the 'let's censor rock music' moral panic of the 80's. Here he's talking about country music.

source

 

[Blagsta]

Or all reggae because UB40 were so ersatz?

Although UB40's first couple of albums were great.

 

[hammerntongues]

LDR has tried and failed to convert me.

Things I hate about country:

The Misery
A decent proportion of C&W songs, to my mind are about unhappyness, loss, heartbreak - why listen to music that makes you miserable.

The Music
There's something that irritates me about the music itself, the chord progressions, structures etc sound obvious, slow and boring and simple.

The Singing
C&W music seems to be sung in this slow irritating southern US drawl.

Guess your not a big fan of Blues or Soul either then ?

 

[cyberfairy]

I thought I hated it until I discovered The Geraldine Fibbers

 

[danny la rouge]

I find that a lot of the dislike is based on a misreading of the genre, and on the fact that it professes its Americanness so strongly that lots of folks cannot find any worth in it.

Hmmm. I think I know what you mean. I think it's a kind of Americanness that people don't like. Or think they won't like. It's basically white working class Americanness.

But as has been said, trying to separate out country from blues, or from other basically folk forms is futile. And many of those forms profess their Americanness, too.

I was, as a youth, inculcated with this idea that rock 'n' roll was the meeting of rhythm and blues with country. And being the kind of person I am, I had to seek out the roots of rock 'n' roll, follow the separate streams back to their sources. But I found that actually the streams had met many times in the past. Delta blues had learned from country folk, and vice versa, over and over again down the generations. You can hear blues in Hank Williams. You can hear country in Son House. There are old, old mountain songs covered by the Carters in the 30s called this blues or that blues. There were black bluegrass bands and white jug bands in the 20s.

I could make you a CD of old recordings going back to 1918, and you'll hear the interplay between country and blues.

But as for country being purely American: I grew up with traditional Scottish music all around me. People sang and played for any occasion. My Grandad played melodian and hammer dulcimer in a ceilidh dance band around the coal fields. And I can hear that music in country. I feel at home in country; I know what it's about. Proper country, that is, not corporate country. It's about ordinary people, working class people; it's about life.

And like much else that seems particular, and set in one place, if it has integrity and verisimilitude it will transcend that and say something universal. Sorley MacLean's poetry does that. On the face of it, it's in Gaelic, a minority language clinging to the most remote Western edges of Europe; it's about places like Halaig, a remote settlement on a little known Hebridean Island, deserted during the Clearances. But even in translation it is far from parochial; it is international. And when country music works, that is exactly what it does - it is of a place, and has the rhythms and realities of the place right through it, but it speaks a much wider truth.

 

[sleaterkinney]

Guess your not a big fan of Blues or Soul either then ?

Blues I actually hate more than C&W, Soul I can appreciate.

 

[hammerntongues]

Blues I actually hate more than C&W, Soul I can appreciate.

Fair do`s , I just can`t get my head around anyone having a hatred for any kind of music on such a broad sweep

 

[sleaterkinney]

But as for country being purely American: I grew up with traditional Scottish music all around me. People sang and played for any occasion. My Grandad played melodian and hammer dulcimer in a ceilidh dance band around the coal fields. And I can hear that music in country. I feel at home in country; I know what it's about. Proper country, that is, not corporate country. It's about ordinary people, working class people; it's about life.

You see I grew up with Irish music as well, and I like it a lot and it was music that my neighbours made in their own houses or in the pubs, but it's a million miles away from c&w, which was about putting on a silly american accent and singing about things which don't even exist in america any more(I doubt).

 

[sleaterkinney]

Fair do`s , I just can`t get my head around anyone having a hatred for any kind of music on such a broad sweep

It's just I've failed to see any redeeming features in the stuff I've heard so far and hated most of it.

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

LDR has tried and failed to convert me.

Things I hate about country:

The Misery
A decent proportion of C&W songs, to my mind are about unhappyness, loss, heartbreak - why listen to music that makes you miserable.

The Music
There's something that irritates me about the music itself, the chord progressions, structures etc sound obvious, slow and boring and simple.

The Singing
C&W music seems to be sung in this slow irritating southern US drawl.

I likw country&western but this made me laugh i think i agree with DLR generally tho, C&W rocks people

 

[danny la rouge]

Blues I actually hate more than C&W, Soul I can appreciate.

Eh? So where does your cut-off from blues to soul occur?

Is Ray Charles blues or soul? For example. Or Sam Cooke? Or Big Joe Turner? Or Otis Spann?

I can't understand somebody who would hate Lightnin Hopkins or Muddy Waters. Or Howlin Wolf. For example. In fact I feel I really couldn't have a conversation with somebody who could listen to Lightnin Hopkins' 1947 & '48 recordings and say "nope. Leaves me cold". I think I'd have nothing in common with such a person.

Sorry mate, but sort your life out.

 

[sleaterkinney]

I can't understand somebody who would hate Lightnin Hopkins or Muddy Waters. Or Howlin Wolf. For example. In fact I feel I really couldn't have a conversation with somebody who could listen to Lightnin Hopkins' 1947 & '48 recordings and say "nope. Leaves me cold". I think I'd have nothing in common with such a person.

Sorry mate, but sort your life out.

wtf?

Come back to the thread when you've found a way out of your own backside.

 

[danny la rouge]

wtf?

Come back to the thread when you've found a way out of your own backside.

Why are you taking offence? This is a forum for expressing musical taste. And opinion. You say you don't like blues. I find that unimaginable.

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

Some times its hard to be a woman.......

 

[danny la rouge]

Come on sleaterkinney, where's your fight? What is there in soul that isn't in blues? You say you don't like blues, so tell us about that.

 

[sleaterkinney]

Why are you taking offence? This is a forum for expressing musical taste. And opinion. You say you don't like blues. I find that unimaginable.

And how is "Sorry mate, but sort your life out." expressing musical taste?. Can't you express yourself properly or something?.

 

[danny la rouge]

And how is "Sorry mate, but sort your life out." expressing musical taste?. Can't you express yourself properly or something?.

It is my way of expressing utter disbelief that someone wouldn't like blues. It says that in my opinion a person who doesn't like blues has not got a fully functioning appreciation of music or life.

I'm sorry you took it as agressive, but really it isn't.

 

[Dubversion]

hey, danny. guess what?

I'm not a blues fan either. I like old rural blues, but at soon as it went electric it (mostly) bored me.

go figure....

 

[sleaterkinney]

Come on sleaterkinney, where's your fight? What is there in soul that isn't in blues? You say you don't like blues, so tell us about that.

Blues to me is just a buch of auld blokes sing about how miserable they are, soul music, they sing about a wider range of things and it's more dynamic.

I'm not really going to get into some sort of trainspotter pedantic argument about what is one or the other or what I thought of some '65 obscure b-side, that's a load of bollocks. With respect.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I think it's political. People don't like the looks of the kind of people usually associated with country. Also, country is largely an american genre, always a big negative strike against something, right? People don't like the ethos of country.

So, they don't bother listening, or if they do, they don't give it a fair listen.

Because there is lots of good country, if you just listen to the music itself.

 

[Dubversion]

I think it's political. People don't like the looks of the kind of people usually associated with country. Also, country is largely an american genre, always a big negative strike against something, right? People don't like the ethos of country.

So, they don't bother listening, or if they do, they don't give it a fair listen.

Because there is lots of good country, if you just listen to the music itself.

or - just maybe, you know, perhaps - they plain don't like it?

I'm a massive country fan but I would never be surprised if somebody didn't like it. As I already said, if i reckoned they'd change their mind if they heard a wider range, i'd give it a go. But not everybody is going to like everything, and while the image / politics might put people off initially, there are still going to be intelligent, reasonable people who simply don't find it enjoyable to listen to.