Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed barrage of
desperate advertising of country music.
Every month, sometimes more than one a month, there is either an “Awards
Show”, or some kind of “Special”.
Country “stars” appear often on daytime and nighttime TV talk shows,
being interviewed, then being allowed time to play at least one song. TV ads also include country “stars”. Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan are all over the
place on TV. The reasons for this hammer
job are beyond obvious. First, country
music as a whole is not selling, hasn’t been for quite some time – since the
mid 90s at least.
Let’s backtrack for a few. In 1980, the movie, “The Urban Cowboy” movie
hit the screen, and millions of hipsters and posers bought up cowboy garb and
filed into what was known at the time as “Country Bars”, or “Cowboy Bars”. Country music took a turn for the worst
between 1980 and 1990. The music became “commercial”,
being more “Pop” than country. More
artists that I care to think about were told by their producers to move away
from the traditional country sound over to the slick, grossly overproduced, “Wall
of Sound”. The Nashville Machine took a
lesson from other genres by hiring “Sessions Musicians”. They did do that to some degree before that,
but when everything went “commercial”, they started with the tightly controlled
studio scene, along with the also tightly controlled songwriter scene. So, now there were “Sessions Musicians”, and “Staff
Writers”. Very seldom were artists
and/or bands allowed to play their own songs, and, the bands were not allowed
to use their players in the studio. By
1984, a small, exclusive handful of musicians were playing all the music for
all the recordings – no matter – band, artist, or otherwise. Same went for studio “Producers” – the guys
who call the shots in the studios – a tiny, exclusive handful. I remember going into a used book and music
store sometime in the late 80s, to find endless reject bins full of CDs by
current “Country” artists and bands.
With most of the music being mindless, contrived white noise, I fully
understood why things were as they were.
About this time (mid 80s) the line dancing craze was starting, with the
Nashville Machine catering to these narcissistic posers by putting out “music”
that was recorded at a certain “BPM” (beats per minute) so that the line
dancing crowd could do what they were doing.
By the early 90s, bands were being phased out to be replaced by DJs –
guys who must have spent HOURS practicing how to push “Start” and “Play”. The country bars, almost overnight, became “Dance
Halls”, with the line dancer crowd monopolizing all the good seating, the dance
floor, and any female who walked through the door. These self serving asses would order a bottle
of water for a DOLLAR, and when they finished with it, do you think they would
order another one, NO, they would go into the bathroom and fill it back
up. The other part of the “Dance Hall”
phenomenon included, first, bands who would mimic the latest songs from the “Country
Top 40”, and have their lips so firmly lodged up the line dancers’ rear ends
that any normal person in the place would lose their lunch. This quickly morphed into DJs having taken
over the stages, the “Dance Halls” having invested in sound systems that had
tens of thousands of watts of power, and stacks of speakers – catering, still,
to the line dance crowd – the selfish posers who monopolized the
establishments, while not supporting them.
This right here is what had me baffled at the time, and baffled still –
that all the club owners and management catered to the line dancers. By the mid 90s, add to the young posers in
their Shepler clothes, we now had the ex disco dimwits – by this time, middle
aged men and women – with the same self serving, snooty attitude as their
younger counterparts. With all this, the
youngsters who used to frequent country bars saw that they didn’t stand a
chance of getting in a dance, or meeting a girl (or girl meeting guy), so they
just quit going out to these places.
These were folks who genuinely loved the music, supported the music, and
supported the clubs – by actually buying stuff – CDs, concert tickets, T-Shirts,
touring jackets, and whiskey when they were in the clubs – as opposed to the
self congratulatory line dance crowd who rarely paid for anything – including their
monopolizing of the dance halls. By 1998,
the dance halls were quickly shutting down – and I mean shutting down all over
the country. As you can see, there are
no more country dance halls. You might
find a small local bar that they might squeeze a 3 or 4 piece band into a tiny
corner stage – mostly being way too loud for the 25 seater venue, and mostly
not worth walking across the street to listen to.
Sometime around the mid 90s, I had the good fortune to
catch a few “Documentaries”, where they were talking about the dismal “Unit”
sales of country music – the bigwigs whining and sniveling about “Piracy”,
blaming THAT for the horrible numbers.
About that time, the number of signed country acts playing the 10,000
seater arenas went from hundreds down to tens.
Since then, you have a small handful of country acts playing the big
venues, while the rest play the 500 seaters – many times even those not selling
out. Mostly who attends the country
themed concerts are the teenagers. It
disgusts me the ruthless trickery that is employed by the music industry – to get
impressionable youngsters to buy their talentless, contrived B.S. With “Streaming Music” being the way of the
world today, CD sales are even lower than before, with just a couple of the
megastars selling enough for the pitiful record labels to recoup the dollars
they put out for advertising.
So, we’ve gone from Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Waylon
Jennings, and George Jones, to Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Trace Adkins, and
Jason Aldean – how the hell is this even possible? You can’t tell me that real talent has simply
disappeared from society. My guess is
that any honestly talented artist will be ignored, and even squashed by the
Nashville Machine. I’ve been to
Nashville four times, first time in 1981, second time 1992, third time 2004, and
last time 2013. In 81, there were
country bars all over that town, and the town was crawling with people –
tourists and locals alike – all looking for places to hear country music. The Urban Cowboy Craze had just begun, so the
transition was going from conventional country bars to more showcase bars –
where they would put on “Vocal Contests”.
It was a huge scam, but there were still people in that town.
By 92, many of the bars were either gone, or had some
other business – non music related in the space. The town was bordering on Ghost Town status –
with that little one block area of Broadway between 4th and 5th
being about the only place to find anything resembling a country bar. Printer’s Alley was no longer a place to hear
music. The “Artists” and bands at the
time were horrid – except for the one family bluegrass band that played a
couple of the venues there. The “side
men” (musicians who would play backup for the “artists”), made the rounds
between the clubs in that tiny area – going from one venue to the next when shifts
would change. All of these guys being
middle aged, overweight men with scruffy beards, and jeans hanging halfway down
their rear ends, and holey t-shirts. They
would have learned the signature Nashville licks, which they would play on
every song. The few fiddle players around
town made noises that sounded, not kidding, like cats in heat. I did manage to hear a couple of half decent
pedal steel players. The only time there
were any crowds at all was on Friday and Saturday nights between about 9 and
midnight.
By 2002, it wasn’t much different, the one block area
being the majority of venues. Broadway
was desolate, some of the businesses being boarded up.
My last trip there was in 2013, much the same, except
that they extended the Broadway clubs down towards the river, and they added
the Hard Rock Café. Still a ghost town,
though.
So, with all the damage that the Nashville Machine has
done, they’re desperate. The RIAA, along
with all the upper management of Billboard, has been lobbying to reduce the
royalties for the artists and writers. I
also suspect, on writers, that they write under the “Work for hire” heading, so
they don’t actually get royalties, they get a flat rate – leaving any profits
to the Nashville brass. We must see all
these new country “Awards Shows”, and specials.
We’ll be seeing a lot of Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan, and whoever else
they can shove down our throats via TV.
The sad part is, as long as there are impressionable people – whether they
be youngsters, or desperate adults, the Good Ol’ Boy Network of “Country Music”
will always find a way to turn a profit at the expense of folks who fail to see
the horrible, ruthless trickery that is designed to sell their talentless white
noise.
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