[lit-ideas] Re: It's Friday!
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2011 11:08:05 +0000 (GMT)
________________________________
From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
>I thought that would get a rise out of Mr. McEvoy. Glad he didn't disappoint
>me. But. of course, he's wrong. He experiences country music from a
>different country. He thinks it's poignant and honestly sensitive and truth
>telling by simple people who've never heard of Popper. >
There was no need to bring Popper into it.
> Most country and blues songs are sad, sappy songs about walking the floors
>and standing by your man and the dog dying and grandma getting run over by an
>18 wheeler -- they just don't cut it with me. Same goes from most blues
>songs.>
But there are plenty of C&W songs that aren't sappy. ('I'm Bastin' Our Turkey
With My Tears' and 'My Son Calls His Daddy 'Granddad''). Hank Williams' songs
can be treated sappily but also taken in a much deeper spirit: but then a
certain commercially dominant strain of C&W can treat almost anything sappily -
imagine Shania Twain singing 'A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall', you'd think the sun
had just come out smiling. To say "most blues" is sad and sappy means you're
listening to the wrong stuff. Robert Johnson was many things but never sappy.
I don't think C&W, especially its commercially dominant strain, is "poignant
and honestly sensitive and truth telling by simple people"; though I think it
often strains for this effect and often so unsuccessfully so it is schmaltz,
riddled with fake and calculating 'sincerity'. Dylan's 'Nashville Skyline',
though a lightweight album by his standards, shows how it can be done without
degenerating into schmaltz but then that album is performed with a broad wink
and a smile as well as sincerity. The trick there is that Dylan doesn't come
off as too knowing, though we know he is knowing, and this somehow adds to
rather than subtracts from the effect.
What do you make of that Bob Dylan Encyclopedia anyways?
Donal
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