[lit-ideas] Re: It's Friday!
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2011 14:34:55 -0600
Ah, so you're scared to argue Popper with me, eh? Cain't say as I blame
you. I'm the new Turk on the street. Everybody knows it's best to cross
over and avoid any confrontation. You're lucky. I'm going on sabbatical
again. I never seem to make it as long as I plan to. Until then, it's
"Good night, Mrs Calabash wherever you are."
Mike Geary
the bad boy of Memphis
On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 5:08 AM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *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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