A parade?
A collaboration? (?)
The Sunday Times takes a look at the current state of the music industry and quotes the ever-interesting Tony Wilson. The same article sees Wilson continuing to espouse his theory of a thirteen-year cycle in pop music. I've covered this before and with another significant year approaching I've been wondering what the Next Big Thing is going to be.
(By the way, has anyone noticed the increasing trend for first-letter capitalisation of Significant Phrases where quotes or speechmarks would traditionally be used? Maybe it's just a weblog thing and we're all very suggestible.)
I've given this some thought and my initial suspicion was that it could be alt.country. It's not a genre that I know a lot about, but I've seen an increasing amount of press covering it over the past six months. It's also been mentioned on two weblogs within the past twenty-four hours, though of course their authors are online pals whose tastes and interests might reasonably be assumed to coincide, so that's hardly any kind of scientific measurement.
There seems to be an increasing number of singers emerging over the past two or three years who have been referred to as "troubadours". Looking back, I think this trend had its seeds in the emergence of Jeff Buckley (himself the son of one of the major troubadours of the late 60s and early 70s, Tim Buckley). However, more recently I'm thinking of Ed Harcourt, Rufus Wainwright and a whole host of other names that I probably should have paid more attention to.
The alt.country trend possibly goes back to the Violent Femmes, but I'm really not sure - I'll have to educate myself. Maybe I'm horrendously underinformed and it stretches back to Johnny Cash, or General Custer, or some stone age guy with a gourd, a stick and a piece of cat gut. Incidentally, no sooner did I mention Femmes vocalist Gordon Gano in a recent post than he released a solo album, which I've heard good things about.
Getting back to the original point of this post, I think I'm going to discount the possibility of alt.country being the trend to watch out for in 2003. The Beatles, punk and Madchester all emerged very quickly, with no apparent predecessor, so if 2003 really is a key date then it's too early to be looking for clues. At one point I wondered if electroclash was another possibility, but again it has very definite roots in the 1980s. Having said that, if we're all raving about Daughter Of Electroclash this time next year, you read it here first.
Stepping back even further, Wilson's theory is all rather WASPish, isn't it? Where's ska, reggae, hip-hop, R&B, and so on? I wonder if its very narrow focus makes the theory less plausible, or more?
Now for some fun. Putting aside the fact that troubadours tend to be solitary creatures, what do you think would be their collective noun? A chorus of troubadours? An outpouring? A strum?
Posted by Hg on Thursday 05 September 2002 at 23:54.
Received 5 comments so far.
Comments
1) That capitalisation thing has been a Personal Stylistic Tic of mine for many a long year now. The awful thing is: I have a habit of doing the same thing in speech, when I'm trying to be vaguely ironic. It makes for rather Disjointed Diction...
2) Roots of alt.country? I'd point first to Gram Parsons, who first took things in a whole new direction. Then to Neil Young, a constant influence. Then to the mid-80s wave of US bands like the Long Ryders, Jason & The Scorchers, and even early REM to some extent. Next, to the "New Country" brigade: Roseanne Cash, early k.d.lang, early Nanci Griffith. Then to folks like Jeff Tweedy of Wilco (Wilco are seen as the godfathers of "alt.country" to many), and definitely to the Jayhawks as well (their 1997 "Sound Of Lies" album is an early classic of the genre).
In this country, Uncut magazine's occasional cover-mounted "Sounds Of The New West" CDs have been seen as landmarks in the popularisation of the genre - and Uncut magazine remains its unofficial house magazine. The king of alt.country these days is probably Ryan Adams, though more for "Heartbreaker" and his stuff with Whiskeytown than for "Gold". NB - if you only own one alt.country album, then it has to be Ryan Adams' "Heartbreaker", no contest.
Mike - I've used the capitalisation thing occasionally for a long while, but I noticed my usage increasing recently. So it's official: it's All Your Fault.
Great summary of alt.country, thanks. I did some more reading last night and realised just how little I knew about it, but with my vast, gaping lack of knowledge it seemed pointless to go back and edit my post.
Chris has now recommended Wilco to me twice, so they're already on the "must check" list. Your further recommendation is helpful.
I saw Ryan Adams on TOTP a few months ago and he did nothing for me but I really love his voice on Beth Orton's new one, so that hint is helpful to.
Oh God. This is gonna be like when I finally "got" R&B last year and went out and spent a fortune on CDs, isn't it? :-)
McLaren and Wilson had one thing in common; they were both exceptional people but ultimately twats! Sorry for using such language but well...it's true
Post a comment
Trackback
http://www.hydragenic.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hydragen/mt/mt-tb.cgi/471
Navigation
The previous post was More Vital Statistics.
The next post is Breathing Under Water.
Copyright
All original material on this site is © Hydragenic, 2002-2008. Extracts of other people's work are used for the purpose of criticism, review or news reporting, in line with the "fair dealing" (or "fair use") principle.