been a little while. juggling appointments, daily health, and things of that nature. i've got a bigger written piece i've been plugging away at, and that'll be a minute. at present: survival mode.

dumped 5 newer pieces in the gallery. one of these days i'll figure out an RSS situation, i know they aren't hard. but-- later.

in the meantime, here is a slight rework of a stream of consciousness that i spat out in an FA journal a short while ago.

i will bust out the gate with a phrase that would make my 12 year old self reach for the smelling salts: i fucking love country music. people are really, really mean to the stuff. it's not like i don't get it! i'm fully cognizant of the rife sociopolitical imagery it conjures in people's heads. barring a brief embarrassment in the suburbs during my larval years, the bulk of my childhood up into early adulthood was spent in turbo-rural isolation. i will restate: i get it. there was a time in my life when "country music" meant garth brooks, bedazzled jeans for suspiciously aryan trophy wives, and insufferable reaganite local radio on 40-minute schoolbus rides. it could invoke nothing else.

thankfully, my relationship with country music in my adult life is a radically different one. it doesn't mean my distaste for anything listed above has changed. yours doesn't have to, either. hell, i'd hope it doesn't. but nobody's life has ever gotten worse for finding joy in new places, and i hope you'll hear me out.

so: here is a list of questions. you dont have to answer them out loud. you totally can, if you want to, but i won't be able to hear you. they are solely for you to chew on.

when you think of any other genre of music, i'd wager you're already thinking of several subgenres. "rock music"-- well, what kind, right? are we talking prog? yacht? math? glam? shit, are we even considering metal in the mix, or no? that would double or triple the size of the pool. and look, maybe i'm overestimating the average person's grasp on subgenres to begin with. but i'd wager you can easily get someone to agree that steely dan is not rush, and both of those are definitely not black sabbath.

there are two genres, these days, that get lumped into a reductive monolith: rap and country. both of these are easy, and in fact, often fashionable for the white middle class to turn their nose at. it's unbecoming for janet on the PTA board to enjoy music by black human beings (not racist, she promises! look, she LOVES prince!), and it'd be just downright embarrassing if the other bank tellers at the uptown branch heard frank listening to some hillbilly shit.

lord knows that brilliant people, more brilliant than me, have taken the pains to dissect the hatred of rap and hip hop that runs through the undercurrents of the white middle class. i'd argue that hatred has fizzled somewhat over the last 30 years, less so as a result of any genuine social progressivism, but through the same forces that let the white middle class slowly subsume and forcibly defang jazz music after world war ii. but i'm getting ahead of myself, and that's for another time.

i'd also argue that pop country has become an increasingly prideful, populist virtue signal in america's New Right-- the "middle class" has so effectively shrunken to a privileged sliver of its former size, and the ultra-isolationist, evangelist GOP that now calls that income bracket home has taken great pains over the last ten years to masquerade as The Party of The People; The Good-Old Down Home Boys. the neocon pop country slop of yesteryear was the perfect springboard. it's been pretty damn effective at dispelling any notions of class war among the rural poor. sure, his whole family went to harvard-- but he's wearing a cowboy hat, damn it! i knew he was just like us!

as far as i'm concerned, it's just another reason not to let a party of anti-human, perma-sneering, living and breathing slime wrench an entire art form from the rest of us. don't let these cunts trick you into thinking you hate country music. hell, THEY don't even like country music. they like when a guy who looks comfortably like them gets up on stage and says something about how the government sucks ass, and uses as many acoustic instruments as possible to really drive home how much "like you" he is.

but i like country music, in at least a solid number of the forms it takes. i won't spit out too many at you, but i'll rattle off three of my favorites for you. and if these don't do it-- i implore you, keep digging. if country isn't for you, it's not for you-- but when you say you hate it, what kind? All of it? folk? western swing? appalachian bluegrass? bakersville sound? early nashville?

i'm gonna give you some songs to sort through. maybe you'll like em! maybe you'll hate em. but try em! worst case scenario, you walk away knowing even more resolutely what you don't like to hear, and your world is a little bigger than before. i'm reminded of a quote that mel tormé paraphrased from an anonymous friend in this '64 recording of jazz casual, discussing jazz singers and how they hit his ear: "billie holiday is a little like spinach-- doesn't always taste good, but it's always good for you."

but maybe that doesnt grab you, or it just doesnt scratch an itch. well, still plenty of fish, so let's keep goin.

you like rock music? dig into some early rockabilly and honky tonk. even if it still doesn't go down quite smooth, you'll understand what you DO like about rock just that much more. rockabilly, honky tonk, R&B, and early gospel are inseparable bedfellows-- the more you listen, the more obvious it becomes that these genre distinctions have more to do with race, class, and instrument choice than they do with actual distinctions in styles of play.

it's my hope, putting these side by side, that you might also tent your eyebrows in shock at the idea that cline was a country artist, but berry and tharpe weren't. insanity! plain and simple.

given the comfortable place that rock now has in global pop culture, i expect these 3 listens to go down easiest. admittedly, i saved your spinach for last. but it's good for you, damn it, so let's get to it.

i understand that more traditional country and bluegrass sounds are among the most polarizing and contentious to the contemporary ear, and me telling you that classism is the reason will not magically tune your ear to it if you haven't dipped your toes in already. still-- this is the genre of country i hold closest to my heart, and i will admit that it's the kind i find myself getting most defensive over.

just like the blues, bluegrass was born out of pain. that's not to say that all bluegrass is sad music-- bluegrass is decorated up and down, forward and back with uptempo fiddle-playing and brisk, warm clog percussion that lends itself well to social spaces.

but bluegrass has its roots as a social salve, as much a brother to gospel as it is the blues. the dust bowl was nothing short of apocalyptic for the families that lived it. the more you understand about the way the great depression hit the south and the southern great plains of the united states, the more effortless the weaving between mirthful and mournful melodies in bluegrass begins to feel.

it was easier for me to turn away from bluegrass when i struggled to attach faces and historical context to the sound. but it's too late now! i have seen too many faces. i have read too many stories. i love too many people, and that's what's the matter with me.

all said and done, who knows-- some of this could have hit you great, and i'm delighted if you found something new that feels worth digging into further. or maybe you poured through each one, and found yourself as uninterested in country as you were before. i'd commend you anyway for trying something new. look, i may never enjoy hyperpop. i've tried. hell, i KEEP trying. but i've never felt like i've wasted my time in doing so! even music you don't like can help you isolate what you do enjoy, and even point you to why.

but first, you've gotta try the damn thing!