Steve Goodman and John Prine were riffing on country stereotypes back in the 1970s - they tried to put everything into one country song. “With all due respect, you can’t have a good country and western song without mother, prison, farms, trucks, trains, Christmas, dead dogs like Old Shep, and getting drunk, so here’s the last verse…”
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Modern country is redneck friendly rap. Girls. Guns. Gold. Gud.
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Fiddle is great, one of my favorite artists plays violin/fiddle but he very organically switches between styles. It’s Andrew Bird if you haven’t heard him before. His range is pretty exceptional… blues, klesmer jazz, folk, old country, etc. Some of his albums are kind of out there but he has a few that center around jazz that are more accessible. Below is one of his really really western-y songs
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Andrew Bird was also in Squirrel Nut Zippers
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Yes, they also have some really fantastic music. Not country but definitely worth checking out. It’s how i initially found Andrew Bird! Squirrel Nut Zippers -> Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire -> Andrew Bird.
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Sounds like a rejected Jared Diamond book title
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I actually liked guns germs and steel.
CGPGrey does a good summary of the theses, and a followup about domestication.
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I had no idea! I love both but came upon them independently. Thank you for the information.
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It was a Lower East Side microscene in the 80s and 90s. Not the opposite of folk, but folkish bands that subverted folk conventions, or were too punk or too weird for the traditional crowd. The Wikipedia article isn’t incorrect but it is woefully incomplete.
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One of my anti-folk favorites:
ETA: For those who haven’t heard this one: Beck decides to write a song about downhome, heartland country and the people that are its salt-of-the-earth. And it’s fucking savage. Below is the closing stanza; the three before it are just as biting. Almost.
Well Jane was born in a small town
Everybody just standing around
They had bingo games and a raffle
Everybody chewing tobacco
Well, she grew up kind of restless
All her boyfriends wanted to be dentists
’Til she got a job at the truck stop
And she got old fast and never did what she want
She’s only a person
Who doesn’t know shit
Nothing happening
That’s about it
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You mention Stevie Goodman AND John Prine in one post? You are the best human being on the planet today!
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Maybe it’s just me bringing this to the table, but it comes across really sad and sympathetic. I mean, that kind of shit happens…
I don’t exactly find it “savage” so much as sympathetic to stereotypes.
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More like this:
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I like it!
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I should’ve chosen a better term because I agree and I think that was part of Beck’s motivation to write the song–that earnest folk music is about acknowledging reality and not denying or distorting it through pastiche and romanticism.
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The term I’ve always heard was “gunrack pop”; not sure if this is a local variant or if two different sub-genres of degenerate country are being discussed.
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