On 10 Aug 2003 16:09:38 GMT, Rich Wood
wrote:

One, I think it's snobbery. Two, much of today's Country doesn't sound
much different than AC. Three, media buyers are younger than most
Boybands and the owners are chicken.

Can't comment on point three, but your first two are bulls-eyes!

Point two in particular is right on target. when talking about today's
"mainstream" country. The currents, recurrents and even most of the
oldies sound closer to the hits of the Top 40 Era than the music being
played on CHR and some AC stations. In fact, some of the song and
artists played as oldies on mainstream country stations *are* straight
out of the Top 40 Era -- Johnny Cash, Statler Brothers, Oak Ridge
Boys, Dolly Parton, quite a long list of country acts that are fondly
remembered by Baby Boomers who grew up on Top 40.

And let's not forget the number of country performers, especially
female artists, who are actually getting a lot of play on AC radio and
VH-1. Sometimes I turn on VH-1 while I'm at the computer just because
I enjoy looking at Faith Hill, Shania Twain, Martina McBride, etc.

Country has always been an important part of what started as Top 40
and has evolved into Adult Contemporary. I grew up listening to
rockabilly, along with the blues, R&B, and Brill Building pop that
also contributed to the big hits of the '50s, '60s and early '70s. At
the time I didn't care for much "hardcore" country -- George Jones,
Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty (himself a Top 40 one-hit
wonder with "Make Believe"), Porter Wagoner and the like -- probably
because it was the "old folks" music my parents and grandparents
listened to. But when Ray Charles did an entire album of country
songs, I listened and liked what I heard. When Roger Miller and Ray
Stevens turned out very clever novelty songs, I didn't care how they
were categorized. When Patsy Cline sang "Crazy", it didn't matter one
bit that both the song and the singer were considered country. And to
be honest, I didn't consider Johnny Cash's "Ring Of Fire" country at
all, since I JUST KNEW that country music never used mariachi
trumpets!

All these artists were able to co-exist on the Hot 100 with Chuck
Berry, Brook Benton, the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons, and all of the
Memphis, Motown and British Invasion acts. If the music was good and
spoke to the teenaged heart-and-soul, that's all that mattered to us
back then.

Today's music industry, including music radio formats, is actually
hurting itself with its emphasis on format fragmentation. An artist,
label or station that tries to reach only a specific audience is in
trouble when the day comes that the audience stops listening and
buying. OTOH, an artist, label or station with broad appeal can
continue to sell to a maturing/aging audience even as a new generation
discovers it -- even if that sort of appeal skips a generation now and
then before being rediscovered, as happened with Dolly Parton and more
recently with Tony Bennett.

They'd all rather the the 11th
techno-alternative-trance-AC-Urban-Polka station in the market before
taking the Country plunge.

And when the Flavor Of The Month changes, they'll change format in
search of another short-term success. Their problem, not the
listeners'.

Now that I'm a fulltime listener, the music-station presets on my
radios are filled with various flavors of oldies stations. If I'm
listening to a Classic Rock station and a song comes on that I don't
especially care for, I punch over to a Classic Hits station ... or an
AC with an extensive oldies library. If all else fails, I grab a CD
from the Time-Life or Rhino catalogs. Rap, trance, boy-bands and the
other genres that appeal to today's youth may or may not be popular a
few years from now; the music I listen to has been around for fifty
years, more or less, and it still appeals to the largest and most
affluent generation in history.

Maybe today's youth-oriented stations are actually the modern
equivalent of the pioneering Top 40 stations, and they'll be
successful for decades to come. But that's not the way I'd bet. I
just don't see a modern-day Alan Freed, Bruce Morrow or Art Roberts
among the current crop of jocks. Nor do I see very many record
industry execs these days who working to find and develop artists with
even moderately broad-based appeal. Tommy Mottola has had
considerable success, but he's still a long way from becoming the next
Clive Davis; as far as I can tell no one is even trying to become the
next Berry Gordy, Sam Phillips or Phil Spector.

I would bet that if Roseland ( a local concert venue in Manhattan) had
a country night every week we'd have to rope off the streets to
control the crowds. Even better, the guns wouldn't be automatic
weapons, they'd be six shooters like the good ol days.

I dunno. These days even rural deputy sheriffs and Texas Rangers (the
closest modern kin of the Old West lawmen) carry semi-autos. People
just don't respect tradition anymore.g

___
Walter Luffman Medina, TN USA
Amateur curmudgeon, equal-opportunity annoyer