by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/10/02 16:59 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/10/02/8974377.aspx
Offtopic and non-technical, and shows a huge bias against country music. You have been warned!
I may not have mentioned this before, but going by Erik's office can often be distracting.
Oh wait, I have mentioned it before.
This time he was talking about country music, since Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish fame, had apparently released a great country music album, and I explained my feelings on the subject.
How did I put it? Something like if I ever caught my foot tapping along with country music, I'd amputate immediately, before it spread up my leg.
Not much room for lack of clarity there, :-)
He then explained that yes, at some level music has been going downhill since the monks started up.
Now a few things happened here.
First, I thought he said The Mumps. You know the great "Heart of CGBG" band from the late 70s.
As an interesting bit of trivia for all of you Love Monkey fans, The Mumps are the band our hero Tom Farell was talking about when he invited over Abby Powell to listen to music at his place when it was not a line. He put in the pink vinyl 45 and played Waiting for the World to Catch Up, and Abby got into an interesting bit of musical history about Lance Loud that I believe Kristian Hoffman originally provided? I had heard she was unhappy whee CBS canceled the series before that episode played but it ended up on VH1 so I think it all worked out.
But then Erik repeated himself, and the word was The Monks.
Which made me think about The Monks (the rock band of GI stationed in Germany in the 60s) or the Monks (the punk band from Britain in the 70s).
Now, with three bands buzzing in my head, any one of which some individual could claim music has gone downhill since then (each for different reasons),I asked him which one he meant.
He explained that he meant neither -- he meant the actual monks from medieval times. And he explained that with my Hildegard of Bingen interest (ref: here and here), I probably know all about it.
Now I was not saying that music has gone downhill since the monks. Or the Monks. Or the Monks. Or the Mumps. Though many famous artists cite each as huge influencers and one could make each argument, I was not....
I just don't like country music!
So I did not listen to the Darius Rucker song. I was never the biggest Hootie & the Blowfish fan though I thought they were okay, and although I am not at all against the idea of a black cowboy (I loved Blazing Saddles, after all!), I'm really not in favor of the ones who sing no matter what their race, creed, color, or sexual orientation. When Paula Cole sang Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?, my only thought was that who cares, as long as they're gone!
If you were a Unicode character, would you have sponsored this blog?
Bryan on 3 Oct 2008 4:08 AM:
so are there any Country musicians of the past you could tolerate? I ask because I think even the hardest of the core have some they appreciate.
Michael S. Kaplan on 3 Oct 2008 8:52 AM:
Well, our parents took us to see Eddie Rabbit once, and I had a crush on Juice Newton for a little while but that was more a young kid "falling in love" with someone whom he does not know anything about and with whom he has nothing in common who asked him to call her Angel of the Morning (albeit in a song). Does that count?
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