“anything but country”

Lately I’ve been digging Ryan Adams’ new album, Ashes & Fire, so it naturally came up in a couple recent conversations about new album recommendations. I was trying to explain the type of music he does to people who are music fans but not familiar with his music style.

After getting past the Ryan/Bryan confusion, I found the real struggle was — as it always is — explaining that it’s country, but not that kind of country. And not scaring off country-music-averse people.

This happens a lot, because lots of my favorite artists are more or less in that category. You know, “alt.country,” as it’s often called.

But that doesn’t work as a descriptor. I can’t stand the term “alt.country,” for several reasons:

1. The punctuation is weird. (This is totally an important factor, you guys.)
2. It sounds pretentious.
3. It implies that it isn’t “real” country music, that the other kind is the real deal.
4. No one (except music-biz people and geeks) who’s not already a fan has heard of it, so it doesn’t help explain anything.

“No Depression-type” music is somewhat accurate, but it also runs into Problem #4 above and makes people think you suffer from mental illness.

So does one distinguish between “that kind of country music I love” and “dentist’s office country music,”** then? By the way, the term “dentist’s office country music” is meant literally. The dentist’s office I’ve been going to since childhood always, always has the local station Country 92.5 playing in the exam rooms.

If I ever happen to hear that type of music elsewhere, my teeth literally start hurting, and I can taste latex gloves and minty toothpaste. Psychological conditioning, y’all.

While we’re talking about country music, can we talk about how sad it is when people list their music taste as “anything but country”? Framing music taste in any kind of “anything but” terms strikes me as dangerous and premature.

I mean, of all the opera music and all the death-metal music I’ve ever listened to, for example, I can’t say I’ve liked any more than a (very small) handful of songs in each genre. But I’d never write them off completely, because, hey, there’s a lot in each category that I’ve never listened to. Maybe I’d really like them, especially if they sound vastly different from what I’ve been exposed to so far. Also, there are may other genres I’ve never listened to that I universally hate. It’s just not possible to say one way or another, in either direction.

**Okay. I like a few “dentist’s office country” songs. Like that Alan Jackson song “Good Time.”

It was this GE commercial that did it. I just want to line-dance at work, okay?
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxhbTkVhljI]

See, black-and-white genre decisions with music are never good.