At last, I am old and set in my ways. At least, musically speaking......
I have very strange (I prefer eclectic) tastes in music. I recently signed up for an online, legal downloading site. I got 100 free songs as a trial when I bought my MP3 player. Let's just say that I had no trouble at all downloading my 100 in that month trial.
I've also made a fascinating discovery about myself. For downloading, my tastes have run to about 3 categories: classic rock/pop (when I can find it), world music (and for my purposes, I'll include classic Cold-War era "exotica"), and classic country/alt-country/Americana.
I cannot tell you how many of those latter songs I have downloaded: tributes to Cash, Willie live, stuff straight off Austin City Limits or some from the Live at Billy Bob's series. And I am loving every last one of 'em. Right now, for example, I'm listening to a track off Dressed in Black (a tribute to Johnny Cash) -- Mandy Barnett and Chuck Mead doing "Jackson" (one of my faves). Mandy Barnett has an incredible voice -- and she hit Nashville about the same time that Leann Rimes was everyone's darling. Well, Leann might have gotten to sing "Blue" (intended for Patsy Cline) but Mandy Barnett had wayyyyyy more Patsy in her voice ... even got to play her in a musical about her life. Unfortunately, as things tend to go in Nashville, she didn't get the recognition she and her voice very richly deserved.
I also got a lot of those classic (and neoclassic) performers who can't buy space on the country airwaves anymore: Willie Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel, even my beloved Dwight Yoakam! Radney Foster, Robert Earl Keen, and others. And PLENTY of the original Sun sessions from Cash and Carl Perkins. Dadgum good stuff!
And when I found it -- I knew I had to have one of everyone's FAVORITE "Lord-I'm-soooooo-drunk-let's-all-sing-together" song. NO! Not Bocephus' "Family Tradition" (although that is a dear favorite) -- the other one: David Allan Coe's "You Never Even Called Me By My Name." On a side note: It's amazing what copious amounts of alcohol and a late hour will do to college-educated people -- it doesn't matter if you're a pre-law major with a 4.0 or barely hanging on in Underwater Basket Weaving. If you are on a Southern campus at a kegger, sooner or later you will sing one of those at the top of your lungs!
Anyhow, Top 40 over the years has meant even less to me than it did a few years back. To use a phrase coined by one of the dearest Queens, Viv .... I "hit the wall musically" quite a number of years ago. Thank God.
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Welcome .... I myself hit that same wall many years ago, it seems. I look at the CDs I've purchased in the last year, and all but one have been new output from the old reliables (e.g. Van Morrison, Robert Plant, Stones, McCartney, Santana).
The trouble is, I have a love/hate relationship with country music. When I'm in the mood, it always has to be either classic country, or Americana.
That leaves AAA ... and some of that music is beginning to leave me unquenched.
I used to pride myself on being on top of most current pop and rock music. Today, though, it's SERAPHIM who is the current music expert of our household. She still enjoys modern day hit music, and more than a few times I've asked HER the "what song is this?" question. Not that I begrudge her knowledge -- it's just that after many years of being the answer man for that genre ... I've done run out of solutions.
These days I've found that I spend 95% of my listening to the tried and true.
In other words, I've turned not into my parents. I think I might've surged past them and become my maternal grandmother. Egad.
-TG
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