Street music in France

I walked by a lot of street music in London and France when I was there this summer, but only took the time to briefly film it three times. Here is the short (44-second) video I made of three very different performances.

The first band, Radio Kamerger, seems to have been on a Russian TV show equivalent of The X Factor. And there they were, playing on the street in the Latin Quarter of Paris.

The sameness of contemporary country music

Forget what I said several years ago about liking country music. I finally persuaded E-girl to listen to it on the radio yesterday during a long car ride. We both agreed:

IT ALL SOUNDED THE SAME.

All male singers. Nearly the same melody.  And the same topics:

• trucks and/or Chevys
• pretty girls with jean shorts (sun tans/smiles, etc.)
• drinking cold beer/partying
• a disdain for cell phones (3 out of 5 songs) and foreign cars (2 out of 5 songs)

Everything was cheerful. No angst allowed.

"Make it stop!" E-girl said after the fifth song, putting her hands over her ears. "I can't tell them apart."

Their voices sounded like they like to pop a cold beer now and then--not like they sit at a bar all night downing whiskey and smoking endless cigarettes. They were more akin to pop singers than to Johnny Cash.

Tom Petty has criticized contemporary country music as sounding like "bad rock with fiddle." I actually didn't hear any fiddles or banjos yesterday. It really could have just been generic rock music, the only difference being, instead of complaining about a breakup or sexual frustration (or the usual narcissistic urges of rock music), these songs celebrated the simple pleasures of a rural life and the possibility of seeing/being with a beautiful "girl."

What I liked earlier about country music is that it celebrated monogamy--something rock music isn't too strong on. But now it seems heavily imbued with an almost anxious nostalgia for a rural/idyllic life that hardly exists. A lot of under-65 year-old rural people aren't working on the farm--they are more likely to be sitting in front of a computer all day than behind a forklift. They drive their trucks (or, more likely, SUVs) to a metro area to earn their pay.

The best critique of the sameness of contemporary country music comes in this mashup published by "Cowboy Dave" earlier this year. (I think I heard at least two of these songs yesterday--but maybe not.) Enjoy?

Women Who Rock (their clothes)

Speaking of rock music, I went to see the Women Who Rock exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in D.C. last week. It was a fun exhibit and I loved the costumes, but that was the problem. Most of the female musicians were represented by what they had worn—that's fine for someone like Madonna (above) or Lady Gaga or Cher, for whom costume drama and sets are as much of their art as their music. But  it was puzzling to see a singer like Marianne Faithful represented by a glam outfit that she wore God knows when (also in her glass box were two prominently displayed faxes Keith Richards had sent her; apparently he scribbles in the same decipherable way that he speaks). I would have liked to have seen pictures of the dewy-eyed Marianne Faithful alongside pics of her more haggard, cigarette-throated elder self, or even better, a looping video showing her transformation over the years, which would surely be a better representation of her life.

Would a "Men Who Rock" exhibit have any kind of focus on items of clothing they had worn? Here is the pair of jeans that Bruce Springsteen wore on the cover of "Born in the U.S.A."; here the chambray shirt Dylan wore on "The Times They Are A-Changing." Not very distinctive, or for that matter, very important in terms of the art produced.

I'm not sure what else one could use to visually represent rock music. Some walls played videos of performances, and there was an entire wall of album covers. Each room had its own soundtrack, according to time period. We walked through in less than an hour and then had lunch. Still, I have to admit, I was thrilled to see the outfit that Cindy Lauper had worn on the cover of "True Colors" and the short (and tiny) red dress Tina Turner had worn in her "What's Love Got to Do With It" video.

E-girl reviews rock music

One of the joys of being a parent has been witnessing how my children respond to music.

When he was in-utero, I-guy would kick so much when a Dylan song came on that I had to sit down (or turn it off). Once—and only once—in the midst of dinner, when he was about three, he very seriously began to sing "Hard Times" by Ray Charles—all the way through, without stopping. ("My mother told me/ 'Fore she passed away/Said son when I'm gone/Don't forget to pray..."). Now he likes ska music and the Smithereens, among other things, continuing to find his own musical paths.

E-girl hated to be in the car as a baby and would start to scream about five minutes in. I found the only thing that would calm her down was if I sang "Hello Dolly" in an Ethel Merman voice. (The other day she started to sing that song and then said, "How do I know these words?") I have no idea how we came up with this antidote to her discomfort. Later she gravitated toward classical music and begged to hear it in the car when we drove anywhere together.

This long intro is really just an excuse to share some of E-girl's recent musical opinions. I try to keep my kids off my blog, at least in any exploitative way. Even if blogs had been much around when they were toddlers, I very much doubt if I would have publicly proclaimed their toilet training successes and failures. And I try not to brag about them widely, or live through them in any way, because I want them to have their privacy, and private, not-publicly-shared histories. (I think this also strengthens my own sense of identity). My biggest justification for doing this right now is that I want to park her quotes where I won't as easily lose them. And, I think, they're unique.

Keep in mind that E-girl's current favorite pop/rock group is Cold Play and her favorite album is the soundtrack from "Once."

• The B-52s: Those girls sound so good and then this guy just keeps trying to talk over them.
• Rihanna: Her voice is all auto-tuning.
• Janis Joplin: She has a certain style.
• Neil Young: His voice is soft and soothing, like running your hands in lotion, except with your ears. I think he could sing in a Muppet movie. 
• Grateful Dead: They suck.
• Taylor Swift: All her songs sound the same.

The saddest songs ever (Melancholy music redux)

In the midst of my seasonal melancholy a couple of years ago, I wrote a few blog posts about the music I use to heighten my misery, which concluded with a short list of sad songs.

Now Adam Brent Houghtaling has taken the list many steps further, cataloging the saddest songs of all time in his book This Will End in Tears: The Miserabilist Guide to Music (Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" is number one on his list of top 100 sad songs, which is why the video is embedded above). Houghtaling said he began writing the book after he realized that the soundtrack of his life was composed of artists with a defining attribute, of "having an uncommon understanding of the varying shades of sorrow."

As the days grow shorter and darker, my soundtrack gets a little gloomier each day, until it reaches a delicious dismalness just before the Winter Solstice. So, of course, I am putting Houghtaling's book on my Christmas Wish List.

Bertie Wooster plays the blues

I gave my hubby the complete PBS "Jeeves and Wooster" series on DVD for our anniversary earlier this month. We just watched the episode where Bertie (Hugh Laurie) plays "Forty-Seven Ginger-Headed Sailors" (excerpt above).

Then, only a day later, Laurie appeared on the "Today" show playing a song from his new blues album. (I couldn't link to it directly, so enjoy the YouTube video that Blogger only allowed me to link to):



I have nothing significant to add here—I just liked the contrast between the young and old man, the simpleton and the serious blues musician. And I'd like to express my admiration for Laurie's ability to reinvent himself in a different country, with a different accent and different dramatic intent. (Still, I have to admit, I really miss Bertie Wooster).

Molly Bloom sings

As I confessed in a post a while ago, I've never made it entirely through James Joyce's Ulysses. After a few futile attempts to get past the first section, I gave up—but that didn't stop me from reading Molly Bloom's famous soliloquy at the end, a passage that has become a cultural reference (Molly Bloom is the name of at least one bar and one band, and the speech has been widely quoted/recited, including in a Rodney Dangerfield movie).

An NPR segment last week on Kate Bush has me delving back into Ulysses-world, or really, Molly/Kate-world. Bush recorded a song in the late eighties, "The Sensual World" that paraphrased the famous passage (the Joyce estate wouldn't give her permission to do the text verbatim). She has now re-recorded it on her new album, Director's Cut as "Flower of the Mountain" with the original text intact.

I found Bush's video for the original version online and keep listening to/watching it over and over (see below). I can't say why I find it so appealing—it's not got a beat that I can dance to and, even after repeated listening, I still can't sing along with it. Maybe what's gratifying is seeing her attempt at making a literary passage come to life; it's also nice to see a female singer who isn't groveling for approval, but making a video that is a kind of performance art.

To hear the new version, see the NPR segment's track list. (It's not available for purchase until May 31st).

Women, rock?

Alternative music radio station WTMD-FM recently sponsored a pledge-drive, week-long marathon of The Top 500 Desert Island Songs of All Time. (Listeners were asked to submit the five songs they'd want on a desert island, and the radio station compiled them into a play list).

I was surprised that, in the Top Ten, there's not a single woman (unless you count The Talking Heads' Tina Weymouth, who may or may not be singing background vocals).

In the top 50, the only female solo is Etta James doing "At Last." In the top 100, there are only four female soloists/women-fronted bands: James, Brandi Carlile, Adele, and Joni Mitchell—singing "A Case of You" which is one of my least favorite JM songs. (There's also a John Prine/Bonnie Raitt duet of "Angel From Montgomery").

I can understand why there is no Lady Gaga, but how can there be no Aretha Franklin in these 500 songs? (Even Madonna made it in at no. 404, with "Live to Tell").

With the station's past theme marathons, like the 897 Greatest Albums of All Time and 897 Greatest Artists Countdown ), you expect the old standbys—Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd—to be in the top 20. But wouldn't you miss female voices on a desert island?

When I see lists like this, I get a little depressed. It seems like women have been singing their hearts out all these years, but no one is listening.

Am I Tipper Gore?

After my last post, in which I tsk-tsk-ed the appropriateness of Lady Gaga's videos for her tween/Nick Kids' Choice fans, and I had a letter published in the Washington Post last week suggesting that they should keep the "Kids Post" section of the paper kid-friendly even on the days it doesn't run, my son asked me a question.

"So, are you becoming one of those outraged parents?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, innocently.

"You know, like Tipper Gore."

Ouch. This is an especially sore point with me, not only because I am a writer who believes in artistic freedom, but because I am a librarian by training. Whether non-librarians realize this or not, you almost have to take a vow in library school that you will offer up information freely and uncensored. The question was posited in my introduction to librarianship class (called "The Block" in those days): if a teenager asked for information on how to commit suicide, would you give it to him or her?

I, surprisingly, was in the minority of those who were hesitant to hand over such material. My suggestion of also tucking in a pamphlet or phone number for a suicide hotline was met with hoots from some of the most ardent students.

I thought I was done with that question until I applied to be a reference librarian at a local public library a few years later. Facing a circle of librarians and managers, I was asked what I would do if a teenager asked for information on how to commit suicide.

"Well," I said, breaking out in a light sweat, "I guess I would help them find the information, but I would worry about them. I might also want to steer them to information on depression or suicide prevention." Wrong answer. Scribbles were put down in notebooks, the head librarian frowned. Later, after the interview questions were done, I was asked if I had any comments or questions. I said that I would like to revise my previous answer about the suicidal teenager.

"I realize, now, that really this is a question about censorship, and whether I feel that it's my place to censor the information that people access, and the answer is 'No, it's not.'" The head librarian smiled and nodded, and I was later offered the job (which I ended up not taking).

Yet I couldn't help wanting to add a parenthetical postscript, a whispered aside, "I'd give them the information, but I would wonder why they were researching it. If a teenage boy said he wanted to know how to hang himself, how could I rightly and forthrightly offer him instructions without trying to hear why he wanted it?"

The local libraries are so crowded and short-staffed now, it's unlikely that there would be time for such a conversation anymore.

And Tipper Gore is a sore point with me, as well, because I didn't think that her crusade was all that bad years ago—as a parent I appreciate the "Explicit lyrics" tag on albums and songs, which resulted from it. No one objects to the rating system on movies; I'm sure most people can agree that they wouldn't want a seven-year-old walking into a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Yes, I know that 99 percent of rock songs are about sex—no need to stop the presses for that revelation. It's the songs about violent sex I object to, the humiliation of women, the glorification of murder, especially in rap lyrics. While I defend the right of the artists to sing what they want to, I don't want to buy it and I'd like to shield children from it.

In wanting to get to some kind of conclusion here, I looked up Tipper Gore just now on Wikipedia. The song that started her crusade, "Darling Nikki," is from "Purple Rain," which I still think is a fantastic album and movie. In context of the movie, Prince is denigrating a woman because he is hurt and mad; it's supposed to be a nasty song. I understand that—the song never bothered me. But I wouldn't want little girls to prance around singing it, magazine in hand. That's not censorship, that's good sense.

Gag Lady Gaga?

Last week, while casting her votes online for the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, my daughter chose "Papparazzi" by Lady Gaga as her favorite song. There wasn't much competition, really, since the other choices included "I Gotta Feeling," which she is sick of, and something by Miley Cyrus, whom she claims not to like. And, she has the song on her mp3 player (the original, not the KidzBop version).

My teenager remarked to me later, "But have you watched her videos? They're kinda nasty."

So, after she was in bed, I sat down and watched the video for "Papparazzi" in addition to her MTV Music Awards performance of it. There are a lot of disturbing images in each one—at the end of the MTV performance, she ends up with fake blood coming out of her eyes, hanging from a wire like she's dead. The music video features images of murdered women—one with a bullet hole in the forehead, one lying in a pool of blood, one whose face is wrapped in Saran Wrap. You get the idea. In the middle of the video are flashes of Lady Gaga seated with other women dressed in what looked like S & M leather ensembles, licking each other's faces.

I didn't really like the music video—in fact, it has diminished my enjoyment of the song since I picture those dead women when I hear it now. I have no problem with adults watching it, but I'm queasy when I think of the tween girls who like "Papparazzi," the song, trying to find the video for it.

Years ago, parents were worried about the influence of Britney Spears, all tarted up and marketed to tweens. I don't think Lady Gaga is marketing herself to tweens, but tweens have navigated to her because they like her music when they hear it.

So, do I want her censored? No, not really. But I wish those videos weren't as easy to find and access as they are. I typed "Lady Gaga" into Google just now, and her official web site was the second link listed; click on it and you see a screen for the "Music Video World Premiere" for "Telephone." If you open it, you'll see what looks like a bad prison movie; within seconds, the prison guards rip off Lady Gaga's clothes and throw her in a cell. (It does say "Parental Advisory EXPLICIT CONTENT" in a small box in the lower corner of the window.)

What is it with Lady Gaga killing people at the end of her videos? So far, in the three videos of hers that I've watched, they've all ended in murder, two of them by poison. Does she want us all to share her fetishes, her narcissism, her psychosis? Even if it's just entertainment, it's weird and nasty stuff. And it's not for kids, obviously.

So, despite the fact that "Papparazzi" is a popular song, I don't think Nick should have put it on that list; kids don't need to be pushed in her direction. That's not censorship—it's just showing well-needed restraint.

Farewell "real sex"—hello "bleak and depressing"

In a post last February, "On getting free HBO for a month," I described the HBO program "Real Sex" and made the startling conclusion that the people featured on the show don't seem to be well-read intellectuals.

Despite my lack of graphic detail about the show's goings-on, that post became one of my most popular for awhile. I know this because Sitemeter (that little green box at the bottom of the page) lets me see the search terms people have used to get to my blog. And there were a lot of "real sex," "HBO real sex," and "dirty real sex" searches for awhile. The searches were from all over the world (Sitemeter lets you see the countries from which the searches originate), though most were from the United States.

Sitemeter also lets you know how long the reader stays on the page. Not surprisingly, those who were looking for "real sex" but found my blog instead stayed for average of "0 seconds."

I've decided to take off the "Free HBO" essays and polish them for publication elsewhere, but I don't worry that people won't still accidentally find my blog. Recently there's been a rash of searches using terms like "bleak depressing music," which has led readers to my post, What is the most depressing song ever? Fortunately, these readers tend to linger a little longer than those looking for "Real Sex."

The most surprising statistic in this is that every search originating from a European country recently (5 out of the last 100, the maximum Sitemeter tracks) were for "depressing music" or some variant. I hope that once the winter is over and the cold and the fog lifts, such yearnings will go away, even if it means less traffic to my blog.

Postscript: I just realized, by merely mentioning "HBO's Real Sex," I'm going to garner renewed traffic to this blog from people who didn't really want to get here. If you're one of those and you've read this far... oh, wait, you already left 20 seconds ago.

Pandora's box of songs: music to write by

Lucky is the person who can write a short story while listening to the Rolling Stones or a Bach fugue. Or who, like my spouse, can write at the computer while listening to rock music and watching TV sports from the corner of his eye.

I've never been able to listen to music and also do anything that involves a computer or a pen. Apparently my brain doesn't multi-task that way. I write best in a quiet house.

Yet sometimes the quiet gets to me. I think of all the songs that I'll never hear because the part of my brain that writes or types is too demanding of my full attention. So, I've been searching for music that would provide a pleasant sonic background my brain won't rebel against.

It was easy to eliminate disco/techno, folk songs, and any music with lyrics. But even slow, sweeping orchestral music was too demanding.

Finally, through trial and error, I've discovered that I can write to piano music. As long as the piano is the main instrument, and there are not a lot of other sounds alongside it, my brain doesn't get distracted. I don't know if this is true for other writers, or just me. Perhaps only the sound of the clarinet will do for someone else, the french horn for another.

Maybe it's because the motion of fingers traveling across a computer keyboard and a piano keyboard are kind-of the same?

I have created a "Piano Music" station on Pandora Radio. When Pandora asked for a "seed" artist or song, I typed "Keith Jarrett" and "Glenn Gould." It has since persuaded me to add Bill Evans and other jazz pianists, as well as Chopin and Erik Satie, and it is still trying to steer me toward Philip Glass. Miraculously, I've mostly heard piano music on this station, having only to occasionally say no to the rare symphony. (I moved Beethoven to his own station, since it hurt to give him a thumbs down).

If you'd like to hear my station, (I think this will work) you can go to: http://www.pandora.com/?ext_lsfi=sf135142619270723600&ref=nf . If this doesn't work, you can create your own station, with similar parameters. Happy listening!

Sad songs, angsty albums, and a twilight tune

Yesterday, I promised to give my current playlist of melancholy songs, but perhaps I promised too much. My playlist is ever-evolving, my purposes changing. While I wanted to listen to depressing music this weekend, when the weather was cold, today with temperatures finally promised to hit above freezing for the first time in weeks, I find myself wanting to venture outside and to listen to something more uplifting.

Oh, well, for the next miserable or cold day, here's the playlist I was able to compile since the weekend (in no particular order, or in any order of preference). If you're wondering about inclusions, see the criteria I listed yesterday.

• River - Joni Mitchell (Blue album)
• Clouds - Joni Mitchell (orchestral version)
• Amelia - Joni Mitchell (orchestral version)
• One - U2
• Taxi - Harry Chapin
• How Soon Is Now - The Smiths* (video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U5HpeA_WSo)
• Handbags and Gladrags - Rod Stewart
• Dancing Barefoot - Patti Smith
• Creep - Radiohead
• Gethsemane - Richard Thompson
• I Still Dream - Richard Thompson
• Blood And Roses - Smithereens
• John Barleycorn - Traffic
• Somewhere in America There's a Street Named After My Dad - Was Not Was
• All Of This And Nothing - Psychedelic Furs
• Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

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Favorite moody/melancholy albums from my past:

Wave - Patti Smith

Low - David Bowie/Brian Eno

Joshua Tree - U2

Shoot Out the Lights - Richard and Linda Thompson

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And the exhilarating/depressing video I mentioned yesterday? Johnny Cash performing "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails. It's a stunning marriage of music and imagery, and particularly poignant since Cash knows he's near the end of his life when he made it. It's heart-wrenching to hear him sing about his "empire of dirt" since he's sitting in his house amid memories and accolades. But it's also exhilarating, for me, because it offers a summary of a creative life that few people get to leave behind. And I'm not even, usually, a Johnny Cash fan.

It's on YouTube now at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go - but if it's not there in the future, you should be able to find it by googling ("Johnny Cash" and hurt video).

[I found this on my own, but it's also listed near the top of Spike TV's 11 most depressing songs of all time.]

An antidote of absurdity

The antidote to depressing music?

Anything by P.G. Wodehouse. I most enjoy hearing or seeing Wodehouse performed instead of just reading his stories quietly. For this, I most highly recommend the "Bertie and Jeeves" PBS series from years ago, or listening to an audio book read by a talented voice actor. I've been listening to "Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves" in the car, read by the wonderful British actor Jonathan Cecil, who manages to create unique voices for a multitude of upper-class British nitwits as well as a credible American accent. It's had me chortling every few minutes and finding reasons to drive so I can hear more of it.

Perhaps a better word for it is "melancholy"

In my last post I asked the question: "What is the most depressing song ever?" The post title itself reveals my problem with writing late at night. My use of language diminishes as the evening goes on, leaving me with only a limited number of adjectives to call upon.

I think the more appropriate word for what I am looking for is "melancholy"—not depressing or, for that matter, morose or morbid. In other words, I like to listen to songs that let me experience a temporary gloominess, not songs that make me want to go stick my head in the oven.

But my criteria are more specific than that. These are some of the things I've ruled out in compiling my current playlist:

• Songs from the lovesick, unless the experience shared in the song is recognizable, and speaks of more than mere narcissistic longing—U2's "One" meets this criteria because the "we" in the song seems universal and not just limited to one couple/one frustrated man.

• Songs that speak of personal tragedy yet are more cathartic for the singer than evocative for the listener, e.g., "Mother" by John Lennon, listed on another web page that polled readers about their favorite depressing music.

• Songs with gloomy lyrics but happy music. On that same web page, people voted for "Luka" by Suzanne Vega. Yes, the subject matter of child abuse is depressing, but the music itself is a little too upbeat for my purposes. Likewise, the subject matter of "Layla" is a little depressing, but the music rocks (and it really could be categorized as a lovesick song).

• Songs that create bitterness or anger, no matter how beautiful the melody or poignant the lyrics—I can't include Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" because I find it too upsetting.

• Songs that are so depressing they cause me despondency and despair, e.g., "Gloomy Sunday."

• Songs that are schmaltzy or cloyingly sentimental. In this category, I'd put Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again, Naturally," which surprisingly is listed among some people's favorite depressing songs on other web sites. Yet, I'd include Harry Chapin's "Taxi," perhaps because I've always had a certain fondness for Harry Chapin, having seen him live and upclose when I was in college, and also because I like the cello in the song even if the recorded song's orchestration veers towards the overly sentimental.

But the other reason that "Taxi" makes the cut is that I've realized, in compiling my playlist, that one of my favorite themes (currently, and ongoing) is the dashing of the wide-eyed hopes of youth. Is there anything more melancholy than this? Richard Thompson's "Gethsemane" is a perfect example of this, as well as Joni Mitchell's middle-aged rendition of "Clouds."

Perhaps the overall theme here (which includes this optimism-dashing) is the unfairness of life—which, for my listening comfort, cannot include songs about brutality, hatred or helplessness.

Of course, your criteria may be different. Maybe you're without a mate and loneliness is the more compelling theme for you. Or you're young and you don't want to hear anyone sing about the dashing of dreams because you're optimistic it won't happen to you.

But if you, too, long for songs of middle-aged and middle-class malaise, as well as songs that sound deliciously gloomy, tune in tomorrow for my current (short) playlist, as well as a list of sad albums I remember fondly from my own youth, and the most depressing/exhilarating music video I've ever seen.

What is the most depressing song ever?

I am a big fan of depressing music, especially on long winter nights. While other people might crave Christmas music come early December, I long for sad songs.

Why? Maybe because feeling depressed in a concentrated way, for three or four minutes, makes me feel better afterwards. It's not catharsis, exactly, more like a lifting of spirits similar to taking a painful and accidental weight off one's foot or pouring alcohol into a cut and then washing it off.

I listen to depressing music until the days start to get noticeably longer, usually around the end of February. Right now, my two favorite depressing songs are "Gethsemane" by Richard Thompson and "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell (sung not by the golden young woman who wrote the song, but the world-weary, too-many-cigarettes-throated singer she destined herself to become).

Sure, there are probably bleaker songs, but bleak isn't the same thing as depressing. [For example, see the lyrics to "End of the Rainbow" by Richard Thompson, or listen to it on YouTube.] There's no hope at the end of bleak, just more bleakness.

I'd like to extend my current playlist beyond these two songs, so let me know what your favorite depressing music is.

[Note: To view my current list of depressing songs, as well as my vote for the most depressing video ever, see the post: Sad songs, angsty albums, a twilight tune and an antidote of absurdity; to view my criteria for depressing songs, see the next post: Perhaps a better word for it is "melancholy".]

(FYI, Joni Mitchell doesn't start singing in this video until 44 seconds in).

I am now officially un-cool

I have a confession to make, and since I’m not Catholic, I might as well make it in the confession-booth-like confines of this blog posting.

Lately, I’ve been listening to Country and Western music in my car.

This is quite a confession, coming from someone who grew up listening to rock, went to punk and new wave concerts in college [yes, that's me in the pic at the right, at my most decadent], and who used to consider herself cool. But I don’t like most music that’s available on the radio in the D.C. metro area (Hip Hop, overproduced R&B, tired classic rock or meaningless pop hits). The one alternative station I can receive goes out of range three miles away from my house (and it plays the Grateful Dead too much, for my taste). I like the Classical station but not for short drives since I can never get in an entire symphonic movement. So, on short drives, when NPR is playing “Car Talk” or some other show I’m not wild about, my finger reaches for the C&W button.

As I drive from errand to errand in my minivan, I wonder why I’ve gravitated to C&W, not sure if it’s a familiar trajectory, from disenfranchised youth to middle-aged suburbanite, raging hormones to stable sentimentality (if rock music is all about sexual love, then much of current C&W music is about the responsible aftermath, or what I call “love with a mortgage”). But I tell myself it’s my writer’s curiosity, that C&W songs tell stories. And sometimes I like even the most treacle-y songs because I like trying to predict the outcome.

When I first heard the song, You Can Let Go by Crystal Shawanda, I was able to predict the third verse while still listening to the first. “The dad’s going to die in the end!” I announced to my disinterested teenage son. “She’s going to tell him to let go on his deathbed.” Even though I called it correctly, I choked up at the end. In fact, I still have to turn the station if that song comes on now.

But I’m not entirely devoid of cynicism. My son and I sometimes play a game in the car where we take a predictable C&W song and turn it into something ridiculous or jaded. Thus, the Brad Paisley song, When I Get Where I'm Going ("When I get where I'm going/on the far side of the sky./The first thing that I'm gonna do/Is spread my wings and fly") inspired us to spontaneously sing: “You know that when I die/I’m going to go into the ground/My body will putrify/But my bones will stick around...”).

Maybe C&W needs a droll/playful sub-set or a fusion with some other, less optimistic genre, but I'm not sure it's going to happen anytime soon—and I'm not even sure I'd tune into it in the car if it does. Maybe the thing I most appreciate about C&W is its earnestness, how (like me, these days) it doesn't really try to be hip.