Anders Brundell
From:
Falun, Sweden
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Posted 1 Dec 2001 10:42 am |
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Last night I watched a country music documentary starring Keith Harling and Dale Watson – with Ricky Davis in there in scattered frames as well. It was on K-world, a popular science kind of cable channel over here, with lots of music and local stuff in it – in this case swedish stuff - and I don´t know if they broadcast anywhere else. Anyway – it was really interesting to compare Dale´s struggle for genuine, real music with the Harling project´s work with promoting a whole pak of a totally styled and made up cowboy, making music that is designed to sell, rather than to be good and genuine country music. Dale went for good, genuine country music, the Harling project went for sell-as-much-as-possible-by-all-means, virtually regardless of what happens with the music.
The picture of a real singer versus an industrially manufactured broiler was obvious.
Now I DO NOT want to run down on Keith Harling – I´m sure he does his very best, and both him and his whife seemes to be quite nice, ordinary people. That´s the picture that the documentary brings, and I don´t doubt that message.
What makes my mind slant (that´s a home made translation of a swedish expression for getting annoyed) is the fact that it obviously pays much better to crawl for the market than to persist with making good, honest and genuine music. In a way one can say that a fair amount of musical prostitution is necessary to make it in music USA, and that´s really no compliment to that market.
Dale once turned down a deal from a big record company because they demanded that he should actually deform his music and be quite another singer/artist than he is. If he went the crawl-for-the-company-bosses way he would – no doubt – be much better off economically today than what he actually is.
Maybe it´s time for a musician´s jihad against the music terrorists on the market.
Anders Brundell, Falun, Sweden |
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