Square Music Hurts the Hip

We’re Square, We’re There - Get Used to It!

by Joseph Crawford Mrazek

While observing a dozen people, from teenaged to oldaged, stiffly going through the motions of square dancing at the Sister Bay Village Hall barn dance on Saturday (July 31st), I had an epiphany: the music that moves most listeners is so hopelessly unhip. Why do audiences prefer square sentimental tunes to more interesting original songs? Is it simply a matter of bad taste being commonplace? Or is there something more elusive and complex behind this troubling phenomenon?

Although the Door County Folk Alliance musicians onstage at the quaint stone bayside venue nearly outnumbered the square dancers that evening, folk and country music used to move millions of Americans. Among the first popular radio programs heard nationwide were the WLS Barn Dance from Chicago and the Grand Ol’ Opry, broadcast by Nashville’s WSM. Both of those popular-music shows started in the 1920s; the Opry can still be heard, now worldwide via the Internet and satellite radio. The nuns at St. Edward’s Grade School in Racine even bothered to initiate us aspiring rock-n-rollers into the mysteries of allemand-left and doe-see-doe in the early 1970s.

I gained some insight into the general preference for square music at a Fish Creek restaurant on that same Saturday night. On an outdoor stage beside the firepit at Gibraltar Grill, a tall grayhaired acoustic guitarist and mediocre singer with the odd stage name “Cookee” captivated a gathering of diners and drinkers. His repertoire, comprised entirely of Top 40 hits from the 1960s and the John Denver songbook, was pretty dull stuff. Moreover, this weirdly compelling entertainer (real name: Gary Coquoz) was a visual parody of middle-class, middle-aged summer tourist - i.e. Jimmy Buffett fan - style: Hawaiian print shirt, white cargo shorts, sneakers and a yellow headband. Yet, despite his cheesy baritone and corny stage patter, Cookee charmed even a jaded amateur critic like me. How’d he pull that off?

Well, I suppose he understands intuitively how music creates a temporary community out of an assembly of distracted strangers. Cookee made the audience part of his act with teasing asides and singalong choruses. He embodied the essence of effective communication: good storytelling. He fed our craving for humor, emotion and wisdom like Jesus Christ dispensing loaves, fishes and beatitudes to the multitudes. But the grizzled mustachioed troubadour Cookee, who hails from the mountain town of Leadville, Colorado, accomplished his minor miracle without invoking an original lyric or even a single note of his own invention. Nevertheless, his tip jar attracted dollars like an evangelist’s collection basket.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I love a good cover song as much as the next guy. I was thrilled, for example, when Adam Mackintosh perfomed John Lennon’s “I’m Only Sleeping” last week at Harborside Park in Ephraim. Then again, that semi-psychedelic ode to indolence remains a hip song, despite the passage of 44 years since Lennon recorded it on The Beatle’s Revolver album. Even so, I reserve my greatest respect for musicians who write their own excellent material. Unfortunately, few songwriters approach what Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and Joni Mitchell managed to accomplish in their heyday.

Retro-chic combos playing jazz and jump-blues from the Truman era - including Shout Sister Shout, a fine Michigan-based ensemble that performed at the Peg Egan PAC in Egg Harbor on Sunday (August 1st) - have their place. But rock ‘n’ roll gradually made such sounds obsolete to most contemporary ears. The resurgence of interest among young music fans in bluegrass and other old-timey sounds is more a faux-nostalgia driven fad than a trend with commercial or artistic staying power. Hip hop can also be politically and aesthetically challenging, but it has mostly degenerated into stale ghetto cliches and empty dance beats.

Sadly, nowadays the masses go for lamer stuff than the rock and soul music that I grew up with in the ‘60s. Music buyers and concertgoers flock to such vacuous pop stars as the earnestly square Taylor Swift and the artificially hip Lady Gaga, neglecting brilliant accessible artists such as Wilco and Neko Case. If the marketplace of culture reflects the times, then we seem stuck in a sterile (albeit sometimes lyrically dirty) era. It’s true that the musical analog of comfort food can be nourishing. Among my own guilty pleasures I count Abba and The Bee Gees. And I certainly would not impose fine sonic cuisine on ears unable to appreciate it.

In the USA we can all enjoy the smorgasbord of musical choices. It’s just too bad that most of us choose junk food. It makes pop-music radio so unpalatable for listeners with above-average taste. Maybe that’s why the Sony Walkman and the Apple iPod succeeded immediately: they made it possible for every person to be his or her own private DJ, hip or square.

Steve & Justin Townes Earle, critical darlings

Will Hermes, one of the critics polled by Nashville Scene (NS), a local weekly, had these kind & insightful things to say in NS's 10th Annual Country Music Critics Poll (see the Jan. 7th issue at www.nashvillescene.com) about two of my favorite Americana/country musicians:

"I loved the father/son symmetry of the Steve Earle/Justin Townes Earle records, which both spoke to tradition, albeit in different ways. Pops bowed to his own creative father on "Townes," with covers that played fast and loose stylistically (see Tom Morello's weirdly appropriate hip-hop noise guitar on "Lungs"); the kid played originals looking back to a still-earlier era while also covering The Replacements. These guys understand tradition is something to be both cherished and run up against." - Will Hermes, whose music journalism/criticism appears in the NY Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly & The Village Voice as well as on National Public Radio.

Overall, Steve Earle finished 16th with "Townes" in the NS critics poll's list of the best country albums of 2009, while Justin Townes Earle's "Midnight at the Movies" got the #8 spot. JTE was also voted the #8 songwriter, ahead of Kris Kristofferson & Guy Clark, but behind Buddy & Julie Miller & even Taylor Swift. The talented Avett Brothers took 15th with their fine record "I and Love and You." Number one went to Miranda Lambert's "Revolution." Thankfully, the Americana sub-genre is embraced by Nashville Scene's editors as being "country," rather than relegating its artists to the margins - as some narrow-minded industry leaders seem to prefer.

Sadly, Neko Case didn't make the cut in either the album, the singles or the female vocalist categories. Apparently the 77 critics who participated in NS's poll think that Ms. Case's brilliant "Middle Cyclone" strayed too far from Americana/alt-country land into pop/rock territory. But at least they showed some wider awareness by choosing Elvis Costello's "Secret, Profane & Sugarcane" as the #11 country album of 2009. Maybe that's Elvis' reward for his many years of championing New Orleans roots music & the classic songs of George Jones & his traditional country ilk. Thankfully, such quirky & often neglected artists as Lyle Lovett & Loudon Wainwright III got nods in the NS poll as well.

NOTE: I'll give you a report on Justin Townes Earle's Jan. 27th show at Nashville's hip Mercy Lounge at Cannery Row as soon as I can.