Quote:
Originally Posted by MolsonExport
And the radio landscape gets even shitter in London and environs, with the conversion of 103.9 from Rock to New Country.
Is there anything lower than New/Modern Country? I'd say it is the bottom of the barrel, except that would insult the barrel.
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On the topic of barrels, I'll paraphrase the late Roger Ebert:
"This doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This isn't the bottom of the barrel. This isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels."
That's how I'd sum up my opinion of "new country".
What's alarming is that a lot of younger crowd (17 - 25) love this new country stuff. I know folks who are that age and they think it's just great. I just stare in disbelief. The thing is, this isn't a generational thing of someone older like myself railing against the younger generation: this product is simply really terrible in terms of quality of content. It is the Walmart of music. Yes there has always been bad pop music, but I can never recall folks of that age bracket embracing it so: in the past that age bracket would utterly reject it. Now they are conditioned to embrace it. I recall recently driving some of them home and I had Bowie's "Aladdin Sane" playing. They absolutely couldn't understand what was going on. I tried to explain the concept of scat-style improvised instrumental composition, and the incredible challenge of doing so and still being able to meander in and out of the established time signature and key and then ultimately return to it, AND do it all in one take. They looked at me as if I were speaking Martian.
It represents that constant lowering of expectations being imposed on the public (and all too frequently embraced by the younger ones) by the powers that be. After all, why bother watching a spectacular film on a hi-def plasma TV with surround sound when you watch the same thing on your cell phone....
And that's why radio stations are embracing it. Just following the money.