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Subject: RTP-area local music and culture

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  • From: Bryk <chscene AT bryk.com>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: whatever earnest high school poetry passes for "nature valley"
  • Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 12:03:17 -0500


On 5-Mar-06, at 8:45 AM, grady wrote:

I think you're projecting, or conflating a certain oldschool "public
radio" tone in her voice with all the other stuff you seem to associate
(quite rightly, I'd reckon) with "public radio". U.S. public radio, that
is. You probably don't love Susan Stamberg, either, do ya?

Well that tone is hardly an American... listen to a couple of daytime hours of CBC Radio 1 for comparison. I think they all go to the same finishing school for public broadcasting, buried miles under some ivy league campus somewhere.

Lynne wrote a really great italian cookbook (also called the Splendid
Table, which may be a slightly pretentious name for a radio show but
less-so for a cookbook, so there's that) & it's packed full of nerdy
definitions & food-historical tidbits & stuff. She's just a wonk in the
same way the Car Guys are wonks, albeit in a different milieu (and with
a different accent).

I poked around the website a bit, maybe you're right and maybe I'll just shut up.
Or maybe it's just that goddamned theme music is so genteel that it makes me want to projectile vomit.


I'm curious: why didn't you nominate a few hours of the execrable "Back
Porch Music" (or better yet, the fucking Thistle and Shamrock) for the axe?

Execrable is strong. Regularly he'll play a bunch of interesting things in a row, and I'll enjoy it momentarily (until he spins some David Massengill or whatever earnest high school poetry passes for "new folk"), but for the most part I find myself grumbling "Fucking bluegrass nazis with their history and sincerity and Seal of Cultural Approval". BPM is delivered so effortlessly, so lazily that it comes off as almost a sinecure for local roots music artists. I almost wish that something would go _wrong_ once in a while... a missed cue, an Immortal Lee County Killers side... fuck, how about some Julian Cope? And it seems sort of boys club to me. Most of the women I've heard are from trad schools old (Tabor, Waterson) and new (Cantrell, Cary) whereas they're willing to spin the Avetts as "something new and exciting". How come I never seem to hear Neko Case or Meg Christian or hell, Kimya Dawson (or whatever earnest high school poetry passes for "antifolk".)

But here's the thing... as much as I occasionally feel overwhelmed by the roots rock weirdos and bluegrass nazis 'round here, I also know that outside of this little roots culdesac called the Triangle, this music is totally marginalized. They're burning with OCD for this music, and they want to keep the flame alive. Is that really so different from me and my Distractions 45s?

Strangely, I don't find Thistle and Shamrock as doctrinaire, but then again it's a genre show based on sort of a cultural nationalism rather than a specific style. Fiona's take on "Celtic Music" seems to be more of a fluid, expansive thang that encompasses some very traditional music, some icky Riverdance-type stuff, some quasi-new- age wallpaper music, the diasporic (Loreena McKennitt representin' for Southern Ontario), and (*sigh*) Eliza Carthy.






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