Mostly a Rant about the Decay of Country Music
OK, I watched one of the other three films. Five Easy Pieces (1970). Great movie. There’s the screenplay. The cinematography. The young Jack Nicholson. Two different best supporting actresses (Karen Black, by the National Board of Review, for her role as Nicholson’s girlfriend; and Lois Smith, by the National Society of Film Critics, for her role as his sister). And the rest of the cast was nothing to complain about: Sally Struthers (pre-All in the Family) as the woman he cheats on his girlfriend with; Susan Anspach as his brother’s girlfriend (with whom he also cheats on his girlfriend); etc.. [EDIT: And OMG, how could I forget Helena Kallianiotes and Toni Basil as the lesbian couple that had a breakdown on the road and Jack Nicholson and his girlfriend give them a ride on the way to his parents' house. At least I assumed they were a couple. There's nothing in the screenplay to make it unambiguous, so I guess they could be sisters, or cousins, or just friends.]
But none of that matters. I watched Five Easy Pieces and fell in love with Tammy Wynette. She was present only in the soundtrack, but in my mind she was the real star.
Damn, why isn’t there music like that on the radio any more? I don’t listen to country music stations, because everything they play these days is crap. Maybe one song in twenty isn’t total crap. I think even those artists who have the talent and the background to play real country music end up filling their CDs with crap because that’s what sells. Supposedly this is the music of the Republican Party today, and I can see why the party is disintegrating. (Well, OK, it’s not just the music; there’s demographics, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the tension between libertarians and social conservatives, and so on...but in any case, the music sucks.) I long for the days of Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, even Hank Williams, Sr. (before I was born).
When I was a kid during the 70s, I used to play with transistors and capacitors and such, and build radios. Of course, they weren’t very good radios, often they only got one station, and that was WHN, the local country station. Then at some point WHN changed; they suddenly stopped playing traditional country music and started playing - I don’t know what, but I know I didn’t like it; I guess it was the same kind of garbage you hear on most country music stations today. I wrote a letter to WHN complaining. I wrote in a fake hayseed dialect, so it should have been hard to take seriously. (This was in the New York area, mind you.) But I got back the usual form letter, which seemed kind of funny if you read my letter first.
Anyhow, yes, Tammy Wynette. After watching the movie, I looked at some Tammy Wynette videos on YouTube, and I discovered a phenomenon I had never seen before: videos with hundreds of ratings (over a thousand in one case), and the average rating still five stars. Usually by the time you get to 40 ratings, you’ll get several people who don’t like the video, and the average goes down to 4 ½ stars or less. Possibly YouTube has changed the way they calculate the average, but it’s still impressive. [EDIT: Yes, it appears that YouTube has changed the way they calculate the average, because I'm suddenly seeing a lot of 5-star averages.] I guess I’m not the only Tammy Wynette fan out there.
I can’t listen to D-I-V-O-R-C-E without crying. Sentimentalism, I guess. Plus, my own parents split up when I was about 8, and I don’t think I ever completely recovered. Apparently broken homes are par for the course these days, but back then it was considered a bit traumatic.
But none of that matters. I watched Five Easy Pieces and fell in love with Tammy Wynette. She was present only in the soundtrack, but in my mind she was the real star.
Damn, why isn’t there music like that on the radio any more? I don’t listen to country music stations, because everything they play these days is crap. Maybe one song in twenty isn’t total crap. I think even those artists who have the talent and the background to play real country music end up filling their CDs with crap because that’s what sells. Supposedly this is the music of the Republican Party today, and I can see why the party is disintegrating. (Well, OK, it’s not just the music; there’s demographics, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the tension between libertarians and social conservatives, and so on...but in any case, the music sucks.) I long for the days of Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, even Hank Williams, Sr. (before I was born).
When I was a kid during the 70s, I used to play with transistors and capacitors and such, and build radios. Of course, they weren’t very good radios, often they only got one station, and that was WHN, the local country station. Then at some point WHN changed; they suddenly stopped playing traditional country music and started playing - I don’t know what, but I know I didn’t like it; I guess it was the same kind of garbage you hear on most country music stations today. I wrote a letter to WHN complaining. I wrote in a fake hayseed dialect, so it should have been hard to take seriously. (This was in the New York area, mind you.) But I got back the usual form letter, which seemed kind of funny if you read my letter first.
Anyhow, yes, Tammy Wynette. After watching the movie, I looked at some Tammy Wynette videos on YouTube, and I discovered a phenomenon I had never seen before: videos with hundreds of ratings (over a thousand in one case), and the average rating still five stars. Usually by the time you get to 40 ratings, you’ll get several people who don’t like the video, and the average goes down to 4 ½ stars or less. Possibly YouTube has changed the way they calculate the average, but it’s still impressive. [EDIT: Yes, it appears that YouTube has changed the way they calculate the average, because I'm suddenly seeing a lot of 5-star averages.] I guess I’m not the only Tammy Wynette fan out there.
I can’t listen to D-I-V-O-R-C-E without crying. Sentimentalism, I guess. Plus, my own parents split up when I was about 8, and I don’t think I ever completely recovered. Apparently broken homes are par for the course these days, but back then it was considered a bit traumatic.