Haha. I've noticed the second one too, though I didn't think it was that widespread. Then again, I don't listen to new music as much as you probably do.

Is it some kind of delayed reaction to the success of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack or what? I'm not sure what else would provoke this sudden outpouring of new wave old time stuff.

My grandpa might've been amused... if he didn't get pissed off that they weren't playing it right. ;)

i really have no idea what started this, or maybe it's always been part of the rock undercurrent, i'm just noticing it now .. i know the o brother soundtrack was successful, but i didn't really pay attention to it. maybe it's eerie coincidence that i suddenly started paying more attention to the country and bluegrass show at our stations (though they've had a consistent audience for much longer than o brother) ..

and the thing is, i really like a lot that stuff, so maybe it's just inherently good music. i don't even mind the profusion of new bands that use rollicking mandolins/slide guitars/countrified fiddles/yodelish vocals, or have always capitalized on that sound, like Dirty Three or Calexico or Okkervil River or And Spiders .. and i forgive Cat Power, because with bands like that, it's sort of an effortless slide into the alt-country territory. but but when a band like Arab Strap starts to twang it up, i feel like something's wrong with the picture??

why did Arab Strap set me over the edge? i'm not sure. maybe i'm just picking on them.

I would tend to say something about it always being part of the rock undercurrent. Grateful Dead, after all, draws most of its inspiration/influence from Americana bluegrass and country traditions. Though Arab Strap with twang does strike me as odd...

oh, but wait a second, you miss DJ Mongoose? now *that's* interesting!

he made it a point to dig up stuff that nobody else had, and he brought a lot of his own music to the station. he was a collector of rare grooves, and as a music collector with my own niche pursuits (aren't we all??), i can appreciate that. solidfunknc also showed me that 'funk' doesn't have to mean college-hippie-jam-bands, and can be genuinely good music, especially when it's dug out of an older era. and the more i listened to his on-air rambles, the more i realized that he was really, really sincere about his love for music, and that his DJ persona was pretension-free. even if he was a little oblivious about station policies or freeform or FCC rules regarding swearing on the air or the fact that a lot of station members made fun of him behind his back, i think he was one of the nicest and most genuine DJs. in his time at the station, he did what he loved, didn't really suffer or hurt anything for it. that's a position to be envied. and now that he's graduated, i've even had callers tell me they miss his show (twice, actually, somebody has called while i was on, to ask about the Mongoose's show, and i had to tell them he's gone).

that's it, basically. i think he's a *rare* exception of how sometimes DJs don't have to be militantly freeform, and can just shake the airwaves within their own musical limits, provided they have some actual depth to their knowledge (and the records to back it up). which most new DJs, despite their insistence, don't really have.

you know what. I think I have to agree with you on that. His befuddled, oblivious, awkward on-air persona was so painful to listen to it was almost endearing. I never had much truck with the music he played except that it was decidedly *not* freeform. He started off on my bad side because I trained him and had to go through so many of his horrible demo tapes. Also, he stayed on my bad side as one of the regular hosts of Pan-African Heartbeat after 14K... and in stark contrast to his rare-groove expertise, I thought his PAH playlists were on the whole, quite horrible. But your eulogy rings true, so I have no argument there!

Who are you anyway? I never denigrated your show or your style of deejaying. I got the funk to back me up. So back the funk up, before i dump you in the trunk. Give me some credit dude.

...then move to NC and you can REALLY get your fill. I would say easily half of the indie bands in our area have some sort of country influence. Of course my favorite local band is Two Dollar Pistols who play authentic Buck Owens/George Jones/Ferlin Husky/Merle Haggard-style honky tonk without the alt-. Well until this last album anyway. Michigan's just playing catch-up if you're only noticing this phenomenon now!

Also as you know I'm a white boy who goes out of his way to play records outside of his race. But being at least partially self-aware, of course I have to find this song amusing:

"I Wanna Be Black" by Lou Reed

I wanna be black
Have natural rhythm
Shoot twenty feet of jism, too
and fuck up Jews
I wanna be black
I wanna be a Panther
Have a girlfriend named Samantha
And have a stable of foxy whores
Oh I wanna be black
I don't wanna be a fucked up, middle class,
college student anymore
I just want to have a stable of foxy little whores
Yeah, yeah I wanna be black
I wanna be black
I wanna be like Martin Luther King
and get myself shot in spring
And lead a whole generation too
And Fucked up the Jews
I wanna be black, I wanna be like Malcolm X
and cast a hex over President Kennedy's tomb
And have a big prick, too
I don't wanna be a fucked up, middle class,
college student anymore
I just want to have a stable of foxy little whores
Yeah, yeah I wanna be black

Racial identity crisis as described by a heroin-shooting male makeup-wearer who dated transvestites until he swore off "that fag shit" when he got married to a Latina...gotta love it!

jesus! you make me never want to play anything Lou Reed-related anymore! .. and that's a lot!

woah, woah. i need a weekend to mull this one over.

and i'd like to think that Michigan resisted the alt-country flood as long as it did because WCBN, at least, insists on mixing things up, so it was harder to notice (although i've been scratching my chin about this one for a while, it's just since the latest Cat Power that i've really noticed it). but the flood cannot be held back forever. not even in our back woods. ;)

Ha ha...I knew that would get a strong reaction! But isn't that the point? Plus, Lou has often written lyrics from the perspective of a third party, so I take the above as biting satire, with grain of truth at the center of it that makes it work. Reed has even insisted that a lot of his more caustic lyrics about his mother & father aren't actually about them at all. Though I'm not sure I believe *that*!

Plus anyone who's gonna write a song celebrating heroin at the height of the hippie age obviously enjoys getting people's goat. It's rather ironic that "Heroin" is now the music bed for a car(?) commercial.