This morning I listened to Cub Country (94.5 FM). There, I’ve said it! My father would be mortified if I told him - actually he’d probably just be confused, but that’s a whole different story. Cub Country, as the name implies, is a country music radio station; I was brought up listening to Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Smetana, Schuman and Vivaldi. Opera, usually The Marriage of Figaro, on Sunday mornings; that was tradition.
In my mid teens I began to rebel, venturing out to buy records of Bartok and Prokoviev. Bartok’s second piano concerto in a recording by Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich I listened to almost incessantly for several months.
Then the unthinkable happened. Anthony Lewis lent me the Beatles double album 1962-66. The first popular music that had come into the house. 1966-70 soon followed. The first steps on the slippery slope. Next an encouraging push from Nick Hockin to buy Pink Floyd’s Animals. Boot’s had opened a record department and I became a regular customer.
From there, things moved steadily down hill. Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Yes, and after a long hiatus, recently the John Meyer Trio. Not forgetting of course Judy Tzuke, Kate Bush, Tracy Chapman, Joni Mitchell and Joan Armatrading.
And in the background the constant influence of the Average Rainfall Band. Although Foys, on lead guitar, grabbed most of the limelight, it was their rhythm guitarist, Mike Tier, who was probably responsible for much of their creativity, though from his self-effacing demeanor, you’d never guess. Check out his recent work with the Hardley Davidson’s - the recording is a bit rough around the edges but his song-writing genius is still there in spades. Tier had relatively eclectic taste, including Genesis, T-Rex and it was rumored that he’d even gone to see Abba, though under duress. It was Tieir’s liking of Skynyrd’s music that perhaps was my first introduction to music made in America.
Some might say that my conversion to country had something to do with the genre’s embrace of rock influences. While that may to some extent be true, for me one of county music’s most appealing features is its directness and its straightforward honesty. It opens a vicarious window onto life in Middle America that would be hard to experience unless one read books or the newspaper or even lived there. But apart from that, and the roads, and the plumbing and the education system, since I’m living here in California and don’t read much - I never read books and the only newspaper I read is the Economist - it provides a pleasant, upbeat window onto a way of life that seems innocent and uncomplicated, at once optimistic and depressingly parochial, a way of life that is strangely conjured in my mind by the Dire Straits song Telegraph Road, though it’s not clear that this is at all what Mark Knopfler had in mind: “Rivers of headlights, rivers of rain” seems more reminiscent of England than the midwest with its vast tracts of rolling corn fields. Perhaps he was thinking of the industrial rather than the rural parts?
Country’s images are often humorous, self effacing and strangely - I know this seems an odd word but it seems to fit the bill here - tender. There is a simple humanity, a caring if you will, that for someone brought up in a culture of stiff-upper lip, never let your emotions show, is actually quite refreshing. So when I turn on the radio to listen to music these days, Cub Country is up there on the presets along side jazz, rock, and increasingly infrequently classical.
