I watched The History of the Eagles
film with huge fascination on Showtime a few weeks ago. Beyond the
interpersonal conflicts, the lifestyle of a rock band, and the
nostalgia of so many songs I remember with pleasure from the 70's
despite my not having been a fan, the film scratched an itch that's
been bouncing around in my head for months. There was lots of talk
about defining themselves and refining themselves into the band they
wanted to be. The issues revolved around the balance in their sound
between their influences – country, rock, and even, yes, bluegrass.
Although many of the issues that surrounded their breakup in 1980
involved money and power, their sound was also an issue. The second
part, which involves the Eagles reunion in 1994 and continued success
as a touring band, seemingly healed from the ravages of the 70's,
shows a mellowed group of men performing for audiences who look to be
former fans grown older and soberer, but no less enthusiastic. The
story of the Eagles continued popularity and resurgence raises the
issue for bluegrass of “what appeals to whom, why?”
The question comes up in many
conversations. A friend (both real and cyber) posted this on her
facebook page. “Loving me some Looney Toons on Cartoon Network!!
Now this is what cartoons are supposed to be!! Bugs, Yosemite Sam,
Elmer Fudd... it just don't get no better!! :D” Now what would my
kids and their kids think about this choice? I remember our sons
watching Speed Racer and the Rocky & Bullwinkle show in front of
the big box that introduced color television into our home back in
the seventies. Despite the powerful influence supported by the world
of the Disney park system, I suppose these two programs and their
many imitators represent “real” cartoons to them more than the
products of Disney and Warner Brothers, first consumed by me in movie
theaters as the brief images preceding Saturday morning serials. Were
the cartoons along with Buster Crabbe, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry the
“real” westerns, or just what hit me at the right time? How did
TV change my perception from the movies that still dominated when I
was quite young? My ninety-five year old mother-in-law looks to Clark
Gable and Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra's great 1934 film “It
Happened One Night” as what “real” movies are all about. Should
I discount her admiration for these films, or incorporate them into
my understanding of where they fit into a larger whole? Why do
Andy Griffith's mythical creations of rural life resonate so strongly
among today's bluegrass fans?
I've written often about Daniel
Levitin's assertion in his influential book “This Is Your Brain on
Music” that the music we bond with in our teens, during our rush to
puberty, is the music we love for life. For me this means the songs
and music of the 1940's group The Almanac Singers which included Pete
Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Their social conscience and re-creation of
sea chanty's and cowboy songs later morphed into The Weavers and then
into increasingly commercial material like The Kingston Trio, The
Limelighters, and The Chad Mitchel Trio who eventually were swallowed
by television into an easily forgotten piece of fluff called
Hootenanny. Of course there were other influences, too (Gilbert &
Sullivan, Toscanini, Paul Robeson, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald,
and Patti Page as well as Vaughn Monroe (who can forget Ghost
Riders?) who entered my consciousness, but heavy doses of rock music
weren't there for me. Our forty-three year old son Alex has a whole
other set of musical choices which influenced him (The Grateful Dead,
Bob Dylan, The Clash, etc.) but study and looking back towards the
antecedents of the music he most likes have introduced him to Robert
Johnson, and Old and In the Way, which brings us back to the
influence of bluegrass music on the larger musical awareness of
Americans. It's almost in our genes, and those with questing spirits
will always find it. Plato attributed the following statement to
Socrates, "What
is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they
disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets
inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to
become of them?" So what has changed?
Bluegrass has always had a troubled
relationship with its antecedents: blues, folk, mountain music,
gospel, rock and roll, western swing, and more. It grew out of
country music expressing the yearnings and longings of people who
moved to the great necklace of industrial areas hung around the Great
Lakes. They longed for the fields, farms, and, yes, mines they had
left behind them in their search for a better life during the
depression and into the increased prosperity of the Second World War.
But today's standout musical groups are much more influenced by the
music that succeeded Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, and Flatt &
Scruggs. They have innovative bluegrass bands as well as other music
bouncing around in their heads. So the LRB, IIIrd Tyme Out, Gibson
Brothers, Balsam Range, as well as Carl Jackson, and Larry Cordle
reflect not only the country music they love, but the music that grew
from the originals. They have found new and creative ways of
expressing this.
No, it's not country any more, not any
more than what Merle Haggard and Buck Owens were doing out in
California when they created a new sound in reaction to the Eddie
Arnold, Chet Atkins and Jim Reeves with their violin backed wailings reflecting
Nashville's understanding of country was country music. It
came to be called the Bakersfield sound, and it reflected the
yearnings, memories, and eventual triumphs of thousands of Okies who
had pulled up stakes in the high plains and moved west only to yearn
for the values and life which they dreamed had existed before their
overworked land turned to dust. Nor any more than the singing and
song writing of Johnny Cash, rescued from the cotton fields of
Arkansas by the Army or Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Waylon
Jennings, discovered in the same sounds found in rock and roll a
music they could create that provided work and sold records for them.
They weren't outlaws, they were professional entertainers, nurtured
in the bars and honky tonks of Texas who discovered a sound that sold
millions of records.
The pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman
writes that everyone hates the Eagles, except the millions of people
who bought a hundred million of their records to popularize the vibe
and feelings they found on the beaches of California. Larry Cordle's
great song “Murder on Music Row” strikes a responsive chord with
many who find the changes away from a music they loved to be
abominable. But the murder will be remembered and treasured by
others who attached themselves to the music that replaced the victim
Cordle so lovingly describes. Murder on Music Row is always being
committed as new, young, vital musicians seek to find a voice that
exemplifies their sensibility, their understanding of the world they
live in and to express it effectively. They seek to find a voice for
themselves and their times, find an audience and make some money
doing it. Then there come copiers, clones, and interpreters who are
never as well-regarded or remembered as the originals until they
become a cliché rather than a new voicing, only to be replaced
again. That's what happens with art, and perhaps all matters of taste
and commerce as they interact. Mozart is still there, but who
remembers Salieri. People rioted at the Paris Opera in 1913 when
Stravinsky premiered his Rites of Spring. Punk and Hip Hop have left
many followers of rock to mourn its loss. Fans will continue to be
outraged as “their” music falls into memory and nostalgia, but
there's always more to come, most of which isn't great, but some of
which will help to form the great stream of consciousness we call the
art of music.
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