In the trendier circles of today’s youthful elite, a person can find it difficult to avoid encountering, across the chests of sophisticates, the names “Wilco” or “Whiskeytown.”
If you have even a small sense of curiosity, then you would probably inquire upon the nature of these strange names and subsequently learn that they were part of a musical movement known as “alternative country.”
While some enthusiasts might claim that the phenomena of alternative country is a vague umbrella term covering all “authentic” contemporary roots music, including artists as diverse as Django Reinhardt and K. D. Lang, they will most certainly agree that the band Uncle Tupelo had some vague role in forming the music.
Alternative country is instead a surprisingly specific genre describing the marriage of alternative music (punk, indie) with country music, its origins being mentally post-modern and musically difficult to peg.
Far from being radical, alternative country is actually the second major flirtation rock has had with roots music. In the early-to-mid sixties, rock was a genre in formation, drawing from often radically different popular and folk traditions (rock ‘n’ roll, country, blues, etc.) to create an entirely new form of music.
Later many began to drift into the slick self-indulgence of psychedelia, and a reaction against the prevailing hedonism ensued, the catalyst of which was Bob Dylan and the Band’s underground recording of “The Basement Tapes” in 1968. Many famous artists were heavily influenced by these recordings, and among them the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, and the Grateful Dead, and the world of popular music was divided between roots and art rock.
Alternative country, in many ways, parallels this history. In the late seventies Johnny Rotten woke up one morning and destroyed music as we knew it. The Golden Age was dead. Long live the Silver Age of rock ‘n’ roll, the time when punk and new wave reigned. The pervasive nihilism of punk and the music it spawned had a profound effect upon the youth of the age. Many longed for a time when values were more concrete and less cosmopolitan. With its seductive images of a simpler life, roots music once again became popular.
Yet an important point remains. For the bands of the sixties, it was their musical roots they returned to. For the indie musician, roots music becomes a tool to express their own dissatisfaction at the dishonesty of contemporary music. It is the attitude of country music of the past they relate to, its air of authenticity, and the anguish of many of its players, not the tradition they represent. It is in this that they misunderstand the music.
The authenticity associated with artists such as Hank Williams and Johnny Cash comes not from their own despairing, self-destructive personalities, but in the way their own failings were redeemed by the art they participated in and by the tradition they represented, which transcended their egos.
There is something disingenuous about the self-conscious connection of alternative rock to country music. The reconciliation of two genres which seem diametrically opposed, one centering upon the destruction of roots, and the other upon the roots themselves, reveals the irony of the our times, which longs for the stability of tradition yet refuses to play a part in its maintenance, preferring the safety commentary to involvement.
Now I don’t want to create the impression that I am accusing all alternative country disciples of these attitudes. I am merely describing the tendencies I perceive within the sub-culture.
For all this, I still respect the alternative country musicians for moving away from the bankruptcy of punk rock and for their creation of what is often excellent enough music.
We have an unfortunate tendency in our culture to listen to the voices of the past in order to understand our contemporaries, assuming by implication that our contemporaries have built upon the past and are superior.
Well, while many of our contemporaries may be very good, sometimes the dead said it best.