Evan's point is well-taken.
     
     Mind you, these days I don't spend much time listening to the local 
     college stations, largely because too often I tune in to find people 
     rambling incoherently about politics or -- much worse -- a dj 
     "interviewing" a local musician which sounds like a 2 am bar 
     discussion of "what were your teachers like in high school?" "oh man, 
     i remember mrs. stipocolloki would come in drunk to english class" 
     "yeah, yeah, man, that was like - it made me question authority. what 
     high school did you go to?..." (this is an almost literal quote from a 
     15-minute conversation i heard on air today.) And this was on CKLN, 
     one of the largest, best-transmitted college stations in Canada, with 
     full-time paid staff... Is the program director on vacation? Didn't 
     they know the mic was on?
     
     That rant aside - there's definitely a stigmatization of rootsy stuff 
     as uncool among the alterna-indie cognoscenti, which is a big change 
     since the 80s. Good friends of mine run the (*very* professional - 
     much more so than commercial radio) all-night CBC Radio 2 new-music 
     program Brave New Waves, and while they have very eclectic tastes, not 
     much country-flavoured music is permitted into the mix. While the host 
     and I have had long conversations about the shortage of great 
     songwriting among new bands, when I mentioned a couple of examples 
     from the twangy side of town she said, "Yeah, sure, but I don't want 
     to have to go that route." As though it were something you'd only do 
     in desperation in your old age. Besides the indie-experimental rock 
     (her staple, but which is not in great supply) she'd rather play the 
     most mediocre electronica than the best of independent twangy stuff - 
     some of which I think much more innovative in its way, for instance 
     the Bad Livers.
     
     Unfortunately I think the fences have been raised higher because the 
     consensus "cool" independent bands now (in the year 5 A.G. (After 
     Grunge)) are ones that are very far from rock - not a bad thing in 
     itself, perhaps even necessary. But with the side-effect that f your 
     standard-bearer is, say, Stereolab, then twangy music is going to be a 
     lot less close to your golden mean than it was when the 
     standard-bearer was the Replacements or the Meat Puppets. If they're 
     going to listen to acoustic music it's either free improv or lo-fi, or 
     it's international folk music of some kind.
     
     Mind you, in circles just slightly less hipper-than-thou you will find 
     young Johnny Cash or Emmylou or Steve Earle fans who also listen to 
     Massive Attack and Gastr del Sol. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to 
     extend up to the gatekeepers and tastemakers, but perhaps in time 
     (again, just get us through the year 2000 and who knows).
     
     Carl W.

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