Now I don't claim to be an expert or even a connisseur of what passes for country music these days...some of it (the more traditional sounding fare) sounds good to my ears, but the soft-rock-with-a-steel-guitar stuff does absolutely nothing for me. Still, over the years I have proven myself to be quite adept at being able to spot "the next big thing", as it were, on the musical horizon. What I mean to say is that I can generally hear a newcomer's song or see their video and accurately predict whether or not the artist is gonna flop or fly.

And maybe I'm not quite as "on the ball" with the C&W genre as I might be with other musical styles that I partake in more often, so I just might be telling the cowboys and cowgals something they already know, but I still gotta say it:

Get ready for it.

GRETCHEN WILSON is gonna be BIG!!!

And I say that even though I don't particularly care for her music. There's no denying she's a very attractive woman, but even that doesn't seal the deal for her.

Her ace in the hole is that the songs she's released so far are exactly what the C&W audience are salivating for. They want something different from what Nashville typically expects them to buy, but they also need to retain that "good old boy" feel and a lot of 'em are just slurpin' up the whole "white trash trailer park" ethos.

Don't get me wrong...I'm not callin' anybody "white trash" and I figure a trailer home keeps the rain off of one's head every bit as well as a mansion. But that's just what many C&W fans find endearing (witness the uncanny success of Kid Rock with country fans, or watch the audience laughing their arses off in a stand-up comedy video by Larry the Cable Guy and you'll see what I mean..."Git-R-Done"!)...

And Gretchen Wilson's first two singles play to that whole thing like Hendrix to a stoned hippie.

Seriously, watching a woman as vivacious as Wilson doing a song called "I'm Here For The Party"...well, if that doesn't smell of sweet success, I don't know what does.





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The last couple of days have been spent listening mainly to the works of Philip Glass and Steve Reich. I finally procured Akhnaten, the third installment of his opera trilogy that began with Einstein On The Beach and continued with the exceptional Satyagraha. The second has been my favourite until now, but I had never heard Akhnaten until yesterday. Maybe it will grow on me, but I still have a soft spot for Satyagraha.

And the Reich piece I've played at least 5 times all the way through is the 20th Anniversary 1998 re-recording of his seminal Music For Eighteen Musicians. This is the work that introduced me to this kind of avant-garde compositional style (I wouldn't dare call 18 "minimalist" after reading the liner notes, but that's kinda what I always considered it...silly me), and I vividly recall the first time I played it in 1982. As seems to be typical with Reich fans, I was working in a record store at the time...perhaps the constant barrage of music listening on the clock prepares the record store music geek to fully appreciate something as drastically different and unique as Music For Eighteen Musicians, but whatever the case may have been, I found it hypnotic, engrossing and utterly original. I hadn't heard it in at least 20 years when I picked up a copy of this CD Friday, and revisiting it brings back many memories of those adventerous days when I first began exploring other genres of music besides pop/rock.

There's something appealing about these mathematically precise, complex and challenging pieces. I know I'm far from truly appreciating them in the sense that someone with serious music theory training would, but nonetheless I still enjoy getting lost in the repitition along with the melodies and beats that emerge from it. It's the kind of music that you hear something different each time you listen that you missed the time before and miss the things you noticed the last time. If you really concentrate on the music, it's almost like a different piece every time, and that's really surprising, seeing how it can tend to seem awfully monotonous if you're just playing it in the background.

It's a similar effect I notice when listening to Autechre. So many layers and interaction between the instruments and notes that there's no way you'll hear everything there is to hear without wearing out the CD.

But by the same token, my brain can only handle so much of ANY of this stuff (Autechre included) until I have to throw on something a tad more "simple".