Are you insulting Jeri, or everyone who lives in the US, DianeE? Either way, I find it amazing that you're brilliant enough to know with such certainty what any of us want/welcome. You're way ahead of me, as I would have thought "Uncle Sam pop" was a bullshit label and that your opinions were simply your opinions and no more valid than anyone else's.

Thanks for all the great, informative tidbits the pair of you have graced us with! Now that I know I don't have any interest in local/regional/etc, I can save a lot of time and effort by staying home listening to cds.
I'd appreciate it (if you have time) if you could sort of direct me toward what I SHOULD be interested in. As a presumably ignorant person, I don't know which plasticized artists I ought to support.

Thank goodness I was told that this isn't a catfight-nonsense conversation! Without that, I would have taken some of the above comments as pointless and argumentative.