The basic roots aspects of early country can best be found and heard in what is today called old-timey stringband music.

This was RURAL music and reflected the closeness of people (folks) with the land and the basics of life -- like the little and big dramas of life --- the tales and humor and the tragedy and pathos --- what it takes to live with nature and srespect it while using it and replenishing it. Then things go WRONG and the base and perversiveness that we people are capable of can be found in the "country" songs. They came from the rural countryside -- and were therefore called COUNTRY MUSIC when a liked and pleasant form of music, alas, bagan to be sold to the world. As time often does, song # 1 has a way of falling to song # 3---and then to # 40. The corporate moguls get scared then---toss out the baby with the washwater---and then create a music that sounds like rock music and calls it country music--simply because the can do it. (It's like the Supreme Court picking the president here in the U.S.A.)

Country Music was, and still is for many of us, rural and close to the earth music. THE YOUTH simply do not know any better. Then they buy up the shit and believe that it is gold and platinum simply because the honchos that sell it to them tell them that it's a valuable commodity.

It makes me sick. Gives me true contemt for the corporate morons---just like I have contempt for the Supreme Court of the USA now.

ART THIEME