Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Elephant Amongst The Pigeons

It never ceases to amaze me the propensity of the American fan to head straight for the insult button when challenged about the veracity of any aspect of their culture. Weirdly I received two comments from "Anonymous", the second squealing in a piggy-like fashion about my ignorance of the Delta. In my travels around the USA I have always been surprised by the ignorance so may residents of that fine country show of their own heritage and lands. I once had the pleasure of a young lady in Corpus Christi who made herself available to me purely because I had seen the world outside of Texas. She was great, and I love Texans for their openness and warmth (well not all of them obviously).

My criticism of CTE is more a criticism of the herd mentality of the music industry. I have absolutely nothing against "kick ass rock n' roll", or "a great live show", but I do struggle with a music media and industry that is so desperate to discover some new messiah that they grasp at any weak straw or crumb of comfort. This has no benefit for the acts or the industry; when a band is pursued so relentlessly, with inducements and large cheques, the pressure on them to succeed from the off is intense and invariably leads to disappointment and career meltdown. I'm sure CTE are fine live but they are purely revisiting somewhere that has already been mapped out and rediscovered in a far more ground shaking way by the likes of The White Stripes or Black Keys.

And as for English fog, anonymous 2, maybe your stereotypical tornadoes has blown a huge new hole in your ass.

No comments: