4: I forgot part of the song went like that.
Am I only reading every third comment? Are both of you being entirely cryptic? Went like what?
6: When I first looked at the post it went Orbison, Mavericks, Mavericks. Then Talking Head replaced the second Mavericks.
8: I, without bothering to listen to the songs because I don't listen to the songs, didn't think that the Talking Heads song had any crooning. The talking heads annoy me, but I know that song fairly well. I still haven't listened to that song (see previous sentence), but I recall the part where they are crooning in it.
9: I'm pleased to say that you totally imagined that.
None of those are crooners, Heebie is totes trolling her own blog.
Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily. It was part of what made Ogged so charming.
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely. Nice.
If they're not crooners, what's the quality that they have in common?
It's true; Moby's oatmeal can't sing worth shit.
The canonical crooners are, say, Frank Sinatra. Style. Ish. Roy Orbison? Talking Heads?
There are some contemporary crooners, but I'm damned if I can remember their names at the moment.
OK, am I imaging that Roy Orbison just got a lot younger?
20: You shouldn't have been masturbating to Roy for some time now.
Somewhat on topic, I have recently fallen in love with Christine Schäfer. Not think-she's-great-would-kill-you-all-if-I-could-have-her love like I feel for Anna Netrebko, but dewy-eyed Proust-loves-Bernhardt admiration. ♥! See also.
22: And we all know that's a live issue for some.
24: For Apo's links, I usually read the URL before clicking. I should probably do that generally. That was far more disturbing than the dino/car thing.
The canonical crooners are, say, Frank Sinatra.
All three of these have a singing style/depth/mental whateverness similar to Sinatra.
24: That was something I'm really not sure I needed to know about the internet. I did enjoy the brief dramatization, but knowing that it goes further, that people develop more and more elaborate variations on the narrative, somehow spoils it.
So is the part in "Wild, Wild Life" that you think of as crooning the "I wrestle ... you wrestle" part?
I'm surprised that people here hadn't heard about the Roy Orbison in clingfilm thing. I'm sure it's been linked here at least once.
I originally saw that ages ago -- maybe 2003? And it's still the strangest thing I ever saw on the Internet, which I find kind of comforting. It makes me believe that there's a limit to possible weirdness.
29: Sometimes they are too much for me, TFA.
28: Well, it's a quick beat. But his voice has that deepness.
30: Did you link to the google search to keep them from finding us?
26: Okay. I'm a fan of David Byrne, and while he may do something kinda sorta like crooning from time to time, I'd never call him a crooner. There's no need to get hung up on the term "crooner," though.
It sounds like we all agree that Roy and Raul Malo are crooners, though. And David Byrne definitely has something in common with them.
Oddly, one of the loudest shows I ever saw was Chris Isaak at the 9:30 club back in 1985/6. Here's a song that was on his 1st album, Gone Riding.
Oh, and heebie, thanks for the Roy Orbison. He sings it better than the composer does.
I saw Roy Orbison on a rotating stage in the round a few years before his death, and he was great. When it came time to sing "Crying" as part of the encore, he not only hit the hit not flawlessly; he hit it, then waited through the applause, and hit it again. And then again, and one more time, all without a loss of power. And on a rotating stage. It was awesome. But it wasn't crooning.
Ok, in 37, listen to what Chris Isaak does with his voice in seconds 24-26. That's what I'm calling crooning.
38: I didn't know he wasn't the original! Who is?
As I understand it, the term "crooners" originally referred to the first singers to take advantage of the fact that microphones allow you to sing really softly and still be heard in a large hall. People like Bing Crosby would sing in front of a full orchestra in a voice you would use to lull a baby to sleep, and everyone went wild.
These days, we are so used to microphones that everyone is a crooner.
Crooner is an American epithet given to male singers of pop standards, mostly from the Great American Songbook, from the 1920s to the 1950s and normally backed by a full orchestra or big band. It was an ironic term denoting an intimate sentimental singing style made possible by the use of microphones.
I wouldn't call it crooning either. I too have that term fixed with Bing and Frank. But, I went to Isaak as there is something rockabilly about all of the clips.
So those of you with singing/opera knowledge, what is that thing in 40? Where you sort of submerge your voice, but with swagger in it? It's different than just singing in a low register.
hit the hit not flawlessly = hit the high note flawlessly. I blame the box wine.
With memory jogged by the Wikipedia link, Harry Connick Jr. was one of the contemporary crooners whose names earlier escaped me.
Michael Stipe -- also in that link's list of contemporary crooners -- I'd have to think about. I can see it. I like that guy, though that has nothing to do with whether or not he's a crooner.
The kind of mumbling that Stipe did on early REM records is definitely something that people wouldn't even think about doing if they didn't have microphones around. He's sung in a bunch of different styles in his career, though.
Also, I'm not seeing a Chris Isaac video here, unless he's in The Mavericks, which Wikipedia says he isn't.
Stipe, a crooner? That's just silly. Might as well call Tom Waits a crooner.
Oh wait, Chris Isaac is in the link in 37, nevermind.
Stipe definitely does not do the voice-thing I'm stuck on.
WikiPedia, the McDonald's of knowledge, gets it right every once in a while:
That's why the great "crooners" are people like Sinatra, Bennett, Nat King Cole & c.
Ok, in 37, listen to what Chris Isaak does with his voice in seconds 24-26. That's what I'm calling crooning.
I don't know what I would call that, but I wouldn't call it crooning.
50: True, though at this point a lot of people engage in singing styles they couldn't otherwise afford sans microphone. It's not just that crooner = doing what you can't do without a microphone. Crooning also involves the intimate and the sentimental, per what you quote in 44. Stipe can be intimate, but he's rarely what I'd call sentimental, which is probably why I balk a bit at the "crooner" label for him.
Might as well call Tom Waits a crooner.
Sinatra and those guys do do the voice thing. I still think it's not crazy to call this feature the croon.
These days, we are so used to microphones that everyone is a crooner.
Which makes this microphone-intimacy meaning of the word totally irrelevant.
55: A lot of people like that description.
59: But the voice thing isn't the whole thing is the thing. "Crooner" is specific to a very specific set of musical circumstances. To effectively broaden the term without going through a fight every time, you'd need a new term. Like, I dunno, "Crooncore." "Croonternative." "Post-croon." "Roots Croon." Something hopefully less horrible than any of those.
If you define crooning as simply "singing lyrically", then crooners are legion.
I really, really want to hear crooncore.
I'm imagining Mel Tormé fronting the Dillinger Escape Plan or something.
Actually, crooning isn't something entirely foreign to Mike Patton, so maybe we'll have crooncore yet.
I would like to hear Death Croon.
Mel Torme was Harry Stone's favorite singer.
I'm working on "Blackened Doom Croon," but you'll have to give me a few months and another couple of drummers.
Croonish. But probably "Post-Croon" meets heebie's needs a little better.
Blackened Doom Croon is the healthy alternative to Pan-Battered Doom Croon.
Blackened Doom Croon is surprisingly plausible. Come on guys. Let's make this happen. I can practically hear it already.
Nooo! My evil self is at that door... and I don't have the strength to stop it!
nosflow is right, "crooncore" needs to exist.
If (as per a previous thread) tweecore is presumptively impossible I'd like to hear how crooncore is justifiable.
I thought LB linked to crooncore?
I think Nick Cave sort of had that Doom Croon idea already, right?
In my heart, I still believe these are crooners.
64.last: Indeed, he demonstrates both meanings here.
(I have to admit, though, neB has a point. I was joking, but I actually could almost hear what Blackened Doom Croon would sound like.
Let this be a lesson. When you joke into the Abyss, the Abyss also jokes into you. The Abyss had totally got jokes.)
Doom croon has, on the one hand, the intimate, close-miked, "smoke-filled room" sound of ordinary croon. But all the singing takes place at very low frame-rattling registers, with most doom crooners having undertaken serious study in the kargyraa style of Tuvan throat singing. The extent to which the singer attempts to retain the "smoothness" of traditional croon or embraces the "roughness" is, understandably, an individual stylistic choice.
Kargyraa. Now imagine it with less of that reedy clarinet-like sound, and more raspiness, and with, say, Bohren & der Club of Gore (or Borbetomagus!) as the backing band.
If (as per a previous thread) tweecore is presumptively impossible I'd like to hear how crooncore is justifiable.
Not justifiable, but possible, and indeed necessary.
I don't get Blackened Doom Croon at all, which probably means I'm not long for bed.
In passing, on the topic of contemporary crooners (true ones), is there a guy named, um ... maybe Babyface? Who I seem to have some idea is a crooner? Or am I imagining this?
81 kind of describes Brodequin, actually, at least as far as the vokills go. While Tenesseean deathgrind is not doom croon, I think that listening to it helps one understand the outlines that any doom croon would have to conform to.
There is indeed a Babyface, and he produces a ton more than he sings, and while I like his stuff a lot, I would call it normal R&B.
59: But the voice thing isn't the whole thing is the thing. "Crooner" is specific to a very specific set of musical circumstances. To effectively broaden the term without going through a fight every time, you'd need a new term.
86: Yeah, a quick google at least tells me that's not who I'm thinking of.
Even on the front page of those result there are obviously visible many in which being a crooner is not predicated of Roy Orbison.
OH WHATEVER. It's perfectly ordinary to call Roy Orbison a crooner.
Also, your definition of "many" is rather loose.
Snarkout, sitting next to me: DON'T DO IT! YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO OUT-LITTLE-BITCH [NOSFLOW].
I really, really want to hear crooncore.
The Twilight Singers?
About time some sensible people arrived.
No, a belter is something totally different! Come on!
96: four out of ten, and one of the others features someone wondering whether it's appropriate to call Orbison a crooner. And if those are the top results, why should we think that the rest have a greater proportion? Hm?
99: When I think belter, I think Koko Taylor.
Leave it to Shrub to bring the descriptivism. I would have tried, but I know naught of music.
Sounds like you're seeing different results than I am. My first page is all calling him a crooner directly or saying other people are crooners in the style of Orbison.
Stipe gets 6, Byrne get 2, Sinatra gets 126,000.
So we might perhaps think of croondom as more of a continuum than a discrete quality.
Or we might think that it has a technical and a loose sense.
The Croontinuum. Nice.
I'd had a vague idea of Orbison as a crooner, which I think is based on having a vague idea of him as singing in Vegas a lot. I submit that Vegas is an important aspect of the Crooner persona. OTOH I know there's a difference between a lounge singer and a crooner, and I don't feel qualified to define it.
I think I'd also had a vague idea of Orbison being a crooner from Nick Cave covering Running Scared. I think it's the combination of sentimentality and bombast.
20,800 for Wayne Newton, supporting the Vegas theory.
Here's a cut described as crooncore.
99: He is right, you know.
My God, it has come to this. Here I am. Fully in tune with nosflow. Singing from the same hymn sheet.
I am frightened. I am very afraid at this moment. And there is no-one here to hold me. NO-ONE, DAMN YOU ALL.
Fully in tune with nosflow.
In this auto-tuned post-ogged age, these things happen.
Get closer to the mic as you sing that, DS. Get all up in the mic.
114: And yet it seems as close to the theoretically-possible concept as Nice Pete ever got to high school.
Which is a good thing. Because true crooncore must never happen.
118: Sorry, I have to rewrite it to say "selfsame hymn sheet," and work in a phrase that involves the diaraesis in some way. I'll get back to you.
Well of course a belter is totally different, for crying out loud.
I just want to say how much I appreciate DS's work. The jury is ultimately out until we see his outfit as well, of course.
Sorry, I have to rewrite it to say "selfsame hymn sheet,"
We would also have accepted "numerically identical hymn sheet".
20: OK, am I imaging that Roy Orbison just got a lot younger?
Hmm, that was pretty weird, this was the video I had embedded (the marshmellow test) where Roy Orbison should have been on this browser when I wrote that and until I just now closed and restarted it. (I do seem to have some Adobe Flash plug-in issues on this Firefox--it came up OK on IE at the time and my plugin-container.exe was > 1,000,000 K and then crashed.) The page source showed the correct embed the whole time ... hmm.
123: Oh, my outfit will bring Jesus into your heart.
If you want him there, of course.
(Although truth to tell, it doesn't really matter if you want him there, he's coming anyway. Jesus is pretty dominant like that. But he cuddled me afterwards, and I am 67% confident he'll do the same for other faithful Unfoggedtarians.)
(Okay, 47% confident.
You're an asshole, Jesus.)
Oh, pshaw. Everybody says that.
||
So the why this week question on the long-form birth certificate may have been answered. Obama goes big with it at the White House correspondents dinner. And I mean big like Gilbert Gottfried with the Aristocrats at the post-9/11 Hugh Hefner roast. Trump was in attendance. I suspect the Jake Tappers of the world will get their panties in a knot, never mind the right-wing loons.
|>
Unfogged is my favorite place to comment on Youtube videos.
ObCroon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2v2yHl9UVs
All three of these have a singing style/depth/mental whateverness similar to Sinatra.
This may be the wrongest wrong thing ever written by someone instantiating a state of utter wrongness, while standing on a plinth carved from solid wrong.
I mean seriously, the fucking Mavericks and Sinatra?
What next? How Debbie Gibson is on a par with Billie Holiday? Liberace with Thelonius Monk?
A certain curmudgeon of this parish did compare Debbie Gibson to Bruce Springsteen, so it's a small step from there...
re: 135
Heh, yeah, although I could sort of see his point in reference to the songs in questions.
I mean seriously, the fucking Mavericks and Sinatra?
Sinatra is your brilliant musician and the Mavericks suck? This is seriously ignorant, unless you're just saying Sinatra is way more famous than the Mavericks.
re: 140
That's trolling, right? It can't be anything else.
If it's not trolling I don't really know what to say. The only response is something akin to pity. But I assume you are taking the piss out of me.
My best guess is that you think they're a one hit wonder from 1993, and don't realize that they're rather highly respected.
My guess is he's saying that Sinatra sucks.
My informed guess is that he is saying Sinatra was great at what he did.
re: 144
No, it's not that -- I get that the Mavericks are a decent band of their ilk, and liked and respected by people who like that sort music [one-hit wonder aside]*. But there isn't much of a conversation to be had here. Musical taste is subjective and personal, people get insulted when other people think theirs is poor, and there isn't much you can say when you think someone is deeply wrong in their personal taste without sounding like an arsehole.
The vast weight of critical opinion, influence on other musicians, critical literature generated, musical longevity, and so on would definitely be on the Sinatra side of the balance, with much the same weight as it would be in, say, a comparison of Hank Williams and Toby Keith, Charlie Chaplin and Adam Sandler, or John Coltrane and Kenny G. But that isn't to say that someone might not actually prefer, say, Sandler movies, or find Coltrane not to their taste. Each to their own.
* although that one-hit wonder is fucking god-awful.
147: What on earth do you think the point I was making above was, that you're arguing against? Are you really arguing this strenuously that their singing styles are dissimilar??
(Not knowing anything about Sinatra or The Mavericks, I was thrown off by the "Liberace with Thelonius Monk" comparison which seemed chosen to point out that the more famous person can be the one who sucks, and the less famous one the one that is admired by people who understand music.)
re: 148
No, I just found the idea that they are comparable in terms 'singing style/depth/mental whateverness' pretty ridiculous, assuming that depth and whateverness refer to something other than just vocal register. And their voices aren't remotely akin, the comparison is absurd. Totally different vocal styles, different registers, different ways of phrasing, intonating, completely difference vocal resonance, singing completely different types of melodic line over utterly different music. And further, one of them is a titanic figure in the history of popular music, and the other is a bloke in a cowboy hat.*
However, I'll just end up digging myself a hole here and sounding even more like an asshole. If you can't see why the comparison might be absurd I'm not going to able to change your mind.
* albeit someone from a band solidly in the competent mainstream of hat-wearing music.**
** cheap dig, I admit. I actually like a fair bit of older country/western music.***
*** which is a pretty SWPL thing to say, I admit/
I have to run, and I've been arguing with 25% of my attention. I really don't care to argue that Sinatra wasn't a grand old musician, and it feels like you're straw-manning me into that, with a side-dose of jeering my disgusting terrible personal taste in music. My original point is that the quality I call "crooning" is something they have in common. It's whateverness because no one here can identify exactly what it is. Go insult someone else instead.
re: 151
Fair enough. I am sounding a bit like an arse.
albeit someone from a band solidly in the competent mainstream of hat-wearing music.
He's so fucking not mainstream country music at all. I know dropping avalanches of knowledge is your favorite thing to do, and I can't compete even when you're very wrong. But you are, on this occasion.
151 before seeing 150, 153 before seeing 152. Comity.
The Mavericks felt not so mainstream, and were ok, just a little sub-Sahm and near-Buffett.
"Crooning vs lounge" whatever. Ray Price, Patsy Cline, Ray Stevens? Chris Isaacs? Seems a little we maybe look too much at the arrangements and production here. Crooning with strings, lounge with piano, drumsets need not apply.
When I think belter, I think Koko Taylor.
I think of "Bassey the belter" (AKA "the Tigress of Tiger Bay")
Since I'm still not quite hearing the sound that HG is using to categorize "crooner" let me ask, do the following involve crooning?
Glenn Campbell (I am still smitten with this performance)?
and, just to see how far I can push this,
Bobby Womack?
As a side question, can you think of female singers that you would call "crooners" or is it a term that refers to a specific subset of male singers?
I should add, part of what I'm thinking about is that the choice of Talking Heads in the OP is a statement that "crooning" isn't limited to a specific genre of music. So I'm just curious whether there's a boundary at which point a given vocal styling is clearly associated with a musical genre/tradition that is distinct from "crooning" or whether you could hear "crooning" in any genre.
mainstream of hat-wearing music
Why not say "Raul Malo", instead of "The Mavericks"?
Mainstream of hat-wearing music
Yeah, yeah, what is this crooning you speak of?
Extended notes, especially at the end of bars, like say Robert Plant on "Dazed and Confused?"
Not so impressed with Sinatra. He was a pretty good actor, at the start of the period when pop song was supposed to representational rather than presentational. The Streetcar Brando of his era...wait it's the same era...but I can always see the gears moving really hard.
Prefer Dick Powell and Bing myself
Not in the mainstream of hat-wearing music.
I think historical crooning has tended to invoke a certain use of the chest voice, a soft attack on notes, general lack of stridency, and maybe a certain way of setting the voice* but it's quite hard to define. I'm not really hearing it -- personal grumpiness aside -- in terms of the singers in the original post, i.e. as a thing they all share with each other and which they might share with crooners of the past. Although I can hear certain similarities between how Melo and Orbison are using their voices, there's a nasal or 'honky' quality** there, though, that seems somewhat antithetical to how I'd understand 'crooning' as a vocal style. There's a bit of that 'honkiness'*** about Byrne, too. Also, about how Bowie sings on something like 'Wild is the Wind', which has a bit of a similar soft-but-slightly-honky/nasal thing about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbpMpRq6DV4
* I don't know the musical term for it, but I'm familiar with the anatomy of it from phonetic/phonology classes. When you drop the voice-box slightly, to create a resonant effect.
** not using that term as a pejorative, lots of excellent/interesting singers have something of that about their vocal style.
*** Blaxploitation jokes ahoy!
This is obviously not the sort of argument that I can participate in, but may I suggest that in deference to the traditions of the blog, people refer to hg-crooning to make it clear when they're talking about what heebie's talking about?
can you think of female singers that you would call "crooners" or is it a term that refers to a specific subset of male singers?
I can't speak for heebie, obviously, but one suspects that crooners are necessarily male.
In my vague, back-of-the-mind quest to identify current crooners in the traditional style ... well, there aren't many, as far as I can think (though my musical knowledge is not vast), aside from Harry Connick Jr., mentioned above. Requirements: should be a solo artist, probably known by singer's name, not by band name; that is, specializes in vocally/lyrically driven songs. The songs tend to be sentimental or romantic.
There are any number of male vocal artists these days, but they tend to be of the singer-songwriter variety. Everyone from Elvis Costello to Richard Thompson to Nick Drake to Bruce Cockburn to Lyle Lovett to Billy Bragg. Crooners none of them, I'd say, though they could probably sing in the style if they chose to.
Hypothesis: the male crooning style is out of fashion, because it is teh gay. The ladeez may like it, but the menz, not so much.
Crosby "Just a Gigolo", 1931 when Bing was America's Crooner
Won't bother with Bowie
Betty Boop ...wait, Irene Bordoni
Louis Prima with Keely Smith looking disgusted
The Coming of the Crooners ...long article from a Wiki link
mentions Elvis "Are You Lonesome Tonight"
The trial-and-error process of the early 1920s revealed that a natural type of voice--rather than a classically trained one--was best suited to radio microphones. An everyday, casual, off-the street and in-your-living room voice. So it was that all manner of folks were invited to step up to the radio mike. Strolling singers--rank amateurs at best--were sometimes hauled in off the street. If the scheduled professional performers failed to show up, then the engineer might fill in by singing the latest pop hit to his own ukulele accompaniment. Radio, it was soon discovered, didn't require either the skills of the concert hall or the vaudeville stage. Rather, it preferred friendliness.The carbon mike responded best when the voice was projected from about six inches away. Accordingly, talk programs and pop singers who employed a gentler mode of presentation soon became radio staples, along with the inevitable salesman. By 1925 radio sales and revenue exceeded that of the recording industry, and the programming framework had become standardized. At virtually every station one heard friendly announcers, promoting the benefits of goods that listeners hadn't realized they needed, before executing a smooth segue into a soft ballad.
Softly, person-to-person. IOW, S-E-X
OMG
Art Gillham "I Crave You" 1927
Now that's what I call music
168 seems right, and explains in historical terms the prevalence on, say, NPR, of the mellifluous (non-strident, non-honkish-sounding) voice. This is sometimes maligned now, perhaps because people associate it with the smooth-talkin' shyster, but I don't see it myself.
I suppose the female equivalent of the crooner is the torch singer, the Julie London mould:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx977XZjtc4
Or [faster tempo]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m55WQ3g9_Y
164 is good, but I disagree about the chest voice—there's a particular chesty resonance I associate with some Crosby and Sinatra, but I can think of early recordings by both that are more in the head and equally croony. Above all, I think, it's legato, light and intimate, with gentle dynamic contours.
Above all, I think, it's legato, light and intimate, with gentle dynamic contours.
Totally gay.
Kidding! (You and ttaM are right.)
re: 172
I suppose, yeah. That Fred Astaire sound is more of a head voice.
A Particular Chesty Resonance: subtitle of a long-awaited sequel by Douglas Hofstadter.
171:Okay, okay, listened to some Julie London and Keely Smith (Autumn Leaves) and started wondering where the sex went in Eva Cassidy who is always on my hd.
So went youtubing. Rainbow,etc. Then Deanna Durbin and Eva doing "Danny Boy"
No, folks, with Eva it ain't the voice, which ain't so great, it's the freaking art. Pitch, volume, dynamics, Eva is doing some weird shit here. My first thought is that, via intelligence, she takes the emotion out of songs to make them spiritual.
I love Fred Astaire's singing, even though it's no voice for the ages or anything. Rhythmic dancer's phrasing or something.
wondering where the sex went in
Oh, you know, the usual places.
It's not exactly crooning, but this Internationale really swings (it's apparently from Capitalism: A Love Story). Happy May Day, sellers of labor!
The Doors' producer called Jim Morrison a crooner, which I suppose explains "Touch Me," if anything can.
re: 180
I can sort of see that.
Scott Walker, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZTS9H-l5qQ
people refer to hg-crooning to make it clear when they're talking about what heebie's talking about?
~/src/projects/pyline 12:41:30 $ hg crooning
hg: unknown command 'crooning'
Mercurial Distributed SCM
basic commands:
[...]
178:I actually sweated that before I got it wrong
(where the sex went) (in Eva Cassidy)
"from" didn't feel right
Well I've missed this thread entirely but I always figured crooning had to do with using falsetto/head voice. Which in fact is exactly what Chris Isaak does in "Wicked Game" though I can't figure out quite what Heebs is referring to in 40/47.
Speaking of crooning, I've never gotten what this(from "High Society") is about, I mean specifically the little exchange that goes "don't dig that kind of crooning, chum"; "you must be one of the newer fellows." It disappears 45 years later in the fun Iggy Pop/Debbie Harry cover, though there's other WTF there.
That line also isn't in the performance by Kurt Elling and John Pizzarelli on the former's Nightmoves, but the lyrics are pretty heavily altered there.
OT: My mom's estate is officially closed, and I'm throwing away, so far, at least half a ream of paper, some of which is filled with my own notes.
In the margin of one such page I just found scribbled:
"Standpipe: Geertz Interpretation of Cultures p. 122, re: parakeets"
Once a scribbler, always a scribbler, I guess.
NMM: Porno-König Harry S. Morgan. Luckily, he wasn't really the one you'd be masturbating to.
The exchange upthread where heebie bridles at the Mavericks being called "mainstream country" is bizarre. Granted ttaM was being overly dismissive, but even so, "mainstream country" is not a curse word. Of course the Mavericks are "mainstream country." Every bit as much as the Dixie Chicks or James Taylor or Dolly Parton or Kris Kristofferson or Loretta Lynn or Waylon Jennings or Charlie Pride or (now) Taylor Swift. What they aren't is either Nu Country or "Alternative" Country, and good for them.
And Raul Malo has a lovely voice. Not a crooner, obvs, but he has that great peal-of-the-church-bell vocal quality that marks so many of the best country vocalists.
187: "A man who says he is a parakeet is, if he says it in normal conversation, saying that, as myth and ritual demonstrate, he is shot through with parakeetness and that this religious fact has some crucial social implications-we parakeets must stick together, not marry one another, not eat mundane parakeets, and so on, for to do otherwise is to act against the grain of the whole universe."
I'm now wondering what Standpipe's remarks were that prompted the scribbling: reflections on the nature of Unfogged commenters? (Are we shot through with--shafted, one might say--Mineshaftness?)
My sympathies re: going through your mother's estate. That must be very rough.
189: The bridling (heh) may have been at the term "hat-wearing."
190: Standpipe made the reference, but I have no idea now why; I think Standpipe's self linked to the relevant Google Books page at the time. One would have to search TFA. I do seem to think that it was apposite. At the time.
My sympathies re: going through your mother's estate.
Thanks, but no worries: my mom died in 2009, and it's just that the estate is now finally fully closed, so I can dispense with some of the malingering stacks of paper around here -- now that I know what's dispensible. The hard parts are over; it's time to move on!
Hey, thanks. Some of this stuff practically has cobwebs on it, though that may just be a function of my house. Which is not hermetically sealed.
And ew, I found a couple of mouse droppings as well; that's from the whole mouse and snake era, which was so last year.
But yes, I've been juggling too many balls, mentally, for my own comfort, so it's excellent to put a couple of them down.
What ever happened to the cabin?
195: I still have to deal with that. My cousin, who's been "renting" it, owes us -- myself and my brother -- about $5000. (He hasn't been paying his rent.) But he's been, essentially, a caretaker.
If he fixed the dock, which was pretty messed up, we can knock some amount, undetermined, off the back rent. Maybe $2000, I dunno. And then basically I have to have a serious talk with him. My brother was supposed to do that a month or two ago, but I doubt he did.
Gah. I really love that place, the cabin. And my cousin loves it, as does the rest of the family (my mother's brother et al.) But my brother and I can't subsidize the place indefinitely.
The exchange upthread where heebie bridles at the Mavericks being called "mainstream country" is bizarre. Granted ttaM was being overly dismissive, but even so, "mainstream country" is not a curse word. Of course the Mavericks are "mainstream country." Every bit as much as the Dixie Chicks or James Taylor or Dolly Parton or Kris Kristofferson or Loretta Lynn or Waylon Jennings or Charlie Pride or (now) Taylor Swift. What they aren't is either Nu Country or "Alternative" Country, and good for them.
Mainstream country means stuff played on mainstream country radio in the 21st century. Which includes zero of those artists except the Dixie Chicks and Taylor Swift.
I think of mainstream country as being Dirks Bentley, Rascal Flatts, Kenney Chesney, Taylor Swift, Toby Keith, etc. The Nashville sound.
Mainstream country means stuff played on mainstream country radio in the 21st century.
Huh? Why only in the 21st century?
199: There were only two centuries with commercial radio and we couldn't do both.
Is 199 a real question? Because Nashville is a pop-esque genre, so once it ages, it ages out of the mainstream, to a degree. The music that holds up over time gets called Classic Country or Retro Vintage Country or whatever.
Imagine all the troops we can commit to Libya now!
Is 199 a real question?
Yes, it's a real question. I don't think of "mainstream" as an indexical.
202: Dang. I just posted that and thought I'd gotten there first.
You added value. I didn't say which Osama.
197: Mainstream country means stuff played on mainstream country radio in the 21st century.
I agree (yet again, drat it all) with neB about the "21st century" cutoff point. "Mainstream country" is also defined, at any rate, by televisual spectacle and ongoing iconic reputation, for which all of the acts mentioned most surely qualify. And even accepting the radio cutoff point: I learned about James Taylor by hearing "Carolina" played on a country station in the 21st century.
Taylor Swift is anything but "the Nashville sound." She is in fact a success story of the Canadian country recording industry. The Dixie Chicks may indeed qualify as Nashville establishment (until they dared defy The Shrub), but if anything are a demonstration that "the Nashville sound" is not as cohesive as commonly imagined.
I was puzzled by the Taylor Swift mention as well. This comment does not add value, however.
And then East Nashville is an entirely different (and entirely more interesting) scene.
In my vague, back-of-the-mind quest to identify current crooners in the traditional style ... well, there aren't many, as far as I can think (though my musical knowledge is not vast), aside from Harry Connick Jr., mentioned above. Requirements: should be a solo artist, probably known by singer's name, not by band name; that is, specializes in vocally/lyrically driven songs. The songs tend to be sentimental or romantic.
John Legend . Not just a crooner but a pretty fantastic one. There's an implicit inclusion of "white" in your definition, because black crooners tend to get classified as 'soul singers' or whatever.
211: I would indeed call John Legend a soul singer, or r&b if that's more your thing as he fits well with that tradition.
I don't think you can call anybody a crooner after 1960 or so who hadn't been one before that. Crooning was the product of a specific time and place and once rock 'n roll got going that context disappeared. Certainly the examples given in the original post all fit within the rock/pop tradition and therefore automatically aren't crooners in my opinion.
Apart from the fact that none of them even remotely sound croonerish.
Granted ttaM was being overly dismissive, but even so, "mainstream country" is not a curse word.
I was being a bit of a prick, as I admitted in the comment at the time. All I meant by it, digs at 'hat-wearing' aside, was that they were squarely within that tradition, and not in the more glitzy/shitty style that is basically cheesy pop music with a few country tropes attached* ['nu' country? I'm not clear on the right term] or alt-country.
* the stuff HG mentions in 198
