Nowhere in the United States is the struggle between progress and tradition as pronounced as in The South. Despite some successful efforts to stubbornly hold to the old, southern culture is changing. As any nationally relevant group of people move through a given timeline they take with them the input of generations past while accepting influences of today. What results is a richer, and infinitely more complex, society.
This is the evolution of a culture; a sort of evolution one may or may not be able to discuss in the local public schools today.
For many who do not live here, this region is a stereotype of its past. Limited exposure has led them to assumptions of ignorance, racism, and resistance to outsiders. Undeniably, the history of The South does offer some evidence for all these inferences. But this is a very superficial view of yesterday, and an ignorance of the area today.
Acknowledgement of Southern disqualification
My personal history is one of bouncing throughout the United States.
Most recently, I’ve spent six consecutive years in the south. I’ve lived in a few different zip codes, and travelled significantly through what is called “Dixie.”
In a region that still labels non-natives “Yankees,” I will never be completely accepted. Never mind the fact that my home state was an uninvolved western territory during that “war of northern aggression.” In reality, North Dakota saved almost all of its brutality for the Sioux. My ancestors gave little consideration to securing cotton or abolishing slavery. Still, I understand I’m a Yankee if I didn’t pick up the drawl prior to grade school.
Yankee or not, I am one of a growing number of transplants in the old home of the Confederacy.
My nomadic history provides me with a unique foundation to observe the peculiarities of this corner, and grounds for well-informed contrasts with other randomly drawn boxes on the map.
I’ll likely piss someone off. Southerners can be a sensitive lot. Just keep in mind, this column is my point of view. You are always welcome to correct, chastise, or thrash me in the comments section below.
Where does it end?
The greater country often views The South as a cohesive group of Republican evangelicals united against the Yankees’ intrusive science and gay. There is little recognition of the conflicts within this region. In fact, people here can’t even agree on where the hell The South is.
There is often a reference to the Mason-Dixon line. That is hardly an accurate measurement today. This marker is typically cited in the context of the Civil War and slave holdings, but was actually established prior to the Declaration of Independence. It follows the southern border of Pennyslvania and ends near the state’s western line. It officially ceases to the east of most southern states, including Tennessee.
This line puts Maryland and D.C. in the south. If drawn out further west, it would give us parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. It really doesn’t seem relevant to today’s South.
Without a recognized geographic reference, our borders become subjective.
I briefly dated a woman from Huntsville, AL. She insisted Tennessee had no legitimate claim to membership in The South. She went farther and denied the entrance into the club to anything above the Alabama border. If a state did not touch the gulf, it was not southern.
Yeah, she was kind of a crazy chick. And she had herpes.
But her concept of southern borders was not unique. It seems many residents do not consider anything geographically north of their upbringing the true south.
Several Nashville natives don’t give Kentucky credit, even though it's right fuckin’ there!
South Carolinans are skeptical of North Carolinans.
Missouri occasionally tries to tack itself onto The South, but very few will allow anything above the bottom slice in, and most southerners aren’t even that generous. It’s better off kind of with the Midwest.
Arkansas is debatable. Not only does it seem a bit north for some, it also is too far west for many. Never mind that its western border draws a line about 1,600 miles off the nearest Pacific beach.
But it’s just not where the state plops itself onto the land. Inclusion in The South often depends less on maps and more on cultural differences.
Florida hangs out there like America’s flaccid dick at the bottom of the states. Still, it is seldom given consideration. Sure, that panhandle is all about southern living. There lies the home of Skynyrd, after all. But the penisular (not a typo) parts are too old, or Jewish, or Cuban, or touristy, or swing too much during presidential elections. Very few will grant the entire state entrance into Dixie.
Many journalists and commentators like to give the Bushes credit as Southerners. Texas truly is not the south. It is its own region, bumping up against the south but not entering it. It is simply too different than…well, everywhere else.
The Bushes other home, Maine, is definitely not the south.
Oklahomans will occasionally attempt to put themselves into the south. But, come on, Oklahoma is really just more north Texas.
West Virginia gets the southern label now and then. Any mistaking West Virginia as southern is simple bullshit. It has an impoverished bluegrass heritage, and it does currently compete with southern states in obesity and poor education. But it’s nestled amongst too much of the north to be given real consideration. Do we not get a buffer between New England and The South?
Virginia is also popping up out the geographic and cultural boundaries of The South. Could the Bible Belt truly accept its most esteemed son, Thomas Jefferson, and all of his anti-Christian perceptions as their own? Probably not. Still, Virginia’s heritage does give it a reasonable argument for inclusion. Its current status as a major D.C. suburb works against it, however.
To gather data and make comparisons, I had to define my own idea of today’s south. Numbers are not often drawn down to the county level, so I had to grant inclusion to full states. If a state—through culture or geography—was not primarily southern, it got the ax.
My determinations, made with a reasonable amount of deliberation, left me with the following nine states:
Alabama (of course)
Arkansas (give ‘em a break)
Georgia (even Atlanta and Athens)
Kentucky (being a little generous, but most of the state is pretty damn southern)
Louisiana (I don’t care what you think of Cajun culture)
Mississippi (undeniably)
North Carolina (growing controversy on this one)
South Carolina (it says so right in the name)
Tennessee (you knew it had to make it)
Let me know where you would draw the borders, or give your perspective on any other element of the south in the comments section below. Then check back on the Last Tuesday in July, when the humidity is so high you can swim through the air, for some real observances on the state of southern culture.
The weekend is finally here...and is following one very weird week...so what better way to make you forget the week (and the heat) then checkign out a show in a nice air conditioned venue!
(This is the first in hopefully many wonder cross-post contributions from Me and the Machine Records. - mdave)
by Josh Preston
You just spent who knows how long writing, recording, mixing, mastering (and whatever else to your music) and you're ready to share it with the world! But before you do, think about this: If you were given the choice between a handwritten CD-R paper cover or a glossy full-color CD case, which would you prefer? Not that we think everything has to be shiny (though shiny things TOTALLY entertain us), but there is something to be said about packaging your music in a visually attractive way. Make it look as great as it sounds!
We know. Just because you're an artist, that doesn't mean you're an "Artist". Below is MATM's Top 10 Tips for Album Art Creation and hopefully they'll make the whole process a little easier.
We hope that these tips have been helpful! After all, our mission is only to make the world a little more beautiful, one album cover/website/t-shirt/sticker/etc. at a time! Also, don't forget to check out some of our designs at Me and the Machine Creative!
technorati tags: me and the machine records josh preston music business nashville album design
(Cross-post from Bills main blog Don't Call Me Ishmael)
The warning signs about the health of mail-order record clubs had long been obvious.
BMG absorbed Columbia House – the world no longer had the need for competing clubs. Then BMG halted new memberships, a clearer sign of the end’s approach.
But this spring, BMG pulled the plug. With all the digital services out there and deals at the fingertips of any computer owner, the need for a club peddling a date music format was nil.
Still, nostalgia rushed in the moment I heard of BMG's fate.
It had been years since I tore open that package in the often-futile hopes of stringing together enough albums to get three, four and later six or seven albums for the cost of one. But my mother maintained the subscription – at Christmas or birthday times, she would offer to cover a package from BMG for old time’s sake. Besides, it saved her from having to hunt down music at the store or learning to navigate iTunes.
When the announcement came, I said, “One more for the road?” She agreed, and along with my sister, we burned off the last bonus points.
So the last trip to the BMG catalog went like this:
David Bowie, Heroes – This replaced a burned copy and finally finished my 1970s Bowie collection. It owes its greatness to the opening trifecta of Beauty and the Beast, Joe the Lion and Heroes.
Spinal Tap – No explanation necessary. I should have owned it a decade ago. But now I’m in Stonehenge, living with the banshees and doing it well.
Willie Nelson/Wynton Marsalis, Two Men With the Blues - Most Nelson albums are like this shows these days – short, sweet and no attempt to hide he’s going through the motions. Not this collaboration, his best since getting together with Ray Price and Merle Haggard. A true collaboration thanks to Marsalis' trumpet and vocals, Willie rarely has this much swing in his step anymore.
Townes Van Zandt, High Low and Inbetween/The Late Great Townes Van Zandt -How overdue was my plunge into the discography of the Texas songwriter? I couldn’t ask for a better introduction than these two records on one disc. It’s nice for Steve Earle to cover many of these songs, but they can’t touch what Van Zandt strung together.
The Three Pickers: Earl Scruggs/Doc Watson/Ricky Skaggs - A little bluegrass bliss reveals how far I’ve come since my BMG orders hinged on Pantera, Megadeth and Alice in Chains.
No BMG order was perfect. That’s how I built up my discographies of the Doors, Elton John, Bowie, Son Volt, Johnny Cash, Ryan Adams, Elliot Smith and a dozen others. You couldn’t beat those deals.
After Metallica’s Garage Days Re-revisited went out of print, Columbia House still had copies, and soon I had mine.
Of course, I probably traded in as many CDs as I kept from the clubs over the years. Not every record turns into a classic, and I outgrew most of the metal.
When I belonged to both services, I remember the occasional oddity changing my musical perceptions. An order for Houses of the Holy came with a copy of Presence substituted, with Columbia House imploring me to try it instead. It arrived on the last day of school in 1993, and when Achilles Last Stand roared to life from the stereo in Mom’s Toyota Previa, I was sold.
At the torrent sites, any album on the planet might lie a click away.
But I doubt the first blast of music off those digital files - even if it is Zeppelin through a car stereo - carries the same resonance.
Further Reading:
Your Music Website is Important but Your Data is More Important. Getting your data out is very important don't get screwed like Echo people did.
For years I'm been harping that an artist should have their own website because you own the content and data. Slowly but surly music artists have been moving their main web presence from MySpace or Facebook to their own domain aka website. Hosting and management tools are getting less expensive or even free so the shift has become less painful.
An article (darknet: echo artist clients face imminent web shut-down) on String Theory Media last week touched another aspect of having your own website. It's the data and content you put on there.
Echo Music emerged from the vast array of web design firms in Nashville becoming the dominate player building and hosting artist websites. They build their own system tailored specifically for the music artist for which they had some of the largest using including Dierks Bently, Rascal Flatts, Alicia Keys and more. So Echo eventually got bought for $25 million by Ticketmaster for which inside sources said they were going to leave it be on it's own. Yeah right....so earlier in 2009 the announcement came that Echo was moving to the west coast and most of the Nashville staff would be let go. The other shoe dropped mid-May when 200-300 smaller Echo artist clients would be dropped and their sites would go dark, the top 20-30 will still have a home on the Echo system. Here is the key item to the story, the Echo system is proprietary and there is no build function in their system to export the content. Meaning all the blogs, photos and other items that you uploaded to the Echo system cannot be moved to another website without some major work being done.
So that's the back-story. Lot's of artists who spent lot's of time, resources and money got dumped because they didn't make enough money for Ticketmaster. All the wonderful things the Echo system did in one place had now has to be moved and reproduced elsewhere.
So the lesson learned is that having a website is not enough anymore even if it does wonderful things all in one place, you need to make sure you can get your content aka stuff out. The internet moves at the speed of light where companies appear and disappear almost as fast. What would happen if Google decided to shut down YouTube tomorrow. Do you have copies of all the videos you have uploaded over the years? If not do you know how to get them out?
If you are an dropped Echo artist looking for a new website don't just jump in with anybody who says they can get you up and running. You'll have a website again and probably spend a pile of money but is there a way you can get your information back out if something happens.
Many agree Web 2.0 was the generation of Social Media, I believe that Web 3.0 will be the age of interchangeable data. You're website have have the pages people visit but all the content (pictures, video, blogs, etc.) will live on another computer where you can move to another company easily. Echo Music is a lesson in why you should care about Web 3.0 and interchangeable data.
Further Reading:
Technorati Tags: string theory media, echo music, music business, web 3.0, nashville
So, you decided to skip out on Bonnaroo...and you really can't handle the CMA crowd...fear not, there is plenty of good stuff happening in town to keep you busy...
Oh and don't forget to play CMApocolypse Bingo! (via Nashvillist)
Have fun and stay safe!
cheers,
j.
technorati tags: cma music festival bonnoroo CMApocolypse nashville weekend
