She could come home at the end of the day, and calmly, unsqueamishly talk about surgery on folks who'd been in motorcycle accidents, or about removing internal organs and clamping vessels. All kinds of blood and gore, that was just another day at the office for her.
But one time, I dropped a heavy object on my toe. It was broken and bleeding. And she could barely look at it.
Why?
She couldn't really answer that question for herself.
In my job, I can happily consume songs that are of the most personal nature. John Lennon's pain of losing his mother. The dissolution of Bob Dylan's marriage. Stevie Nicks singing the poisioned words Lindsay Buckingham wrote about her.
Not that I'm unfeeling about these emotional songs. But I don't know that I ever wince.
So why is it that whenever I get to the part of "Gonna Be Some Changes Made" where Bruce Hornsby admits to accidentally spitting on the crowd during a concert, that I become a horrified teenage girl?
T-M-I, Hornsby! Gross!
Up in front for all to see I′m graceful like a bumbling fool
Then I thought I felt slip from my mouth a little drool
Maybe no one noticed it, on my mind heavily it weighed
I saw two people snickering I said there needs to be some changes made
One little independent business, with two studios.
Truthfully, through large portions of the week the AM simulcast the FM, so whatever you heard on one, you hear on the other.
But there were a few exceptions. The AM station carried a live Jazz show that wasn’t on the FM. And the AM was the local home of the Virginia Tech Hokies.
But the most marked difference between the two channels was on Sunday morning, when the preachers came.
I think, if you grow up Catholic, you are accustomed to a religious style that is ordered, predictable, emotionally a bit muted.
And if you grow up in the North, your view of the Southern preacher is likely based on TV caricature.
So it was an education for me, to sit in as I did from time to time, and host the Sunday morning programming on the AM side.
Lord knows that I was pretty ignorant about Gospel music. So someone would have to pick out songs for me ahead of time.
But the real job of that shift, was to shuttle the Preachers in and out of their time slots.
Not unlike how the station would sell commercials, they would also sell blocks of time to the various area Baptist ministers, who’d come in every Sunday morning, to deliver the Word of God (as they saw it).
It could be real fire-and-brimstone stuff, and often, the preacher was overcome with the spirit to the point that he became unintelligible.
You had fiery guys like that, but you also had these weird, monotone, slightly-angry-yet-laconic-zombie deliveries. Those were the guys that gave me the creeps.
Meanwhile, on the FM side of the station, we’d play this Bruce Hornsby track, about a colorful, charismatic preacher and I’d wonder if they had different preachers where Bruce lived (at the other end of the same state).
These guys were the closest thing to monochromatic human beings I’d ever met.
In my mid-20s, through a series of life twists and turns, I found myself working at a radio station in the most western part of the state of Virginia, right on the Tennessee border. I’d been a lifelong New Englander, and had my ideas about the American South.
My 7 years living there both confirmed my ideas, and completely challenged those ideas.
I worked for a bright, educated, well-read, thoughtful, liberal family. And at every opportunity, they caused me to consider the stereotype of a Southerner, and to reject it.
Does the stereotype exist? Yes it does. Yes, in the South there are pick-up driving, country music loving, under-educated, super-religious, right wing folks, who are pretty much exactly like the people TV might lead you to believe were in the South.
And truthfully, there are a lot of Southerners who embrace that image, and try to own it, whether they live up to it or not. Bright, educated, well-read, thoughtful, liberal folks who would still readily identify themselves as Rednecks.
My friends were quick to reject that kind of simplified categorization of themselves, or the part of the world they live in. And in a town full of doctors and lawyers and college professors, it became pretty evident to me that my preconceived notions about Southerners were pretty limiting. I, myself, learned to be vigilant about stereotypes, assumptions and pigeonholing.
I’ve especially kept an ear out for it in Country Music, where some artists will sing songs that are intentionally crafted to fit an anti-intellectual, jingoistic, good ol’ boy/girl image. Songs and artists like this serve to reinforce a stereotype that, like all stereotypes, at best over-simplifies who people are and at worst limits who they can be.
So what to do about this new Bruce Hornsby song, “In The Low Country”?
Hornsby is from Virginia, too, albeit from the other side of the state, in the eastern, Tidewater area. And in this new song, he sings in the first person, as a Southern stereotype. A gun-toting, squirrel-skinning, booze drinking, wrasslin’-watching, NASCAR conservative.
Certainly, this is a tongue-in-cheek performance from Bruce, that recalls, in a more subtle way, Randy Newman’s “Rednecks.”
And that’s the problem. The subtlety. I think Hornsby is singing this tongue-in-cheek, but that’s only after listening to the song a number of times, and closely reading the lyrics.
That’s not how most people listen to a song on the radio. They’re driving or working or cooking with the radio on. They’re not listening with a critical ear.
And in that case, does a song like this serve to support the stereotype, rather than skewer it?
I'm the Program and Music Director of mvyradio, a broadcast and internet station on the Island of Martha's Vineyard. You can hear it here.
I've been in radio since the early 90s, programming shows. As Music Director, I receive dozens of CDs and songs every week, from Record Labels, Promotion People and Independent Artists. I try to listen to everything anyone asks me to.
So the old iTunes list is pretty long.
The idea of this blog is to go to that list, grab one (usually at random, but not always) and write about it. Every song has a story. How it fits into the artists oeuvre. What it meant to me when I first heard it.
I'll try to post the song in full, whenever possible, and I invite you to listen and tell me what it makes you think of.
And for more great music, you can stream mvyradio from anywhere in the world, here.
