Post by Frank HoppeI've been enjoying Chance McCoy & the Appalachian String Band quite a
bit. One person whose opinion I respect says it's ok but Chance
doesn't sound like he's sinned enough. Maybe that's my problem,
too. ;-)
Having met and picked a bit with Chance, I can testify that he knows
how to sin and likes to sin. He makes me wish I was young enough to
sin as he does.
He has got some good music.
I just think poeople should listen to the old stuff first just to find
out what it is, so they can view the new stuff in reference to it.
I love a lot of the new string bands, but I listen to very few of them
because there is so much of the old stuff to hear. I cannot dictate
what other people should do about anything, nor do I wish to confuse
my own tastes with what people should do.
I am interested in the old music as a product of culture and history
that no longer exists and recognize that whatever we do, we are not
reproducing it because we do not come from that context.
The OTM revivial which I date from the late 1950s has been going on
longer than the amount of time that the original commercial recordings
were made in the 1920s through the 1930s. Many of us who got into it
as teenagers are retirment age and older, as old or older than some of
the great old time musicians and blues singers who we "rediscovered"
in the 1960s.
Despite the general pressure of many of us to stick near the old
tradition, whatever social and economic forces that are represented
amongst the nearly 60 years of OTM revivalism probably have more to do
with our playing than simple reproduction of the traditional music.
Still, that might be good stuff, just not the :"real thing" but still
goood gooood music.
I especially like some of the musicians like Chance who are young
enough to be sufficiently sinful to play OTM the proper way. In the
1960s, a certain attitude about being old timey developed based on the
near senility of many of the great old players. There was an
unconscious and conscious apping of how old people act as part of the
routine of being an Old Time Music shtick. We forgot that the old
musicians and singers we found hadd gotten into the music as hormone
filled teenagers, wild giirls and boys knowledgeable of opportunities
to fornicate, imbibe white lighting, and "take a wiff on me," and not
the oldsters they had become.
Tony Thomas who is feeling particularly old today and who was supposed
to call Social Security today about how much can I make and still get
my check.