Opinion: Modern country is the worst musical genre of all time

Shout-out to yogiboy for sharing those PBS links. I saw part of the Burns series on country music, and have always meant to finish it. I did get the box set of CDs from it, and the ones from his jazz series. Ken Burns is a national treasure!

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Personally, I would rather listen to Tuvan throat singing than either country or (c)rap music.

Certainly a provocative first post, mind you, even if I happen to agree with it.

@bdp24 Long out of Austin but I saw some great people there, including Cornell Hurd. Others too many to mention. Saw some jaw dropping performances at Antones, Cactus Cafe, La Zona Rosa, Continental Club, UT Campus, and on and on.

Awesome, bdp24. I did find one record by Johnny Staats using Roon ... not that one, but I will keep searching. 

Jerry Douglas... one of my all-time favorites! Have you heard the many Transatlantic Sessions he has done Aly Bain and with Irish/Scots musicians? There are at least 8 or 10 of them, with amazing guest artists including Alison Krauss (of course). It was a BBC project, filmed AND recorded in cool locations in Scotland (I haven't seen the videos and want to). Really worth checking out.

➡ This is a great thread now! For me it is much more about the music than the gear, which is only a means to an end. I love discovering new music. ROON is superb at feeding that habit. 

 

@patrickdowns: There is one Bluegrass album you may have missed (a lot of people did), and it’s a doozy! Wires & Wood by The Johnny Staats Project. Johnny won a mandolin and guitar competition, and came to the attention of Bluegrass fiddle superstar Tim O’Brien, who appears on the album. Joining Johnny and Tim are Sam Bush (mandolin), John Cohan (upright bass), Jerry Douglas (dobro. Jerry is favorite currently active living musician), Sara Evans, along with others. The song flow alternates between instrumentals and ones with vocals. A fantastic album! Johnny was offered tour support to promote the album, but declined, as his $ guarantee was less than his day job as a UPS driver paid. ;-)

@akg_ca Well don’t you just make a newcomer feel welcome.  
Good thing the post-# police are out, keeping watchful eye on how many posts people have made, and then strongly advocating silencing people whose opinions they don’t like - “too bad that the AGON blocking feature doesn’t include the forum posts yet.”

If I find myself in the unfortunate position of being exposed to the stuff that comes out of speakers when someone is listening to a contemporary “country” music station, I know what pure, unmitigated agony is.
I can at least, on an abstract level, conceivably understand eating Easy Cheese (well, even that one’s a stretch…), watching The Bachelor or Emily in Paris, or watching curling or NASCAR.  
No such understanding with this aural experience.  

It is disingenuous to conflate criticism of this aural experience with criticism of, say, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Mickey Newbury, or Townes Van Zandt.  
As others have noted, there may indeed be plenty of good music today that would be considered “country.”   
Again, conflating a criticism of such with criticism of the average, everyday contemporary “country” music station is disingenuous.