My sister Wendy only listens to country music.

Now we grew up in Connecticut.  She went to college in upstate New York.  Although she got her graduate degree in D.C., for the last two decades she’s lived in Minneapolis, and that’s about as far from shitkicker as it gets.

Wendy will call me up.  Start singing me lyrics.  I kind of laugh.  I figure it’s an aberration.  It’s a way for her to be in touch with the people.  Rolls right off of me.  Because, you see, I never hear this music, I’m just not exposed to it.  The only thing people in the music business in Los Angeles care about country music is the grosses.

I get sick and tired of hearing the same old tunes.  And, it’s worse with XM, because there’s a PLETHORA of stations playing the music I know, it’s easy to just slide through my greatest hits 24/7.  But, being a music fan is being a shark, you can’t stand still, you need new stuff.  My mother could never understand it, you’ve got HUNDREDS of records, why do you need NEW ONES?  Why can’t you play the OLD ONES?

Oh, some day I’ll get back to them.  When I’m reminiscing, when I drive by someone who reminds me of an old girlfriend, when there’s a nip in the air that reminds me of a similar day back in ’67.  But, for now, I’m still collecting.  So I’m listening to XM 45, the Cafe.

Now what I hate about this station is they make it like a REAL cafe.  Whenever the announcer comes on, there’s hubbub, like you’re in a bistro, a bar in between acts.  Interesting concept, just sounds fucking AWFUL!  Furthermore, the music played by Mike Marrone on the Loft is just better.  There’s more hits to shit (of course, these tracks were never hits by YOUR standards, but to a fan, anything that lodges in your heart and won’t let go is a hit.)  Still, I know eighty five or ninety percent of what Mike plays, and what I don’t know tends to be historical.  I’ve got a hunger for more of the now.

It’s fascinating.  Did you know that Ben Folds is actually good?  Oh, I haven’t heard him on terrestrial radio since "Brick", and he’s got that whacky sense of humor, I never took him seriously, but really, he’s got talent, XM Cafe has convinced me.

But just now, combing the Sunday real estate section, reading about the movie stars renting out their beachfront property for the summer, a song started emanating from the XM jukebox by my side.

Now you know that XM features a readout.  It tells you who’s doing the song, and what the title is.  And I was stunned to find out that this mellifluous tune, like lying in a hammock in Tennessee on a June afternoon, was by Deana Carter.

Now she had a hit back when too, didn’t she?  Some novelty Nashville tune I never heard?

And I’m sitting there listening.  There’s something right about this track.  But not right enough to write about it.  Until the guitar starts to WAIL!

Oh, I respect that those loops in hip-hop records are music.  I understand they get into you and make you move.  But creating that stuff is a different kind of skill from studying an instrument for decades, just to be able to lay out notes that feel RIGHT!

We boomers grew up with the guitar.  It got inside us and has never left.  Put a Les Paul or a Strat around your neck, plug it into a stack of Marshalls, and we’re READY!  Get inside our bloodstream, make us twist and turn, make our genitals tingle, do it to us one more time.

I’ve stopped reading.  I’m just staring out the window.  Waiting for "Sunny Day" to end, so I can then go into the other room and download it.

If "Sunny Day" was a hit, I’m out of the loop, I’ve never heard of it.

The business is now one of selling tracks, not artists.  If the artist himself is not responsible for the music, if it’s made by someone from South Central in a studio in the Valley, or an old man in Sweden, we just can’t relate.  Because then it’s not a personal statement.  And what we’re looking for…is personal statements.  Stuff we can sidle up to, bond with, try to understand, have a relationship with.

It’s a lonely world out there.  And the major labels don’t seem to understand this.  That the key isn’t to sell stuff that’s going to slide right off, but to INFECT the audience, to the point where they want MORE!  Records are not like movies, movies are inanimate objects, they don’t have careers, oh, there are occasionally sequels, but other than "Godfather II", none was ever better than the original.  But "Sgt. Pepper" is DEFINITELY better than "Please Please Me", and "Tumbleweed Connection" is CERTAINLY better than "Empty Sky", and ARGUABLY better than "Elton John".  The key isn’t to sell us one track, take our money and go home, but to HOOK US!  Get us to buy a ticket to go along for the RIDE!

There’s a ton of great music out there.  Problem is, most people don’t hear it.  It’s deemed too hard to sell by the labels, they say their hands are tied, that TV and radio won’t play it.  But this isn’t what labels used to be, this isn’t what records used to be.  Labels used to be living museums, collecting artifacts that GAINED value over time.  Records were documents, that CATALOGUED an artist’s career, but weren’t the career itself.  They were snapshots.  And, like a parent with his Instamatic, there were many snapshots.  It was about the CREATING, not the selling.

If only the media would do a mea culpa, would apologize to the public.  State that they realize they’ve been peddling junk in search of the quick buck.  And that from now on, they’re searching for stuff that’s going to get people OFF!  Stuff they want to be married to.

I don’t want to be married to Deana Carter. But I’m already married to "Sunny Day".  I’m not even sure if she IS a country artist anymore.  After all, the album upon which this track lives was released on Vanguard.

"Sunny Day" is not a hit.  But, it’s got a feeling, that puts you in a mood, makes you remember, springs and summers past.  Both good times and bad.  And isn’t that what music is supposed to do?