In a message dated 9/4/2003 1:32:46 PM Pacific Standard Time, ortrudes at mindspring_com writes:
Just wondering, my new fellow listees….
Listening to OHIO, in particular…Ohio, Cruel and Pretty, Hometown Boy….and Go Down Easy from GDBD….
Karin and Linford I believe know the small-town feeling…the strip pits, sloe gin backporch nights, 7-Elevens, the slow curve of a backroad …and draw from the memories of their early years.
Are you a smalltown person, country bumpkin, city slicker?
It might be interesting to know the demographics of their fanbase….
If you live in a city/rural area now…is this where you were raised? Is it your first choice to live where you live now?
I grew up in a Connecticut small town…not country, not city….suberbia.
I moved to Colorado as an adult to be near these gorgeous mountains and open spaces.
I’ve visited large cities (ie NYC) and althought it’s exciting to stay a while and experience city life with a somewhat impersonal flavor (surrounded by millions of people and yet somehow isolated) I am happy to be a country-mouse.
Any thoughts?
Wow, trudes. Great question. And finally one that relates to me enought that I don't feel like an intruder by answering!
I was born and raised in tiny little Troy, Montana. Less than a thousand people, we lurked in the woods by the Idaho-Canada border, with Glacier National Park a little bit to the east. Growing up, I think I spent about 60% of my time just riding my bike around the logging roads that coiled off everywhere in the woods. Or I'd hike. Heck, even being on paved town roads felt like at any moment I could be swallowed up by the forest. We were in a deep valley, and only those with really good antennas could pick up radio broadcasts from Spokane. Music wasn't a very strong influence on me then.
After I graduated high school I joined the Coast Guard. I was first stationed in Seattle, where I began to slowly find music that I enjoyed and built up a CD collection. Stuff like the Beatles, Tori Amos, REM, Mamas and Papas, Belle and Sebastian. Then I transferred to Homer Alaska, a place very much like my hometown. After the bustle of Seattle, it felt about as close to returning home as I could feel, I guess. While on a trip to Anchorage, I discovered Good Dog Bad Dog at Borders. The first thing that struck me was how much I envisioned Troy as I listened to it. Especially with Go Down Easy. It was great. So two months later I had collected all their albums and was a diehard fan.
I transferred to San Francisco a couple years ago, shortly after Films for Radio was released. I'm divided about that album. It's by far my least favorite of theirs. Individually it's got some great songs, but as a whole, to me it's just not cohesive. And more importantly, it's the only album of theirs that doesn't swallow me up and deposit me on my bike, bumping along a dirt road. And it's somehow appropriate that it's release coincided with my move to the Bay Area. I like it here, but I remain stand-offish.
When I listened first to OHIO, I felt the same way I did back at that Anchorage Borders. I can jump in my car, hit play, and it doesn't matter if I'm stuck in traffic on the Bay Bridge, in my head I'm pumping my legs up Callahan Road on my brother's handed-down bicycle, with the cottonwood trees dusting me with their fluffy seeds.
yeah, I'm a hometown boy.
Perry.
|