>I like old blues and stuff with cool voices and sick
>guitar-playing but Seeger, Guthrie as well as Dylan, Baez and
>that whole strand is not my thing at all and outside of Neil
>Young and a few others, I don't like rock that follows that
>template either. Of course, I LOVE¤ the Byrds and their
>followers but it's a different thing I think even if they had
>strong folk-roots. It's the same reason I can never truly get
>into most country(bluegrass is obviously different); it's too
>much emphasis on lyrics and top-line melody for my tastes; the
>"backing" is not very happening to my ears.

I can feel you there... I empathize to an extent, but not all the way.


>BTW, the thing about relating, I can not "relate" to at all; I
>grew up on metal that had practically nothing to do with the
>outside world-it was totally insular music that really said
>nothing to people about their lives (actually, that's a common
>critique against metal of the "true" variety:"It says nothing
>to me about my life") and I REALLY dig that approach to music;
>to create its own universe which you HAVE to enter on its own
>terms. Cecil Taylor and Miles Davis classic 60's quintet are
>other favourites that to my ears made music according to those
>principles and that's like the best music ever.

Well, to a degree you are really encapsulating my view... When I talk about trying to "relate" to folk or any other kind of music, it's not about me needing the music to match my own worldview or personal experience. I'm quite willing to meet the music (and its attendant culture) where it's at, on its own terms.

The lives of heroin-shooting hipsters in dark clubs, snapping off beat to jazz and listening to beat poetry has nothing whatsoever to do with my life, but I can understand the culture and completely get into the groove of bebop (apart from the basic excellence of the music itself).

The problem with folk is that I just can't understand the culture or even some of the aesthetic priorities of it. I can't get what they appreciated about certain performances, about what made one great and another mediocre. The culture, while not necessarily being insular, is just impenetrable to me.

And yes... the lack of "edge" is very much a problem for me too. But I get the feeling that the people involved with that scene DID feel a edge there. And that's what I just can't get!