Is your name Magne? I apologise if I get it wrong.

You always have very intellegent posts. Usually you seem to understand more about American Music than most people here. If I can help you with understanding some of this idocy over here, let me know. You can always PM me.

There are enough books about all this, I don't think one more will make much difference. I prefer to do my own kind of "online workshops" on pages like these. More informal and personal.

If you study the history of Nashville recording you can see a very interesting pattern.

Starting in 1936 with the Bristol Sessions, Jimmie Rogers (A distant cousin of mine) and the Carter Family,started the first major country record out of Bristol Tennessee/virginia. Nashville was already in the book publishing business so it was a natural expostition to come here.

In 1955, Owen Bradley started the music business here with Bradley's Barn, which started the "Nashville sound" Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Jimmy Dean, etc. That brought attention from New York, where most of the music and television industry was. That is why you got TV shows like Eddie Arnold, Tennesee Ernie Ford, Andy Griffith in the 50's and 60's.

In the 60's you see the spike driven from Johnny Cash, Glenn Cambell, Mac Davis, Hee Haw. The "Outlaw Spike you mentioned came at that time, the mid 70's where the hippie movement was happening.

The late 70's-early 80's brought the Urban Cowboy days with everybody looking for love in all the wrong places.

The early 80's were the new traditional movement with Randy Travis, George Straight, Alabama, Reba.

The late 80's-early 90's were the Rock explosion with Garth, Shania, and others.

The 2000's have continued that with Rascal Flatts and on into Taylor Swift.

And it gets really funny how each generation complains about the current state of music coming after them. With the older contengient complaining about "That new crap that is on the radio, don't sound like in my day." The only thing constant is the complaining.

On Sunday I was in Florida playing a week of gigs that I do once a month. At the first of one of my shows, I saw an old Nashville writer friend of mine. He just happened to be in the area befcause he has a condo down there. We were talking and he was complaining about the current state of the industry. This is a guy who four years ago wrote one of the biggest songs of the year, called "Murder on Music Row", It was a huge hit with Alan Jackson and George Straight. It had the lines:

Twin fiddles can't be found and steel guitars no longer play
And drums and rock and roll guitars are mixed up in your face.

Great song and well known sentament. The funny thing is that I moved to Nashville in 1988 when this guy was just getting his career in high gear. He had some songs on the charts and the "old guys of that age, the 60's and 70's, were complaining about his songs as being "That new crap ruining country music."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

MAB