Some of them look a little too mainstream to be genuine Americana which I think needs a somewhat less commercial edge.

My recent favorites – to go all Americana with spelling – include Jim White, Giant Sand and Calexico. And just to be all incestuous, the Giant Sand video appears to use the indie rhythm-section-for-hire combo of John Convertino and Joey Burns – unsurprisingly, since Calexico spun out of Giant Sand a few years later. White narrated Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus a great documentary well worth searching out.

There is indeed “nowt wrong with mainstream and commercial success.” However, this ignores the artistic compromises that must be made to garner that mainstream success. The music of Calexico, for example, has become less interesting as it gained commercial success and made the group made its music more acceptable to a mass audience.

The only sure thing about this sentence – [s]urely the point about Americano, is its commercial success – is that it is wrong. Americana was and is a reaction to mainstream homogeneity. The music of Americana might recount the American dream in its songs but it is the dream of Tom Joad not the dream of Gordon Gecko.

I would place Americana as a cross between old-time country and indie rock – replacing the saccharin of modern country with the acidity of rock.

Paul B -

In other cultural areas the definition of Americana may be broad enough to include Coca Cola and Mom’s Apple Pie this is not the case in music. The following definition is from Wikipedia:

– Americana is an amalgam of roots music formed by the confluence of the shared and varied traditions that make up the American musical ethos; specifically those sounds that are merged from folk, country, rhythm & blues, rock & roll and other external influential styles.[1] Americana is popularly referred to, especially in print, as alternative country, alt-country or sometimes alt.country.

This definition, to my discredit, does assert that Bruce Springsteen is a notable Americana artist. I’ll give you that for Nebraska but, in general, I think it blurs the meaning of Americana to so describe Bruce Springsteen.

The stuff about exclusivity is wrong. I see a lot of entry-level bands playing small clubs and have little interest in ever again spending $70+ to see Prince performing in an acoustically-dead arena. At these shows my friends and I typically buy some merchandise because we want to see the bands succeed. Indeed, we saw a performance last week by someone we’ve seen four or five times and who is easily good enough to be successful – and yet we were disappointed for her that she has not yet broken out. I would much rather she was successful than that my friends and I were still able to stand three rows back at one of her shows. If we seek exclusivity there is always another new band in town.

Paul B asks:

– NDM, thinking of Simon and his love of Dylan (incidentally I also am a great fan of his work up to about Blood on the Tracks, not sure about his more recent offerings) how would you explain the reaction to when he went electric.

I too have been a great fan of his work although I would add Desire to the list of greats – and Patti Smith’s recent cover of Changing of the Guards reminded me there were a fair number of good songs on Street Legal. I think the reaction to his going electric was a response to those who wished Dylan to remain within a particular genre of music. By then, of course, he was a very successful musician whose songs had been covered by many others who had turned them into major pop songs.

I have a theory that the reason the British music industry has been so successful internationally is that it has not been beholden to genre in the same way as American music. Britain did not have country charts or R&B charts or soul charts it only had one chart listing the highest record sales regardless of genre. This led to British artists being able to pillage and mix styles together in a way that was not really possible for American artists in an America large enough to have substantial numbers of fans supporting pretty much any style of music – and radio stations to sate their every need in their chosen genre. The concept of a crossover artist has no meaning in a music environment that focusses on pop music rather than country music or blues (or Americana). I find it hard to believe that Reggae, for example, would have been as successful as it has been had the initial commercial focus of its artists been America rather than Britain – even if the Jamaican music of the 1960s started by pillaging American music.

Many small American bands now view Europe as the main stomping ground where they have a hope of gaining a respectable following. I know of one young American singer who plays to 1-2,000 people a time in France but barely does better than friends and family for her hometown shows. Personally, I don’t like her style but I wouldn’t put the difference down to French bad taste.

The singer I referred to in my earlier post is Rykarda Parasol. As far as I know she is not big in France.

Although not really “West Coast” you could always head up to the wilds of Anchorage, AK.

I bet Bob Dylan was thinking of a different Sarah when he sang “sweet virgin angel.”