{"id":3549,"date":"2012-01-11T07:43:58","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T13:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=3549"},"modified":"2012-01-11T07:43:58","modified_gmt":"2012-01-11T13:43:58","slug":"hillbilly-highway-all-signs-point-to-garth-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2012\/01\/11\/hillbilly-highway-all-signs-point-to-garth-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillbilly Highway – Party on, Garth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Sheldon Birnie<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a shitty day in Winnipeg, and all I wanna do is listen to Garth. I know there\u2019s some good shows coming up, some local talent to profile, but I only wanna write about Garth. There\u2019s a whole world to explore on the Highway today, but all signs point to Garth.<\/p>\n

So fuck it. Garth Brooks is a beauty. The biggest star in the world at one point, Garth took country music to a whole new level, and many have lamented that fact and cursed his name ever since.<\/p>\n

For years, I was in that camp. Garth Brooks and Top 40 country were everywhere in my hometown in northeastern BC. On the radio on the way to school, on the PA before and after hockey games, on the tape deck in my buddy\u2019s dad\u2019s truck, on your baby sitter\u2019s TV set. I couldn\u2019t stand living in a world where Garth Brooks was King.<\/p>\n

When I was 17, we used to drink beers in my buddy Nick\u2019s basement. His parents were huge Garth fans. I\u2019m sure they had every album, even the Chris Gaines <\/a>\u201cGreatest Hits\u201d disc. They both had at least one sweet Garth concert t-shirt, and their TV was generally tuned to CMT, too. Nick\u2019s parents were beauties, but we just didn\u2019t understand at the time. We were too caught up in smoking pot and listening to Fat Wreck Chords<\/a> comps.<\/p>\n

My friend Lisa Moore, guitar-lady with local grungy-blues-babes the Bushtits<\/a>, grew up in a town not unlike my own. Her history with Big Garth sounds a lot like mine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have strong but mixed feelings about Garth,\u201d Lisa says. \u201cI grew up in northern Alberta in the 90s. I remember riding the bus on gym outings in grade 10 with The Hits <\/em>blasting\u00a0in my discman while publicly pretending not to be into country music, because radio-friendly country is what everybody else on the goddamned\u00a0bus was listening to. But hell, he had some crazy\u00a0steroid hooks going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure, G-Force has some stomach turning ballads, and everything he did was over-the-fucking-top, but that\u2019s the point. Go big or go home, right? Fuckin\u2019 A. Besides, what good rural Canadian can say they haven\u2019t karaoke\u2019d the shit out of \u201cFriends in Low Places\u201d?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s something universal about <\/em>\u201cFriends in Low Places,\u2019\u201d<\/a> says Lisa, \u201cEven if\u00a0all of your friends are\u00a0t-shirt designers who\u00a0listen to She & Him<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Back of a Garth sweater that I own. And wear. Regularly.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not convinced? Pump \u201cAint Goin Down Til the Sun Comes Up\u201d<\/a> cruising the commute home on a Friday afternoon. Listen to \u201cBeaches of Cheyenne\u201d<\/a> when you feel like maybe you got off to the wrong foot your significant someone \u2014 it could be worse, pal! Or take a look at any live video<\/a> of Garth and Co rocking the fuck out of Anywhere, USA.<\/p>\n

Sure, I\u2019d take Dwight over Garth six out of seven days of the week, but hell, G-Force has his place. Like a shitty Tuesday in Winnipeg when \u201cMuch Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)\u201d<\/a> came up on the music box and, for a couple minutes, the biggest star on the Highway and a downtrodden skid in worn out boots felt the same damn thing.<\/p>\n

Keep it rocking, friends. Party on, Garth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sheldon Birnie It\u2019s a shitty day in Winnipeg, and all I wanna do is listen to Garth. I know there\u2019s some good shows coming up, some local talent to profile, but I only wanna write about Garth. There\u2019s a whole world to explore on the Highway today, but all signs point to Garth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[214,432,513],"class_list":["post-3549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","tag-country-music","tag-hillbilly-highway","tag-karaoke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}