The other day I decided to see if I could find anywhere in Auckland that I could listen to some live country music.   I pretty much came up empty.

There aren’t any bars or clubs that specialise in country, although there are some that have country acts sometimes.  Lone Star cafes play country music, but it’s mostly old country that I don’t really like very much.    I have a couple of places to investigate, but basically I’m out of luck when it comes to modern country in Auckland.   It was nice in Texas that you heard country music all over the place.

Part of my search led me to the music section of myspace, which actually seems fairly useful (which isn’t saying that much when compared to my general opinion of myspace).  The standard artist page has a few songs to listen to, lists of upcoming gigs, bios and links to buy albums.  I poked around on there for a while and came across a few new US country artists that I’ve never heard of before. 

One of those was Gary Allan, who was the singer in the music video I posted yesterday.  His voice is fantastic, and I love his style.  His music doesn’t seem quite as manufactured as a lot of the bigger name artists, it seems a little bit more raw and real.  Realism is the heart of country music after all.

I downloaded about half a dozen songs of his before I discovered that he was also damn sexy.  While he is apparently sufficiently attractive to some people to watch the music video without sound, that’s really not the best way to experience it.   Unfortunately, the songs of his I like the most aren’t posted on YouTube, but that video is a reasonable taste of his style.     Here’s another:

I make no apologies for my taste in music.  I like the Oak Ridge Boys.

I love the bass singer’s voice.  It’s so sexy that it gives me butterflies.  If I’d been a bit older than 3 years old at the time of this video, I’d have been a groupie.

When you play the video, try to guess which one is the bass singer. You’ve got about a minute to guess before you find out for sure.

These guys are still together, and still touring about 6 months of the year. Maybe I can still be a groupie

See how many hallmarks of 80s New Zealand you can spot in the video:

I loved this song when it came out and I still like it now.  Dalvanius Prime was a genius.   The Patea Maori Club actually visited my school so I saw it performed live. 

I seem to have finally gotten Rock Me Amadeus out of my mind now, but its been replaced with another song:  The Downeaster "Alexa" by Billy Joel. 

It’s an amazing vocal performance, and the music is incredible.  Somehow it just sounds like being at sea through rough weather.  Brings back all the memories and feelings of cresting large waves and slamming back down into the troughs.

I can’t get the song Rock Me Amadeus out of my head.  I only vaguely remember it from the 80s (I think I was about 7), but I saw it the other night on C4, and then downloaded the song.

For the full experience, you need the video as well as the music.

The other night while watching one of my TV programs, I flicked channels and heard some good old school 80s music on C4.  It proved to be the top 40 worst ever number 1 songs.   I was intrigued so I kept flicking back to see what they were while I watched the other channel.

A large number of them seemed to be from the 80s, and a lot of them one hit wonders, like Mel & Kim’s Respectable, and Pseudo Echo’s Funky Town, and Falco’s Rock Me Amadeus.   I know I’m biased on this, but I don’t think many of the songs deserved to be on the list.  Their only fault is they don’t match current pop tastes, many of them are musically and lyrically much better than today’s music.

Towards the top of the list there were more recent songs.  Something by Christina Aquilera and Ricky Martin, a few hip hop & rap, some recently manufactured stuff.  

Number two was the Crazy Frog song, which I wholehearted agree should be there, but only because the original was much better.

Number one was  "They can’t take that away", by the first NZ Idol, Ben Lummis.  I think that’s a pretty well deserved win.