A Manifesto

Jack Sparks continues his crusade against Nashville tide against country's heart.

A spectre is haunting America--the spectre of Nashville. The history of all hitherto existing TRUE twang music is the history of hillbilly struggles.

Those struggles have been rendered null and meaningless in a machinery designed to deliver a demographic to a corporate advertising bloc that cares neither for the music that has been created in response to its wealth, nor for the music that it has destroyed in its wake. Country Music used to be an American art form, forged in the fires of a rapidly growing nation, where urban problems met rural realities, and vice versa. And, at the end of the day, you could hold forth eloquently on it, dance to it, and above all, get drunk and pass out to it.

As the Powers of Greed prepare Nashville for the annual false storefront insouciant parade that is FanFare, it is time for the voices of the lost soul of Country Music to speak up and publish a manifesto of dissatisfaction, disinterest, and disharmony. We will speak with our pens, our keyboards, and our pocketbooks.

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But, more importantly, we will stand on a few bedrock principles, from which we will not budge, no matter how beguiling and deceitful the lies of the establishment become.