Country music was never my thing. I went to college knowing a little bit about modern rock and next to nothing about country music, though I knew some of what I had heard sounded like twangy pop-rock with more hootin' and hollerin' added into the mix. I later did an internship at one of those fly-by-night country stations that tended to pop up like disease during the 1990s and got to hear more than I wanted. To be fair, not all of it is bad – 5% of it serves a musical purpose; the other 95% is not.
Flashback to college: the primary competition of my undergraduate radio station was a country station and therefore a format we didn't play. I've noted there was an always an interest to experiment on college-run stations but seeing how country stations had over saturated the airwaves, both university-owned stations I worked at saw little reason to compete and made a point of programming something different. Really out there. Like funk music. More on that later.
Whilst an undergrad, my first (and best) roommate found my choice of major interesting and said he might listen in the morning when he went to the gym to workout. His attitude promptly changed when he found out the campus station did not play country music. I pointed out – foolishly – that if he wanted that sort of thing to listen somewhere else. This, then, was my first bit of radio promotions and ended with an undesired response. His thing was country music and when he left for the weekends to travel an hour to his hometown, I eyed his CD collection on the shelf. Here were names and notes and songs and songwriters that I had vaguely heard of either in the newspaper, on CMT or TNN, or those times I found my roommate listening to that "other" station.
One of the names was Kathy Mattea, who I really didn't think fit into that other 95%, as I really came to liking the song, Nobody's Gonna Rain on Our Parade, partly for the sing-song chorus and partly from seeing repeat showing of the video – where, sort of like that Coolio video (see Slide, slide slippity slide, I do what I do just to survive), people are packed like sardines into small places (this time, I think, it was a steamer trunk).
This song, and a few others, made me aware of country music circa 1995 but it didn't pull me to convert me to a fan of the format.
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Nobody's Gonna Rain on Our Parade
(Brad Parker/Will Rambeaux)
Kathy Mattea
From the album Walking Away A Winner
1993
Well there's a blue moon hangin' in a small town sky
Nobody's listenin' to the band tonight
Nobody feels like dancin' in this sad cafe
Oh, but you and me baby we got somethin' to live for
One more step and we'll be out that door
I don't know where we're goin' but we're already on our way
The train is leavin' and it won't come back
We got one-way tickets on a one-way track
Nobody's gonna get their hands on the plans we made
And nobody's gonna rain on our parade
Well there's a red light blinking on an empty street
Church bells ringing in the dog day heat
The more we try to change things, the more they stay the same
But there ain't no tellin' just what we'll find
Out past the city limit sign
There's a voice out there and I heard it callin' our name
The train is leavin' and it won't come back
We got one-way tickets on a one-way track
Nobody's gonna get their hands on the plans we made
And nobody's gonna rain on our parade
Well there ain't nobody
Don't need nobody
Couldn't be nobody
Don't see nobody
Nobody's gonna rain on our parade
The train is leavin' and it won't come back
We got one-way tickets on a one-way track
Nobody's gonna get their hands on the plans we made
And nobody's gonna rain on our parade
The train is leavin' and it won't come back
One-way ticket on a one-way track...
Nobody's gonna rain on our parade...