Rain ...
Language barrier is a pain in the neck and unfortunately, my fellow Quebecers often don't seem to realize that a language that cannot be used to communicate fails to meet its foremost objective. We're recruited so early on and taught that it's us against them (French vs English) and instilled with an obsession w/ our identity and how distinct we are and how badly we were treated...
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This has been the issue in "pop music", which is the worst and most ethnocentric group of people I have ever met!!!!!
The big issue with top ten and pop music is that you think that it is good, and the best, and you have never heard anything else ... and we were telling people this in 1969/1970 when the European progressive/experimental scene was taking off in a huge way, while San Francisco and LA and NY were too busy getting ripped senseless and killing themselves, and the media in America loving it, because it helped get rid of those dopers! And help their belief that drugs were evil!
The funny thing, was that in Santa Barbara, was cool with all the foreign stuff that my old roommate was playing, even though both KCSB and the other FM station used to intentionally make fun of all the foreign music that was played at KTYD, something that even the folks at KTYD could not handle ... Christian Decamps singing in Fench? Giacomo singing in Italian? That band was singing in Spanish! Oh my gawd ... that was German? Alan Stivell singing in what? ... Celtic? ... can't have that fake Celtic stuff! Wait a minute, was that Mika singing in Japanese?
But so many of those bands got huge ... but we had an issue ... at one record store:
Owner - Who is gonna buy that stuff?
Us - Anyone.
Owner - How many people listen to your show?
Us - Well, you can go after the numbers, but we just beat KMET and KLOS and the other Santa Barbara FM station is playing religious PSA's ... you can get those publications by calling the FCC.
Owner - But if I stock it no one will buy it!
Us - How do you know? You don't have any of these in the bins. Not even Tangerine Dream!
In the end, all it did is hurt people's ability to even realize there is more music out there than we can possibly EVER conceive, understand, or EVER hear! America is way TOOOOOOOO isolated from foreign countries and languages, to the point that most cable providers STILL don't allocate services to the Spanish Speaking folks, as an example, and it is said that it is over 25% of Americans now? You really think that 25% of Comcast or Time Warner channels are in Spanish?
Heck, I even have a Canadian band named "CANO" that is outstanding ... but no one ever heard of it! Beautiful album "Au Nord du Notre Vie" (name by memory, might be incorrect).