We don't have rednecks in Britain. We have racists alright, but they're grey-necked men in raincoats and boy scout trousers who wave faded flags and have been in our town this month carrying posters saying "GET "EM OUT!" "Em are black, Irish, Asian, French, American, students, Communists and the Rolling Stones, I don't know what music British fascists listen to. Folk is red, pop is Jewish, rock is degenerate, so I guess it's German drinking songs and Protestant hymns. What it isn't is country and western.

Which makes life tedious for fascists and difficult for British rock. The old formula was blues + country = rock "n" roll and Britain didn't have either and in the early days didn't have rock "n" roll either, only Cliff Richard and the Shadows. But later on, and I've never known why, we did get blues. South London blues, Stones style, and they didn't just sweep the world then but are still playing with faithfulness and fervour — viz Dr. Feelgood and even more obscure outfits, like Eddie and the Hot Rods. But we never made country music. Our schmaltzy tunes and serttiments came straight from show-biz ballads like "Yesterday," we lacked the mythology of hard working, hard drinking, hard divorcing, REAL PEOPLE.

The gap is filled by fanaticism. The favourite singers of the straight country freaks are Jim Reeves and Slim Whitman, big hipped fifties men for the women who'd like to look like Dolly

Parton but haven't got the complexion, and what's worse are their menfolk, who like Johnny Cash best of all and wear cowboy clothes — pointy boots and string ties and lassoos. Every Easter there is a scary gathering of these peaky cowboys and their girls at Wembley. Big stars are flown in from Nashville and the spaces are filled by English country singers with careful Texan accents. Lots of hot dogs get sold.

Elsewhere, there are rockabilly freaks. Most original Sun records are now stored lovingly in British bedrooms. They aren't played so much as stroked. The ghosts of old dead artists like Charlie Feathers and Elvis Presley are invoked, slim hipped fifties men for the fellows, while their girls, who are dark and clean and physical, prefer the cruder energy of Jerry Lee or, getting it slightly wrong, the maudlin romanticism of the Everly Brothers. I went to see Emmylou Harris in Birmingham last week and most of the audience weren't there for her but for her ancient musicians, James Burton and Glen D. Hardin. Even the young lads in the audience, fifteen and sixteen years old,, who kept muttering about Genius and God and Not Fit To Touch The Edge Of His Plectrum just like they were watching Jimi Hendrix or someone. The two kids who forced me to my knees said I was septic and got quite annoyed.

This sort of dedication is rarely heard in British rock, although there are country elements in some of the groups playing London's pub circuit. But I can't take prissy Commercial artists from Streatham as Merle Haggard and nor can the great British public. They find it hard enough to take prissy commercial artists from LA as Merle Haggard. The Eagles fly low

here and what I've never believed (you tell me) is that Olivia Newton-John is an honest to god number one country star. We only see her on the telly with Cliff Richard and the Shadows (again) and get our revenge this way: all her records that are hits in the States we don't buy, and her English hits are Euro-songs, all bouncy, which you don't get "cause they'd spoil her Marlboro Country image.

We did like "Convoy,," though, mostly because it was incomprehensible. A lot of people thought it was a kiddies" song, all those bears and chickens and playing in the bath. I thought it was about Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's Hamburgers. America and meat and rippling great truckers like I'm always hoping to find under the bed. I know C.W. McCall's really an advertising man from Indianapolis but his record's so virile! And that's what British rock's never had: big, easy, drawling men. Though there is a fellow now called Wayne Nutt, another ad man from Indianapolis, who's working on the oil rigs in Scotland and singing songs about being virile in Aberdeen. Good luck to him. The Scots are all runts and ol" Wayne could balance the Bay City Rollers on one hand. Maybe he should — what an act!

Meanwhile, real English country music — i.e., music about the English country — is made by little people. Ace weasel is Ronnie Lane and his band Slim Chance and their music of furtive slipping from job to job, drink to drink, hedgerow to hedgerow. Gypsy music without mystery, all eyes open for the quick nick. And my new favourite provincial band are the Kursaal Flyers who've got a new album called The Great Artiste on UK. There was a TV documentary about their life on the road last week and they turned out to be the most boring band in the history of the world. But that's their point. Provincial life is boring too. Desultory cruising for sex and dope and the big thrill which is always another evening in the pub. The Flyers record this life with wit and hopelessness: "Uppers to counteract de downers, downers to counteract de uppers" and what I realise is that the English drink too much even to have those morning moments of remorse, the evening's energy, around which American country music revolves. Back to the bar and mine's bitter.

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Simon Frith