Did you know Tim McGraw was good?<\/p>\n
I had to drive from Santa Monica to Hollywood.\u00c2\u00a0 During RUSH HOUR!<\/p>\n
I hear traffic is hell just about everywhere these days.\u00c2\u00a0 Just know that ours is even worse.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d like to tell you I could walk faster, but as you well know, NOBODY WALKS IN L.A!<\/p>\n
To listen to the same damn rock and roll for an hour plus, I just wasn’t up to it.\u00c2\u00a0 So I decided on a project.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d work my way up the Sirius dial, all the way from Channel 1 to INFINITY!<\/p>\n
Maybe it was just my mood, but even the rap sounded good.\u00c2\u00a0 Really, listen to alternative rock for a while and ANYTHING will sound good.\u00c2\u00a0 What happened to all these skinny little white boys that they have to whine over their tinny guitars?\u00c2\u00a0 Who’d want to fuck these pencil-dick people?\u00c2\u00a0 You want to know why people constantly say rock is dead?\u00c2\u00a0 LISTEN TO THIS SHIT!\u00c2\u00a0 Or the imitation metal.\u00c2\u00a0 Rock is so far from its home base, so far off target, so far from three chords and a chorus, so far from honesty and\/or comprehensibility, it’s a wonder we can sell it at all.<\/p>\n
Really, Ice-T had some interesting shit to say.\u00c2\u00a0 But he’s no longer a rapper, he’s a TV star.\u00c2\u00a0 Seems like everybody in rap wants to be somebody else.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a lifestyle for the listener, but for the act?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just a stepping stone to further riches.\u00c2\u00a0 I wore my do-rag in the car for about ten minutes, but then that was enough, I moved even further up the dial.<\/p>\n
And it’s not easy on Sirius.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it takes so damn long for the titles to show up.\u00c2\u00a0 And then, you’ve got to cycle through the titles and the channel name.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean if you don’t know the music, how in the fuck would you know who did it?\u00c2\u00a0 I’m constantly pushing the button, feeling like I’m living in the twentieth century, before I expected to get it all, RIGHT FUCKING NOW!<\/p>\n
Some of the stations are confusing.\u00c2\u00a0 Is the R&B crooner the anomaly on the rap channel, or is this a whole new category?<\/p>\n
But you know when you hear shit-kickin’ music, you can hear the cowboy hat through the dashboard.<\/p>\n
But when I was growing up, country music had a twang.\u00c2\u00a0 It was so far from Top Forty that it was referred to as "Hillbilly Music".\u00c2\u00a0 And believe me, there are no hillbillies north of the Mason\/Dixon line.\u00c2\u00a0 But this stuff…\u00c2\u00a0 It ALMOST sounds like rock.\u00c2\u00a0 The rock that USED TO BE!<\/p>\n
Unlike the hip-hop, there are real instruments.\u00c2\u00a0 And melodies.<\/p>\n
And unlike the new rock, the structure is basic, verses and choruses, modulations up the scale.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, listen for a few days and that’s what bugs you, the lack of INNOVATION!\u00c2\u00a0 If rock were country, Yes never would have followed the Beatles, never mind Jimi Hendrix.<\/p>\n
But within this framework…there’s a whole WORLD!<\/p>\n
Oh, I made it all the way up the Sirius dial, to the traffic reports.\u00c2\u00a0 Listened to the weather in Boston.\u00c2\u00a0 But as I drove down Sunset Boulevard, just past the Beverly Hills Hotel, my research done, I went back to Channel 60, "New Country".<\/p>\n
And every one of them words rang true and glowed like burnin’ coal, pourin’ off of every page like it was written from me to you, but I was not tangled up in blue, I was laughing, I was alive, I was ECSTATIC!\u00c2\u00a0 This was a joy I hadn’t experienced in oh-so-long!<\/p>\n
But I don’t know shit about country.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe this is the crap.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe this is the stuff those deep into it rail about.\u00c2\u00a0 Then I realized, I was the target audience, I was fucking IGNORANT!<\/p>\n
And I tried to switch the station.\u00c2\u00a0 Tried to leave the Sirius country ghetto.<\/p>\n
But I couldn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Rock no longer appealed.<\/p>\n
Oh, I spent some time at Channel 63, Outlaw Country, which oftentimes seems to truly be more rock than country, but I kept on coming back to New Country, Channel 60, day after day.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it was fun to be on the pulse, of SOMETHING!<\/p>\n
But I wasn’t going to write about it until I heard this Brad Paisley song on the radio today, "Ticks".<\/p>\n
I hate Brad Paisley on principle.\u00c2\u00a0 How did this wimp score Kimberly Williams?\u00c2\u00a0 And is that REALLY his name?\u00c2\u00a0 And if so, why didn’t he CHANGE IT?\u00c2\u00a0 To be known as a fabric design?<\/p>\n
But this song.\u00c2\u00a0 It has this one line…<\/p>\n
It really didn’t register until the second time through the chorus.\u00c2\u00a0 And one thing about country choruses, after the song is done, they’re embedded in your brain, you’re still singing them when you get out of the car, they’re with you FOREVER!\u00c2\u00a0 Anyway, the second time I heard this line, I cracked up…<\/p>\n
I’ll set you up from the beginning.\u00c2\u00a0 Of the chorus anyway…<\/p>\n
Cause I’d like to see you out in the moonlight Utterly hysterical!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s me!\u00c2\u00a0 I like to be playful, a little rough, I want to wrestle you down and inspect every inch of you.\u00c2\u00a0 I want to check you for TICKS!<\/p>\n How the hell did he come up with this?\u00c2\u00a0 This is the kind of creativity we USED to have in rock.\u00c2\u00a0 What a great concept.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup honey, I’m gonna pull down your pants, make sure nothing’s burrowed in your skin!\u00c2\u00a0 And after I do, I’m gonna put something in YOU!<\/p>\n I felt like I was five.\u00c2\u00a0 Before there was a difference in the sexes, playing doctor in the backyard.<\/p>\n And after stopping to buy something, I heard Big & Rich’s "Comin’ To Your City".\u00c2\u00a0 The guitars are rollickin’, there’s an enthusiasm, it sounds like…WE’RE AN AMERICAN BAND?\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe Tesla’s "Comin’ Atcha Live"!<\/p>\n Well we’re comin’ to your city Well we flew through Cincinnati That’s what rock bands do.\u00c2\u00a0 They get in their buses, pile their shit into big airliners, and set out across this great big country of ours.\u00c2\u00a0 You buy your tickets in your sleepy little burg months in advance.\u00c2\u00a0 And the day of the show, you leave work early.\u00c2\u00a0 You get high in the car on the way to the gig, drink beer in the parking lot.\u00c2\u00a0 And when the band hits the stage, you’re happier than a housewife getting a Pontiac on OPRAH!<\/p>\n But this isn’t a rock band.<\/p>\n But they’re talking about Marilyn Manson!<\/p>\n Oh, you’ve got to wade through the right wing crap.\u00c2\u00a0 Christianity and the family.\u00c2\u00a0 But, at least they’re singing about their reality.\u00c2\u00a0 As opposed to the rockers rhyming metaphors incomprehensible to laymen.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re singing about LIFE!\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got a life, DON’T YOU!<\/p>\n And there’s sad stuff, like Jake Owen’s "Starting With Me".\u00c2\u00a0 A tear in your beer lament similar to what we used to think country music was.\u00c2\u00a0 But mixed in with all this modern rock-oriented stuff, the truth of the lyrics, the mood, it breaks through, it rings true.<\/p>\n And the joy in Terri Clark’s "Dirty Girl"…\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not that different from Brad Paisley’s elation over checking his honey for ticks.<\/p>\n I mean who would you rather fuck?\u00c2\u00a0 Some skinny pierced and tattooed skank screaming about how life sucks or Terri Clark?\u00c2\u00a0 A woman?<\/p>\n I had to endure Toby Keith’s ode to the American soldier.\u00c2\u00a0 God, is country radio propaganda?\u00c2\u00a0 People hear this shit and line right up behind the Republicans, hating Hillary and Bill Maher.\u00c2\u00a0 Fuck right wing talk radio, COUNTRY radio has a constituency unrivaled in the rock OR rap world.\u00c2\u00a0 Furthermore, alternative rockers and hip-hop fans DON’T VOTE!<\/p>\n And country radio has a base.\u00c2\u00a0 People actually listen.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s still the heartbeat of the community.\u00c2\u00a0 The way AOR was way back when.<\/p>\n But the kingpin is Tim McGraw.\u00c2\u00a0 Being Sirius, being the land of repeats, every other song seems to be by Tim McGraw.\u00c2\u00a0 But, like I told you above, he’s good!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like every other song in the early seventies being by Led Zeppelin…\u00c2\u00a0 Got a problem with that?<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Did you know Tim McGraw was good? I had to drive from Santa Monica to Hollywood.\u00c2\u00a0 During RUSH HOUR! I hear traffic is hell just about everywhere these days.\u00c2\u00a0 Just know that ours is even worse.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d like to tell you I could walk faster, but as you well know, NOBODY WALKS IN L.A! 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I’d like to kiss you way back in the sticks
I’d like to walk you through a field of wildflowers
And I’d like to check you for ticks<\/em><\/p>\n
Gonna play our guitars and sing you a country song
We’ll all be flyin’ higher than a jet airliner
And if you wanna little bang in your ying yang come along__<\/em><\/p>\n
And we all got really happy
Grabbed a bowl of that skyline chili along the way
Then we rolled on into Kansas
Scared the hell our of Marilyn Manson
And the party started happenin’
Hey hey hey<\/em><\/p>\n