Pickin' on Keith Urban...

Call it that if you want, but this sort of thing really grinds my gears (h/t C.M. Wilcox)...

"When you say the word 'country' now, it's changed a lot," Urban says. "Now maybe you think of the Dixie Chicks, even Taylor Swift, but for a long while it was Dolly Parton and John Denver. When I look back at the music I grew up on, in the late '70s, early '80s, it was always contemporary, and that was Ronnie Milsap, Merle Haggard, Glen Campbell. And I don't think there was a cowboy hat in sight.

Like I said at Country California, it would seem Keith Urban thinks the gripes about country music's periodic pop leanings started about 1999 or so. And I honestly don't really get why he lumps Merle Haggard in with Ronnie Milsap and Glen Campbell. Sure, Hag had his more contemporary moments, but they didn't go nearly that far. And guess what? A lot of folks would say Ronnie Milsap and Glen Campbell weren't all that country either. There were folks that had problems with the Ronnie Milsaps and Glen Campbells of the day even as they acknowledged those artists' talent. I remember way back in the bad old days of the late '90s, with dial-up Internet and 28.8k modems I was haunting the music message boards on America Online and there was this one person I remember who'd go into near-apoplectic fits whenever Ronnie Milsap was mentioned because of his trademark pop-adult contemporary sound. I saw exactly where she was coming from, too, because I didn't like that sound either. If it came down to that or the newer folks like George Strait and Alan Jackson, I honestly would take the latter as closer to Real Country Music. Dolly Parton and John Denver? I guess Urban thinks "9 to 5" was a real shining moment in country music history. And how about Charlie Rich burning the envelope when John Denver was named CMA Entertainer of the Year back in 1975? (Not that he had any room to protest Denver's country cred or lack thereof, but the point still stands.) Really now, it strikes me that these Hot New Country artists have some piss-poor arguments to attempt to justify what they do. First it was "everybody listens to a bunch of different kinds of music," and then, "these pop-country artists bring people to country who wouldn't otherwise listen," and now this? What next?

Yeah, he's still got it...

(Welcome, visitors from Country California! Main page is here, pull up a seat and stay a while!)

So I don't know if all of you remember, but that George Strait show at Reliant Stadium I mentioned yesterday? I was there, and like I say, the man still has what it takes.
His opening acts were Blake Shelton and Sugarland, along with Julianne Hough. We got in a bit later than we thought we would and unfortunately missed most of Julianne Hough, but we saw Blake Shelton and Sugarland in their entirety, both of whom are really good live. I must admit there's still a lot of Sugarland's records that I don't care for that much, but the woman's still got a hell of a voice. Everytime the video cameras landed on Kristian Bush's face, though, I thought of his general jackassery that's been commented on here before. It didn't so much detract from my enjoyment of their set, but I did think of how much better off Jennifer Nettles would be if she went solo. Kristian Bush seems by and large to be more of a stage prop anyway, although he made for a decent stand in for Bon Jovi on "Who Says You Can't Go Home." The highlight of their set, as I thought it would be, was "Stay." I got a kick out of what happened during this and certain other songs through the evening. You know how folks used to light their lighters during songs? Well, now they're doing video and pictures with cell phones. Same effect, just different colored lighting. Lol....but back to the show, I don't know how Jennifer Nettles pulls that song off every night. She really gets into it, just like she did on the video, although she didn't break down and cry like she did on the video. I suppose you could say that's the mark of a professional.
Blake Shelton is really engaging on stage, and like Jennifer Nettles, he's the furthest thing from a studio creation. He sounds pretty much exactly the same on stage as he does on cd. I got a kick out of his introduction to "Some Beach." He was talking about the traffic, as the first verse of that song does, and no doubt we all could relate that particular evening; with the way the Loop 610 is set up in Houston, as you're coming from the east side, you have to get over two or three lanes to get off there at Kirby and turn right, and traffic was backing up like crazy in those lanes and the feeder road. And I had been hearing about his rendition of the freecreditreport.com jingle, but that, well...it just has to be seen to be appreciated. It was just hilarious. I kinda had an idea it was coming with the introduction, where he said he was about to sing something really emotional that meant a lot to him, but it was still a great move.
And what to say about George that hasn't been said before? He was amazing. I remember the lights going down and the crowd raising the roof as the lights went down and he and the band took the stage. Every now and then I think of how I'd like to have seen him in the mid-to-late 1980s when he was more or less the hottest thing in Nashville, but now that I think about it I wouldn't be surprised if the reaction he gets even now in Texas is the same as it was way back then. And he still sounds great too, even after all these years. He sang a pretty wide selection of songs, with a pretty good chunk of them coming from the last couple of albums -- It Just Comes Natural and Troubadour. I must admit I was surprised at a couple of things, the first being the fact that he only sang one song off the new album that'll be out on Tuesday. I remember when I saw him in Austin in January of '05, he sang a couple songs from Somewhere Down in Texas -- and that album wasn't due out for another five months. Maybe it was just the fact that in that particular venue "Texas" made for the ultimate encore. ;-) But it's ok, because I have never really cared for hearing album cuts before the album comes out. I like to be surprised.
The second was the lack of cover songs. With pretty much every show before that I've seen -- and this was No. 15 -- they usually bring out "There Stands the Glass," "Milk Cow Blues," or "Take Me Back to Tulsa," but none of those showed up in the set. No doubt most of the folks in the audience loved "How 'Bout them Cowgirls," but I'd gladly have traded that or "River of Love" for one of those cover tunes. I've said before that those covers are the highlight of a live Strait show for me. It was admittedly a TINY disappointment, but he and the guys made up for it with the aforementioned surprise....
...after the first song in the encore, "High Tone Woman," the band launched into the drum-and-fiddle introduction to...wait for it...CHEROKEE MAIDEN! It has literally been YEARS since I've heard George and the Aces play that live. If I remember correctly the last time that song made it into the set was in the second year of the festival tours in 1999, at Houston's Rice Stadium. My uncle commented that probably no one else in the audience knew that song; I'd tend to agree with that, but I did see the guy in the seat next to us singing along. I don't know if he was the only other one besides us that knew it, but I'd bet that most didn't know it. At any rate, it was AWESOME to hear that song again, and "Folsom Prison Blues" is always a treat as well.
So that's 15 George Strait shows I've seen. I don't know if he'll be around for 15 more, but if he is you can bet your ass I'll be there.

Random Sunday morning observation...

Just when you think there's no way George Strait could surprise you, sure enough he goes off and does it. More on that later. ;-)

Pretty good story on King George...

...here, but I do have to take issue with one thing:

Despite his Lone Star pedigree and pride, Strait also is not, thank goodness, a good ol' boy. His music doesn't — like so much of today's country — pander to lowest common denominators or go for cheesy sentimentality. He's not squawking about blessing broken roads or sexy tractors or how tequila makes her clothes fall off.

I can see where Mr. Guerra's coming from here, but the thing about it is, a Texas good ole boy is EXACTLY what George Strait is. He just doesn't play it up in his music or media appearances. One could argue that the acts who go for the cheesy sentimentality and lowest common denominators are anything but the good ole boys or girls they try to pass themselves off as -- or, from a different angle, that they basically eschew one manufactured image for that one, as C.M. Wilcox from Country California posited a good while back. (I must admit I do like most of what I've heard from Rodney Atkins' If You're Going Through Hell cd, although "It's America" is rather trite.) But Strait really is just a soft-spoken Texas cowboy -- it's not just an image, and that positive perception is only bolstered by his reclusiveness and low profile, I think. I don't know how much different that is now from the early-to-mid-'80s when he was establishing himself, but considering the fact that he's still around now, still selling albums and selling out stadium shows like the one in Houston tonight, I'd guess it wasn't that much different.

I'm sure that's be a surprise to the designers...

...or, Eric Thompson needs to have what, again?...

MADISON, Wis. — An online weapons dealer who sold a gun or accessories to three mass killers, including a man who opened fire at a Pittsburgh-area health club this week, said Friday that any of the shooters could have just as easily found what they wanted at a Wal-Mart or another store.
Eric Thompson, whose company TGSCOM Inc. last year sold an empty Glock 9 mm magazine and magazine loading apparatus to George Sodini, the man who shot up a Collier Township, Pa., health club on Tuesday, said the sale was legal and his company did nothing wrong.
...
Seung-Hui Cho used a .22-caliber handgun bought from TGSCOM in his attack at Virginia Tech in April 2007, in which 32 people were killed. Stephen Kazmierczak, who killed five people in an NIU classroom before killing himself in February 2008, bought two empty 9 mm Glock magazines and a Glock holster through a TGSCOM site.
...
Andrew Goddard, whose son Colin was shot and wounded at Virginia Tech, said Thompson "needs to have some sort of social responsibility."
"I take issue on the basic principle that he's selling something that doesn't have a legitimate use outside of stalking and killing people," Goddard, of Richmond, Va., said.

Wow. What the hell does one say to that? Well, beyond "what a load of emotionally-based fact-free crap," that is. I do wonder, though, what he thinks of the institution of police forces, considering they all carry the very same things the mass shooters did. If we're going to take Mr. Goddard's line of thinking to its logical conclusion, we might as well say that when it's all said and done the police are only good for stalking and killing people. Of course I am sure if you point that out to him, he'll say, "but that's diiiiiiffffereeeent...." Just because of that little piece of metal on a policeman's chest. After all, they're "Only Ones," of course. Were I Eric Thompson I'd be more than a bit tempted to tell Mr. Goddard to take his "social responsibility" and blow it out his ass, but maybe that's just me.

More bloggy for you later....

...for now life calls. Stay tuned. ;-)

Oh, this is WROOOOONG....

....but so damn funny!

Ooooh, yeah...

...one of my favorite cuts off Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime cd, on the Boneyard, Sirius Ch. 19: "She always brings me what I need, without I beg and sweat and bleed...when we're alone at night, waiting for the call, she feeds my skin..."
Perhaps the LEAST radio-friendly cut from that record, "Spreading the Disease" was the the first song I ever heard from Mindcrime. I remember I was riding through Bridge City, if I remember right it was in the early afternoon. It was pretty cool to find out the band had recorded other songs besides "Jet City Woman" and "Silent Lucidity," let alone something so way the hell out there as that song was. Not yer Mama's rock music, to be sure. ;-)

Would it be wrong of one....

...to ask if this guy has any background in economics?

Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the pursuit of fast profits undermined the financial markets' ability to regulate themselves.
...
George said a restructured global economy is emerging, and it should promote development in poor nations while helping poor people in rich countries. Investment money from poor nations is flowing to rich countries, worsening the poverty in poor nations, he said.

And if he doesn't, furthermore, would it be wrong to tell him to sit down and shut up?

Well, it looked like a no-brainer to me...

this right here, that is...

AUSTIN, Texas — Republicans U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Gov. Rick Perry are walking a tightrope heading into their primary, where the winner will emerge the front-runner for the governor's race in this decidedly red state.
On one side are Hispanic voters — a growing and influential bloc willing to listen to the GOP titans and one the candidates may need in the general election. On the other is a group that Hutchison and Perry cannot afford to anger: the Republican base of religious, largely white and conservative voters.
So they've done a two-step around Texas, showing up in majority-Hispanic parts of the state to appeal to those Texans while talking tough on guns, border security and other top issues for traditional primary voters.
Witness Hutchison at the Texas Association of Mexican-American Chambers of Commerce convention in McAllen last week. Only days before she had announced she would vote against Hispanic Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation to the Supreme Court.
She explained to tepid applause that she could not vote to confirm a judge who was not a firm supporter of gun rights. Balancing Texas gun owners against Hispanic pride? The GOP candidate chose gun owners.

Huh. To think some people would actually see this as a bad thing, someone making an assessment of a political appointee based on said appointee's positions on fundamental human rights as opposed to pandering to the racial grievance-mongers. I could have sworn that was exactly the kind of world Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted his kids to grow up to see:
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
And yes, your position on the fundamental right of self-defense is as good of an indicator of your character as anything. As for the issue of border security? It's worth asking just whose side Texas Hispanics are on, as having the porous border we do seems to me to serve illegal immigrants and Mexico better than the United States and Texas itself. I suppose some might wonder where the racial grievance-mongering comes into all this. Well, it seems to me that the way the journalist put it -- "balancing Texas gun owners against Hispanic pride" -- is an indication that particular constituency sees their race as an overriding factor, that we should disregard everything else that's usually taken into consideration when we're talking about political candidates and appointees just because of said candidates' and appointees' race. And I still don't understand why, unless of course you wanna just come out and say all the Hispanics harping on Sotomayor's race are just as racist as the Ku Klux Klan. Which is about right to me, really, as politically incorrect as that may be.

Something else to make a man skittish...

...about tying that legal, and sometimes Gordian, knot...

Dear Abby:
I have been married for four weeks. Two weeks after my wedding I met a man who excites me and makes my heart race. My husband, “Mitch,” and I dated for eight years before getting married. We're both 25.
...
My relationship with Mitch is boring. We spend a lot of time at home and don't go out much. Mitch goes to bed early, and I'm tempted to leave and go see this other man. What do I do?

This is just the perspective of a man looking in from the outside, but it is what it is.
Dated for eight years? And the relationship's just getting boring NOW? Somehow I seriously doubt that. It's worth asking why in the hell she got married in the first place if the relationship was always that boring. You'd think they'd have had the whole compatibility thing figured out and gone their separate ways long before that much time had passed. And you'd think they'd have had at least a little set-to before this point. Damn sure makes me see there are definitely worse things than being single at my age. I sure hope it's worth it for this woman when that initial passion fades as it so often does. But then I suppose I could be wrong about that. That passion could well be something that lasts a lifetime. (If circumstances had been different I'd have had it myself...) She may have tried to talk to her husband and he brushed her off. But going from what she said in the letter, her only qualm with him is that he's "boring." Some might see the whole thing differently, and that's quite all right...but at any rate, I am quite glad I am not the man in that situation.

Right then, who are the bigots, again...

...here?

...In a fusillade of pique, Ohio Sen. George Voinovich charged that Southerners are what's wrong with the Republican Party.
“We got too many Jim DeMints (South Carolina) and Tom Coburns (Oklahoma),” he told The Columbus Dispatch. “It's the Southerners. They get on TV and go ‘errrr, errrrr.' People hear them and say, ‘These people, they're Southerners. The party's being taken over by Southerners. What the hell they got to do with Ohio?' ”

Wow, and people call the Southerners the bigots? You sure as hell don't see people like Tom Coburn going to their states' media outlets and making fun of the way the Northerners talk, let alone the way they think -- which by and large is really what deserves the most ridicule. One might turn Voinovich's question around and ask him what the hell the damn mealy-mouthed moderates have to do with the South. Hey, what's good for the goose is good for the forking gander, y'all. One wonders just whose side Kathleen Parker is on, considering the source of that poll she cites. The Daily Kos? Really now. I'd say sooner or later the Republicans are going to have to face their inner Voinovich and tell him to sit down and shut up, but then maybe that's just me.

So I guess the gun controllers would think this just fine, too...

...because, as you see, this act of violence was not perpetrated with a gun...

Victor McDonald said Tuesday that he was trying to forgive the three men he says blocked his ice cream truck and beat him while shouting racist epithets in northwest Harris County last month.
...
McDonald's nose and his skull around his left eye were fractured during a July 22 beating in which he said his attackers screamed racial epithets at him. Shielding his eye from bright light during an interview at his home Tuesday, McDonald said his vision still is blurry, but hopes it will get better in about two months as his skull heals.

Not only that, if they had their way he very likely wouldn't even have had the option to defend himself with a firearm. Recall, if you will, this quote from Michael Beard of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence:
"The privatization of public safety is a dangerous issue in our society. And I've always seen that as the beginning of the loss of liberty."
If you'll remember, he said that after Arlington grandmother Susan Buxton made national headlines after being caught on tape shooting on intruder who broke into her home a few years ago. No doubt he'd think the same of Mr. McDonald's defending himself with a gun as well.
But the really baffling thing? The fact that certain black advocacy groups, i.e. the NAACP would likely not have a problem keeping that option from him as well. Makes their name more than a bit ironic, if you ask me.

Well, it's nice to see him admit it, but...

Via the fine folks at Country California, we have this from Kenny Chesney:

"Growing up, I don't think anybody listened to any one kind of thing," he says. "What I think of as country, well, that's not really what we do. But then again, I think most of our fans are listening to other stuff, too, whether it's Dave [Matthews], [Bruce] Springsteen, [Tom] Petty or Jackson Browne, not to mention Bob Marley, who I think may be the great equalizer among all kinds of music."

Wow. So now we have a major artist using the old "listening to all kinds of music" thing to justify his own slide into mediocrity and being the one-trick pony he's turned into. I don't know about the rest of you, but to me that sort of thing is not only long in the tooth, but it's also painfully transparent and more than a little bit judgmental. It seems to me that Mr. Chesney's saying all his detractors have narrow tastes in music when he really doesn't have any concrete evidence to back that up with. I will freely admit that when it comes to country music, I like the more traditional country and that's all I listen to as far as the genre goes. And that's not the result of me not giving the other music a chance. It's the result of me tuning in and finding the music more than a bit lacking. It isn't the country-ness of the music, it's my perception that it just sucks. As far as my tastes, a random sample from the iPod...
Gordon Lightfoot, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"
George Jones, "The Grand Tour"
Kelly Clarkson, "Walk Away"
Metallica, "Disposable Heroes"
Lefty Frizzell, "Look What Thoughts Will Do"

So anyone who would accuse me if not having varied tastes myself, I would thank them kindly to keep their mouths shut -- because, just like Kenny Chesney, they don't really know what they're talking about.
Oh, the "one-trick pony" remark. Well, I don't know, how many songs about summertime, the beach and all that has he done in the last 5 or 6 years? Way the hell too many, if you ask me. That's gotten long in the tooth, too. Jimmy Buffett he'll never be, no matter how hard he keeps trying.

Wow. they got an award for that?

Hey, all you voyeurs out there! Go to work for a big-city newspaper and you will not only have your tendencies embraced and encouraged, but you can also win awards for violating people's privacy!

APME announces awards for outstanding journalism
...
the judges awarded these APME First Amendment Citations:
...
_The Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial Appeal for stories and a searchable database of state handgun carry permit holders.

Good grief, what the hell is wrong with people?

BWAAAHAHA! Quote of the day...

...from none other than Ray Wylie Hubbard: "M is for the mileage I've gotten out of this song..." And you all know what song he's talking about, right?

Hey, wait a minute...

Something's not quite right here...

PHOENIX — It was a scenario U.S. law enforcement had long feared: A fragmentation grenade from Mexico's bloody drug war tossed into a public place.
...
The weapons are preferred by drug hitmen because they are cheap and easy to find. Many are left over from Central America's civil wars and sold on the black market to drug cartels. Some are brought in by weapons smugglers. Others are diverted from the region's militaries: In April, Guatemala seized 563 grenades after a shootout with Mexican drug cartel members, and officials later determined the grenades came from Guatemalan military bases.

But...but...but...they all were supposed to have come from those damned American gun shows! That's what the gun-controllers keep saying, and they would NEVER lie to advance their agenda...

So I guess it's official now...

...that we elected a bunch of clueless socialist loons to run the country last November...

WASHINGTON — Two of President Barack Obama's economic heavyweights said middle-class taxes might have to go up to pare budget deficits or to pay for the proposed overhaul of the nation's health care system.
The tough talk from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers on Sunday capped a week that brought rare good news for the economy: The worst recession in the United States since World War II could be on the verge of ending. Even so, officials appeared willing to extend unemployment benefits.
Geithner and Summers both sidestepped questions on Obama's intentions about taxes. Geithner said the White House was not ready to rule out a tax hike to reduce the federal deficit; Summers said Obama's proposed health care overhaul needs funding from somewhere.
...
"If we want an economy that's going to grow in the future, people have to understand we have to bring those deficits down. And it's going to be difficult, hard for us to do. And the path to that is through health care reform," Geithner said. "We're not at the point yet where we're going to make a judgment about what it's going to take."

So basically, what Mr. Geithner is saying here is that the only way to save the economy is through raising taxes. With the economy in the still somewhat shaky state it's still in. Wow. And this guy was appointed secretary of the damn treasury? One would think they'd at last hold off on that until the economy started growing again. I wonder what they'd do if we took the route he did and did not pay those taxes. And why isn't there any talk of cutting wasteful spending? Yes, I am quite aware of the cuts to defense by way of killing the F-22 program, and I'm not even saying I agree with that, but was that it? I really do wonder what it's going to take for the people to wake up and get the attitude that the colonists had back when King George was pulling this same crap...

Cloud, silver lining, etc.

...or, Breaking up and moving have their unknown advantages.
Never mind the airing of the dirty laundry. We'll just leave the whole moving thing at that. But yeah, I had to move and it was a pain in the ass. There was an added benefit to it, though, that I never would have foreseen. I couldn't pick up Sirius for squat where I was. And I had the window on the north side, which is the direction they tell you to align the antenna. In my new place the window's on the south end. So I was thinking I'd be out of luck. Not so. I can get better reception here than I ever did in the old place. So not only do I not have to deal with the crap I got to the point of having to deal with, but I can now have good tunes -- on my stereo instead of my computer -- in my new shite-free situation. Works for me. ;-)

"...sleep, my friend, and you will see, the dream is my reality...they keep me locked up in this cage, can't they see that's why my brain says, raaaaaage...." Ahhhh, vintage Metallica....

More musings on the Rock Hall of Fame...

So you all remember this post, in which a commenter to a Houston Chronicle story mentioned certain acts which were and were not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I wondered how much of that had to do with politics. Well, last night I was screwing around on the Internet, and googled the phrase "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame credibility." Some surprising stuff there, that I honestly didn't have a clue was the case, but on the other hand not so surprising in other ways. I never knew that Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner had anything to do with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, much less effectively controlled who gets in and who doesn't. That would certainly explain why certain artists who had little to nothing to do with the genre are in the HOF and certain other artists who became icons of the genre aren't, considering his POS magazine labels certain artists as "rock artists" who have little to nothing to do with the genre. I can understand somewhat the induction of certain artists from the '30s to the '60s considering that's the period in which rock was born and became a distinct genre, but the inclusion of other artists has, as many others have said, really diminished the Hall's credibility and made it into more the American Popular Music Hall of Fame. (Rush isn't in the HOF, but the Jackson Five are? Really?) I dont necessarily see anything wrong with acknowledging the contributions of non-rock artists to the American musical canon, but they really should be putting a lot of those artists in an "American Pop Music Hall of Fame." And some of those in the Rock Hall wouldn't really belong in the Pop Hall either. The Beastie Boys? Didn't they have that one big hit that they more or less just shouted the lyrics on? A supposed insider said here that Jann Wenner treats the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum like a toy. He and his cronies more or less treat the Hall of Fame itself as a showcase of their favorite artists as well, apparently, considering some of those inductees.