The Songs of My Life...

So I stole this meme from Ted 'cause I thought it'd be fun...

1. For each year you've been alive, post a song title (with performer name) that was released that year. There's some flexibility here - singles, albums, and Billboard Top Songs Chart will all be within a year of each other, but tend not to overlap. You have a song and a date, you're good to go.
2. You have to post songs that you own, or have owned in the past, or your parents owned when you were a child. If there's a year where you just don't have a song, then pick any old song from that year, but mark that year with an asterisk (*).
3. Ladies do not have to list more than the most recent 29 songs. A Gentleman never asks a Lady her age. If you want, though, list 'em all.
4. Once you've posted, tag 4 other bloggers.

So, off we go...

1977 -- Linda Ronstadt, "Blue Bayou"
1978 -- Van Halen, "Eruption"/"You Really Got Me"
1979 -- the Eagles, "Heartache Tonight"
1980 -- Merle Haggard, "I Think I'll Just Stay Here And Drink"
1981 -- Earl Thomas Conley, "Fire And Smoke"
1982 -- Ricky Skaggs, "Crying My Heart Out Over You"
1983 -- Taco, "Puttin' On the Ritz"
1984 -- Yes, "Owner of a Lonely Heart"
1985 -- Steve Wariner, "Some Fools Never Learn"
1986 -- Dan Seals, "Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold)"
1987 -- Bon Jovi, "Wanted Dead Or Alive"
1988 -- Metallica, "One"
1989 -- Clint Black, "Killin' Time"
1990 -- George Strait, "Love Without End, Amen"
1991 -- Alan Jackson, "Midnight in Montgomery"
1992 -- Mark Chesnutt, "I'll Think of Something"
1993 -- Billy Joe Shaver, "Georgia On A Fast Train" (the definitive version, anyway)
1994 -- Joe Diffie, "Pickup Man"
1995 -- Terri Clark, "Better Things To Do"
1996 -- George Strait, "I Can Still Make Cheyenne"
1997 -- Garth Brooks, "Longneck Bottle"
1998 -- Faith Hill, "This Kiss"
1999 -- Alan Jackson, "Pop A Top"
2000 -- George Strait & Alan Jackson, "Murder On Music Row"
2001 -- George Strait, "Run"
2002 -- Cross Canadian Ragweed, "17"
2003 -- Gary Allan, "Songs About Rain"
2004 -- Lee Ann Womack, "I May Hate Myself In The Morning"
2005 -- Dierks Bentley, "Lot Of Leavin' Left To Do"
2006 -- George Strait, "Give It Away"
2007 -- Clay Walker, 'Fore She Was Mama"
2008 -- Alan Jackson, "Small Town Southern Man"

No tagging, but if you'd like to play along, let's see what you got...

Yeah, I still got a sense of humor...

Even with recent events, I thought this was funny as hell! I will be honest, though, and say that even more recent events have helped. Not to be indirect or anything, but...she told me red looked good on me, and with apologies to Toby Keith, yeah, I kissed her, and ain't interested in her sister. Hell yeah, turn it up, right on... ;-)

...now what are we accusing the threepers of, again?

I more or or less agree with everything David Codrea said here, and I'm trying to think of a civil way to say what I'd like to say in addition to that, but I'm having trouble with it. But I'll give it the ole college try.
I find it ironic as hell that it's the much-derided 'threepers' who are agitating for political action on the organizational (NRA) level in regards to Constitution-hating U.S. Attorney General nominee Eric Holder, while the 'prags' are actually trying to justify the NRA sitting on its ass, considering a number of the 'prags' like to accuse the 'threepers' of wanting to shoot first and talk later. I really don't want to come off as an asshole about any of this or offend people reading this whom I consider to be friends (even if only virtually), but for the life of me I can't figure it out. It's like the NRA is the Republican Party and said 'prags' are the apparatchiks derided by so many of us. And I can't help but think the pragmatists are being more than a tad hypocritical. I see Sebastian was talking about the three-percenters being assholes...yeah, well pardon my french, but I think they fucking EARNED that right this go-round. Organized and united we stand, and disorganized and divided we will fall...and I can't help but think it's going to be anything but bad if the biggest gun-owner organization sits this fight out and doesn't help the folks who do take the time to write their reps on their own. One can't help but wonder what the point is. If the NRA sits this one out, what are they going to do down the road when the fight gets harder?

Maybe the same source?

Shooter, on KIKK's death:

KIKK was the right vehicle at the right time for Texas Country. A whole slew of events and a large cast of characters played a part in its demise. I'd have to say that Darren Davis (former Program Director) had a lot to do with it. I get that info from a couple of reliable sources.

I've a feeling I know who at least one of those reliable sources is. Said source dropped by this blog once when I was writing about KIKK before and left a comment about Mr. Davis to the very same effect. As for KIKK being the right vehicle, I'm not so sure about that. Hadn't the station already augered in long before they decided to make it the test bed for the Texas country format? Again, I'm just going what I've seen in Houston media, but from that it seemed to me that the killer for KIKK was when Westinghouse came in and blew everything up with firing all the deejays and flipping to the Young Country format. And yeah, I remember that one real well. "Young Country 95.7, All the hot young country without all the tired old stuff." And that pissed me smooth off every time I heard it, I kid you not. (It's worth asking if people like Bryan White or Neal McCoy really made any worthwhile contributions to the genre as opposed to being part of a passing fad...and regular readers probably know my answer to that already.) I wouldn't be surprised if that very thing destroyed KIKK's credibility in the eyes of many who vowed never to listen to KIKK again. Another thing that pissed me off, now that I think about it, is that it seems that Davis just tried that Texas-centric format as a last-ditch effort to keep the station from having to flip formats completely. Both the station and the music deserved better than that, especially in the state's largest radio market. I know that there's little if any chance of Houston ever getting a bad-ass radio station like what 99.5 the Wolf in Dallas was once upon a time. One never knows on down the road, but I don't know that KILT either needs or could survive such a rebranding of the station at this point that the Wolf took ten years ago, as it's still the top country station in the market and such a move would be pretty stupid. Still, though, I think it would have made for a much better vehicle for Texas music, even with the different approach that would be required with the realities of the Houston market. Texas and Nashville co-existed on 99.5 the Wolf in Dallas (and KSCS too, for that matter), and I don't see why they couldn't do the same on KILT. I think the suits are letting the experience with KIKK teach them the wrong lesson vis-a-vis to what extent Texas-alt country is viable on free terrestrial radio, but then I have been wrong before.

That's a weird idea of fun you have there, Sparky...

As the title implies, Michael Beard of the Organization Formerly Known as the Coalition to Ban Handguns has a really odd idea of fun...

Let us make one more New Year's resolution: to have a heck of a lot of fun pushing the Obama administration, the new Congress and our state legislators to seek creative solutions to the tired old problem of gun violence.

Ok, if you say so. I guess everybody has their own idea of fun, but I could certainly think of many more fun things to do off the top of my head than meddle in other people's affairs. In any event, there are at least a couple of ironies on display here. For one, there's the use of the term "creative." I guess Michael Beard has a different definition of the term "creative" than mine, because as far as I can tell, he and his fellow malcontents aren't going to bring anything new to the table, just the old tried-and-failed proposals they've been bringing since the 1970s. Sort of like what Barry McCaffrey and his fellow drug warriors have been bringing to the table vis-a-vis the War On Some Drugs for about as long. And then, of course, there's that title: "You Are A Citizen." Yes, indeed, I am. But of course, if Beard had his way, I would be a subject, completely at the mercy of brigands in and out of government — for, of course, as the old saying goes,
"An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject."
(h/t Kurt Hofmann)

I always did like this song....

playing here: "She comes down, from Yellow Mountain, on a dark, flat land she rides....on a pony she named Wildfire, with a whirlwind by her side...on a cold Nebraska night..."

Just some random radio observations...

From an installment of the TV-Radio notebook by the Houston Chronicle's David Barron:

"You want both, more listeners and more time spent listening," Topper said. (Richard Topper, GM for KGOW 1560 AM — ed.) “But if I had my druthers, I’d rather have a small group of people who are passionate about the station.”

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of radio people shared those sentiments, as the people who are passionate about the station will stick with it through the hard times...but here's the thing. If you want those passionate listeners you have to cultivate and nurture the station's identity, and I always thought a big way to do that was with the deejays and other on-air personalities. I first started listening to KILT-FM, Houston's 100,000-watt heritage country station, when I moved to Bryan-College Station from Northeast Texas in late 1998, and I listened on a daily basis until circumstances forced me to leave the area almost two years later. When I made it to this part of Texas (just a few months after I left College Station) and turned it on 100.3 again and heard all the familiar voices — Hudson and Harrigan, Robert B. McEntire, T.J. Callahan, Dan Gallo, Rowdy Yates — it was almost like coming back home, or getting back in touch with some old friends I hadn't seen or heard from in what seemed like years. Familiarity, like an old favorite t-shirt or something like that. And when I made it back down here for good in August of 2001, just like I did when I was in College Station, I started listening every day when I could, static be damned. But it seems like one by one, all those folks are being let go. Dan Gallo, who used to do mid-days on the station, is now at Country Legends 97.1 after being let go from KILT a couple of years back, and R.B. and T.J. are both recently gone due to financial considerations. I understand that money has to be cut somewhere and that things like this are bound to happen now and then, but even so I think it'd be interesting to find out where the break-even point is, where the erosion of the brand and of loyalty to it are worth the money saved by letting go of the people who make the station what it is. From what I remember reading it was precisely these actions that torpedoed KIKK — once the king of country in Houston — back in the late 1990s, even though the motives, again, from what I gather, were different. Whatever the reasons, they don't make the moves suck any less, at least from this radio listener's perspective. Satellite radio's looking better and better all the time...

Why don't we address the problem EFFECTIVELY, Barry?

...instead of just talking around it?

The Mexican State is engaged in an increasingly violent, internal struggle against heavily armed narco-criminal cartels that have intimidated the public, corrupted much of law enforcement, and created an environment of impunity to the law.

Now of course this much is true, but as you'll see if you read through that entire report, there's nary a word about taking the profit out of those drugs by pulling the rug out from under the black market, just the old proposals of pouring yet more money down the black hole of fighting the traffickers themselves, and of course a heaping helping of anti-gun PSH:

Mexican law enforcement authorities and soldiers face heavily armed drug gangs with high-powered military automatic weapons. Perhaps 90% of these weapons are smuggled across the US border. They are frequently purchased from licensed US gun dealers in Texas, Arizona, and California. AK-47 assault rifles are literally bought a hundred at a time and illegally brought into Mexico. Mexican authorities routinely seize BOXES of unopened automatic military weapons. The confiscation rates by Mexican law enforcement of hand grenades, RPG’s, and AK-47’s are at the level of wartime battlefield seizures. It is hard to understand the seeming indifference and incompetence of US authorities at state and Federal level to such callous disregard for a national security threat to a neighboring democratic state. We would consider it an act of warfare from a sanctuary state if we were the victim.

Now, I don't know what gun stores these people have been going to, but I've been to shops both here in the Golden Triangle and Houston too and I have yet to see a single fully automatic firearm, or hand- or rocket-propelled grenade for that matter, on the shelves of said stores. Firehand tears up this nonsense quite well and I really don't have much to say beyond his commentary, but what I said there applies here as well. Of COURSE Barry McCaffrey's full of shit. He was a damn drug czar in the Clinton Administration and such is practically a job requirement for that post.

Water is wet, fire burns, and Clay Robison is just as clueless as ever...

...yes he is:

Texas legislators can't help themselves. Even before their upcoming session hits its stride, they will do something to get national attention, the kind that makes TV hosts snicker and roll their eyes.
A surefire attention-getter this session will be an anticipated bill to let Texans openly pack pistols on their hips, in their belts or elsewhere in public view as they go about their business.

Yes, indeed, because that's the biggest, most important aspect of this and any other issue before the Texas Legislature — what the late-night TV comedians think. Even though they're going to make fun of our state and our neighbors anyway, even though they traffic in the same tired old stereotypes that would get them thrown out on their asses if they were doing it to *insert race here*, yes indeed, these assclowns' opinions matter, damn it! Can't the rest of you ignorant hicks see that?
Seriously though, considering that Clay Robison is the Austin bureau chief for the Houston Chronicle, it pretty much shows that the Chron doesn't care about even trying to put up a front of objectivity anymore. I am still trying to figure out if that's a credit to them or a detriment...

Yeah, that's right, keep ignoring us...

you blithering fool...

Perhaps not surprisingly, Ron Paul activists have voted up the majority of questions con the site. Most of these questions deal not with the vital and necessary goal of getting more Republicans who supported Ron Paul involved in the process, but on policy questions like eliminating the Federal Reserve, Austrian economics, the Fair Tax and the 2nd Amendment that the RNC Chairman has absolutely no jurisdiction over.
Whether it's Ron Paul Republicans or movement conservatives or moderates, my message to all is one and the same: the RNC is not a policymaking body -- nor should it be. It cannot make Republicans in Congress spend less, worthy a goal as that might be. The RNC's job is to win elections -- period. That means the RNC is made up of good political people -- not policy wonks -- who with all due respect, you wouldn't want making policy.
All the candidates for RNC Chairman are good conservatives. RNC members should choose the one who will win elections. As I've written over the last few days, technology, strategy, and tactics are not the only things -- and success in these areas is inextricably linked to having a Republican message "we can believe in."

Excuse me, but this is pure, unadulterated horseshit. If the policy positions are so unimportant vis-a-vis the job of the RNC chair, why don't voters just go ahead and write in Bernie Sanders on the ballot and be done with it? No matter the extent of the policymaking the RNC does, if certain positions on certain issues aren't shared by who's in charge, then it's going to make it that much easier for the party to be infested by whining moderate sacks of mediocrity like John Warner, Mike DeWine, Arlen Specter and, yes, John McCain. And, sorry, but supporting or rationalizing any kind of gun ban (or predicating your support on gun rights on whatever extent a firearm might be useful for hunting) automatically disqualifies you from the title of "good conservative." For crying out loud, you dumbasses, you see what catering to the mushy middle got us on November 4th! Don't you fools ever learn?
(h/t David Codrea)

To satisfy your curiosity...

The original version of "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out Of Hand,"


the studio version of James Hetfield's cover,


and this nifty Youtube find, Hetfield doing the song live on CMT.

More on the cover tunes...

inspired by the last post....
I've heard some people say that those note-for-note covers of songs are boring, but I don't agree with that. I think that even though they might be pretty faithful reproductions of the originals, even so the artists are in a way putting their own stamp on those songs. And it doesn't hurt that a lot of those covers sound really, really good (see: Alan Jackson's entire Under the Influence cd). On the other hand, an artist remaking the song with his or her own sound is a pretty dicey endeavor. Just for another example, taking that Waylon tribute cd, Metallica frontman James Hetfield's rocking cover of "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out Of Hand" ended up being my favorite song on that cd, but Deana Carter and Sara Evans' mushy middle-of-the-road Adult Contemporary rendering of "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" was just about the worst thing I'd ever heard. Worse than Shania Twain, worse than anything on Faith Hill's Breathe cd, worse than Rascal Flatts. Hell, it almost sounded like somethin' the Flatts boys might have done. I know this isn't the only choice, but if it came down to a choice between crap like that and a note-for-note cover, I'd take the latter any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Speaking of those covers, another of my favorites has always been Terri Clark's rendition of Linda Ronstadt's 1978 hit "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me," which was on the radio as I was riding home from work. Another pretty faithful rendition of the original, but she still does it justice. I saw her sing it live when she was touring with George Strait in 1996; some of the scenes from that video were taken from footage shot on that tour. I always wondered if any of that footage was from Shreveport, Louisiana in February...

Just a thought...

Listening to this cd, I get the idea that Travis Tritt doing a whole album of nothing but Waylon Jennings material would be absolutely phenomenal. I don't CARE if his version of "Lonesome, On'ry and Mean" was a note-for-note repro of the original, he sounded DAMN good. Maybe one day, you never know...

You don't even have to leave your seat...

Like Codrea says, "Will you go here, right now, and submit your own question? Because we're out of time--the debate is tomorrow."
A perfect opportunity to get active, without even getting up from your seat. Do it. No excuses. I did it and you should too. Took me two minutes, tops. My question is here:
Are we going to get any sort of admission from any of the candidates that the Second Amendment ultimately isn't about hunting deer and ducks? Or that the term "military-style assault weapon" applies to every firearm in existence when it's all said and done? Or just more of the same? Keep in mind what that "more of the same" got us this election season.
What're you waitin' for? Go, go, go!

Just a couple of things...

If any of you fine folks are leaving a comment and it says you're banned from commenting here, it's not you. I banned a range of IP addresses a while back because of the aforementioned abusive commenter and you might be in that range. My most sincere apologies if you are...I am trying to fix that. Shoot me an e-mail at the addy on the sidebar there and I'll fix you up. I may just open them all back up. We'll see.
And check out Gator's blog. I found it yesterday and really like it. From his latest post:

I must admit that I have absolutely no idea how many Federal, State, and local laws there are pertaining to the ownership, sale, transfer, registration, possession, transport, manufacture, importation, storage, functionality, carry, and use of teddy bears. Or Play Doh.

Me neither, but I am betting it's significantly less than 20,000. Which means Dan Kotowski is talking out of his fourth point of contact, as many gun-grabbers do.
Bookmarked & blogrolled.

Whining Warner

...or, What's that high-pitched noise coming from the east?
Oh, that's just soon-to-be-retired RINO Senator John Warner from Virginia:

Warner said he hardly recognizes the Republican Party now. He said it seems to have little appeal to or tolerance for moderates like himself, Holton and others who made the GOP competitive in Virginia in recent years.
"I suddenly realized I had so little in common with the party that I once was proud to be among those who built it up," Warner said.

Huh. This seems to be a familiar refrain, but just for grins, let's take a gander at the one issue this blog mainly concerns itself with.
John Warner. Rated D by the NRA, F by the GOA. Supported both the Brady Bill and the Clinton semi-auto rifle ban. Supported a ten-year extension of that ban (which, by the way, was of course re-introduced by other "moderates" in the GOP back in June). From what I gather he also supported HR 1022, the much more onerous ban championed by New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, she of "that shoulder thing that goes up" fame. Supported the amendment to what eventually became the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (S. 1805) that would have commissioned a study to determine whether certain hunting ammunition should be banned for its armor-piercing capabilities. (Somebody enlighten me here, isn't it a no-brainer that pretty much all rifle ammo will zip right through most body armor?) Supported extending background checks to all gun sales. Oh, and it should be noted he's a Marine veteran of two wars, which makes him that much more of a disgrace. Thanks for your service, John, but that notwithstanding you can go screw. You got us that much closer to that bipartisan mandate for disarmament, and honestly for that alone I tend to think you're deserving of the ignominious title of "ex-Marine."

Funky name for a band, but those boys could rock...

...or, Who knew so much blogfodder could come from the radio?
Unlike the tune mentioned in the last post, this one is actually played quite often; it's probably a staple of the play list on every classic rock radio station from Long Island to Long Beach. And no doubt a lot of the folks who read my humble scribblings here are older than me and know this song and this band well. I've read that Grand Funk Railroad was one of those bands that was loved by the fans but hated by the critics; with the band's huge success in the 1970s such an observation fits with a lot of critics' not-so-commercial tastes. Still, though, even with my off-kilter tastes I thought this Michigan band was damn good. (I will admit though, that I much preferred Joe Cocker's version of "Feelin' Alright." Call that one a guilty pleasure...) A lot of people no doubt consider 1973's "We're An American Band" to be in the same league as "Margaritaville" or "Free Bird" — that is, if they never heard it again that'd be just fine — but to me it's one of those songs that's just absolutely timeless, that rocks just as much now as it did the first time I heard it. Would you believe there's actually a video for it? I never would have guessed videos went that far back...

Hadn't heard this one in a looong time...

My main preference for country music is pretty much everything that came out before Garth Brooks, but even so I will readily admit that the early-to-mid 1990s was a damn good time for traditional country, all things considered. Besides Mr. Brooks, there were, among others, Alan Jackson, the Beaumont boys (Mark Chesnutt, Tracy Byrd and Clay Walker) and another of my favorites, Atlanta, Texas native Tracy Lawrence, who hit it big right out of the gate with "Sticks and Stones" in 1991. There are a lot of No. 1 hits from that time that I rarely have heard since the time they were chart hits, and one of them is my favorite song from Tracy Lawrence, "My Second Home," the third single from Tracy's sophomore album Alibis and a No. 1 record on Billboard's country singles chart the week of December 11, 1993. I had neither heard the song nor seen the video in a loooong time. I must have not really been paying that much attention to the video way back when, because as it turns out it's another one of those "count the cameos" videos featuring several country stars who were having success at the time. The song was on the radio this morning and it really was a pleasant surprise. I have that cassette somewhere but nothing to play it on, and I remember the rest of the album was really good as well...I believe another trip to the music store is in my immediate future...

That was the original idea, yeah...

Kelly, in comments here:

Could just be me, but I thought Congressmen weren't exactly supposed to make enough money being Congressmen that it would, y'know, encourage them to become career politicians or anything. Seriously... Congress not paying enough? Maybe it'd be a good idea to get a main job and just represent the views of people in your area, rather than being a "lawmaker" for a living.

Nope, not just you. From what I've read a few of the Founding Fathers didn't think much of the career politicians either. Regarding things like term limits, here have been those who have argued that the more experienced legislators were better for the country, and I can see where they're coming from with that argument, but at the same time I don't understand why said argument didn't hold enough water with the state legislatures when they ratified the 22nd Amendment in the late 1940s. Even though the political power is diffused among 535 legislators as opposed to being concentrated in just one person in the presidency, I think the dangers intended to be mitigated with that amendment are just as potent, especially with the two-party system being as entrenched as it is. I think it'd be interesting to see what would happen if legislative salaries could be tied somehow to average or median incomes in the legislators' respective districts so as to lessen the incentive to stay in there for half their lives. It'd probably require some redrawing of the districts in the case of the House of Representatives to make it more equitable, but I think it'd definitely be worth a try. But, of course, like so many other beneficial measures, it'll never be tried because way too many people have a vested interest in keeping the system as it stands now.

Come back when you have a better record...

From this morning's Chron:

Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday that Congress should be as generous to judges as it already has been to itself, by approving an inflation-related increase in their pay.

Shhhyeah, ok. I really don't know about that one, John-boy.
Seriously, though, there are more than a few who would say that given the "quality" of "service" from Congress, that raise they voted themselves wasn't really justified. Far be it from me to start spouting lefty populist bullshit, but even so I don't know how anyone could say members of Congress or the judiciary are that underpaid, considering how un-seriously they take their constitutionally mandated duties. And back to the justification for a pay increase or lack thereof, one could very well say the same of the Supreme Court. It seems that for every Heller v. D.C. (which itself has a few flaws waiting to be exploited), we get a Kelo v. New London. I know that many states later moved to limit the potential damage of Kelo, but I can't help but think that's beside the point because that opportunity doesn't always present itself. Like the title says, I think maybe the justices should come back when they have a better record of upholding the principles established in the Constitution and by the Founders in their other writings. If it takes 50 years then it takes 50 years.