ountry music is not a genre I personally appreciate. I don't hate country songs, but they do not connect with my inner musical tastes on any level. On top of that, I generally find them unintentionally hilarious, with their warbling vocals and ridiculous lyrics. I guess you have to grow up with the stuff to appreciate it.

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April 29, 2003

For lack of anything else to post about here, I'll include a rant from Donnie:

Okay brief intro here. I DO NOT listen to country music. The town that I live in is hosting an event called "Country Thunder". For four days, the place is a zoo as a total of 30 or so country bands perform over the course of the event. Since I work in a grocery store, this is a great deal for us as the influx of people probably triples our business. So, to accommodate them (kiss ass), I am forced to listen to a country radio station....Which I believe is cruel and unusual punishment, but that I'll save for another time.

Since I was being forced to listen to this crap, I decided to actually start listening to the words in a desperate attempt to drown out the slide guitar and twanging b string bends on the guitar. And this leads me to my point.

The song is "Have you forgotten" the artist is "Darryl Worley". The album was just released, and according to the country station I was listening to it is selling in record numbers. The thing is the song is about the war with Iraq, and how the reason for it is the attack on the twin towers and the pentagon. Thus the "have you forgotten". Some of the lyrics that I can loosely remember are (excuse the misquote here) "Some people say that we're out looking for a fight, after 9/11 I'd have to say that's right". I actually laughed out loud when that line came out, in the midst of selling some ground beef to a burly guy in a cowboy hat, but man that was funny.

Then to the "Bin Laden is why we are attacking Iraq", another quote, or very close to, only heard it once. "They say we don't need to get Bin Laden, to them I say have you forgotten" (which coincidentally is rhymed with Bin Laden every instance through the song, though I thought he was supposed to be in Afghanistan, but that aside). I at the very least was able to not laugh at this one.

And then just one other point, that is the very first part of the song, starts off close to "Some people say that we don't need this war, But, I say some things are worth fighting for. What about this here piece of ground, we didn't get to keep it by backing down." This statement is 100% true. Some people did not want the war, then he expressed his opinion about there being things worth fighting for. And we did gain our freedom by fighting a war on our own soil, but that was in the 1700's. To my knowledge, after that (not counting the civil war) we haven't had any real battles on American soil (I am not counting the 9/11 attacks or the attack on pearl harbor as they were more or less terroristic and one-sided, and both were justly avenged). Now, if we had, or do, find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that would prove there was a threat to our country, that would make his point. I am sure we will find this evidence, we just haven't had time to plant it yet, being a bit overly concerned with the oil wells over there.

Ahh crap, this is going really long again. I encourage you to listen to that song, and marvel at the fact that your average backwoods hick totally believes every word of it. Hell it may even be Dubya's campaign song in the upcoming election.

I have not heard the song, but I've heard of it.  While wondering just how you manage to rhyme "bin Laden" and "forgotten", (Which: "bin lotten" or "fer-goddeen?") I looked up the lyrics, which, through the miracle of the Internet, is easily done.

Anyway, I have heard part of the song at work, but while I'm working I'm paying as little attention to the music as possible, since 98% of it is not music I want to hear.  Pop or R&B or Country or Classic Rock.  So it didn't make any impression.  All country songs sound so ridiculous to me with the silly vocal yowling that I can't take them seriously, but I'm pretty good at ignoring them.

The only one that breaks through my audio trance is Friends in Low Places, which I just looked up to confirm that it was by Garth Brooks. That one I can't ignore since the hound dog-howling vocals never fail to crack me up.  I can't hope to transcribe them phonetically, you really have to hear the song to understand the depths of melodrama that Garth impregnates it with.  Just to try quickly, at the title line, which is the funniest one.

Well I've got friends in low places...

sounds like:

"Whu-ale eyes got fruh-ands in loooooow puh-lace-ezz"

The whole song is done in this incredibly-hickish accent, like something off of Hee Haw, but the best part is when he gets to "low places" and drops about 3 octaves, just for a couple of words. I can never help but singing along while laughing at the absurdity of it.

For a long time I thought it was a comedy song, like Weird Al Jankovic or some DJ doing a parody of how absurdly country music is vocalized, but I eventually realized that no, it was a real song, and people actually took it seriously.  And it was a big hit, apparently.  Anyway, this is entirely off topic.

As for the Darryl Worley (God that's a dumb name. Sounds like a middle relief pitcher for an Arkansas double A team.) song, I don't really have an opinion.  Sure it's painfully melodramatic, but that's what country music does best, and you have to play to the audience. There's nothing in the song lyrics that is entirely inaccurate, and nations that have been attacked always produce patriotic/jingoistic music to commemorate it and focus their thirst or revenge. The annoyance most "thinking people" have with it is that it's being used in conjunction with the Iraq Attack. Or was being, since I guess that's over by now.  Aside from the coming years of civil war and anarchy and terrorism, I mean. *cough*

But Darryl doesn't actually mention Iraq or Saddam in the song, just bin Laden and 9/11, which is factually correct, as far as we've been led to believe, anyway. And bad song or not, we should remember it.  Nations carrying a collective grudge is never a good thing for world stability, think Germany in the years after WWI, but it's a reality in this situation.

The interesting thing about Bush making so much political hay from 9/11 is how selectively people are viewing it.  The patriotic, blow stuff up type people are Republicans, and they choose to see Bush's actions after 9/11, which were all pretty much common sense, as examples of brilliant leadership. Even though he'd been president for over a year and a half before 9/11, and his Administration had ignored all the recommendations for tightening security and going after bin Laden left by the Clinton Administration, and has submarined all official investigation efforts since then, he gets no blame at all for the lax airline security and terribly slow response on that fateful day.

Now this is entirely speculative, but if Gore had been president then, I suspect the demographic that supports Bush and buys country albums would have spent the last 2 years raging about how it was all his fault that the airport security was lax and the military didn't shoot down the other hijacked planes before they could hit the other World Trade Tower and the Pentagon.  And country songs about it now would be used as protests against Gore for not catching bin Laden yet.  I do find it sort of ironic that this song about catching bin Laden, which even Fox News viewers must realize hasn't been accomplished, is actually taken as patriotic and heartening, and supportive of the military and Bush. 

And again, if Gore were president, how would people view the whole "We didn't catch him, and we bailed out of Afghanistan immediately, leaving the people in squalid misery and Al Quida to reform like the T-1000 after Arnie shot it post liquid nitrogen, but don't worry about that." I suspect a lot less charitably than they do the Bush-headed, equally unsuccessful operation.

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