07.12.12
Elvis Hitler’s Struggle
Hank Williams, Jr. has put his new album of mostly Tea Party-themed I-Hate-the-President music, Old School New Rules, on YouTube. You may not be able to get through it. But I listened for you.
Readers may or may not remember Hank lost one of his big money gigs last year, getting tossed as the opening theme to Monday Night Football, for comparing the President to Hitler. Country music did not rally to his cause.
And it won’t this time. Because while the genre and fans won’t tolerate the Dixie Chicks, and even went out of their way to ruin them, they also won’t publicly indulge anything like him.
Darryl Worley found it out with Keep the Change, an anti-Obama single he peddled to the Tea Party, hoping grass roots interest would force country music radio and television to play it. (If Worley made a penny of business value for every play on the fan-made video for it, he’s grossed about 2300 dollars. Boosted to a dime per play it’s still a sub-poverty wage for one office worker with a family. So while the numbers superficially looked like support from the standpoint of a major label artist who had previously had a hit single, they meant nothing.)
The best Darryl Worley could manage was an appearance on Huckabee. His record, promised after the release of the “Keep the Change” single never materialized. Instead, his company went out of business.
Like with Worley, Hank’s dilemma is that country music is emotionally embalmed. (He has also stupidly put his old anti-Obama tune with the exact same title, “Keep the Change,” on the new LP. It smells strongly of desperation.)
It’s classic rock refugee music for white people desperate to hold onto the delusion that if they’re just good enough, family-loving, God worshiping, hard workers, everything will turn out right in the end.
And what strikes fear in them is the wisp of any idea that this isn’t the way things are, that the country they think they live in hasn’t been the way they thought for a long time. Reality, looming over everyone like an unstoppable slow motion avalanche, threatens everything they believe in.
The music must therefore remain cheesy comfort.
Hank Williams Jr. is cheesy but not a comfort. And if there are songs that blame the President for everything, tunes that vow vengeance at the voting booth — well, the audience might find it agreeable privately but they won’t buy it and country music radio won’t play it. All the buxom young cut-off wearing girls on the summer tour circuit will find the mood harshed by Hank’s clumsy song to the small businessman, “Who’s Lookin’ Out for Number One.”
Counry music fans just don’t, don’t, don’t want trouble.
And Hank’s music is angry and a bit psychologically troubling but also not that great, expertly played by ringers and sung in two ways, either as a smooth ham or a mild boor tilting at the government.
In other words, if you want to have a genuine shit fit maybe you should really have one, instead of a big Nashville-session-man-and-buddies-middle-of-the-road imitation of it.
“I want to dedicate this song to every working man and woman in this country and everyone trying to run a business constantly punished, taxed and regulated by the federal government,” declares Hank Jr on the previously mentioned small businessman’s anthem.
“Our glorious leader just got back from China and Japan where he gave away our jobs, put us down and sold out our plans,” he sings. “We don’t need to be givin’ all that money away to other folks.”
It just doesn’t work as catchy music.
The first tune, “Takin’ Back the Country,” features his dead dad, autotuned. One presumes a few people in the studio thought this a bad idea but declined to say anything on the matter.
Hank Williams, Jr would desperately love Cow Turd Blues, from his new album, to be a Tea Party anthem.
Hanks gets a few points for giving it all away, at least for now.
Frank said,
July 13, 2012 at 10:55 am
Well said.
I think you missed the part about being conceived in American Idol, nurtured in marketing surveys, and brought forth by focus groups.
As a country boy who pretty much grew up on a Farmall Super C three-point, whenever I see any of those faux country boys who never pulled a ragweed in their sheltered lives wearing their stupid shrunk-up straw imitation cowboy hats with the ridiculously curved brims that will keep neither the sun off your face nor the rain from down your neck, I want to–how may I put this delicately?–hurl.
George Smith said,
July 13, 2012 at 12:21 pm
Pull ragweed, haha. Would they even know ragweed? I did indeed neglect to mention the American Idol bit. Scotty McCreery. And then there’s the girls.