LUDIC LOG

Grazi to Christian for the inspiration.

I have been plagued of late by accusations of insufficient patriotism. God knows that I base my sense of well-being on what total strangers think of my political attitudes, so I intend to correct this misapprehension. Today, I downloaded seven patriotic country songs, which I will now review for lyrical and political content, musical quality, and patriotic fervor. Do you see how I suffer for my country? Call this un-American, if you dare. How many of you would make this sacrifice?

#1. "God Bless the U.S.A.", Lee Greenwood. It's hard to approach this song critically, since it's so ingrained in the public consciousness; after nearly two decades of hearing it in truck commercials, football stadiums and G.O.P. campaign films, it's pretty much impossible to think about without all that baggage. However, a few shots of tequila seemed to put me in the right frame of mind to tackle the job. First of all, it's not really a terrible song. I mean, it sucks -- don't get me wrong, these songs all pretty much suck -- but it doesn't suck in a worse way than any number of other mass-produced pop songs suck. In fact, it's fairly well-written and has a classic structure, and Lee Greenwood has a decent voice. However, its ludicrous overproduction is so glossy and slick and overdone that it robs the song of any inherent virtue it might possess. Lyrically, it contains one of the more notorious grammatical boners in pop history ("I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free"), but it's really not particularly jingoistic. In fact, with its focus on American pride and not on the beating in of foreign heads, it hearkens back to a simpler time, when Coke hadn't changed its formula and all the terrorists were Libyans -- a time that now seems a million miles away.

#2. "Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)?", Alan Jackson. The first of the wave of neo-nationalist songs from the Nash Vegas crap factory after September 11th, 2001, was this relatively inoffensive number from the professionally bland Alan Jackson. Lyrically, there's nothing here to offend hypersensitve liberals like myself; the song's content is in fact rather empathetic, encompassing a wide number of reactions to the terror attacks. There's a few missteps (the heart-on-the-sleeve religiosity, the seemingly proud way in which Jackson boasts of not knowing the difference between Iran and Iraq, the goofy query about where people were when they heard the news -- who was cooking out in the back yard or working the stage in LA at six in the morning?), but with its 'love is the greatest gift of all' message, it's almost hippie-happy. Musically, however, it's a complete snore. Jackson specializes in painfully uninteresting lite-country, so this isn't any kind of a surprise, but at almost five and a half minutes long, "Where Were You" goes nowhere far too slowly.

#3. "This Ain't No Rag It's a Flag", the Charlie Daniels Band. Good ol' Charlie! This dope-smoking, corpulent ex-longhair used to be one of the rulebreaking social misfits of 1970s Outlaw Country, but he had himself an epiphany somewhere around the time Ronald Reagan took office and has become one of the most reliably reactionary right-wing lunatics in the entertainment world. It was to be expected that he'd cough up an insanely overblown song in the wake of 9/11, and he sure didn't disappoint! Lyrically, this is one of the worst of the lot, getting the racist "raghead" reference out of the way right in the title of the song and building from there. It's a predictably macho 'we're gonna crush you like an ant' number with verse after verse of dire imprecations against "you", although who the "you" who's gonna get their teeth knocked out is left unmentioned, perhaps because Charlie doesn't know who they are, only that he wants to kill them. Anyway, musically, it's not too bad -- a typically rockin', gurgling pseudo-boogie that starts out pretty well and then gets more and more tedious the more you listen to it -- and even has a nice raw production feel to it. It does, however, introduce the pandering and annoying technique of ending a song by chanting some variant of "USA! USA! USA!" over and over again.

#4. "Have You Forgotten?", Darryl Worley. "Who the fuck is Darryl Worley?", you might ask. Exactly, I might reply. A more cynically crafted song it is difficult to envision, and to claim that this nakedly opportunist number by a previously unknown country singer wasn't designed to rocket him to the top of the charts (which, of course, it did) would betray a rather massive naivete about the music industry. The lyrics to this one are not so much violent or jingoistic as they are moronic; it takes war protestors to task for apparently having 'forgotten' what happened on September 11th, just as if Iraq had anything to do with it, and features the line "you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin-Laden". Now, I read a lot of leftist radical hippie journalism and opinion, and I don't remember having heard anyone say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin-Laden, but obviously I don't travel in the same social circles as Darryl Worley. Worst of all, the song is a total bore -- not only typical, tedious, overproduced pop-country crap, but with the hasty hodge-podge quality of a quickly-thrown-together cash-in number, which this is.

#5. "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)", Toby Keith. This is the crown prince of ass-kicking songs -- going so far as to to feature the charming lyric "put a boot in your ass". (As is typical for these songs, the 'you' is unidentified, either because these guys aren't exactly sure who attacked us or because they don't want to alienate the three Arab-Americans who buy their records.) It's lyrically asinine, containing tons of tuff-guy bluster and every third-rate bad-ass cliche in the book ("lit up your world like the Fourth of July", "your name at the top of his list", the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist", "the eagle will fly", "there's gonna be hell", "the whole wide world is raining down on you", "justice will be served", "the big dog will fight", "you'll be sorry you messed with the US of A", ad nauseum). And it ends with another nationalist chant ("The red white and blue! The red white and blue!"). The hell of it is, this is probably the best song of the lot. It's catchy, Toby Keith has a really good voice perfectly suited to the material, and it gets the job done: it's a big ol' chunky country-rock number with ringing chords and an anthemic feel. I mean, again, it's not good; I wouldn't voluntarily listen to this song in a million years. But it's the best of a bad lot.

#6. "Iraq & I Roll", Clint Black. Never one to be left behind on a trend, uberhack Clint Black jumps on the neo-nationalist bandwagon with the first song explicitly about the war with Iraq (although even here he tries to get cute; the chorus tries to play it both ways, but ends up merely mispronouncing the name of the country in two different ways and spilling out another lame variant on the 'let's roll' meme). Musically, this one is so not bad it's almost good; it's pretty catchy, it's rockin' in that dated '70s-boogie way that pop country seems mired in, and it actually has a deceptive, interesting rhythm pattern. It's eminently listenable if you happen to like this sort of music. However, its lyrics are absolutely retarded: threatening, blustery, lamely punning, and, well, just dumb. "I'm a high-tech G.I. Joe"? What are you, nine years old? And, of course, it betrays its utter lack of ideas by ending with a jingoistic chant ("I'm talkin' 'bout the USA"). I never thought such a sentence would issue from my fingertips, but even Clint Black can do better than this.

As a side note, I also downloaded Steve Earle's "John Walker's Blues", which is not only not terrible, it's amazingly good. Quiet and contemplative, a brilliant character study that's understanding without being forgiving or condoning, great lyrics, a hooky, stuttering, distorted guitar, and a chilling overall tone. Proof, once again, that the Devil has all the best musicians.