One Friday a while back Heather dragged me to a country music concert. It was Brooks & Dunn with “special guests” Big & Rich.
    There are, perhaps, two songs from Brooks & Dunn that I like, and one of them is a cover tune (My Maria). Hated it. Wanted to leave the moment the “music” started to play.

    It wasn’t helped by the fact that the sold-out crowd of mouth-breathers knew every friggin’ word to every gimmicky, boring, predictable song and acted as if they were all recitations of divine revelation. (“Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” makes a nice bumper sticker, but if you repeat it twenty to thirty times it becomes a hit country song! Same thing with “Weee-oooo! Play Somethin’ Country!”)

    Big and Rich, however, were quite entertaining in ways they certainly didn’t intend. Their touring carnival side-show was complete with multi-ethnic backup singers, what appeared to be a 13-year-old guitar player, a miniscule dwarf with crutches named “Two Foot Freddy” and a large black rappin’ cowboy named “Cowboy Troy”.

    I once wrote a piece on how today’s country fulfills the same cultural niche as the hair-band rock of the late-1980′s. Big and Rich validated my claims by wearing Tom Petty style head-wear, and with far more electric guitar than twang. I’m all for fusion, if it has some merit, but this stuff was little better than Poison or Bon Jovi at its most vapid.

    Meh.