Dierks Benedict

I think you mean Dierks Bentley. And while I laughed my ass off at Hee Haw many a time, remember that Kenny Rogers (yes, the chicken man hisself) showed up many times.

My favorite moment: When Laura at the beginning couldn’t understand why she was doing a “Breaking news…er…I mean this just in” intro and realized that it was old news about Obama and asked, “Is this the Fox News way of doing things?”

Perfect honesty captured for eternity…

Well, that’s a bad rule of thumb to have, frankly. Up until ‘86 or so when he started buying his own bullshit too much, Bocephus’s output is pretty goddamn awesome. The guy could play damn near anything, had a killer band, a redneck wail second only to The Killer himself, and wrote him some damn fine country songs. Dig up “Hank Williams Jr. & Friends”. Seriously, you’re missing out. Nothing past ‘86, though.

And country’s been marketed as pop since Ray Price and Eddy Arnold and Patsy Cline (and that’s probably being generous; Hank Sr. had no problems about his songs being pop hits), so attempts at widespread acceptance is nothing new. What is new is the total elimination of any redneck or blues/R&B influence in the music. What the record companies realized was they were never gonna sell Middle America on scary crackers like Johnny Paycheck or Steve Earle singing horrifyingly depressing songs. Luckily, the South has plenty of suburbs and that’s where they went. Figured out that white people really wanted to hear pale, boring music that wasn’t as mopey as mainstream rock radio. And thus, Dierks Benedict. Oh, well.

I really love this new handle Is it too offensive to start using regularly?

Dude, that name is just wrong. You’ve got to change it.

And Matt, country started sucking long before ‘93. As soon as they decided to make and market it as pop, damn the torpedoes and any shred of authenticity, the headstone was cut. My general rule of thumb has been “Hank Sr. good. Hank Jr. bad.” for a looooong time now. Now that the only difference between Britney or the Asscrack Boys and whatever is now called “Country” is the occasional presence of pedal steel, just so the rubes know who to drop their cash on, I feel just fine ignoring all of the above.

Oh for the King Biscuit Flower Hour late nights on WNEW, or maybe Allison Steele…

Lawn. Off it.

I’m disappointed.

Also, it looks like Faux is a complete cockup, organizationally. Funny, really. I’d be a bit put out if nobody told me who my guests were. Of course, I’d probably ask somebody well before go time, but you’d think that with all the money they toss at that channel, they could hire some competent people.

Ha, ha.

/Nelson.

My personal favorite bit of “Hee Haw”, with added Conway Twitty. The twenty-somethings I work with think I’m making this shit up.

I couldn’t find the original Hee Haw version for some reason, but I did get the clip of a cute little cover of it by a band I love with all my heart.

BR549

The P. says Austin City Limits is still on.

Y’all, Darius Rucker has a Top 30 country song. I wish I could hate it, but honestly, it’s just too boring. Feh.

My Saturdays until I was 13 or so, and then my folks bought a satellite dish like every upwardly mobile cracker in the ’80s and we watched nothing but baseball. Play, fish or hunt all day, and then come in for supper, usually around five. Six o’clock it’s “Hee-Haw” on Channel 9, then over to the PBS channel for a full series of “Doctor Who” followed by an abreviated “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and the aforementioned “Austin City Limits”. Then, the local news followed by “Mid-South Wrestling” and “Soul Train”. The night’s capped off with a half-hour of CNN, the sign-off, the National Anthem, and Young Matt T. is asleep by one or so if he doesn’t stay up to read, which he generally does, either way to the sounds of an all-night truckers’ country radio show from a station in Tuscaloosa I could only pick up past midnight. Explains almost everything, a friend of mine said.

Flaming out on somebody you or your staff have invited to appear on your show for not “doing their homework” by checking it out – especially when they cite being too busy doing a REAL JOB – shows a serious taste/class deficit – I bet that guest is just itching to come back on her show after such idiocy.

Are there any FOX face-pimps who aren’t even bigger knobs off-air than they are once the light goes on?