We gots to hang chilly, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers
Cover shots
“Time” named Barack Obama “Person of the Year.” And Sarah Palin made the cover of “Moose Tracker Quarterly.”
Finally, OJ is right about something
Snow closed the airport at Las Vegas. I guess OJ Simpson was right, he is going to prison when hell freezes over.
Slacking
The secret service is under fire because they didn’t stop the shoes from being thrown at President Bush. You get the feeling the Secret Service isn’t taking this seriously, today they changed President Bush’s Secret Service code name to Loafer.
Here is my much awaited (cough) treatise on The Dixie Chicks saga.
Saw the Dixie Chick Bush-comment controversy documentary “Shut Up and Sing” and it was interesting musically, politically and demographically.
To review, in 2003, on the night before the Iraq war started when patriotism was at an all time high and nobody – especially little Dixie Chick lead singer, Natalie Maines - knew what was going to happen in Iraq, in front of an staunchly anti-Bush London crowd, Natalie announced they were against people getting killed in Iraq and that they were ashamed that President Bush came from their home state of Texas.
It is my opinion this was neither an anti-war stance nor a brave political stand but rather simply Natalie Maines sucking up to anti-American Europeans for the sake of being well received during her London show. Who isn’t against people getting killed and or violence and war?
Once young naïve Natalie let the toothpaste out of the tube, there was no putting it back. But what she did next was tantamount to smearing the toothpaste in everyone’s face and all over the walls.
When their core country red state audience objected to that anti-Bush remark on the eve of our nation going into battle, Natalie took offense and turned around and insulted them. That was the big mistake, not her Bush comment. If she had just shut up and or apologized, Bush would eventually prove her right.
The lead singer, Natalie Maines, of a band that decided to call themselves a nickname for the heart of country music, Dixie, insulted country fans as ignorant, violent and stupid. She went on to disparage other country artists like Toby Keith and Reba McIntyre and their fans. It would be slow, painful career suicide.
Toby Keith represents the right wing side of the same mistake. Although, unlike Maines, Keith is at least smart enough to realize most country fans are conservative, nonetheless, why would Keith risk alienating his few liberal fans? Both sides in this nasty fight were stupid. (Natalie appeared onstage with a FUTK shirt trying to be cute by saying it meant Freedom, Unity, Tenderness and Kindness or something just as lame)
All Natalie Maines had to do before she lashed out at country music fans as stupid red necks was to look at the name of her band and at the fiddle player and banjo players on either side. They are nothing if not a country band. And Maines goes after country fans? Like with OJ and the memorabilia heist, it was an example of total arrogance and ignorance.
Once cornered, Natalie became very defensive and, to their credit, her fellow DC’s, Emily and Marty, rallied around her. Natalie certainly had the right of free speech. But so did the people who called country stations to boycott her music, but Natalie thought that part of free speech was wrong and she said so hammering country music fans along the way.
As the Dixie Chicks were to find out quickly, democracy works both ways. It may not work that way in the world of the pampered music stars, but it does in the real world.
As time went on and their record sales plummeted and radio stations boycotted them and their projected concert revenues tanked, Natalie flipped and recanted her anti-Bush statement in an obvious too-little-too-late insincere attempt to stop hemorrhaging money. Now whatever credibility Natalie had with the fans who might have respected her position, even if they didn’t agree with her, was now gone.
Upon seeing the non-reaction her apology got, Natalie got angry again and switched back to recanting her recanting making even more anti-Bush –once his popularity started plummeting - and derogatory red state and insulting country music fan statements to the press and in the songs she wrote. In interviews and lyrics, Maines told her old fans to piss off and that she would find “cooler” -her word - fans who agreed with her political views.
From where did Maines think this cooler fan base would materialize? Did she really believe all the blue state people who hated Bush would suddenly develop a love of banjo and fiddle music just because Natalie hated Bush too? That is one huge ego without much brains behind it.
And I submit it really isn’t about politics anyway. The Sixties are long over, the days of music fans being stoned enough to endure self-righteous political lectures by singers ended thankfully with Joan Baez and Bob Dylan long ago. Right or left wing, we now want our music and our politics separated.
The last real Eagles concert was in Long Beach Arena in 1981 which I attended. It was a benefit concert for anti-nuke liberal congressman Alan Cranston. It said so on the tickets, all the proceeds would go to his campaign, which I felt was fair and, being more liberal at the time, I was more than happy to support Cranston.
And this was the heart of Eagle fan country, Southern California. As with the Dixie Chicks, there is a difference between people who like a band and own a few of their albums and the people who go to see them in concert. The concert goers are far more fanatical. This crowd looked like the Eagles, most had on Eagles t-shirts from previous concerts. It was clear the Eagles were a part of this crowd’s – man, I hate to use this word – lifestyle, but they were.
But even when our beloved Glenn Frey stood up and started talking about Cranston, the crowd booed and booed loudly. (To me that seemed unfair since that was the stated purpose of the show, and it pissed off Frey but good) It wasn’t that the audience was a bunch of right-wingers, the sweet smoke smell in the air was proof that wasn’t the case, they just didn’t want to hear a political lecture during a concert. Nobody does anymore. We want entertainment and politics to be separate.
That was the final straw for Frey and lead guitarist Don Felder and they got in a fight over it backstage and the band broke up.
The Dixie Chick’s 2006 tour was a disaster by any measure. The only venues that sold out were in Canada and the blue state Northeast. Houston wouldn’t even let them perform. Ticket sales for the Dixie Chicks in Dixieland were virtually non existent. They had totally destroyed their core fan base they had worked so hard to build.
Let’s be fair, the Dixie Chicks weren’t the only stupid ones on this. There was plenty of footage in “SUAS” of moronic mouth-breathers who were way, way too angry at what the Dixie Chicks said. One psycho fan threatened to shoot them at a Dallas show. Who cares what nut job right wingers think anyway? The Dixie Chicks – mostly Natalie - made the mistake of specifically insulting their more-middle-of-the-road once loyal country music fans along with the nut jobs.
But being extremely talented musicians – for what it’s worth, I like their music - the Dixie Chicks continued to make records that sold and won music awards. But the hardcore Dixie Chick concert-going Southern fans, the ones musicians live for, the heart and soul of any band, had vanished forever. Nobody has destroyed a fan base more efficiently except for Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan and they had the help of booze and drugs.
To this day poor little Natalie Maines doesn’t get it. She thinks the country fans she did so much for turned on her the split-second she needed them. That wasn’t true. She turned on them when they didn’t agree with her. (Something tells me little Natalie Maines doesn’t spend a lot of time in Mensa meetings)
Public relations departments should teach how not to do what the Dixie Chicks did. Their world must have been so insulated for them to think, yeah, let’s insult our core fan’s patriotic beliefs in front of a bunch of American-hating Europeans and then insult those same American fans again for objecting about us doing it in the first place. Oh, and let’s also ask them to buy our records and concerts and have their radio stations play our music while we’re doing it.
The ones I do feel sorry for are the two other Dixie Chicks besides Natalie Maines, Marty and Emily. They were sweet and loyal to the lip-flapping attention-whore Maines to the end. And they got screwed for it. Now that wasn't fair.
Cover shots
“Time” named Barack Obama “Person of the Year.” And Sarah Palin made the cover of “Moose Tracker Quarterly.”
Finally, OJ is right about something
Snow closed the airport at Las Vegas. I guess OJ Simpson was right, he is going to prison when hell freezes over.
Slacking
The secret service is under fire because they didn’t stop the shoes from being thrown at President Bush. You get the feeling the Secret Service isn’t taking this seriously, today they changed President Bush’s Secret Service code name to Loafer.
Here is my much awaited (cough) treatise on The Dixie Chicks saga.
Saw the Dixie Chick Bush-comment controversy documentary “Shut Up and Sing” and it was interesting musically, politically and demographically.
To review, in 2003, on the night before the Iraq war started when patriotism was at an all time high and nobody – especially little Dixie Chick lead singer, Natalie Maines - knew what was going to happen in Iraq, in front of an staunchly anti-Bush London crowd, Natalie announced they were against people getting killed in Iraq and that they were ashamed that President Bush came from their home state of Texas.
It is my opinion this was neither an anti-war stance nor a brave political stand but rather simply Natalie Maines sucking up to anti-American Europeans for the sake of being well received during her London show. Who isn’t against people getting killed and or violence and war?
Once young naïve Natalie let the toothpaste out of the tube, there was no putting it back. But what she did next was tantamount to smearing the toothpaste in everyone’s face and all over the walls.
When their core country red state audience objected to that anti-Bush remark on the eve of our nation going into battle, Natalie took offense and turned around and insulted them. That was the big mistake, not her Bush comment. If she had just shut up and or apologized, Bush would eventually prove her right.
The lead singer, Natalie Maines, of a band that decided to call themselves a nickname for the heart of country music, Dixie, insulted country fans as ignorant, violent and stupid. She went on to disparage other country artists like Toby Keith and Reba McIntyre and their fans. It would be slow, painful career suicide.
Toby Keith represents the right wing side of the same mistake. Although, unlike Maines, Keith is at least smart enough to realize most country fans are conservative, nonetheless, why would Keith risk alienating his few liberal fans? Both sides in this nasty fight were stupid. (Natalie appeared onstage with a FUTK shirt trying to be cute by saying it meant Freedom, Unity, Tenderness and Kindness or something just as lame)
All Natalie Maines had to do before she lashed out at country music fans as stupid red necks was to look at the name of her band and at the fiddle player and banjo players on either side. They are nothing if not a country band. And Maines goes after country fans? Like with OJ and the memorabilia heist, it was an example of total arrogance and ignorance.
Once cornered, Natalie became very defensive and, to their credit, her fellow DC’s, Emily and Marty, rallied around her. Natalie certainly had the right of free speech. But so did the people who called country stations to boycott her music, but Natalie thought that part of free speech was wrong and she said so hammering country music fans along the way.
As the Dixie Chicks were to find out quickly, democracy works both ways. It may not work that way in the world of the pampered music stars, but it does in the real world.
As time went on and their record sales plummeted and radio stations boycotted them and their projected concert revenues tanked, Natalie flipped and recanted her anti-Bush statement in an obvious too-little-too-late insincere attempt to stop hemorrhaging money. Now whatever credibility Natalie had with the fans who might have respected her position, even if they didn’t agree with her, was now gone.
Upon seeing the non-reaction her apology got, Natalie got angry again and switched back to recanting her recanting making even more anti-Bush –once his popularity started plummeting - and derogatory red state and insulting country music fan statements to the press and in the songs she wrote. In interviews and lyrics, Maines told her old fans to piss off and that she would find “cooler” -her word - fans who agreed with her political views.
From where did Maines think this cooler fan base would materialize? Did she really believe all the blue state people who hated Bush would suddenly develop a love of banjo and fiddle music just because Natalie hated Bush too? That is one huge ego without much brains behind it.
And I submit it really isn’t about politics anyway. The Sixties are long over, the days of music fans being stoned enough to endure self-righteous political lectures by singers ended thankfully with Joan Baez and Bob Dylan long ago. Right or left wing, we now want our music and our politics separated.
The last real Eagles concert was in Long Beach Arena in 1981 which I attended. It was a benefit concert for anti-nuke liberal congressman Alan Cranston. It said so on the tickets, all the proceeds would go to his campaign, which I felt was fair and, being more liberal at the time, I was more than happy to support Cranston.
And this was the heart of Eagle fan country, Southern California. As with the Dixie Chicks, there is a difference between people who like a band and own a few of their albums and the people who go to see them in concert. The concert goers are far more fanatical. This crowd looked like the Eagles, most had on Eagles t-shirts from previous concerts. It was clear the Eagles were a part of this crowd’s – man, I hate to use this word – lifestyle, but they were.
But even when our beloved Glenn Frey stood up and started talking about Cranston, the crowd booed and booed loudly. (To me that seemed unfair since that was the stated purpose of the show, and it pissed off Frey but good) It wasn’t that the audience was a bunch of right-wingers, the sweet smoke smell in the air was proof that wasn’t the case, they just didn’t want to hear a political lecture during a concert. Nobody does anymore. We want entertainment and politics to be separate.
That was the final straw for Frey and lead guitarist Don Felder and they got in a fight over it backstage and the band broke up.
The Dixie Chick’s 2006 tour was a disaster by any measure. The only venues that sold out were in Canada and the blue state Northeast. Houston wouldn’t even let them perform. Ticket sales for the Dixie Chicks in Dixieland were virtually non existent. They had totally destroyed their core fan base they had worked so hard to build.
Let’s be fair, the Dixie Chicks weren’t the only stupid ones on this. There was plenty of footage in “SUAS” of moronic mouth-breathers who were way, way too angry at what the Dixie Chicks said. One psycho fan threatened to shoot them at a Dallas show. Who cares what nut job right wingers think anyway? The Dixie Chicks – mostly Natalie - made the mistake of specifically insulting their more-middle-of-the-road once loyal country music fans along with the nut jobs.
Sabes don't throw out the baby with the dirty bath water?
But being extremely talented musicians – for what it’s worth, I like their music - the Dixie Chicks continued to make records that sold and won music awards. But the hardcore Dixie Chick concert-going Southern fans, the ones musicians live for, the heart and soul of any band, had vanished forever. Nobody has destroyed a fan base more efficiently except for Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan and they had the help of booze and drugs.
To this day poor little Natalie Maines doesn’t get it. She thinks the country fans she did so much for turned on her the split-second she needed them. That wasn’t true. She turned on them when they didn’t agree with her. (Something tells me little Natalie Maines doesn’t spend a lot of time in Mensa meetings)
Public relations departments should teach how not to do what the Dixie Chicks did. Their world must have been so insulated for them to think, yeah, let’s insult our core fan’s patriotic beliefs in front of a bunch of American-hating Europeans and then insult those same American fans again for objecting about us doing it in the first place. Oh, and let’s also ask them to buy our records and concerts and have their radio stations play our music while we’re doing it.
In the end of "SUAS" it is painfully clear poor little Natalie Maines sees herself as a tragic free speech martyr. Maines is a lot of things: cute, bubbly, rich,famous, personable, funny and talented, but she is by no means a martyr. She shot herself - and her band - in the foot but good. Then she kept reloading and shooting her foot again.
The ones I do feel sorry for are the two other Dixie Chicks besides Natalie Maines, Marty and Emily. They were sweet and loyal to the lip-flapping attention-whore Maines to the end. And they got screwed for it. Now that wasn't fair.
What's the moral? Let me drop a little marketing wisdom here: if you want someone to buy your music, do not call them dumb redneck hicks. They pretty much don't like it.
But everything is going to be fine for the Dixie Chicks. They seem nice and down-to-earth, even the ditsy diva Maines, and they really are talented and talent will win out.
Oh, and Rumor has it Kristen Stewart is a huge fan.
But everything is going to be fine for the Dixie Chicks. They seem nice and down-to-earth, even the ditsy diva Maines, and they really are talented and talent will win out.
Oh, and Rumor has it Kristen Stewart is a huge fan.
posted by Alex at
8:57 AM
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