Rolling Country 2006 Thread

and oh yeah, my album of the year now (passing up victory brothers) is kentucky headhunters' *flying under the radar*, which cheats by taking the best songs from each of their previous three albums (only two of which i heard), but what the hell, they've never made my top ten before (my REAL not just country top ten i mean), and this year maybe they deserve to. victory brothers are missing *something*; lalena insists they're closer to the barenaked ladies or ween than to big 'n' rich, which i don't buy, but they do come up a little thin, somehow. (though then again, compared to b'n'r's first album, who doesn't?) i don't find them mere cynical hee-hawing wearers of lampshade farmer's hats at parties, though, not even close. and i expect they'll finish toward the top of my top ten. might help if other people would check them out and offer their opinions, though...

and oh yeah oh yeah, most entertaining (and silliest, and most rockingly big n rich like) country song i heard on the radio on the road was the (new, i assume?) trace adkins one about "hey batter batter hey batter batter swing." 100 % baseball metaphors, and way better than the phil rizzuto part of "paradise by the dashboard light," how can i NOT love it? so what's the deal, did "honkytonk badonkadonk" turn him into a novelty artist for good? i think he's helped by it, even if he'll never do another "i'm tryin'" again...

what do you think of the bocephus/big and rich crib of badonkadonk

still haven't heard it. (and by the way, by "rockingly big n rich like," i think i just mean something like "hard rock powerchords plus fiddles used in a way that dances like funk". which may or may not be fully accurate for the baseball hit, which i only heard once.)

>even if rodney does pretend people in small towns leave their doors unlocked<

or even if i pretend that they don't (because, uh, sometimes they DO, you know.)

incidentally when i got home home to queens monday night our front door had the extension cord for the landlord's son's big ass power generator running through it. power had been out here in sunnyside since wednesday, so we took an extra night before coming back; it got turned back on only two and a half hours after we got back in, which meant that all the emergency supplies we'd picked up in bucks county monday morning (battery-run fans and lanterns, candles, a stovetop coffee percolator, lots of backup batteries) will have to go into storage until the next con-ed fuckup. too bad the dry ice won't keep that long. but we only had maybe $50 of rotten groceries in the fridge when we got back, and we obviously picked the right week to out of the burough, even if we missed all the excitement.

anthony, edd, etc, thanks for the well wishes by the way. and edd, thanks again for the charlie rich burn, which came while i was gone, and which is in my CD changer now. (i also found a used copy of a 1974 comp of '60s charlie called *fully realized* for 50 cents in an antique barn in jeffersonville -- well, the second disc of the double LP anyway -- and brought that back with me. so these should at least help me start getting up to speed. inscription on the back of the comp says it was originally released in 1965 and 1966 as *the many new sides of charlie rich* and *fast talkin' slow walkin' good lookin' charlie rich,* both of which titles sound quite promising.)

also edd, keep your chin up. my thoughts are still with you.

and what the heck, already posted the entire list on the recent purchases thread, but here are all the country-associated records I bought 50 cents to $1 each, at three antique/junque barns (north side of Route 28 around Arkville, north side of Route 44/55 around Gardiner, just off north side of Route 52 in Jeffersonville) and one used store (Rhino Records in New Paltz) upstate last week; if anybody has any opinions on any of these in any way, please say so:

brewer & shipley - the best of - double LP
dr hook - pleasure & pain LP (not disco-country enough, sounds like)
freddy fender - the best of LP
ian gomm - gomm with the wind LP (pub rock was kind of country, right? so maybe i should list the bram tchaicovsky album here too, but i won't...also won't list gap band's 1976 indie-label self-titled album despite their wearing of cowboy hats or bighorn despite bighorn sheep being rural beasts beloved by southern rockers)
charly mcclain - greatest hits LP (sounds surprsingly good so far)
charlie rich - fully realized LP (second disc only of two-disc set)
t.g. sheppard - i love 'em all LP (also not disco-country enough)
hank snow - the wreck on the old 97 double LP (badass train wreck on cover)
steeleye span - the steeleye span story: original masters double LP (somebody compared a montgomery gentry song to them once)
hank williams jr - whiskey bent and hellbound LP
*viennese waltzes* 10-inch compilation EP (probably influenced country dance music somehow, right?)

congrats chuck by the way! also continued best wishes to edd, we're all here for you brother.

thanks, haiku...

i'm also wondering if it's about time somebody came up with a theory about how country's current shoutout thing (trent willmon putting on some ray willie hubbard, jake owen putting on some hank jr, rodney atkins putting on lots of skynyrd in one song and some milsap in another song) should be considered a trend for the post--hop-hop age, but that's just silly since david allen coe and everybody like that did it all the time years ago, right? (but maybe the specific names dropped are getting more interesting? it's so fucking boring when eveybody's always listening to hank and merle all the time. though shooter replacing nugent with george jones was okay, i guess.)

Contemporary shoutouts in country music go back at least as far as Tex Ritter's 1961 "I Dreamed of a Hillbilly Heaven," a dream about dead country singers except that Tex ends up reading The Big Tallybook shouting out Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry, Roy Acuff, Eddy Arnold, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Marty Robbins, Minnie Pearl, Tex Ritter...TEX RITTER?

that hank snow album is one of my favourites, there is a good peice of writing on snow in the heart aches by the numbers book--i wonder why he doesnt get as much lvoe as like acuff?

haiku
you are also forgetting the faboulous chick version of hillbilly by reba/dolly/loretta--much better then the original

anthony i am not forgetting it but rather answering xxxxx's question about history, plus i didn't really know they did a version of it if i'm being honest but i don't care, reba mcintyre IS DEAD TO ME NOW

Yeah, gongrats again, xxhuxx, and sorry for spilling the beans, but I didn't know (so maybe I was the chosen White House leaker-pawn). When I get a little more time, I'll dig up Disc 1 of Fully Realized and tape it for you, it's cool. Whiskey Bent And Hell Bound is one of Bosyphilis's better oldies, and Curb has kept that, as well as a lot of his other (remastered) 70s goodies, listed for $9.99, last time I looked. The Solas was a little girlier than I first thought (but in good as well as unmanly ways), should be on UWeekly next week (Particle's on there today, but not country o course). Also today, the Willie feature is on CharLoaf (a tad fardled at one point in the middle, because I was supposed to "clarify"), but mainly okay: http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/content?oid=56647/

reba is awesome, she is better then almost anyone working today, or was until that stupid sitcom.

xxhuxx you might want to check out aaron pritchett in general and hold my beer as a single--its pretty awesome.

http://www.aaronpritchett.com/downloads.php
video here

xpost Sorry, this is more direct:
http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/content?oid=oid.566647/

sorry (4 hrs. sleep)http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/content?oid=oid:56647/

might be the last / that's doing it, but seemed like I needed it for the linking, anyway you'll see the title,"I Let My Mind Wander," in the lower left margin; click on that pls, and you'll be there, whoopee. Anyway xpost Ian thanks for your thoughts, I'm sure they pertain, but a lot of people, performers and others, are urban *and* country (esp. as processed in city of Nashville), and also what you describe doesn't nec lead to depressing albums, so if (I still haven't heard) new Chicks is a drag, it's their fault, at least as much as the Situation, etc. (not that there aren't plenty of reasons to be depressed)xxhux, the only time us small town folk don't lock our doors is when we're addled and/or hoping for some compny. One mo time:
http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/content?oid=oid:56647

That's the one, without the slash on the end! Also, anybody got a new release date for (the reworked) Ashley Monroe?

I think everyone in small towns locks their doors now but maybe didn't use to and that's why all the nostalgia for it. (We never did, which was good because when I came home from cruising 82nd in Portland I could just walk right in, and I probably would have lost my keys all the time.) But that whole necrophiliac 'oh the good ol times is gone woe is us' stuff is boring me right now, maybe later.

And Anthony I am referring specifically to Reba getting kuntry kudos for dissing the Dixie Chicks behind their backs. Always a great voice and an appealing personality which doesn't come thru on the show. But she is now part of the Axis of Evil, eff her.

line dancing to alan jackson is more fun then it sounds

matt reba didn't dis the dixie chix behind their backs until after the dixie chix dissed her behind her back!

they didnt though, not really, they were talking about peoples tastes in music, and although it was a dumb statement it wasnt personal the way hers was, and you know all this already

what was the anti reba statement?

Martie McGuire, in Time Magazine: "I'd rather have a smaller following of really cool people who get it, who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith. We don't want those kinds of fans. They limit what you can do."

This is being taken out of context by a lot of people who have only read part of the quote, or interpreted as "CHIX DISS KUNTRY STARZ CUZ THEY HATE BLU COLLAR TV AND 'PUBLICANZ" but I don't think she meant it like that. Still kind of a dumb thing to admit out loud though.

I'm not sure I agree with Haiku that the Chicks' clunkily worded Reba diss wasn't "personal" (if you don't want to share space in a CD changer with somebody, or be listened to by "those kinds of fans," whatever the heck that's supposed to mean, how is that not personal, whether Martie meant for it to be taken that way or not? Toby's been in my five-disc changer more than the Chicks this year since he made a better album, so does that mean they don't want me as a fan?), but the claim here is that Reba threw the first stone:

http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/dixie_chicks/message_board.jhtml?c=v&t=727264&m=5543246&o=0&i=4

By the way, that 1970 Charlie Rich album that Edd burned for me, Big Boss Man, is great; my favorite songs on it are "Nice 'n' Easy," "I Can't Even Drink It Away," "Big Boss Man," "Golden Slipper Rose," and the excellently titled "I Do My Swingin' at Home," with probably "Memphis and Arkansas Bridge" next, and the two early '60s singles he added at the end, "Lonely Weekends" and "Who Will the Next Fool Be," at least as good. But I might like the second disc of that Fully Realized twofer LP I bought (aka either Fast Talkin Slow Walkin Good Lookin Charlie Rich or The Best Years, from 1966 on Smash -- Peter Guralnik's liner notes seem confusingly to contradict the note on the back of the album) even more; I'm kinda blown away by how funky the guy could be.

(Martie also severely underrates the extent to which having "a smaller following of really cool people" as fans can limit artists too, obviously.)

so yall really think reba's soft enough for her sitcom cracks that 1) the dixie chicks don't like the bushes (HOW DARE REBA INSINUATE THIS) and 2) the dixie chicks stick their foot in their mouth are really way harsher totally crossing the line more than the dixie chick's 'reba and her fans are garbage and beneath us'???

I don't think that at all, James. That was sort of my (muddled) point.

Bram Tchaicovsky Strange Man Changed Man (post-Brinsley Schwarz soft Brit country Byrds-jangle powerpop rock pretending to be pub-rock new wave in 1979, just like the Ian Gomm LP I bought but even duller) on now. I think I buy a copy of this album for $1 or less every 15 years or so, and I discover the same thing every time --- namely, that "Girl of My Dreams" (#37 pop in the USA in the late summer of '79, where Gomm's "Hold On" went to #18 a couple months later; "Girl of My Dreams" is better thanks to its "Born to Run" opening and the fact that it's as great a blow-up sex-doll song as any by Roxy Music) is the only non-mushy thing on it. (Okay, "Nobody Knows" churns a little at the beginning in an early Tom Petty kinda way maybe, before it softens up; I dunno, I'll give the LP a couple chances, but I'm really not expecting much.) It's sort of like how every few years I'll order chicken livers in a restaurant and then remember why I haven't ordered them for a few years. Or something.

I like the Rich Smash material the best; I think "Big Boss Man" is a good Billy Sherrill record (BS did good stuff with Jones, too). To my ears, it gives the best-rounded picture of what Rich did. The companion disc to that one, made around the same time and also by Sherrill, I think, is "The Fabulous Charlie Rich," another real good one.

That Trent Willmon record is a great concept album about upward mobility in the class sense, seems like, with a real undercurrent of that desire to make your woman happy while having the real fear underneath it, like she's gonna leave any minute because you don't have enough money, and maybe she's sick of your Ray Wylie Hubbard all the time on the stereo, plus your knuckles, Trent, are a mess from all that tinkering around with that piece of shit truck in the driveway. Perhaps the emblematic line is the one that goes "You can't blame a country boy for tryin'/And I did the best I could." Trent seems to realize his hard-shell redneck tendencies and wants to pull back, like when he realizes he's looking right through his woman (seen that look myself from good ol' boys down here, and probably guilty of giving it myself from time to time), and then he gets her coffee the Way She Likes It, probably with those little individual Kreamers you get at the convenience store (bait is available too, and WD-40 for that fucking bolt that's stuck on that goddam truck), the ones that have International Flavors, Irish Setter Mist. "Baby, is the Irish Cream your favorite, or how 'bout this Amaretto Splash...? More sugar...?" But he maybe gets the coffee thrown in his face, that'll wipe that thousand-yard stare off your face. And of course, "Surprise" is excellent, and this is where his sensitivity and receptivity to new modes of coffee enhancement and perhaps male enhancement (when is a country star gonna make one of those commercials, I mean Trace Adkins in a bar and so drunk he forgets to tuck his johnson back in, so everyone is transfixed by his enhancement), and certainly to some specific wishes on the part of his partner, really pay off--he ends up in a high-rise with a jacuzzi, and Ray Wylie sure sounds good there too. "Baby, lemme play one for ya that's for the con-ess-yours, 'Choctaw Bingo.' Ever watch the History Channel...?" Like Tony Soprano, a little afraid of Kulture but when it comes attached to a pretty ass or face, open as all hell. In short, one savvy guy who plays off the competent-plus that is self-effacing, can change a tire quick or tighten up that squealing belt (hey, this spray I got here will get that squeal out, baby, until we can git this ol' belt replaced, let me take you down to Auto Zone, yeah, this ol' truck's a little dirty but it runs real well...you like Willie, ever *really listened to* 'Red-Headed Stranger'?"

And in "Good Horses to Ride" he learns from the best bullshitter, Tut, still dreams of "Conquistador Gold" (like Tony Soprano in the episode where he dreams he's a Roman emperor...hey, ever watch the History Channel?), and gets off an eloquent line about "concrete and steel they spread like the plague/Consuming the rivers,, the mountains and the plains." In short, a great line of bullshit and one designed to help him get that classy, elusive woman he's always wanted, a real evolutionary step or two up in this hat-act thing. And I think the music's pretty great, really cool choruses that manage to play off the rockin' verses, the usual excellent guitar...good album, and the only one I can't stand is "Night in the Ground," yet another live-like-you're-dying song, pretty lame for what seems to be an imaginative guy who can see Comanches "in them breaks to the south." But, an interesting contrast to what Toby wants to do, wall 'em up and play with 'em? Women just want to be kept at home, eh, guys? Trent knows better.

xp (Actually, Bram's 2nd best track is probably his "I'm a Believer" cover. Which may or may not be better than Smashmouth's, who knows.)

But mainly his album just reminds me once again that British people can't sing (though pub-rock did seem to produce a whole bunch of exceptions, and in 1979 they were all over the place).

"Turn on the Light/We gonna wreck the place tonight"--man this Bram T. track would totally put a foot in your ass (it's the British way) and spill some blood on the dancefloor if the Count Bishops or even Eddie & the Hot Rods or Ducks Deluxe or the Motors was doing it, but Tchaicovsky's band (who had some connection to the Motors, I think, but I'm not exactly sure what) are just way too polite about the thing. They also don't have the prettiness of, say, the Records (whose "Starry Eyes," bizarrely, did not go Top 40 in the US)

(Sorry about the tangent folks, but it is country, sort of.)

haha: james b. intentionally seeing only one side of dixie chick comment so he can work up indignant anger on the part of good-ol-salt-of-the-earth supermultimillionaire reba

i already said it was a dumb comment, because mm left herself wide open for that interpretation. but there's no 'reba's garbage' there at all unless you're desperate to see that. if anything it's misguided rockism. (and no i don't think it started with the bush family reunion thing, that was just kind of a lame sitcom line and not malicious at all and I don't think they were reacting to it.)

You don't have to stretch too far to see "Reba's fans are garbage" in there, Haiku; in fact, you have to stretch pretty far not to see it. I could give a flying fuck for Reba myself; when was her last good album, Whoever's in New England 20 year ago? Or For My Broken Heart in 1991, maybe? Never heard it, but that one had a couple good singles I guess. Either way, it's been a while; can't remember the last thing she did I cared about). But most of her fans aren't supermultimillionaires, I don't think. And I bet most of them had no reason to hate the Chicks, until now.

but but but that's not what she meant...haha now i'm Capn-Save-A-Chick!

What did she mean, Haiku? And I'm not saying being hated doesn't have benefits (which might be the point, in which case more power to Martie.) I have no problem with the Chicks pissing people off. If anything, they don't do it enough. I'm just saying that acting like jerks toward fans might not be the canniest career move.

My interpretation is that it's kind of like if Chris Martin said "I don't want Coldplay to be in the same five-disc changer as Oasis and Robbie Williams, I want fans that get us" or some nonsense like that.

Although, y'know, fuck it, if she meant "fans of Toby Keith and Reba McIntyre are stupid assholes who don't understand how awesome we are because they are hayseed buttmunchers," then I can't think of another American musical group that would have more of a reason to feel that way based on recent history.

I think Martie was trying to say two things: (1) If we want to please the bulk of Reba and Toby fans, this will prevent us from doing a lot of stuff that we want to do [this is obviously true], (2) Reba's and Toby's fans aren't as cool as our fans [this isn't as obviously true]. Those really are two different points, and she shouldn't have run them together. I kind of don't think she meant to say she doesn't want to associate with Reba or Toby fans, but I can see how people could read her that way.

I think she was saying 'Reba's and Toby's casual fans [remember these are people who only have three CDs in their five-disc changer] aren't as cool as our most intense and therefore ideal fans'. But I have said way too much about this and watch, they'll start playing "I HATE SOUTHERN WORKING CLASS LOSERS" in concert. I'll be so embarrassed.

In other news, Chip Taylor's two-disc album, Unglorious Hallelujah / Red Red Rose is still awesome.

x-post, sorta. I listened to the Rodney Atkins last night, and found it very enjoyable, (esp. Cleaning My Gun) if not amazing. Agree that Trace's "Swing Batter" track is good--stuck in my head the past few weeks.

I've heard a song by Josh Gracin (early American Idol finalist working with Rascal Flatts) a few times now--"My Favorite State of Mind" I think its called. I was kinda suprised at how much I liked it considering what a wet bag of salt he was on the TV show. Anyone with an opinion?

I saw this t-shirt while wandering aimlessly on the interweb yesterday:

http://www.standarddeluxe.com/store_c.php?pageNum_s_c_simg=0&portid=158

My first instinct was to be anoyed by it: I take it to mean that country music is a thing of the past. It's a dodgy critical trick: don't get involved in an argument about whether a genre's currently good or bad, try to claim it's dead, imply that what's using the name at the moment's a fraud. (Philip Larkin pulled the same trick with regard to modern jazz, btw.)

Possibly I'm displaying the heightened sensitivity of the recent convert.

In other news, I am hatching a plan to visit Nashville, finally. I very much hope this plan comes off.

Tim, let me know if you make it down to Nashville (or over, or up...).

I am in the middle of doing my Trent Willmon opus; the post on TW above was an attempt to get loosened up to do it. Musically, I think Trent's record is pretty bleh; but any record that has, what, two or three songs about "changeable" women, two songs that mention "bobbers," and two in a row that extol the virtues of skinnydipping...conceptual: he's, in my estimation, *easy with unease*. I find his vocals corny and overly professional, but I still think this is one fascinating and kind of important country record.

and it's not country, but I think Andy Fairweather Low's new one, "Sweet Soulful Music," is superb; and yeah, Brits can't sing, but can we make an exception for the Welsh? (and there is a sort of Nashville connection with Low; some of his '70s records were partially done here, and he used many great Nashville session guys on some of them.)

it's not pubrock, it's more focused, seems to me; but damned if I don't halfway think the new one is even better than his stuff from thirty years ago, he sings better. he's 58 years old today.

Andy's La Booga Rooga was one of my post-played of the 70s, and he had a lot of other goodies too (yeah, all the way back to the Amen Corner, when they were duking it out with Small Faces and Peter Frampton And The Herd, for many a young bird's heart and pence). Brits can't sing (with xxhuxx-preseved italics in the original) was a stage whisper of Mr.Frith's, in one of his "Letter From Britain" Creem columns, I think. I forget what he was listening to.It might even have been when he was grossed out by cheeky Bea'uhls singles, re-released in mid-Punk: "the *chirpiest* group ever!" He's not just talking notes, of course. But I think it's truer of Brit (and American and other) males than females, and yes, let's not tar the Queen's Welsh-Scots-Irish captives(except for Bono etc.) with the same brush. Speaking of healthy Irish/Irish(and one German)-American female lungs: http://www.uweekly.com/story.php?iidart=3474

ah, a stage whisper.

my mother died this morning. I was there when she died, along with my sister and my father. She was bedridden the last week, and stopped eating and drinking last Thursday. Funeral Friday. She was 71, born near Savannah, grew up there and in Statesboro, Ga., and in and around Augusta/N. Augusta/Aiken, S.C. Lived in Tennessee since about '55.

These things, you think you're ready for them, but you never are, and as I sit down for the first time today and think, it's hitting me.

I'm so sorry, Edd. It's good that you were all there for her.

Battle of the debut singles about listening to other artists:
"Tim McGraw" by Taylor Swift vs. "Let's Make Love and Listen Death From Above" by CSS a/k/a Cansei de Ser Sexy; I pick the latter (which more or more seems like it could wind up in my year-end singles top ten even though I was very iffy about their album in a review I wrote for Spin, and which also has nothing to do with c&w music), but feel free to try to convince me otherwise. The Taylor Swift song is admittedly pretty good (also better than anything Tim's done this year, just like the CSS song is better than anything DFA have done, ever. I didn't notice the middle part where they try to *sound* like DFA til I watched the highly adorable video on youtube, during which part they also dress up like DFA elephants.)

Finally watched Toby's "A Little Too Late" video on cmt.com loaded (where I am getting really sick of the Prilosec commercial about the Big N Rich groupies or BnR deadheads or whatever they are), and I found it quite successful. Only part that strikes me as remotely questionable is the shot where it looks like he misses hitting this wife with the shovel and digs it in the cement bag instead; the rest is self-deprecating enough and just convinces me that people are too frigging senstive these days, even if it reiterates that Toby might have some women issues almost as conflicted as, say, the ones Dennis Leary exhibits on Rescue Me. Also: Jeez, what a great song.

Edd: sympathy and best wishes.

Don: let's not tar the Queen's Welsh-Scots-Irish captives: heh, this'll be British history as learned from "Braveheart", I'm assuming. I was much happier when you were writing off all the Britishes, it seems a bit harsh just singling out the Englishes. (Seems to me the English have as many honourable exceptions as the Scots at least: I'll take the English Dusty Springfield over the Scottish Bobby Gillespie if you know what I mean.)

Anthony: I was all ready to order that CD until your final paragraph! Perhaps I should learn to download stuff, like everybody else.

sorry for your loss edd.

thanks, you guys. just got back from the funeral home. she had a lot of friends, and I saw some old, old Clarksville folk I hadn't seen in decades. got a phone number from a recently divorced old flame who called me "amazingly well-preserved, for a former drunk," and she's half-right...sense of humor well-preserved too, baby...

filed my trent willmon scene piece. during all this, working has been my salvation. never missed a deadline yet and figured I'd keep that up; my mother would've wanted it that way, a scrupulous person. doing a shortie on wanda jackson's upcoming nashville show w/ amy lavere--talked to wanda on the phone! and she was sexy as hell even at 70, what a burr and a purr in her voice, and she said something to me about how male writers typecast women but never do the same for "some hairy-legged boy" that floored me. now to listen to her (most likely awful_ "I Remember Elvis" CD, which has a pic of the young, sexy(er) Wanda on the cover...

I think that's the right word--I am a bit fried, finally had to calm down with a valium. I ran 5 miles in the dusk last night, just to get back to semi-normal. good to be alive, all that.

anyway, I think Trent's record--having now listened to it maybe 4 times all the way thru, and in my usual method, taking notes on it twice, once for music, once for lyrics--is uneven. but "surprise" seems like a minor masterpiece, and for once his telegraphing the lyrics feels like the right thing to do instead of just cheesy as on the song about "good horses to ride," which I find insufferable. as I do the otherwise quite pleasantly performed "ropin' pen." but his songs about women and their changeable ways are really good...and as I might've said above, this is a good record about skinny-dippin' and fuckin', I guess, but I wish he'd come out and say it. I don't hear much too exciting in the music itself, and the singing can be overripe. but he's onto something here and god only knows, he could turn out to be a menace or even better, a good novelty-song artist. so I rate the record a solid B, but "surprise" gets an A+.

Take care, Edd.