Big & Rich: Album of the Decade?

I didn't see that thread. Were you supporting Suicide Girls or attacking it? I don't like it. The mag they were launching bombed and they never paid anyone.

Anyway, I wanted to show that I did Big & Rich's record three years ago. The similarity of the imagery in these two songs -- their 'Rollin' and my 'Robocowboys' -- is startling. Both reference cowboys, crowds, men in black. Both collide genres. Both play on the paradox of the lonely cowboy, and counterpoise him with a crowd. Theirs, though, is conformist, merely reinforcing the stereotype of the individualist in a crowd of individualists. Mine deconstructs the stereotype and shows up the paradox. (My tune also beats theirs, although I stole it from Gary Numan.) Here are extracts from the lyrics of both songs:

Ain't gonna shut my mouth
Don’t mind if I stand out in a crowd
Just want to live out loud
I know there's got to be
A few hundred million more like me
Just tryin' to keep it free

Charley Pride was the man in black
Rock 'n' roll used to be about Johnny Cash
Hey, what do you think about that
I'm a crazy son of a bitch
But I know I'm gonna make it big and rich
Yeah, I'm gonna let it rip

Hey, just wanna hear everybody sing (rollin', rollin')
At the top of your lungs till the windows break (rollin', rollin')
Say hey, Cowboy Troy...

Big & Rich, Rollin' (2004)

There's so many insiders on the outside
I think it's beginning to be the inside
And fire regulations have disallowed
Another lonely cowboy
From joining the lonely crowd

There's so many mavericks right off the map
We've redrawn the map to bring them all back
There's so many renegades off the beaten track
They're beating a track to my door
And I'm beating them back with a board

All the men in black
With nowhere left to go
Their darkness comes pre-packed
With a warm familiar glow

Robocowboys, you're dead ringers
Robocowboys, say you're singers
With your Texas Instruments

And breaking the rules has become the new rule
They're teaching it now at business school
They're all wild and crazy and one of a kind
Anarchists to a man
Everybody does it like no-one else can

And irony's a kind of sincerity now
With so many milking a once-holy cow
And alienation's a kind of belonging
A synth isn't cold any more
There's a country new wave banging on the door...

Momus 'Robocowboys' 2001

(and now I just hurt myself laughing at/with 'robocowboys', texas instruments, that's some balls I admit it)

Ha ha. Hey Momus, are you in Liquid Tapedeck, by any chance? If not, you join them! Your posts sound *exactly* like their press releases (except not as funny, but they could probably help you with that).

And now...

Neil Young - Computer Cowboy (1982)

Well, his cattle each have numbers
And they all eat in a line
When he turns the floodlights on each night
Of course the herd looks perfect!
Computer cowboy.

Well, he rides the range ?til midnight
And the wild coyotes yowl
As he trots beneath the floodlights
And of course the rhythm is perfect!
Computer cowboy.

Ride along computer cowboy
To the city just in time
To bring another system down
And leave your alias behind:
Computer syscrusher.

Computer syscrusher.

Crusher. syscrusher.

Syscrusher.

Come a ky ky yippee yi yippee yi ay
Come a ky ky yippee yi ay.
Come a ky ky yippee yi yippee yi ay
Come a ky ky yippee yi ay.

Computer syscrusher.

You're going to quote 'Hi-Tech Redneck' to me next, aren't you?

And Gretchen Wilson can fucking sing.

But they both sing *waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay* better than Fred Schneider.

hasn't jello biafra attempted to sing country songs on some of his CDs? his voice sounds more like fred's than anybody else's ever has.

Fred actually sounded great in one song on a Bosco album a couple years ago, though.

er... no.

Also no (at least for the past 25 years).

er, YEAH.

beside the point. Compared to my favorite albums of the decade that have a specific worldview (Desaparecidos, Good Charlotte, Nellie McKay for instance), Big & Rich aren't coming from a young-person-entering-the-world context. Their anthems allow for a more universal age to voice them. Plus, unlike countless albums I find rewarding (those artists, Travis Morrison, David Banner, Kimya Dawson, etc. etc.), Big & Rich - except for their theme songs - aren't as dependent on a specific persona. I'd like to think a rap group (and I think it would have to be a group) might eventually top Big & Rich for open worldview anthems this decade (hell, maybe if the Black Eyed Peas got their shit further together).

wha? huh?