If you gotta explain the joke…

• Posted on September 28, 2009
• by Karen Fayeth
• 1 Comment

Then it isn’t funny. Right? Or the saying goes something like that.

For the past couple years here in the Bay Area, we’ve been without a country music station. At all. None. Zero.

So yeah, I’m a fan of country. I’m also a fan of blues, rock, eighties, popular, swing, jazz, mariachi and mambo. It’s all good by me.

I really do like the old country stuff. I’ll admit that. Stuff I grew up on. I tend mostly to listen to the Roadhouse on my Sirius radio. They play only old music, and I love it.

But I also like new stuff. I’ve just haven’t been listened so long, I lost touch a little bit.

Recently I discovered that country music has returned to Bay Area radio, so now, every time I’m in the car, that’s all I listen to.

I’m getting caught up on what’s hot right now.

And I’m perplexed.

Every other freaking song is proclaiming, “I’m from the country! Oh yes I am, let me tell you about dirt roads and June bugs and mama’s apple pie! No, really, I swear to GOD I’m so totally country, you don’t even know!”

It’s making me weary.

All this chest beating, “no, I’m totally serious guys! I’m country” is bull crap.

Example? Current number one country song? “Small Town USA” Oh and “Big Green Tractor” is on that list too. Both proclaiming that they come from the dirt roads and pretty green tractors.

Oh and recently I heard that song “Boondocks,” though I think that one has been out awhile.

But anyhow, to all of this, I say:

Blah, blah, blah all you yahoolios!

Did Willie ever have to let you know he was country? Did Merle feel he had to prove to you he could drive a tractor? Does *anyone* doubt that Dolly came from something real poor and made it big?

No.

Give it a rest, you kids. If you have to say you are from the country, you probably aren’t. Folks tend to just know these things.

I blame Sarah Palin, by the way. All her chest thumping “I’m just a country girl!” while, you know, being governor and wearing $3,000 custom made suits.

If it were just a song here and there, I probably wouldn’t have noticed, but there is a glut of these “where I come from” songs. It is sort of repetitive and honestly, rather boring.

Plus, it’s all faker than a cowboy riding a broomstick pony with plastic spurs on his spotless boots.

Kind of like those “cowboy up” bumper stickers. Read my thoughts on THAT phenomenon in this post.

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