For several months after Jack moved back to town after y2k, he had a night job as a hotel clerk at a Travelodge where modern country music was constantly piped in and couldn’t be turned off. I recently found some papers that came from that time and found something he had written during his shift. I’m copying it exactly as I found it scribbled:
In the last 45 years baby boomers have been the driving force behind music sales. They brought us bop, then rock and roll, R&B, the Beatles, folk, folk rock, acid rock, and outlaw country. Then they began to drop the ball and the younger crowd began to take over– ended up with endless rap, and Country fell to wailing love ballads.
Baby boomers tuned out in a tragic replay of the 70’s, but this time they did it in the musical manifestation: they turned down their hearing aids.
The result has been the drivel incessant caterwauling that dominates the airways today– effeminate men and hairy-chested women proclaiming endless love. No more cheating, getting drunk, hopping trains, going to prison, missing hound dogs, dying in car wrecks, remembering mama. No more low sentiments and lower experiences. All whining through orthodontics.
If we don’t want to spend our golden years listening to this trash we’ve got to get back into the driver’s seat. We’ve got to get some music baby boomers can identify with. Pull those teeth out of the water glass and tune back in.
So I wrote this song- seed corn for the next wave in C&W. I call it “Bypass on the Great Divide.” Cock your head so you can see through those bifocals and hum along:
Westbound on the interstate
Out on the Great Divide
Our Winnie overheated
So we pulled off to the side.
The sagebrush and the redrock
invoked our reverie
While the engine cooled I thought about
My bypass surgery.
Refrain:
You can have your diabetes
and your special brand of “C”
But when heat-waves blur the mesas
I’ll take bypass surgery.
We’ll be turning off at Flagstaff
for the fairways to the south:
My third ex-wife will meet us
with my grandkids and her mouth
Those two eggs up on whisky toast
and home fries on the side
she always made for breakfast
were my downfall and her pride.
You can have your diabetes
and your special brand of “C”
But when heat-waves blur the mesas
I’ll take bypass surgery.
So we’ll take the brats along with us
and camp somewhere below
the International Boundary
buying meds in Mexico.
Cause it’s not the margaritas
nor the senoritas sweet
It’s the discount pharmaceuticals
that tug these flattened feet.
Now the engine’s finished cooling
and the wheels begin to roll
and there ain’t no bloody stool
in the RV commode bowl.
You can have your diabetes
and your special brand of “C”
But when heat-waves blur the mesas
I’ll take bypass surgery.
Now. Let’s get busy and hear some songs about ’49 Fords, Joe Stalin, moon disks and fender skirts, the Korean War, the Berlin Crisis. 6 volt car batteries and flathed V-8s. Skirts with hoops. Saddle loafers. Cushman eagles. Red Ryder BB guns. Let’s argue whether Roy Rogers or Gene Autry was the king of the cowboys. Scandalize the grand kids with Roy and Dale, travelling salesmen, and Johnny Fuckerfaster jokes.
So Far From Heaven 