Big 'N Imus

All too often, between 6 and 9 a.m., I'm awake and watching "Imus In The Morning" on MSNBC. Don't ask me why, but there I am, and there it is. Don Imus is a crotchety old sumbitch, but he's entertaining and has good taste in music. He has lots of cool roots acts performing live on his show, and I've caught everybody from Dwight Yoakum (with Kevin Smith on bass... freaking sweet) to the Blind Boys Of Alabama on there. This morning, he had my boys Big 'N Rich enlightening the airwaves. I know I've spent way too much energy focusing on this latest Nashville Machine monstrosity, but thus far they've been the pinnacle of goofy Nashville pop, making Garth Brooks sound like Lefty Frizell. But, I was up, and there they were. I took in the whole shebang.

Where do I start? First, I was only about 51% as appalled as I had planned to be. I gave it a chance. As high-tech Nashville-slick as their records are, who knows if they're actually talented or not? I know their stuff usually makes me make a face like I just smelled something putrid, but the only way to know for sure is to hear somebody live, unfiltered, with no big rock 'roll show, at 8:00 a.m. on a weekday morning.

The impression I got was this: Big 'N Rich is 1.5 semi-talented guys, with all the resources and great songwriters and producers and publicity money can buy, backed by a tight, hip young funk-rock band. If this act wanted to totally realize itself, it would ditch the cowboy hats and country charts, get co-produced by Kid Rock and Dr. Dre, and go totally honky hip-pop. In all truth, when the dudes weren't singing, I found myself toe-tapping to them funky grooves and stuff.

Obviously, it was nowhere remotely near the universe of country music, except that they had one cowboy hat, one 1979 Burt Reynolds porn-'stache, and a fiddle player. They did a rock-anthem-y Vietnam vet song, which would have been sorta cool..... if the Allman Brothers did it (apparently Big 'N Rich's publicist found out that 'Nam vets are a huge part of their demographic, so now the Vietnam vets are their big cause du jour). Then they did that annoying "Coming To Your Citaaaay" song, and another tune that was decent funky-pop until they started hollering "Jalapeno!!!! Whooooo!!!" What??? Why take something that was almost borderline acceptable and then Wal-Mart it up with a bunch of high school cheerleader dance-floor booty chants??

I honest-to-God listened to this from a purely musical standpoint. I put aside all my biases about what they do and what acts like them have done to country music and its truest fans, and tried to look at the act for what it is. And what it is is a tight white-boy funky-pop act, that employs some of the best pop-music producers and songwriters in the world (not Big or Rich themselves, but high-demand Nashville and L.A. guys), and is backed by insane amounts of money. As pop music, it's about a C+. As country music, it's a Z-. The problem isn't what they do, it's how they sell it -- they exploit the loyalty of generations-old country music fans to get as rich and famous as possible.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're on the "three-record plan" -- when somewhat respectable artists do about three crappy pop-country records, get rich & famous, and then retire wealthy or go back to doing the kind of music they always wanted to do, in relative obscurity. We can only hope.

Truthfully, they went from #1 to #1B (Kenny Chesney is still head honcho #1) on my "Musical Satanist" list. Jo Dee Massina is a pretty steady #2, and Toby Keith went to #3 after a couple of relatively acceptable country songs in the last year or two.

Anyway, I still watch Imus. He does have good musical taste 99% of the time. He's just uninformed about the tons of other great, true-roots-but-with-mass-appeal country music that's out there. Speaking of, after absorbing Big 'N Rich on Imus, I was lucky enough to flip to the local Fox 7 News morning show and catch Two Tons Of Steel doing the very same thing. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about. Ahh, I love the smell of ironic artistic juxtaposition in the morning.

Roger