drugs don't let friends do

...And Skag was a scientist, and he found a way to reproduce himself in chicken soup. He would shave living cells from the palm of his right hand, mix them with the soup, and expose the soup to cosmic rays. The cells turned into babies which looked exactly like Delmore Skag.

Pretty soon, Delmore was having several babies a day, and inviting his neighbors to share his pride and happiness. He had mass baptisms of as many as a hundred babies at a time. He became famous as a family man.

And so on.

-->Skag hoped to force his country into making laws against excessively large families, but the legislatures and the courts declined to meet the problem head-on. They passed stern laws instead against the possession by unmarried persons of chicken soup.

And so on.

The illustrations for this book were murky photographs of several white women giving blow jobs to the same black man, who, for some reason, wore a Mexican sombrero.

--From Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut

The reason Mick Anselmo could never let someone like me on his flagship shithouse, K102, is the same reason that single people couldn't have chicken soup in Kilgore Trout's story about Delmore Skag: the laws against possession were based on fear, and that breeds incongruity. Two things would happen if I were on K102: 1) actual Country music would get played from time to time, and 2) I'd take the filthiest, most off-color songs, overdub the bleeps, and slap them on the air at the most inappropriate times of day, right as grandma was about to read her People with her morning coffee, just before her stories came on the television.

As such, you get what Trout had instead, the musical equivalent of a black man in a sombrero getting fellated by several white women, and Anselmo calling it "country."

I like Hank III more than I like Shooter Jennings. I can't put my finger on it, but I've not only seen, I've also observed them both, and Hank just has a leaner, more desperate, slant to what he's doing. Both are derivative (Jesus, how could they not be?), but Hank has more of an edge; at the end of a Shooter show, I find myself wondering who the lazy stoner is.

I like that this 2-disc set was put out by Bruc records. He used to record for Curb Records in Nashville, the same fat shit heels who brought you Tim McGraw. I can't tell you what Bruc is; I can't tell you if it's just a play on words and he's still on Curb. But, if he's not, this is certainly a clever way to tell a major label to shove their whole program up their asses.

I like that most of this album couldn't be played on K102 by whole-milk and Wonder Bread Travis Moon and his army of robots, without heavy use of Cool Edit and the bleep.

I like that every other song is about drug abuse.

How much of this shit is manufactured? I don't know. Like I said, it's just a feeling, but the overly slim, overly tattooed, rat-tail wearing sumbitch who bombs his way into town two or three times a year, never leaves me doubting that he's got some real fucking problems, despite the name and the money.

I don't know, maybe I'm buying a load of goods...maybe I'M the legislator passing the laws against possession of chicken soup, thinking I'm protecting somebody or doing some good. But, at the end of the day, Hank III's whole act depends on whether you buy "it."

One thing that is very thumbs up about the whole product is that he worked it all out with the assistance of Joe Buck, who really IS talented and really IS shithouse rat crazy. And the absolute shiniest part of this penny is without a doubt the fiddle parts supplied by Donnie Herron. The fourth time through on this disc, I concentrated on the fiddle. The answer to the question, "Whatever happend to BR5-49?" is all too readily apparent. If you're aspiring to hillbilly violin mastery, THIS is how it's done, pay attention.