The Band Played On

The Common Man got up early this morning, hoping to get a jump on the day. As he sat checking email, he heard that The Dixie Chicks won five Grammys last night. The Common Man was too busy watching Battlestar Galactica (easily the best and most culturally relevant show on TV today) to see it live. And anyway, The Common Man doesn't usually watch awards shows. They are all very similar to one another and celebrate an ostentacious display of wealth, fashion, and jewelry that The Common Man finds distasteful, mostly because he cannot afford such things. Besides, he can just read the results the next day. Or the Common Man usually lets The Uncommon Wife watch them and report back.

Anyway, The Common Man is happy for The Dixie Chicks, whose 2003 comments at a London concert were blown wildly out of proportion by an hyper-sensitive minority of neo-con Country music fans and the corporate radio syndicates who can't afford not to cater to them. So, even Country music fans in L.A. and Maine were denied the opportunity to hear from the Chicks for four years because 1,000 idiots in Texas burned their CDs. Meanwhile, Toby Keith will put a boot in your ass (it's the American way!). I heard that somewhere.

And the Dixie Chicks' new album is pretty damn good. So good, in fact, that it became the only album The Common Man bought for himself in the last 3 years (the last was probably James Taylor's October Road (good, mellow wine-drinking music). Of course, you still won't hear any of the songs on Country radio, so The Common Man urges you to buy the disc or to legally download the tunes from your favorite on-line music emporium. Other artists who have fallen off the pop-culture map that are highly endorsed by The Common Man include John Hiatt, Guster, Lyle Lovett, and Chantal Kraviazuk. Any other suggestions?