I recently went on a long car trip. My car is from 1997 and has neither CD nor tape playing capabilities. It also gets terrible radio reception. This means that I usually only have one option for radio stations while driving through rural areas. These stations, of course, play country music.

Country music means a lot of things to a lot of people. To some people it means pedal steel and fiddles. To others, it means twang. To me, it means country pride. What is country pride? People with country pride were raised poor and rural with old-fashioned values. They are proud of this fact. I think this is terrible. Achewood said it best, “Oh Lord but we’ve got country pride simply because we were able to escape starvation in the richest nation in the history of the world.”

There’s a certain fondness always placed on the past. Cracker Barrel had an advertising slogan: “If the world has a front porch like we did back then.” First of all, that isn’t even a sentence. Second off, what the hell does that mean? It means that things were better in the past without saying why or how. It is just understood. That is at the core of country pride. Things used to be better when everything was simpler. The world was smaller and we had less money, but we were happier. This past is something to be proud of.

Why would you be proud of being poor? Being poor is the easiest thing in the world! I don’t mean it is easy to live a good life if you are poor or even to live a life at all. I mean that it is easy to become poor. More people are doing it every day in America. You shouldn’t be ashamed of being poor, but it is nothing to be proud of, either. If you are proud of it, it means that you think there is something noble to being poor. That it makes you a better person. And that if your kids are living a better life than you, they are weak and ultimately worse off. Well, guess what? [Kids now are likely going to be poorer than their parents](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/12/middle-class-young- people-future-worse-parents) so I guess these kids will be more noble and thus better off. Great!

I think that we, as a country, should be trying to reduce the number of poor people, and that means we stop glamorizing a poor childhood. Look at this:

This music video is pretty terrible. What does the American Southwest have to do with anything? I’ll assume the video was filmed in Arizona to celebrate the deportation of brown Americans. That’s something to be proud of.

The lyrics to this song really show what country pride is all about. The singer’s father says, “We were cane switch raised and dirt floor poor. ‘Course, that was back before the war.” The chorus goes on to say, “That’s something to be proud of.” So, you were hit with a switch and you couldn’t even afford a floor. But this was during the depression, right? No. The verse mentions his father flying an F-15. F-15s didn’t enter service until 1976. Since the Vietnam War ended in 1975, either his father doesn’t know what kind of plane he was flying or the war they refer to is the Gulf War. Anyways, based on the singer’s age, I believe they are talking about fighting in Vietnam so these people are proud of living in the dirt during the 1960s. I guess the thing they are proud of is not being dead?

I really don’t want to disparage poor people here, that is not my goal. My goal is to separate the pride in overcoming obstacles from the pride in having obstacles. Nowhere in this song is there any mention of real success that people are proud of. I can see being proud of overcoming all of the difficulties poor people face. I don’t think that is what is happening here. I think the singer is proud of being poor in the first place. The second chorus states, “Just be thankful that you’re working, if you’re doing what you’re able and putting food there on the table.” Having a job and food should be basic rights that every American can expect. Right? Or should people have to struggle to not starve? I don’t think there is anything noble in that struggle and that we should be ashamed of ourselves as a country that we have hungry people.

People should be able to expect more. I can’t imagine having to put all my energies towards getting enough food. I have a job, but I don’t like it very much. I’m glad that I have a job, but I’m mostly frustrated that it is difficult to find a new one. Am I spoiled? Am I an ungrateful little shit? I don’t think so (obviously). I think it is reasonable to expect more out of life than working at a shitty job to barely make enough money not to starve. Everyone should have more than that. People should have reasonably fulfilling jobs and make enough money to be able to afford food, housing, and health care plus a little more. Anything less than that is not something we, as a country, can be proud of.

So we have two options. We can follow the Dead Kennedys’ advice, or we can stop it with the country pride and start helping poor people. Because that is, ultimately, what country pride amounts to. Being proud that you didn’t starve even though nobody helped you.

-PTD

Welcome to Sartorial Sursday here on on Another Flavor! Satorial Sursday is the day we discuss the appearance of a person in a music video.

Rob Zombie is one of the most visually attuned musical artists around. (Is he still around? I think I remember reading that he died in a freak bungee jumping/blood transfusion accident.) I read an interview with him once (before his untimely demise) where he said he would buy albums entirely based on their covers. Maybe you can judge an album by its cover. Shouldn’t you be able to, though? The artist is involved in creating the album cover, so I think it should be representative of its contents. Same with books. The cover is a great way to judge! I think we all have a good idea what this book will be like:

Dragula was Rob Zombie’s first hit as a solo artist. On his own, he had total control over the look of his video and how he appeared in it. Here’s the video he made:

This video is awesome. Everything looks fake and ridiculous and I love it. The picture we will be looking at is this:

Rob Zombie has dreads, is wearing a huge amount of make-up, has a crazy beard, and is driving a ridiculous car (the Dragula).

I guess I just love [talking about people with dreads](/posts/satorial-surday- whats-up-by-4-non/). Once again I don’t have much to say about them except that it was the ’90s. I don’t believe that Rob Zombie was from Jamaica, but I haven’t done any research so he very well could be. Let’s go ahead and say he managed to crawl his way out of Kingston and onto the charts.

Zombie’s make-up is of the category called corpse paint. According to Atom and His Package on his song Me and My Black Metal Friends, corpse paint is a scary name for make-up. He also mentioned that in Norway “there’s nothing to do but kill each other and play guitars in the snow.” I think all of that applies to Rob Zombie. He is trying to look as scary as possible on what is, in essence, a dance song. When it comes to musical genres, image is almost everything. There isn’t a real difference between Cradle of Filth and Yes except Cradle of Filth has a scary name and scary make-up. That is why Cradle of Filth is black metal and Yes are prog rock.

Now, the car. The name “Dragula” is awesome but it implies a drag racer. That is not really what we get here. This is a better view of the car:

It has a skull on the shift lever and its exhaust pipes coming directly out of the engine look like devil horns. These are both awesome. The car itself looks more like a hot rod than a drag racer. It reminds me of what’s-his-face’s car from American Graffiti:

I guess there is a drag race in that movie, but that is definitely a hot rod. Totally boss.

Rob Zombie’s clothing in the video can be better seen in this shot:

For some reason he is dressed in an old-timey coat. Is he wearing breeches? I guess it is hard to tell. Some things we are just not meant to know.

-PTD

Ideally the visuals in a music video complement the song so the video adds something that is not there in the original song. You don’t want to just show visually what is happening in a song, you need to add to it. This can be very difficult with a song that tells a story. Naturally you want to make a little movie that shows the story from the song. But if the whole story is told in the song, what is the video adding?

Biz Markie’s song Just A Friend tells a story about a man, a woman, and her friend. The lyrics are very direct and tell the whole story in plain language. So what can he do in his music video? He discovers that he can use the visuals to create better characterization. Namely, he uses it to make himself look like an idiot. Awesome.

Check it out. Just A Friend by Biz Markie:

The video opens with Markie sitting around talking to his friends. They are making jokes about each other’s mothers.

Then some women come by.

The men are extremely interested in them. One of them says, “Let me touch you!” That is super creepy. Why did these women stop? They didn’t say anything to the men, they just slinked up to them and then slunk away. I guess they are really into street harassment.

Markie tells his friends to forget about those women. He begins to tell them why…

He clearly understands the importance of pointing to indicate the beginning of the story. Pointing is one of the most important things we have in this world and we need to be pointing as much as possible.

At the beginning of the story Markie is just coming off stage.

We see him drenched in sweat to the point where he needs to wring out a towel because it is totally full of sweat. One of the people who performs with him apparently stands inside a giant toilet. This is sweet. Markie is making himself out to be a buffoon.

He meets a woman backstage and is very interested in what she looks like from behind.

Because he has already established that he is not very desirable, we suspect that something might be up. He asks her if she has a man, but she says he is “just a friend”. We can all see where this is going.

Markie does not, however. He sings about how he has a bunch of friends of both genders so it is no big deal.

All of the friends he shows have nerdy names, wear glasses, are in unfashionable clothing, and are not particularly attractive. Clearly he does not have the kind of friends that the woman has.

Now we see Markie falling in love with the woman. He buys her a nice necklace.

They frolic while wearing swimsuits.

Biz Markie’s swimsuit is apparently a shirt with a heart on it and shorts with hearts on them. That is amazing! He is so in love that he dresses like a moron. He is so into her and she just seems amused. Incidentally, when they first met the woman describes his performance using the word amusing. It seems that she does not take him seriously.

She goes away to college and Markie calls her every day.

I can’t say enough how much I love his outfit. He looks so pitiful calling her.

One time he calls and a man answers. Look at him!

There’s no way he can compete. The woman says that is just her friend, but that’s probably how she describes Biz Markie as well.

He goes to visit her at college.

He dresses in his traditional college outfit that seems to consist primarily of a cardigan. We can see that he is out of his element there.

He stands outside her door to build tension. We can sense what will be behind that door.

Also, he hilariously rhymes “dormitory” with “number three”.

He opens the door and we see exactly what we expected:

He says, “Oh snap.”

That is both sad and hilarious.

As a result, he swears off women.

The sign says “He-Man No Women Allowed Club”. She broke his heart.

I think the video makes it much clearer that their relationship was doomed from the start. He was so into her and she was not that into him, and the way they acted in the video makes this clear. I also love how unmercifully Biz Markie makes fun of himself. He doesn’t believe that he deserves a good woman because he is a doofus. I don’t think he is a doofus, though. He made an awesome video!

I also love what he does for the choruses. The chorus is mostly just piano and singing, although drums come in about halfway through. To show this sophisticated instrumentation this is what we see:

His singing is also delightfully off key. It really adds to his ridiculous charm.

When the drums come in he keeps his wig but loses his dignity so he can rock out.

He’s practically like Little Richard there.

This video really warms the cockles of my heart. I like how funny it is and it really makes me like Biz Markie. I feel sorry for him that he is unable to make that woman love him as much as he loves her.

So funny. So sad.

-PTD