So I’m driving back from a nice family Easter out at my Mom’s place, minding my own business, and lo and behold, on the radio comes a new (? new to me) Toby Keith song. I can’t believe that I’m still able to be flabbergasted by this guy, but he manages to do it by following up his pseudo-patriotic claptrap with a song celebrating, I still can’t believe it, the DEATH PENALTY. With a little frontier justice thrown in for good measure.
Toby Keith – Beer For My Horses
Well a man come on the 6 o’clock news
Said somebody’s been shot, somebody’s been abused
Somebody blew up a building
Somebody stole a car
Somebody got away
Somebody didn’t get too far yeah
They didn’t get too far
Grandpappy told my pappy, back in my day, son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys
Hang them high in the street for all the people to see that
(Chorus)
Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we’ll sing a victory tune
We’ll all meet back at the local saloon
We’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces
Singing whiskey for my men, beer for my horses
We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
We’ve got too much corruption, too much crime in the streets
It’s time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send ’em all to their maker and he’ll settle ’em down
You can bet he’ll set ’em down
————-
Memo to Toby: What’s the next subject for Mr. Songwriter? Tax cuts for the wealthy? Iraqi oil? Cutting down the rain forest? I await your next artistic endeavor with slack-jawed interest.
Oh and I almost forgot. Remember when you said getting booted off that Fourth of July special last year was “censorship”? Sort of puts the whole Tim Robbins/Susan Sarandon thing in perspective, doesn’t it?
Now, I have to ask. What radio station are you listening to in Madison that is playing that song? Since SD has only one independent radio statio (everything else is owned by Clear Channel) I remember the Madison ones with great fondness. They actually still played music and they had more than a 12 song playlist. I often wish we had something like 92.1 here.
Oh, and while we’re talking music that makes you cringe, my boyfriend, Wade, was recently in Fort Worth, TX for a conference and at a local restaurant they actually played a whole series of country songs with patriotic Bush quotes spliced in like they usually do for love songs for movies.
I think Toby Keith’s next song should be “Don’t Go In The Out Hole”. What a pussy.
Maybe TK is the most subversive of us all. Cause to me, in those perfectly rhyming lyrics of his, those “bad guys” sound suspiciously like our own US Government.
Maybe it’s really a call to revolution.
92.1 is owned by Clear Channel, and has recently changed format.
Sad news about 92.1. I liked them. Then again that was back in my college days 4 years ago. I’m pretty sure they were not Clear Channel back then but I could be wrong. Are there any independents left?
Ever hear of freedom of speech?!?
I love this song. I live in a neighborhood that used to be beautiful and safe. Now it is overrun with drug dealing dirtbags. It’s like a stinking getto here and I would love to hang half of them from the nearest tree. I’ve been here 24 years and it’s very sad to see what has happened to my hometown. I think the police are too afraid of the backlash they’d receive if they did anything about it, so they tiptoe around these assholes. Meanwhile, these assholes run the neighborhood.