Friday Fun: Bocephus/Palin ’08
Country royalty has weighed in on the presidential race — Hank Williams Jr. (known to the kids as the “Are You Ready for Some Football” guy) released a song earlier this week praising the virtues of the current Republican ticket. It’s stuck with a yawner of a title (“The McCain/Palin Tradition”), and the lyrics are laughable as ideology (read ‘em below the break), but I submit to you that this song is a masterful adaptation of fleeting campaign talking points into the strict conventions of country music. And Ol’ Bocephus truly gives it his all, pulling off some rap-worthy verbal contortions to get the lines to rhyme and the syllables to fit.
I grant that it’s no “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” the ditty that propelled my distant (and doomed) ancestor into the White House, but it IS a real good country tune — some rock-ish studio flourishes here and there, but its heart is a solid swinging beat and a spare root/fifth bassline (I played along a couple of times), layered over with good fiddle and steel guitar parts and of course Hank Jr. Not exactly his daddy, and it sure ain’t his boy Hank III (whom you gotta go see if you haven’t — imagine country music played by terrific musicians with a fiendish punk-rock intensity), but Bocephus can sleep well, knowing he has done his political convictions proud.
[Right after I finished this, I realized that "The McCain Palin Tradition" is a remake of a real tune -- so of course the music's well developed. And I'll tell ya, it makes the whole thing even MORE impressive, since how many of us have the verbal agility required to turn a song about drinkin' partyin' and smokin' dope into a REPUBLICAN campaign song?]
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