David Allen Coe, RFD

Kind of like Mojo Nixon without an education. Not that Mojo's got the best education, mind you... just to give you an idea. Yeah, it's bad.

Chuck will defend him wholeheartedly. I've heard a lot of his stuff through my roommate, who's a big fan. It'll make sensitive folx squeam, but he can be really great (and really awful, but mostly great).

Worth a listen -- there's no one else like him -- but let's face it, the guy's a grade-A asshole. The racism and misogyny aren't any kind of pose, and they're not even clever most of the time. That said, "Finger Fucking Sally" is some kind of classic.

Start with *Human Emotions* (1978), the album with the "Happy Side" and the "Sui-side," and also the album that ends with him splattering his wife's blood all over the wall then shooting himself. Then work from there; most of the late '70s stuff is great. (Not just for punk-rock value, either; he was a great singer, with a great band. Really rhythmic; better Caribbean stuff than the Bellamys or Jimmy Buffett ever did. The records are very, very catchy.) There are a bunch of really consistent CD compilations, too. I've never heard any of the, um, somewhat (maybe ironically?) KKK-oriented Blowfly-like semi-bootleg collector's only albums since I was in the Army and I didn't really know who he was yet; they're pretty offensive, and I actually have no memory of how good they were. The stuff he recorded with Kid Rock a couple years ago wasn't bad; not sure if it ever came out, tho.

(spoken interjection after a couple of verses and choruses) "I sent this song to a friend telling him that it was the perfect country and western song. He wrote back and said that it wasn't the perfect country and western song because it didn't mention trucks or trains or momma or jail or gittin' drunk. So I wrote another verse and sent it to him and he had to admit that it was now the perfect country and western song:

"Well I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But by the time I got to the station in my pick-up truck
She'd got run over by a damned old train"

from 'She Never Even Called Me By My Name' by David Allen Coe. That first line of the extra verse is magnificent.

Of course, that song was written by the late Steve Goodman.

Yes, I think that is explained in the song, in fact. I think the lyrics are the other way round than I wrote them above, i.e. "Steve Goodman sent me this song" etc. I don't know how I got that mixed up. I've not played it in a while, I expect.

I prefer Daevid Allen, of Gong, David Allen Grear, of JAG, and of course, David Allen, of me.