Dixie Chicks, "Long Time Gone"

I guess I have the same problem with coming from somewhere as I do with wishing I came from anywhere else in the world--ohlordplease just not the us of fucking a. I don't know think I'll ever be completely at ease with anyone's government, but I've found something to love about every culture I've been able to learn about extensively. You watch CNN or you read indymedia.com news and you get your knees jerking and you say "GOD! I HATE this country!" but it doesn't even occur to you that saying 'i hate america' equates with 'i hate american culture' in the same way the ol' ILM trope dictates that he who hates a song by a black person is a straight up racist, quite obviously. There might be generations of sociohereditary misconceptions at work, but it's still an awful exaggeration. If you say you hate American culture and everything about it, you're saying you hate fucking Howlin' Wolf. You're hating on the Eagles Greatest Hits and "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and "Don't Stop Believin'" and all this shit. It reminds me of this website I visited lately, it was a Che Gueverra fansite for wannabe internet revolutionaries, and it had its own MARXIST "ANTI-AMERICAN" RADIO INTERNET STATION(it really did say it was an anti-american radiostation--what does that prove?), and what's on the playlist?: Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, NOFX and one or two bands from misc. countries throughout the globe. Screw the hataz, man. This country's churned out a lotta good shit. (we've got rage, dude! fuck the machine, what more could you want?)

So the Dixie Chicks get themselves in the same mess. They say "We're ashamed GW is from Texas," and the people hear "Fuck Texas, all those other non-Dixie Chick motherfuckers is stupid." And I wonder, "What was in the subtext of their saying this?" It's something I would say if I were them, but the objectivity I'm granted by living half-a-country away in bloody fucking Indiana allows me to analyze the statement a little closer. "Long Time Gone", in a way, exemplifies the sentiment in their nasty little quote-able. They're saying "I certainly did get the hell out of there", and that's something someone from a nowhere town in the midwest can relate to (they even say the word 'indiana' in the song.. round here, when someone talks about the place you from, you holler, WOO!). But the elation of having got out is only the subplot. There's a reverence to the concept of 'home' -- in fact they named the album after it -- that carries the mood of the song. This song feels like home, and there's little about it I can't relate to. It has a unique enough swing to it ("i said its been a LONG TIME LONG TIME LONG TIME goooooone"), and more than enough soul. One of the things I love about the Chicks is the group dynamic; singer or rhythm section, it's just three girls all of whom were meant to be stars, and you can feel the presence of each on this song. The obvious climax is the bit where she belts it out mostwise, "I THANK I THANK I THANK I THANK", which seems quite obviously her show, but the dynamics of the guitar/fiddle/banjo suggest a group effort, and by this point, that's exactly what it's going to take to get me to sing along with the praises of rural America.

God bless those of us who've resisted the urge to turn into de facto communists like I have. Y'all give me a little pride.