Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 20, 2023

Should listen to Martina McBride.

What a choice, I’d rather shoot myself than listen to either.

Weird timing that this old strip is republished during the uproar about Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” music video, which was pulled from CMT for being “pro-lynching.”

I don’t know whether to kill myself or go bowling.

Mostly about having affairs…

Country music, you lose your job and spouse, and the dog dies.

Let me see, the copyright on this strip is 1991. Hip-Hop was and is about much more than that, but the year signifies the time of NWA. And anyone who actually saw the lauded film “Straight Outta Compton” and I’m sure most commenters here most likely didn’t, will realize why “Gangsta Rap” went after one group, but no excuse really for the other.

Go to Tennessee and call it that- I dare you!

What is ironic is NWA’s Ice T has made a lot more money playing a cop for 25 years on TV than for recording.

As I walked out on the streets of LaredoAs I walked out on Laredo one day,I spied a poor cowboy, all wrapped in white linenAll wrapped in white linen and cold as the clay.

“I can see by your outfit, that you are a cowboy.”These words he did say as I slowly passed by.“Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story,For I’m shot in the chest, and today I must die.”

“It was once in the saddle I used to go dashing,Once in the saddle I used to go gay.First down to Rosie’s, and then to the card-house,Got shot in the breast, and now here I lay.”

This song cannot be performed in FL, btw!!

Either that, or it’s about abusing police officers and shooting women. I just can’t decipher the lyrics.

No need for lyrics if the music’s good, but it usually isn’t these days

The closer you get to the innercity the further you are from English. It’s a purposeful drift meant to keep outsiders, outside until they can be properly lured in for a little “wilding”.

Country music’s about Mama and trucks and trains and prison and getting drunk.

Peasant music? Have you listened to the insipid lyrics to what passes off as country music today?

Oh, you breaky my achy heart!

With country, you can cry in your beer and a good buddy will come over and pat you on the shoulder.

I used to dislike country music as too whiny and repetitive until I got into round dancing and discovered it’s excellent to dance to if you just pay attention to the tunes and ignore the lyrics.

There’s a recent term, “Nash Vegas,” which describes the so-called authenticity of country music these days.

This comic appeared in those halcyon days between “Rhinestone cowboy” and 9/11 ruining country music forever

The depiction of women in gangsta rap can be pretty horrendous but the music is some of the best hip hop ever. Arms and shoulders above the hip pop of Beyonce, Jay-Z, and their milquetoast ilk. And as a depiction of the African American experience the lyrics of Dr. Dre, Paris, & Tupac ring true.

Stand by for Jimmy Thudpucker.

Country music = white man’s blues.

Here is an interesting and totally true anecdote from my own life:

Back in the late Pleistocene I had completed my freshman year in college, a college that was a ten-hour drive from my hometown. About midway through the school year, during which I lived in the weirdly posh dormitory at my university (it was a converted luxury hotel in a town that had previously been a resort city but now was on the decline), my father took a long-term assignment in Alaska and rented our home to a college fraternity, with the proviso that the bedroom that had been mine during my high-school years and the rest of the basement would be mine when I returned. I had only planned to use it sporadically, though, as I intended to spend most nights at my girlfriend’s.

So I was really looking forward to coming home for the summer. However, at the end of my grueling 10-hour drive I got to my old home and the fratboys would not let me in — they actually physically prevented me from entering my own home.

But hey! No worries! I’d just go to my girlfriend’s, as I had intended to do after I unpacked anyway, have a lovely evening frolicking about with her, and start to deal with this problem the next day.

So I got to my girlfriend’s, about two miles away, came to the door, and she opened it but would not unlock the screen. I said, “What’s wrong,” and she told me that she’d gotten herself a new boyfriend and I needed to go away. We talked on the phone EVERY DAY, including the night before, and she had never let on.

Well, this was too much. I had thought we’d be getting married eventually, but now I was homeless, virtually penniless and with no place to sleep except in the back seat of my Pontiac. I was so despondent that I actually drove to Great Falls Park, set on top of one of the cliffs south of the falls overlooking the rocks, and began to push myself to oblivion.

But then I thought, no, I think I’d rather go bowling, which I did and everything got better rather quickly.

“Drop Kick Me Jesus Through The Goal Posts of Life” might not go over well in Communist Countries.

Who knew there were RepubliQans in Vietnam?

Anyone who think that’s the message of hip-hop…..clearly missed the message!