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DIXIE CHICKS!  |
An urban dude sticks up for
those bold country girls
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
Let’s start
off with the truth. I don’t want to James Frey any of this.
I know nothing about country music.
I am a Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and John Philip Sousa kind
of guy on patriotic holidays.
I used to drive from New York to Florida for baseball spring
training in the early 1960s and 1970s. Then my kids got too big
and too restless to have them in a car for two and a half days.
Try it. You’ll hate it. We've done the two and a half hour
flights ever since.
When we drove to Florida we parked the first night over the Virginia
border in a North Carolina motel. After a nap, a diner dinner
and a bath, we listened to country music and read books. No TV
in a room with babies.
I liked the country music. You could make out the lyrics, which
soon disappeared under the aegis of rock. You could sense the
emotion and you could feel the power of the tales.
It was on to Georgia or north Florida for another stop on the
second night and more sessions with the country music singers.
Reading the books was fun (especially if they were ones I had
written), but the country music was a kick. I never bought a
country music LP in those days or a CD in these days. I just
liked listening on the radio.
For the next six weeks, as I traveled around Florida asking Mickey
Mantle when he would retire or Whitey Ford if he threw a spitter,
I listened to country music on the car radio.
Now the Dixie Chicks have entered my life. I saw them one night
on TV being interviewed by Diane Sawyer. I liked the songs and
I liked their looks. These were three Texas gals, sisters Martie
Erwin Maguire, Emily Erwin Robinson and knockout Natalie Maines.
Martie played the fiddle, mandolin and sang, Natalie, the pretty
one in the middle, played guitar and sang lead and Emily played
guitar, banjo and sang as they impacted on the national music
scene.
They had a few No. 1 sellers on the Billboard charts,
they won a few music awards and they coasted along nicely on
tours, television appearances and concerts.
On March 10, 2003, at concert at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire
Theater in London, Natalie Maines, a native of Lubbock, Texas,
paused between songs and said, “Just so you know, we’re
ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”
Country music audiences, mostly from the south and the southwest,
responded in violent anger, including death threats. They were
called, among other things, traitors, Saddam’s Angels, Dixie
Sluts, outcasts and Benedict’s (for Revolutionary war Arnold)
in radio calls and letters.
Two days later they backed off a bit when Natalie, in an interview,
said, “I feel the President is ignoring the opinions of
many in the U.S. and alienating the rest of the world.”
She later said, “As a mother I just want to see every possible
alternative exhausted before children and American soldiers’
lives (2700 so far) are lost. I love my country. I am a proud
American.”
Iraq was invaded March 20, 2003 as American soldiers searched
valiantly for WMDs. So far they have not found those or Osama
bin Laden, both probably hidden away with Jimmy Hoffa under the
goal posts at the New York Giants home in the Jersey Meadowlands.
On April 24, 2003, 34 days after he sent American troops into
Iraq, President Bush was interviewed by Tom Brokaw. He told Brokaw,
“The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. I don’t
care what the Dixie Chicks said. I want to do what I think is
right for the American people.”
The Dixie Chicks disappeared from TV screens. I missed them.
I especially missed Natalie, a top notch entertainer and a looker.
All of us horny seniors like those lookers. It is always fun
to see them and listen to them, especially when they have a nice
political bite about them that you enjoy.
Then on the May 29, 2006 issue of Time Magazine, the Dixie Chicks
were back on the cover. They were more sedately dressed than
they had been on the cover of Entertainment Weekly after the
political brouhaha.
They had a new nasty song they were pushing which clearly explained
their stand and denied their foggy apology. It was called “Not
Ready To Make Nice” and it summed up their stand and the
stand of a lot of us about Bush’s war.
I don’t know how long the war in Iraq will go on. I don’t
know how many more kids will die in Bush’s war. I met Bush
a couple of times when he was in the baseball business in Texas.
He seemed like a nice guy. I’m not ready to make nice.
I catch the Dixie Chicks on TV once in a while now. I enjoyed
the Time story. I’ve heard them a couple of times on the
radio when I chase down to the end of the dial.
You know what? I’m going to break down. The next time one
of my kids is in the record store I’ll ask them to pick
up “Not Ready to Make Nice” for me. It’s the least
I can do.
©2006 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. This column first posted June 5, 2006.
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