The Last Bass Outpost

My nightmares are always about things I've broken and they can't be repaired!

Those mock satanists are of course intellectual provocateurs, not everybody comprehends their approach of putting free human will - I can see Auntie Ayn R smiling from her grave, she never thought much of religion - above adoration of and devotion to any form of supernatural deity. When I read about them on school boards a while ago, I thought to myself this might not end well in the US of A, never underestimate stupidity and ignorance. All religion is potentially dangerous.

I arrived at the conclusion that there is no devil already as a child, even earlier than surmising that there is no God either. I can't have been older than eight or nine, I just defined both out of my life. Psychologists will however have to say something about the fact that I love movies about the occult - it's all humbug to me, but I'm thoroughly entertained by it and find hanging on the edge of my seat with goose bumps pleasant. Ghosts, Satan, Lucifer & the Beelzebub, demons, exorcisms, haunted houses, vampires, bring'em on! And when the end credits roll, I switch on the light and go to bed totally unperturbed (but deeply satisfied if it was a good one) and no creaking door, wind-flung window or rushing curtain bothers me. I never dream of anything occult either.



PS: Well, there was one dream ... A year or so after my dad had died I had this extremely vivid dream of him and me doing garden work together. Now if you knew my dad: Doing garden work with him was excruciatingly terrible and best avoided, because nothing I did was ever good enough.  But this time we worked smoothly together, got things done - an unreal experience! And near the end of the dream, we're standing around looking at the heaps of garden waste as I suddenly ask him point blank: You are aware that you're dead though, right? And he just gave me one of those trademark slow silent crooked smiles of him, nodded a little and then starts fading away like in some cheesy ghost movie ...

And then I woke up and felt real good about it! 

I never for a second wanted to put either Truck Stop or Dave Dudley anywhere near fake country! Although, by Dave's definition, Truck Stop never could or can be authentic or even credible (they've been playing C&W music in Germany since the early 70ies at least, in various line-ups, I even saw them live once when they were still singing only English) because when they sing English they of course adopt a country drawl, but amongst themselves and in interviews they speak German with a Hamburg accent (note: Hamburg is not known for either a sizable cowboy or Native American population, never has).

It wasn't clear to me that the "lived-in" accent thing is so pivotal to you guys. Germany is awash with Bayerische Volksmusik artists that sing like they were raised on a remote mountain farm near the Austrian border a hundred years ago with guttural rrrolling 'r's, yet who change to fluent high German in off-stage life. Likewise, an Australian like Keith Urban who sings North American country-tinged pop (or whatever you want to call it) can then by definition never be the real thing. And didn't The Beatles sing an Americanized English on their songs yet revert to their Liverpudlian accent the second they stopped singing? Dare I mention Blackmore's Night where a Jewish-Polish-American Princess from Long Island sings her take of late medieval/Renaissance English?

And then there are girls in cropped or knotted tops, torn leg cut jeans shorts plus cowboy boots, all looking like they jumped from a Playmate pictorial where they explain how they grew up on a farm, love animals, and want to become veterinarians once they are done with 'modeling'. But really, is there any crime of dumb sexist depiction of females through the male lens that fake country/country pop has committed that has not been perpetrated a thousands times over in 80ies Rock and Hair Metal or  Rap/Hip-Hop vids? It's a male fantasy world that is being created there, a caricature of rural life, beer drinking in the sun on the back of a pickup truck and 24/7 sexually accessible + available 'babes' writhing about. Seriously: What else is new? I doesn't really say too much about the music, does it? Sexist connotations/presentations and popular music go (and always have gone) together like ham and cheese.

I don't think a band like Florida Georgia Line was ever out to win authenticity contests. Their music is a commodity.

Did Bob Dylan betray folk music when he picked up an electric guitar? Were Police a bunch of posers because none of them came from Jamaica and they were somewhat lightly hued?

I'm always skeptic of self-proclaimed guardians of a certain type of music.



Bring on the country influences!

Man, we haven't had a vid of him put up in a long time. A real life sign. Happy birthday!

Their accent is mostly fine, a bit on the North German side. What can you do when you're from Hamburg.



Actually it was based on their hit that Dave Dudley became a household name in Germany, he then toured with them.

To the daughter-fathers: I'm proud of you, way to go!

It's a cheap shot and I'm glad that nothing of the sort ever happened in the Purple camp with its convoluted family tree. Whether in 1975 or in 1993, Blackmore neither in public nor in court ever questioned the legitimacy of the other guys continuing (though he is rumored to have lawyers take a look at it!). DP today features one solitary original member - the drummer, i.e. Ian Paice. Gillan and Glover are from a second line-up (which albeit eclipsed the first one in popularity).

I stand by what I said: Real fans know whether a line-up is legitimate or not, the rest of the audience doesn't give a damn as long as the music is decently presented and they recognize the old hits.