Stampede day #3
Very smooth running night this time. Not quite sure why. The ridiculous line-up to get in was no shorter than the night before and they let the same numbers through the doors. Perhaps we were just better organised. More time to hang around the refers out back and flirt with the cowgirls inside the bar...
One of the workers on our team was fired last night. He showed up first night wearing sandles. Second night he screwed up documentation, sending bar totals out of whack. Then last night he arrived drunk!
I've realised what's wrong with most country music. It's not the vocal twang or the uninspired instrumentation, but the dumbed-down, innane lyrics about driving around in your ute or gettin' drunk or telling your boss where to go. They played a film clip of a song called 'Redneck Woman' on the big screen last night: "I'm a redneck woman, not a classy woman...I leave the Christmas lights on the tree all year round..." and on and on. I looked around and spotted women actually mouthing the words.
Johnny Cash and Neil Young are obviously two artists way ahead of the pack. Neil's more folk/rock/grunge but the countryfied 'Harvest', 'Harvest Moon' and 'Prarie Wind' albums are sublime. Steve Earl, the 'Copperhead Road' guy, has more of a cult following and he's very underrrated. He's been around since the early 80s and still producing hard-hitting records like the recent anti-Bush statement 'The Revolution Starts...Now'. He's also a classic rock n roll outlaw who's had something like 6 wives and addictions to just about everything. They played 'Copperhead Road' last night as well and I wonder how many of the drunken conservatives realised Earl's a long-standing leftist. Sort of like how silly Ronald Reagan used the anti-Vietnam war Spingsteen song 'Born in the USA' as a campaign song in the 80s.
I'm conscious that I'm working in just one little beer-soaked pocket of the Calgary Stampede and I haven't yet experienced what it's really all about - the chuckwagon races and rodeo events. I have free entry to the grandstands but it's just finding the time to get there before work starts that's the hard part. With thousands of tourists decending on the city the public transport is a nightmare. Still 8 days to go though.
MG
One of the workers on our team was fired last night. He showed up first night wearing sandles. Second night he screwed up documentation, sending bar totals out of whack. Then last night he arrived drunk!
I've realised what's wrong with most country music. It's not the vocal twang or the uninspired instrumentation, but the dumbed-down, innane lyrics about driving around in your ute or gettin' drunk or telling your boss where to go. They played a film clip of a song called 'Redneck Woman' on the big screen last night: "I'm a redneck woman, not a classy woman...I leave the Christmas lights on the tree all year round..." and on and on. I looked around and spotted women actually mouthing the words
Johnny Cash and Neil Young are obviously two artists way ahead of the pack. Neil's more folk/rock/grunge but the countryfied 'Harvest', 'Harvest Moon' and 'Prarie Wind' albums are sublime. Steve Earl, the 'Copperhead Road' guy, has more of a cult following and he's very underrrated. He's been around since the early 80s and still producing hard-hitting records like the recent anti-Bush statement 'The Revolution Starts...Now'. He's also a classic rock n roll outlaw who's had something like 6 wives and addictions to just about everything. They played 'Copperhead Road' last night as well and I wonder how many of the drunken conservatives realised Earl's a long-standing leftist. Sort of like how silly Ronald Reagan used the anti-Vietnam war Spingsteen song 'Born in the USA' as a campaign song in the 80s.
I'm conscious that I'm working in just one little beer-soaked pocket of the Calgary Stampede and I haven't yet experienced what it's really all about - the chuckwagon races and rodeo events. I have free entry to the grandstands but it's just finding the time to get there before work starts that's the hard part. With thousands of tourists decending on the city the public transport is a nightmare. Still 8 days to go though.
MG
posted by Matt G at 10:43 AM
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