One of the Brawler's favorite bands is the Drive By Truckers, who filter the triple ax attack of southern fried rock through a grinder of mid-80s American punk and marry the sound to sharp, incisive and largely unsentimental tales of life in the south. Their latest album, Brighter than Creation's Dark,broadens the band's vision to include Iraq. They played one of those songs, "The Man I Shot," early during their 3 p,m. July 3 slot at Summer Fest. Based on frontman Patterson Hood's (pictured above) conversations with vets, it makes the point (which won't be made to minors playing an Army video game simulation) that there's a price to be paid for killing people (this and other vids obviously not from Summer Fest).
They also played Puttin' People on the Moon,which takes a look at the people who've been left behind -- and might even feel "bitter" -- in post-Reagan America.
Mary Alice got cancer just like everybody here
Seems everyone I know is gettin' cancer every year
And we can't afford no insurance, I been 10 years unemployed
So she didn't get no chemo so our lives was destroyed
And nothin' ever changes, the cemetery gets more full
And now over there in Huntsville, even NASA's shut down too
As there's more to life than politics, they also ripped through Carl Perkin's Cadillac, which makes the point that "Mr. Phillips was the only man who Jerry Lee still would call sir."
And, as Patterson Hood is wont to do, he made a long spiel about his great uncle George.George, who grew up in a small town in Alabama. Born in 1920, he saw up close the good and bad of the old South. At Iwo Jima, he saw some unimaginable things. And this fall,he plans to cast his vote for a black man -- something inconceivable when he was a young man. "I don't give a fuck who you plan to vote for but that makes me want to cry," Patterson observed. The band then launched into his uncle's story, The Sands of Iwo Jima. A line from the song had been running through the Brawler's mind earlier that day as he listened to Charlie Sykes' outrage/meltdown over the Army pulling a violent video game in face of protests and pondered the mind of war cheerleaders: "I never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima."
It was a fine show -- seeing DBT on a bright summer afternoon may be better than catching them in a dark smokey bar. But the Brawler does feel the band misses guitarist Jason Isbell. Here he is singing Dress Blues.
In other Summerfest as metaphor stories, MIke Plaisted riffs on the multiracial audience at the Earth Wind and Fire show and is mocked by Rick Esenberg (who. let us recall, last year expressed his shock that Roger Waters hates George Bush).
Hey Mr. Brawler I was there too at the truckers, it turns out. That was a great time.
Posted by: bert | July 14, 2008 at 07:09 PM