"...Waylon and Willie and The Boys....Say Hello to Jeff..."

Truth, the old adage offers, is often stranger than fiction.

How about when the truth is fiction?

Or, more to the point, when fiction offers up more truth than truth offers?

Got that ice cream headache in the middle of your forehead yet?

Twisted fortune cookie wisdom notwithstanding, it occurs to me that there is, among other things, a delightful irony in the fact that the product being offered by a fictional country singer seems more real than the lion's share of the merchandise rolling off the 16th Avenue assembly line these days.

After all, when someone says "essential, seminal, no frills, roots edged country music artist", I'll bet my Rorschach against your Rorschach that the first name that pops to mind is not Jeff Bridges.

And what fun to find that it pert near oughta be one of the first names that pops.

My good old days in Nashville taught me a lot of things, among them that Hollywood, historically, doesn't have a clue about Nashville.

From the early 60's when George Hamilton lip synced to Hank Jr's vocals as he "portrayed" Hank Senior (yes, kids, that George Hamilton) to such modern day Tinseltown missteps as "The Thing Called Love" and even George Strait's close, but no cigar turn as "Dusty Rhodes" in "Pure Country" (Strait was young and impressionable in those days, but I bet he doesn't have the same agent now as then...if only for allowing his client to portray a country singer named "Dusty Rhodes"...why not just name him "Music Rowe"?...), Hollywood has a near perfect record of cranking out crap, labeling it country and conspiring to cash in on the popularity of the format at any time the masses are paying attention.

In fairness, they are consistent about one thing.

They almost unfailingly portray Nashville, and country music, in terms of the way they think Nashville and country music should look and sound, as opposed to the way it actually looks and sounds.

Even the most recent high gloss "Country Strong" could just as easily have been made as "very special movie of the week" on Lifetime.

Or CMT.

Or both.

For my movie spending money, the Hollywood hoedown wanna be's have only gotten it close to right twice.

"Tender Mercies".

"Crazy Heart".

Robert Duvall got an Oscar for the former.

Jeff Bridges for the latter.

And, in both cases, the lead actor was the lead singer, performing material that met the criteria too often missing from the garden variety sour mash melodramas.

Authenticity.

Meanwhile, back to the irony, go in search of both the soundtrack to "Crazy Heart" and Jeff Bridges most recent, eponymous CD.

I think you'll be, as I was, surprised and delighted to find that the most throwaway stuff in either case are the inevitable "slickies" on the movie soundtrack.

The coolest, meanwhile, is the remainder of the soundtrack and the whole of the solo album.

In other words, production by T Bone Burnett and vocals by Jeff Bridges.

Amazing work.

And an oasis in a desert of paint by the numbers "country music".

Five stars from this seat in the peanut gallery.

And my fail safe litmus test as to the pristine quality of the product?

Bet your life savings that American Idol will never do a "Jeff Bridges Night".

What Rhymes with Tsk?

Mark Twain pegged it.

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

Nicely played, Samuel.

I'll go you one better.

When I was a boy of 21, my father had little or no use for any of the music that I enjoyed.

By the time I was 51, I understood why.

Doing a little musical research, I came across the video for the latest Eminem single. Generational gap aside, I've simply never been a fan of the genre' where Mr. Mathers has made his mark.

That said, I think of myself as a creative man, possessed of an open mind.

At least as regards the creative arts.

So, I gave it a look/listen.

And while Marshall's latest self portrait isn't going to convert me, it does accomplish one thing for certain.

It is a textbook illustration of why we tend to hate what our kids listen to as we get older.

And it has nothing to do with the content, per se'.

More in a moment.

First, ladies and gentlemen, the shit stirring stylings of Eminem...






Here's the thing about the thing.

You don't have to be a Rhodes Scholar, or even over the age of eleven or twelve, to see that this is one pissed off fellow.

Live and let live.

And while there's no denying that the envelope of " the world sucks and I'm here to tell you about it" gets pushed exponentially harder with each new generation of tellers, it's also true that there's really no new information being included in the envelope.

Sooner or later, everybody finds out that the world sucks.

Happiness seems to be largely a matter of learning to live with the pony philosophy.

As in "with all this shit...there must be a pony..."

While Marshall's blunt, and very well paid, approach to sharing the shit side of the story isn't exactly the kind of prose you would vote to have carved on a DC monument, it is, like every other point of view, deserving of the freedom to be expressed.

When I was younger and the musical heroes of that youth were pushing that era's envelope, mothers and fathers were quick to dismiss those expressions as, at best, inappropriate, at worst, vulgar, obscene, even moral warping.

Probably.

Somehow, my generation managed to weather the warping and went on to become the mothers and fathers of the next generation.

Whose envelope pushing is, at best, inappropriate, at worst, vulgar, obscene, even moral warping.

Emotional knee jerking aside, I never intellectually understood why my father had no use for the music that I enjoyed.

And why a lot of what I listened to evoked either stony silence or the tell tale subtle head shaking with a gentle, but obvious, tsk-tsk attached.

I wrote it off to a predictable lack of hip.

The man was in his 50's, for God's sake. Old people don't get shit.

Turned out, I was missing the point.

It came to me some years later.

Long before M and M started venting his spleen to the tune of ten figures.

And I understood why the music I enjoyed pissed my father off.

Because it made him feel old.

By turning him into his father.

As the tsk-tsk torch was passed.

Couldn't help but think, though, as I finished listening to Mr. Mathers' musings.

Time marches on.

Sooner or later.

We all get handed the torch.

Marshall, too.

Yo. Tsk-tsk, muthafucka...