Right...now! Yes, that's the Hank Williams III--son of Bocephus, grandson of the Hank Williams--throwing the Dio Devil Horns, covered in tattoes, with the pentagram sticker on his electric guitar. He's plays in a Satanic punk-rock band, he's convinced he's going to hell, he curses, he drinks, he smokes (those left-handed cigarettes and even plays his bong as an instrument on record); so, he's pretty much like his father and grandfather*--the apple didn't fall too far from the tree with this one.There's a lotta things about him you don't know anything about. Things you wouldn't understand. Things you couldn't understand. Things you shouldn't understand. You don't wanna get mixed up with a guy like him. He's a loner. A rebel. And on this song, he announces this to the world. It's his statement of purpose. He doesn't believe in Nashville; he just believes in him. It took a year-long court battle for III (as he prefers to be called...you know, 'cause he's an outlaw, an individual, an original) to have a judge order Curb Records to release his album Straight to Hell--and they created a subsidiary--Bruc Records (get it?)--just to do so. No radio stations (of note) would play his music, and heck, even the Dixie Chicks get played south of the Mason-Dixon line a time or two. Wal-Mart refused to carry the record. It still made it to #17 on the Billboard Country Album charts (and #73 on the Top 200 overall).
That's a very significant feat--to find its equivalent, you'd have to go back thirty years to when the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen" hit #1 on the U.K. charts despite being banned from radio. III's song "Dick in Dixie" resembles the Pistols' single in another way: they both bite the hand that feeds them. The Pistols' railed openly (in a way not done so before in pop/rock music) against the honored figurehead of their country (and singer Johnny Rotten claimed he was the Anti-Christ in "Anarchy in the U.K."), but what III does here is just as alarming, not just because of his (semi)favored-son status (at least in Outlaw Country), but because he's doing so while peforming country music--bluegrass county, at that--and radio's not playing bluegrass country anymore (NPR on Sundays doesn't count). III--at least here--is more of an outlaw than his father or his father's friends ever were, 'cause back thirty-or-so years ago, when Waylon and Bocephus were decrying the state of the industry, Outlaw Country was being played on the radio (maybe not as much as the Music Row Countrypolitan records), as records by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash (as well as Waylon and Bocephus) received significant airplay.
No country radio stations played any songs from Straight to Hell. They couldn't, even if they'd have wanted to. They'd have been fined out the wazzoo. III laces nearly every song on the album with a heaping helping of profanity**, he includes hardcore tales of drugs and sex, and on the double album's second side, III drops a forty-two minute long song comprised of voice mails, tape loops, live song snippets, musician dialog, monologue, and several stretches of silence. It's the most experimental piece of music I've ever heard a country artist make (though I don't think it belongs on this countdown, as it's more of an album to itself than a true song). What amazes me about this, is that III knew--of course he knew--that his songs from this album wouldn't be played on radio. Yet he made it anyway. And he made it (not counting the last song on side two) using traditional country song structure and instrumental arrangement (and the musicians on the album--especially on "Dick in Dixie"--are absolutely fantastic, showcasing some of the best, smoking-hot bluegrass playing I've ever heard). He made a country record, so that no country radio station would play it. And it almost went gold.
And that is rock and roll.
NOTES
*Hank, Sr. was kicked out of the Grand Ole Opry for his drinking and conniving, and he still hasn't been reinstated.
**The lyrics on this song are profane and offensive, and not just to Nashville. Let me share with you what I can share (I'm keeping my blog family-friendly; unlike III, I'm no rebel):
"Well some say I'm not country/And that's just fine with me..../They say that I'm ill-mannered/That I'm gonna self-destruct/But if you know what I'm thinking/You know that pop country really sucks"
And that's it. That's as far as I'll go here. I'm not going to even post a video. I'll give you this though:
I don't think Hank would've wanted it this way, though.
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