Episode 0308: "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome again to another episode of This Song Sucks. Podcasts with three musical pals get together, talk about the music that we hate. I am Josh Kavanaugh. Today I'm joined by Blaine. Somehow watches every damn TV show there is. Duncan, how's it going Blaine?

[00:00:27] There's a trick to that and it's, and I can't say it on the air. Is this what you're doing in your bathroom breaks at school? You're close. Just watching a little euphoria with

[00:00:39] the headphones in. While he's teaching class. You put in the one video to make the kids watch and then you watch euphoria on your laptop. Perfect. And that third voice you hear is Kevin. Did he really just say that, Halbrook? Welcome to the show, Kevin.

[00:00:57] Yeah, thanks for having me. Glad to be here. I'm going to let Blaine introduce you a little bit. You seem to be an old time buddy of his. So Blaine, why don't you tell us a little bit about

[00:01:06] Kevin? Yeah, Kevin, Halbrook is currently the head honcho, head host of Where's the Line podcast. Tales of disturbing, gross, interesting, fascinating. Check that out. I really like it a lot. There's only been one occasion that I couldn't listen to one. So kudos. Maybe that's kudos or

[00:01:26] maybe that's a drawback for Kevin. I don't know. You gotta tell me which one off the air when we're done so I can go listen to it. Yeah, I will. It was a personal thing. But anyway, yeah,

[00:01:34] I've known Kevin for years and years and years since my days in Tuscaloosa. Kevin is a musician. That's how I met him through music and he even drummed with the lookers in some interim

[00:01:44] moments for our band and he's recorded our band and he and I have been longtime friends. It's really good to have him here. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for the introduction,

[00:01:54] Blaine. And Blaine, by the way, wrote a song that is one of my favorite songs and I have been singing the wrong lyrics for about what, 15 years now? 15 years now. I just found out a couple

[00:02:05] of weeks ago what the lyrics really were. You gotta give me the details on that one. Well, if you want to know it's a song called Virginia State Park. I misunderstood almost every lyric in the song but probably the best one is there's a line that's when God's

[00:02:19] out to get you. It's hard to escape and I, since the first time I heard that song, thought he was saying when dogs are in the kitchen, that's hard to explain. That might be a better line. What do you think Blaine?

[00:02:33] I thought it was so deep. I thought that was like an imagist poem sort of a line. Well, when Hayden and I were with Blaine and the Lookers, we had a little too much to drink at the rehearsals. We would often intentionally change his lyrics.

[00:02:48] Oh yeah, yeah. When I was gone there was a baptism often changed to when I was gone, we were a bass fishing. Yeah, well, I love that one. Still sing it like that. Well, Blaine has selected our song that we're going into today. Blaine, why don't you

[00:03:07] tell us what song it is and just a little brief reason why you picked it? One of the bad things about everyone knowing the title of the podcast and getting a little promotional stuff beforehand is I don't surprise anyone. So you've already pinned your hate email,

[00:03:23] I'm sure, but I have picked for good reason in which listeners will find out. Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA 1984 Country Hit. Also known as Proud to Be an American for those who didn't catch it from that title. Yeah, this is really just probably the most trash

[00:03:44] song we've done yet, I think. I don't know if there is any redeeming qualities to this whatsoever. Vapid is the word that comes to mind. There you go. That's a good one. I'm glad we brought you in. It sounds like you have a better vocabulary than me, Kevin.

[00:03:58] I did find one redeeming quality. I'll get to it. All right. Yeah. We'll get into it. But as we always do, we'll start off with a little background on our artist, what kind of led up to this song and his career.

[00:04:10] So right off the bat, I love it when I get an artist's name who just, you know, it's going to be good from the beginning, born Melvin Lee Greenwood in October 1943. So I'm going to try to refer to him as Melvin the rest of the episode,

[00:04:25] which is very appropriate as you'll see going forward. Mr. Greenwood, Melvin was born in a town called Southgate, which is just south of LA. However, his parents divorced really early and he was actually mostly raised by his grandparents

[00:04:39] in Sacramento. He got his start playing music at the age of seven. He learned piano and he was singing in the church choir at the time. Apparently at age nine, he started to teach himself how to play saxophone. He looks like a saxophone player that mother.

[00:04:56] When he plays it, it's called a saxophone. Oh, there's I have strong feelings about the saxophone. I'm sorry to like be doing this shit already, but I don't think saxophones have any place in music except for comedy and 80s music. I don't think it goes anywhere else.

[00:05:13] I mean, we had a discussion in another episode about saxophones being terrible in rock music. You know, you probably don't know this, Kevin, but I'm a bit of a jazz guy and that's really the only place I find saxophone acceptable for most of the time.

[00:05:28] I can agree with that. I wasn't really considering jazz at the time and this is not a very well thought out argument that I'm making. It's okay. No one really considers jazz ever, so I understand. Hey, I'm in Kansas City now. There's a lot of jazz here.

[00:05:41] Oh yeah, KC. You better be into Count Basie now. But I really hope that his grandparents were deaf because could you imagine listening to a nine-year-old teach themselves saxophone? Uh, no. So you know, his musical career at inches kind of expanded from there. He started

[00:06:00] his first band and I got conflicting names on this. As you can imagine, there's not a whole lot of certifiable information about this, but one source called his first band My Moon Dreams and the other one simply called it The Moon Beams. And according to his website,

[00:06:17] this is from the bio on his website, he quote, played most all of the instruments in the orchestra and was the drum major for the marching band. Now, you know, that sounds impressive, but from my

[00:06:30] experience, that is kind of code for he could play a lot of instruments really poorly. Yeah. So I don't doubt that he had talent, but you know, saying you play all the instruments in the orchestra sounds like a bit of a brag on your website bio.

[00:06:46] I'm really shocked he plays anything. I'm shocked that he was the drum major. That's the most surprising thing to me because the drum major, you know, to people who aren't that familiar,

[00:06:55] that's the kind of fancy prissy guy that's out in the front of the band that doesn't actually play anything and like dances and slings batons around. I'd really like to see Lee Griggenwood

[00:07:05] doing this. I mean, but he, you know, those guys, they get picked to do that because they are one of the better musicians in the marching band. So like clearly he had chops

[00:07:14] at something to get that position, but it also kind of tracks because you think about the song we're talking about today with this sort of militaristic march section. It kind of makes sense. But according to Greenwood in these early years with his with his non-school band,

[00:07:31] he would play like USO shows, American Legion halls and an interview I found like from pretty recently, he said that kind of gave him exposure to the quote military life.

[00:07:43] You know, so how true that is, I know it might just be a little backfilling in to kind of give himself those conservative bonafides. But that's what he said. But however, not long after like at

[00:07:57] age 16, he joined country artist Chester Smith and made his first television appearance with that group. That led to him to then becoming the saxophonist for Del Reeves. And I don't know much about Del Reeves. Maybe Blaine, you could fill in the blanks here,

[00:08:14] but this apparently Reeves is best known for his novelty quote, girl watching songs called Girl on the Billboard and the Bells of Southern Belle. There's no saxophone on this. I don't know if Greenwood was on it, but just the idea of girl watching songs sounds pretty fucking gross.

[00:08:33] Yeah. Yeah, that's a creepy genre of music that I didn't previously know existed. Peeping Tom's Everywhere. Oh, yeah. You know about him. Yeah. From there, Greenwood starts his own band called Apollo and moves to LA in 1962 to give it a shot. The group was signed to Paramount Records

[00:08:52] and they made him rename the band the Lee Greenwood Affair, which I'm not sure that's really any better than Apollo. And sources I read said that they made a few records for the label, but I couldn't find any of the recordings online. Paramount was kind of an old,

[00:09:07] really old record company that mostly it actually closed after the Depression. It had like Ma Rainey and a lot of those other sort of similar acts in the 20s and 30s. But I think at this time,

[00:09:18] it was just sort of like someone had bought all the rights to the songs and it was just sort of on its way out and it actually closed down for good while Greenwood's band was signed to the label. Because of Lee Greenwood. I can only hope so.

[00:09:38] So after the closure of Paramount Records, Greenwood moved to Las Vegas and while he was there, he worked as an arranger and a performer for Lounge Acts, which apparently included playing organ for strippers. I know this is the 60s, but like the fact that there's a guy there

[00:09:58] playing organ while the women are taking their clothes off seems a little odd, don't you think? A little bit. I can't imagine it. I mean, I guess you think about like the stereotype of like the DJ

[00:10:09] in strip clubs now who's just really lame and cheesy. Right. Is that kind of what he was, you think? I'm just when you're saying that, I'm just imagining a big Phantom of the Opera

[00:10:19] style giant tube organ with like strippers hanging off of those tubes that come out of it. And a man in an American flag leather jacket. Playing the whole thing. He was born in that goddamn jacket.

[00:10:35] I think so. There's about a gajillion pictures of him in that jacket, but he also apparently at this time he worked as a blackjack dealer. So I mean it kind of sounds like things weren't

[00:10:44] going great for him. In fact, in a later interview, he would say that he moved to Las Vegas because LA had quote, chewed him up and spit him out. So things are not going too great for

[00:10:56] Melvin in the mid 60s. I can't believe how semi interesting he is. Like I did not expect any of this. It seems like he was you know a real working musician, you know, for most of his

[00:11:10] early career. By the late 70s though, he had moved to Reno and was performing at lounges there, which I mean, I don't know much about Vegas and Reno in the 70s, but I have to imagine that

[00:11:23] Vegas to Reno at any time period was a step down for somebody's career. Oh yeah. So he's languishing there and he's discovered by a man named Larry McFadden who was the manager

[00:11:33] and leader of Mel Tillis. Oh yeah. Their touring band. So again, I'm not much of a country music guy. Blaine, what can you tell me about Mr. Tillis? He was known for his stutter.

[00:11:44] Like that was almost like a comedic thing about him. But he had a couple of decent songs that were hokey, but yeah. Coca-Cola cowboy. That's the one and I like that one. Okay,

[00:11:55] it's hokey as hell, but it's fine. He had a string of number one hits on the country chart through the 70s and early 80s. So I mean kind of the big deal in the country music scene.

[00:12:05] I mean again, Greenwood never played with him, but his manager discovered Greenwood and kind of gave him his shot. He convinced him to move to Nashville and record some demos. This was in the late 70s, early 80s. And so by 81 through these demos, Greenwood had signed a

[00:12:20] contract with MCA. In that same year he released his first single called It Turns Me Inside Out, which reached number 17 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Just that's just a country chart, not the Hot 100. And that would lead to an album being released in 82 called Inside Out.

[00:12:40] And that album reached number 12 on the Country Albums chart. So I actually have a clip of the song It Turns Me Inside Out to give you an idea of what Greenwood was doing pre-God Bless the USA.

[00:12:53] So if this is the Heart and the Blender song it's gonna blow my mind. Eve 6? Do you know the title of Eve 6? Yeah. In a way I'm glad it's over In another way you turn Blaine Shrink in his head, he knows this one. I know this one.

[00:13:20] In a way I guess it's better That sounds like God bless the USA with different lyrics. Totally. Yeah. At my house growing up from 76 to 92 at least it was just a perpetual radio playing

[00:13:41] country radio stations and if not that if we were in another room it would have been CMT on as just constantly. So you play any country song from that era and if it got a little bit

[00:13:55] of airplay we'll recognize it. And in Kevin's right that was just basically God bless the USA. I mean this kind of song is kind of I think indicative of his career because he mentions

[00:14:07] even in the early days in LA with that band that they were just trying to do love songs and most of his songs from his first three albums are like this which to me it just

[00:14:18] sounds like a sappy romantic you know schlock or whatever but not very country like I don't understand why a song like this would be on the country charts. I mean Blaine do you have any idea was that pretty popular? That was a lot of 80s country right

[00:14:32] you know a lot of it. The good 80s country sort of did sound like country western roots at least so it's an easy shift from going from love songs to fuck the flag song.

[00:14:43] I guess so. And it's that the music behind it though it sounds like he's creating the music version of his own song. It's a very music feel for sure for those listeners who don't know what

[00:14:58] music is. MUZAK look it up and you've heard it in a grocery store around LA probably. If you've ever worked retail you hate it. So his next two albums would expand upon his success

[00:15:12] with some actual crossover hits on the pop charts. So the next one is called Somebody's Gonna Love You in 1983 this record is certified gold and it was number 73 on the Billboard 200 like the big boy chart. This included the singles IOU and Somebody's Gonna Love You.

[00:15:31] Fucking bangers. Yeah IOU is basically very similar to that clip I just played it's a sappy love song it was number 53 on the hot 100 and Somebody's Gonna Love You was on number 96.

[00:15:45] So again like pretty decent showings on the pop chart for a country artist and I've got another clip and this one is a little different but this is Somebody's Gonna Love You and so let's let's see what y'all think about this.

[00:16:29] Yeah this to me sounds like love making music baby. It sounds like it sounds like the lame white version of Lionel Richie Melvin Richie if you will. Yeah he's flirting with some disco there and it sounds like it hints of shitty holland oats. Yes shitty holland oats

[00:16:49] which is the name of my memoir. So IOU the other song from single from this record would actually win Mr. Greenwood his first and only Grammy and that was for best male country vocal performance. I pulled up

[00:17:07] to try to see who who was it that he beat. So that year IOU won that Grammy it beat Ray Charles Born To Love Me Earl Thomas Conley Holding Her Hand And Loving You Much Better Song

[00:17:21] Vern Gosden If You're Gonna Do Me Wrong Do It Right Much Better Song Ronnie Millsap Stranger In My House and Kenny Rogers All My Life. I guess there wasn't a whole lot going

[00:17:34] on in the male country category that year. Apparently not. So from that we get the next album you've got A Good Love Coming in 1984 again this record certified gold it would be 150 on the

[00:17:49] Billboard 200 so not quite as successful and no singles from this would chart on the Billboard Hot 100 but this is the album where we first hear God Bless The USA Today's subject. It was

[00:18:02] a single from the album and it would reach number seven on the Hot Country Songs chart in that year 84 but again it did not appear on the Hot 100 at this time it would later as we'll

[00:18:14] get to here in a second. But I have a feeling that this song was a bit of a throwaway originally because when he first released it on the album it was the last track on the B side of the

[00:18:24] album and he would say in a later interview that he was surprised that the record company wanted to release the song as a single it wasn't his idea somebody at the company heard it and said

[00:18:35] we got to get this out there. This song and we'll talk a little bit more details about its kind of background and place in our culture here after I finish our bio section but the song was nominated for two Grammys best country song and best male country performance

[00:18:51] and it lost the first one to Meryl Haggard's That's The Way Love Goes which makes me feel better and then lost the second one to City of New Orleans which is a Steve Goodman song but performed by Willie Nelson so that first Grammys he may have Blaine's reaction

[00:19:08] makes me think he didn't quite deserve that award. No he didn't no Verne Godson's really good and so is Earl Thomas Connelly well he's okay but it seems they made it up the next year

[00:19:18] by making sure that this dumpster fire of a song didn't win a Grammy. So just to wrap up kind of the rest of his career his following albums and he recorded several albums to the

[00:19:29] 80s and 90s and into the early 2000s and these these would appear on the country charts at various sort of middling positions but he never had another solo album or single that appeared on

[00:19:42] the pop charts or even reached gold status except for albums that contained God Bless the USA and the song has been on the same like multiple versions of it but probably like at least a dozen

[00:19:57] different records released by Greenwood himself and then Who Knows How Many Others it was I tried to count and it became a feudal exercise so for like one example of an album that did well was

[00:20:09] American Patriot from 1992 it of course included the song and that album reached number 172 on the Billboard 200 and is a certified platinum record and this album is about as schlocky as it gets the opening track is the fucking pledge of allegiance children are reciting it and then he

[00:20:29] does like a music version of it so I have a clip here to play that and it's the end it sort of wraps up the kids oh thank you thank you and then it goes into him singing it mercifully it's

[00:20:38] not very long I just want to get you get the idea of how awful this album is under god indivisible with liberty and justice I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america oh blaine is so furious right now

[00:21:18] that's painful yeah it hurt and there's other you know god bless america every other like cheesy patriotic song you can think of makes its appearance on this album I think this is around the time he really started rocking that leather american flag jacket um his only other albums

[00:21:36] that had any success were his first greatest hits record was released in 85 it reached platinum and was number 63 on the billboard 200 and then he had a compilation or collaboration album with barbara man drill called meant for each other and that hit number 89 on the billboard 200

[00:21:54] his last album of new music was released in 2003 and everything released since has been compilations live albums or christmas albums which somehow this fucking song god bless the usa appears on these fucking christmas records I can't stand it when a non christmas song appears on

[00:22:15] the christmas album I guarantee you they put some sleigh bells in the background oh yeah yes I didn't investigate that but man if he missed an opportunity if he didn't yeah I don't

[00:22:27] even have to listen to it already so let's let's get into a little more details about the background of the song and then we can start ripping into all the shit we don't like about it

[00:22:35] which probably will be covered here because it's the more and more I dug into this the more furious I became so according to greenwood he wrote this song in response to the shooting down of korean airlines flight 007 which occurred in september of 1983 this is a commercial

[00:22:56] jetliner going from anchorage alaska to soul south korea and apparently it accidentally got into some soviet airspace at the same time there were like american spy planes or something and the soviet's

[00:23:10] mistook it shot it down everyone on board died so it was like a big kind of international incident obviously this is still cold war territory in 83 and so greenwood wrote this

[00:23:25] in response and later interviews he added that he wanted to write the song my whole life some kind of like patriotic song I've always wanted to write a song about america we just need to be more united

[00:23:39] so he likes that he wants what he thinks is this song is about uniting americans and as we'll see I don't know if it's politics necessarily flesh that out talk about the fucking butterfly effect

[00:23:50] I mean do you think Russia would have shot that plane down had they known that it would have resulted in this fucking song you know I mean like if you think of everything that flutters out from that

[00:24:02] that the destruction of that korean flight zero because you get this song and then you get I know you're going to go through all this but this shit gets played at the republican national

[00:24:12] convention and shit it's like Reagan's favorite do you think that we can draw a direct line from this plane going down to the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia I think we can

[00:24:24] think we can and I think it'll be a fairly straight line I think we can blame Lee Greenwood for what's happening through the whole damn thing yeah well this is not a political podcast so

[00:24:35] I'm not sure how great we'll be at that but we'll try uh so one thing that I did find about the original writing of the song and I don't know what the lyrics were but the second verse

[00:24:45] was different originally and the producer of the song suggested this is the verse where he starts just listing all the places in America but the producer suggested he change it to what we have

[00:24:56] now advising him basically to add these reference to the country to appeal to a wider audience so we have this first piece of evidence my thesis is that this song is all about

[00:25:06] crass commercialism and this is the first example of that he wants to appeal to as many people as possible so he talks about New York LA Detroit Houston just trying to cover a wide blanket

[00:25:19] and so as I mentioned earlier the song was not really popular outside of the country music audience initially however the song has surged in popularity at various times of crisis in the

[00:25:32] U.S. so that album American Patriot that I played the clip from earlier it came out in 92 which is right after the first Gulf War and that was really the first resurgence of popularity for

[00:25:46] the song apparently general Norman Schwartzkopf used the song as an anthem for that war and the story is is that apparently he played this song in his staff war room just before the launch of

[00:26:00] the invasion and right after saying a prayer yeah Storm and Norman Storm and Norman making this song the theme song of first Gulf War cool yeah because that's what you want if anything's missing

[00:26:17] from a war it's usually the theme song there you know that that's a sickening idea to have a quote unquote theme song I mean assuming that's what he said I don't know if he ever thought of it

[00:26:30] as a theme song but the fact that like literally like a half hour before we start dropping bombs on Saddam he plays this song for his staff and then says a prayer I mean that's pretty indicative to me

[00:26:43] of course we see the next huge surge in popularity of the song after the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001 the song hit number 16 on the hot 100 on September 29th 2001 so just a few weeks

[00:26:57] after the attack and it didn't just like appear like in bubble up and they hit huge it was just week one that was its position and it stayed pretty high up for 17 weeks straight after that

[00:27:09] the song also saw a flurry of releases in 2003 not just from Greenwood and this is around the time of the second invasion of Iraq Dolly Parton released a version of it on her album for God in Country

[00:27:21] whoa it's just as bad except it's Dolly singing it so it's slightly better I guess the finalist of season two of American Idol performed and released a version of this song and it reached number four on the hot 100 so at top Mr. Greenwood's version

[00:27:39] and Greenwood released two different versions of the song in 2003 okay I have a clip of one and this is a version from his album Stronger Than Time which is his last record of new music

[00:27:50] it features a choir called the Fiskville Singers but really the best part of this is the incredibly awful electric guitar they should have put some talkbots in there those those cheesy riffs are throughout the entire song yeah like every every minute of

[00:28:34] people not singing has that and it sounds especially worse at the beginning because it sounds like the electric guitar setting on a Casio keyboard that seems to be his his signature sound yeah that's his bread mode yeah well the other

[00:28:49] version that he released it appears on his 2004 greatest hits album but I think it was released as a single in 2003 it's similar to the original but it loses the cheesy synth sounds in guitar

[00:29:01] from the original version is he taking the same vocal track I'm curious I would say that transferring from 1984 tapes to 2003 he may have just done it again yeah there's a couple

[00:29:15] other versions we'll get to here in a second that you'll learn there's more oh yeah yeah yeah but I'm gonna save that one for the end so another thing we mentioned Kevin brought up that conservative

[00:29:25] politicians just love this freaking song the song was first picked up by Reagan's campaign in 84 and it was played during the republican national convention as Kevin mentioned but Greenwood also performed this song at the inaugurations of Reagan both bushes

[00:29:43] and Donald Trump was not asked to by any of the democratic candidates as far as I know I thought you were gonna say he was not asked to you by any of the candidates he just showed up anyway and started playing it elbows his way in

[00:29:59] you know you want me here you didn't ask but yeah this is where I belong it's pretty astonishing that Clinton would have picked Bob Dylan singing chimes of freedom over Lee Greenwood I don't understand it another like one another kind of diss from the democrats

[00:30:16] is that I think what happened like that they the government puts in this person who's like a national endowment for the arts um spokesperson or something and after Obama was elected in 2008 he nominated Esperanza Spalding who is a jazz-basist vocalist incredible musician

[00:30:37] to take over for whoever it was before I think it was Greenwood Greenwood had been nominated for that and put in that position by Bush too and the Senate never confirmed it apparently this is a Senate confirmed position so like Greenwood just served the entire term

[00:30:53] as this ambassador or whatever during Obama and then just stay there for Trump and it was recently that Biden finally said all right you're gone and has nominated somebody else but she's this other

[00:31:07] person forget her name is probably also languishing in the Senate it's just like one of those real big fuck yous like we're not going to confirm you yeah and and when you know when Biden the

[00:31:16] Biden administration got rid of Greenwood off of the national endowment for the arts I kind of feel like that was like one of those cases where it had probably he would have

[00:31:25] probably been off of there sooner if anybody had known he was on it right like I kind of feel like just nobody noticed he was there and then somebody was like hey Biden do you did you know Greenwood

[00:31:36] is on our national endowment for the arts that's ridiculous right okay we'll fix that well this guy Melvin has been loyal to Trump he hasn't really said too much I mean he's usually pretty cagey

[00:31:50] when it comes to people asking about his like political ideas and stuff and he's always just like oh I'm just happy to you know be asked by the president to perform this song but he performs at

[00:32:00] his rallies and I have a clip of him performing this song at a Trump rally during the 2018 mid-term elections you're not going to hear all of it because it's awful but it starts with Mike

[00:32:14] Pence introducing Donald Trump and you see in the video the music starts as Pence is finishing up his introduction and then Greenwood just like sort of appears to the side of him like out of nowhere

[00:32:27] and then he starts singing as it comes out and I don't know if you know this but as singers age they often will be smart and move their music down a key

[00:32:38] uh-huh mr. Greenwood does not do this uh and at 70 something years old he can't quite hit those notes anymore just missed it pretty rough he's his last note can't quite get it there

[00:33:30] Melvin come on buddy if you're if you're gonna hit the note wrong at least keep the vibrato he is a vibrato monster you go listen to his back catalog even it's it's been there the whole time

[00:33:46] as I said he's usually pretty cagey in interviews when asked about the use of the song in politics saying he never meant for the song to be political but like his continued appearances with Trump seem

[00:33:58] to indicate otherwise my my suspicion is he's either so crassly commercial that he doesn't care that his music gets used by batshit crazy conservatives or he himself is a batshit crazy conservative and just doesn't want to admit it there was a 2017 Rolling Stone interview with him

[00:34:16] when he was performing for Trump's inauguration you know a lot of bands were asked to do it and they backed out and said no because they didn't like Trump but when asked about his opinion of Trump he hits all the normal usual conservative talking points saying quote

[00:34:31] I don't think there's any doubt that Donald Trump our president-elect is a patriot he's a businessman and I think he's going to do the best for our country economically I think that now he's put a general in his cabinet they'll have a consensus of opinion on ISIS

[00:34:44] and that's a great thing we need to get that under control and the immigration issues basically just reading a script from the Tucker Carlson show no he's a he appears on

[00:34:56] Fox News a lot oh does he I think so is he is he giving his opinion in these situations they I think they just use like live footage of him singing this song oh and at the at the rallies

[00:35:11] yeah but he you know they certainly posterizing so I've got two more pieces of evidence that I think sort of indicate just this song isn't about patriotism it's about crass commercialism he just

[00:35:25] wants to beat this horse dead until there's nothing left coming out of it oh no doubt and so the first piece of evidence is that they released a couple years ago a god bless the USA bible

[00:35:39] oh come on which yes includes copies of the founding documents like the constitution and the Declaration of Independence but also lyrics from the chorus of the song when asked about it Greenwood said quote I couldn't believe there'd be a better match than faith and patriotism did you

[00:35:56] not research that it has a 1986 copy of penthouse in the back strange but it's true man here's the best piece of evidence guys this this made me so happy when I found it I don't think he gives

[00:36:14] a shit about patriotism he just wants to have this song just rotate somewhere being played for the rest of his life there's a fucking Canadian version that he recorded himself proud to be a

[00:36:26] Canadian really it's called god bless you Canada and it is literally the same song of course the first verse is the same and then the second verse instead of talking about places in America

[00:36:38] talks about places in Canada and then the first and last line of the chorus are just you know he shoehorn's Canada in there so here's here's a little bit of that but before you play it can

[00:36:49] I just want to I'm hoping fingers across that it is so blatant that it's the same vocal track but he just went in and just dropped the word you know like really bad like really bad television movies

[00:37:02] not even properly aligned yeah bless the you at Canada all right here it is second verse into the beginning of the chorus from the shores of Nova Scotia to the forest in bc Montreal to win a pit from sea to shining sea and all that legal weed

[00:37:28] Detroit we can see her oh god above the USA because there's pride in every Canadian heart time Kevin is jumping out of his chair right now I okay I don't know if this is appropriate

[00:37:55] time for me to go on this fucking rant but I've been toying with this little idea in my head that Lee Greenwood is secretly a genius and we're not going to find out until he's dead

[00:38:05] and none of this none of this I don't actually believe this to be true but the fact that he recorded that as a Canadian song from the perspective of an American standing on the shore

[00:38:17] longingly looking across at Canada yeah so he has this patriotic song you know I'm so proud to be an American and then he re-records it from the perspective of an American admiring Canada

[00:38:30] so I've been so the lyrics to this fucking song he says you know it starts out he says you know if my wife and kids were dead for whatever fucking reason I'd be proud to be here and what's how

[00:38:44] does the chorus go at least I know I'm free so he has the song where it's all about being proud about being American and he lists no examples of anything that he's proud of except

[00:38:58] at least I know I'm free and like there's a connotation to the two words at least you know you're like some heavy like cars a piece and my car is a piece of shit but at least it runs

[00:39:11] you know like that's how I'm used to hearing people say at least so he says at least I know I'm free and then he gives no other example of anything that he's proud of in America

[00:39:21] which to me makes this the perfect song for batshit crazy nationalism so like oh I am super proud of America and I'm gonna scream America at anybody and then you say well why are you proud of it

[00:39:36] just cuz America freedom and that's what the song that's what the song is saying it's like genius in that way and the fact that he's willing to record it for a different country

[00:39:46] I think maybe a little bit proves that he's not as nationalistic as you might see maybe when he dies he's gonna leave a note this song was really about how shitty nationalism is

[00:40:02] kind of like born in the USA you know right right I mean it's the I think the genius of Greenwood that you're alluding to is that he makes it so generic that anybody can

[00:40:13] stamp their ideals of what America is onto it which is nationalism in a nutshell right yeah that's it yeah that's it yeah that and that I have the stereotypes and tropes that he does fit into

[00:40:26] the song is actually a little impressive because he's being like you said vague enough that it's that it kind of works so there's a slight genius to it sans nuance yeah I mean

[00:40:37] that's what we're getting the song specifics here and which is right where I wanted to be but that theme that you talk about and get y'all's opinion on this he loses his farm and his family

[00:40:48] the music video has this little story of him he's a farmer and he's losing the family farm and he's having I guess the last dinner on the farm with the family much more specific

[00:40:58] but yeah I'm I see the thematic sort of story of Job from the bible in this where Job is just getting shit on over and over again and he's still like no I'm still with God and that's

[00:41:12] kind of what he's saying about America here like I have to close the farm down but you know what America is still great yeah and not really looking inward or at the fact that you know your farm

[00:41:24] probably closing because I don't know like speculation on commodities which is just US government has let run a muck that's the reason why your farm's closing like America could be the reason your life is shitty in action on climate change I don't know take your pig

[00:41:40] yeah exactly take your fucking pig what what is it to that thread in American conservatism where it's like I'm gonna not give a shit about how crappy my life is blame it on

[00:41:52] whatever else except the people in charge right you touched on something that I hadn't thought of it's that America is God but God is also God maybe there's more nuance to it than I thought but

[00:42:06] I don't know I mean it is God bless the USA I mean the it is interweaving of Christianity and the story of America is something that oh yeah gets played up by conservatives really actually

[00:42:18] politicians of both stripes to an extent for sure it just it seems like it has enough specificity to allude to like a biblical type story but also enough genericism as you say Kevin to like

[00:42:33] you can paste anything you want to on it but blame did you have any other like sort of things you notice in the lyrics that you wanted to talk about but they're painful because

[00:42:43] they're pandering to me I think the few songs I've brought to this song sucks the song itself sucks on its own but this one definitely has a lot more intangibles that have just become attached

[00:42:54] to it immediately with Reagan of course I just like this song in 1984 when I was eight years old shortly after hearing it the first time I mean just didn't do anything for me and I remember kind

[00:43:06] of thinking why is this played over and over I don't why why is this always on a patriotic show I didn't like it why do people stand up for it I might have loved the song when I was a child I

[00:43:17] feel like I did you and I are about the same age so there's did you really know I loved Elvira by the Oak Ridge boys that was my favorite song in the world but I think this might have been in

[00:43:28] the top three or five you know those formative years you know okay I'm a different person now I've grown okay yeah and there's gonna be a lot of people because of those intangibles

[00:43:40] who are going to come at us maybe I don't know there's gonna be a lot of people who try to make the argument that if you don't like this song to at least some degree you're you're some sort of

[00:43:47] anti-american communist but the truth of the matter is these song if you put gobbledygook lyrics in there as a placeholder it's nails on a chalkboard what do you mean by putting like

[00:43:59] different lyrics in there or the if you just like if he would have released this with just like you know placeholder stuff no no message of America or USA you would hear how horrible it is

[00:44:14] the song itself is horrible and then we're gonna also talk about the message or the aura around it that gets attached to it by people who've listened to it maybe not so much him at

[00:44:25] least not in the beginning maybe not maybe yeah I mean I thought so what you're saying is that the song itself stripped of any like patriotic meaning is just absolute garbage I mean

[00:44:36] you have the really cheesy synth sounds in the original that sound like they're played on a Walmart piano and that despite the fact that he's recorded multiple versions of this that original version is the one with the most spins on Spotify and none of the versions

[00:44:51] get any better like musically just strip the lyrics away none of them are like oh okay that's a little better yeah it's like you got a new keyboard that played some new generic fucking

[00:44:59] built-in tune and you just decide to sing it over the new one yeah it's just slightly better sounding because there's like 20 years of development in that technology yeah yeah and cheap keyboard technology I mean but even like even from a like other musical aspects of it

[00:45:14] I mean some of the chord changes are not that bad because it uses like inversions right in the chords which you don't hear in a lot of pop music these days especially

[00:45:24] but some of that's yeah decent sounding but there's other instances of it like the chord change from the end of the verse to the beginning of the chorus is very like stark and weird

[00:45:36] it's like a D minor kind of thing right well it goes from a B flat to a C in second inversion which has an E note in the bass so that jump is really kind of

[00:45:48] stark and doesn't sound very good in my opinion man he also at there's no reason for that extra chord the the phrase is actually nine bars so he just kind of holds that last chord out

[00:45:59] to give you preparation for this new chord it sounds kind of like he's changing key but what follows after it just sort of makes it fall flat okay like it's it's not very well

[00:46:12] thought out I mean and of course like you know in a lot of these types of songs the melody in the verse is just a single note he repeats that changes over the chord and then

[00:46:23] in the chorus he's just singing a rising arpeggio there's nothing really like particularly interesting about it what Hayden flag you right now for being too dorky probably yes am I supposed to do that

[00:46:34] yeah yeah yeah that's that sounds like no I didn't because I'm some of that's really interesting the parts that I can understand and it makes sense to me when I think about the song

[00:46:44] there's aspects of it that aren't terrible but when it all congeals together right I mean particularly I have some arranging picadillos in here like when he that last chorus that he slows down and you get

[00:46:57] like the snare for revolutionary war marching beat to it is just so fucking cheesy and dumb oh it's it's shooting for the purely saccharine without without logic thought or even credibility to some degree and I think immediately preceding that the the marching snare drum sound is probably

[00:47:17] the most hilarious cymbal crash I've ever heard in a song let's talk about let's dissect this cymbal crash okay everybody was gonna talk about the cymbal crash I'll let you go ahead Kevin yeah

[00:47:28] no I just I don't know why it's so funny to me and I'm hoping maybe somebody can explain why this is funny hilarious but all the music stops and you hear this marching band cymbal

[00:47:38] crash that really kind of sounds like the player has accidentally done this like before he was supposed to yeah but no they play it that way every time there's no bass drum is the biggest thing you need

[00:47:51] a boom with it right like is that what it is it adds an extra beat right to the to the phrase and there's that kind of off-putting and you know if you go listen to chikovsky's 1812 overture

[00:48:04] there's moments like this as I did where they shoot a cannon they literally shoot a cannon that would be effective right it's a fucking cannon that is what that song is missing it's yeah

[00:48:13] I mean there's no bass drum as Blaine says but like you've built up this big thing and all you get is this little dimpy sort of cymbal crash I mean the it's just that the frequency spectrum

[00:48:24] that that is is just like it builds bill bill we get a lot of content and then it just all of a sudden shoots down to that narrow high range of the cymbal so like we could use some like tom or

[00:48:35] a timpani crash or a bass drum or like something in there to provide more frequency content and that's why it falls flat I think is it's just like how funny it creates an extra beat in there I

[00:48:47] didn't even know that that's god it's don't you love how it starts with the with the hypothetical if all the things were gone but hey let's give him some modern a modern tip of the hat here because

[00:48:59] he's not thinking about his wife and kids as things and you know if all the things were gone but my children and my wife you know he didn't include them in the things you gotta you gotta tip your

[00:49:10] hat I can start again and live my life the way I really wanted to in the first place who needs this form that my family has built up over generations yeah yeah I'll say one

[00:49:21] other thing blame before I let you continue with with the lyrics here arranging wise the end of the first chorus you notice how it builds up god bless the usa and then it just drops and his

[00:49:33] I'll play the clip real quick yeah god bless the usa so it's like someone forgot to tell him hey hey lee it gets quiet here like it just builds up builds up big huge note and then just drops to

[00:49:55] nothing there's no transition so he just kind of starts whispering this song like oops my bad we're back to this temp we're back to this level that specific yeah I thought that was a bad choice

[00:50:06] the people I think who crafted the song whether he wrote like all the music to it and how it came together in the studio I just think there was not again as I mentioned I think this was

[00:50:17] kind of a throwaway song for him by its placement on the album he didn't want it to be a single originally and then just the sort of craftsmanship that you would normally put into a recording is just

[00:50:27] not there but they never go back and make the they've released it 17 times 117 times um that particular clip you just played makes me think of how weak this song is it's so weak it's so

[00:50:44] milk toast because there are going to be comments I'm going to talk about a little bit they talk about how much they get pumped up about this song how hey I think I know how how jingo is or maybe everybody recognizes this is the genius

[00:51:02] allegory to vapid nationalism that it really is and that's why all these people are so excited hey give them a lot of credit there Kevin yeah a lot of rope there I'm trying to be a happier

[00:51:15] person and give people the benefit of the doubt nowadays well okay I'll counter that and I'll say if you think I'm calling anyone who likes this song like truly likes it plays it on their

[00:51:23] own accord or by their own will if you think I'm calling them simplistic or dumb or feeble-minded I am seriously can't you imagine getting in the car with somebody and they say this comes on the right

[00:51:41] here and no no no worse they plug in their phone they got the cd and they go let you ready to go yeah I'm ready and this comes on I'm like dude you put is this what the fuck oh god this might

[00:51:54] happen to me because since you know since I knew we were going to do this I've been working myself up to actually listening to this fucking song and I haven't been able to make myself do it until today

[00:52:05] a few hours before the recording and so I didn't want to listen to it in the house because you know this apartment building the walls are thin I don't want my neighbors thinking I'm an asshole

[00:52:14] or anything no matter how soft I play it they might still hear it so I got in the car and drove to the grocery store and so I'm playing the song listening to it in the car and I pull up

[00:52:24] like there's a homeless person on the side of the road like at a red light and I looked over and I felt so bad like it was just like I just turned it down like he probably couldn't hear it anyway

[00:52:34] like I don't I don't feel safe listening to the song anywhere that scene in the beginning of office space when he's listening to rap music real loud and the guy walks about exactly

[00:52:43] turns it down and rolls up the window but I mean it was at that beginning lyric where he's like if I lost my wife and kids and everything today I'd still be happy to be here and

[00:52:53] shit and I roll up right next to a homeless person who is you know very well possibly have lost his wife and everything and he's ended up on the side of the road and here I am listening

[00:53:01] to this piece of shit song right in front of him well I just felt bad about it. He just needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps you didn't know he had. Yeah he does yeah that's what we need

[00:53:10] in America we need to buy people more bootstraps because they could pull themselves up by them I don't even know what that bootstrap is. These socialist bootstrap giveaways. I really hate that this song has become another national anthem of sorts our co-national anthem

[00:53:27] I talked about people standing for it there are so many better ones to choose from first of all if you won't upbeat there's Kendrick Lamar's alright if you like the downbeat let's try America the Beautiful by Ray Charles but now here's my personal favorite let's let's disregard Lee

[00:53:43] Greenwood for the rest of eternity and choose James Brown living in America. Okay yeah that's your co-national anthem if you need one I was humming that before I before we jumped on one and I thought man that's a great song well I mean it's it really is

[00:54:01] I don't know do you know when that song came out 1985 or six so around the same time yeah so it's it just seems more indicative of the 80s to me because it is clearly much more fueled by

[00:54:14] cocaine than God bless the USA. I really will make the argument very small claim that the USA it's ideals that we don't achieve hardly ever are really great and I think in my adulthood I've

[00:54:31] overlooked those they are great so I'm not dog in America at least not it's ideals I'll say well that's that's the kind of nuance that the people who might listen to this song in their car

[00:54:43] for fun like that they sort of wash away we can sit here dog on this song but it doesn't necessarily make us anti-American it's just pointing out that these ideals you talk of we haven't quite got there yet and singing this fucking song over and over again isn't

[00:54:57] going to get us there. I don't think he's really good I mean again he the only thing that he says he likes about America is the freedom and there's 161 other countries in the world that

[00:55:08] can give you that. Yeah I mean he wrote another version of a song for Canada a country that his people are also free. Before I listen to this again today I could have sworn he'd said something

[00:55:19] about Mount Rushmore in that song somewhere but that's pretty amazing that you attached that to the song yeah I just I don't know I thought for sure there was gonna be lines about the

[00:55:29] Statue of Liberty Mount Rushmore the fucking Grand Canyon I don't really know what that has to do with USA. It's just there. Other than at the end of it yeah. There's this great thing America had nothing

[00:55:38] to do with. But I would have thought he would have been able to come up with one thing he liked about America if he's going to sing a whole goddamn song about how much he likes America. Yeah like milk duds you know something. Something anything. Unboiled meat.

[00:55:54] Call back to Mr. Sheeran there. Just freedom. It's the biggest problem of this song now that it opened the door to even maybe an even worse one which is Toby Keese Murder, Kill, Commandment

[00:56:10] those kinds of things. Yeah again you could probably draw a direct line between that and those kind of songs and then you know the music of Mr. Aaron Lewis that we've talked

[00:56:19] about before on this podcast. Am I the only one? Again another like generic slot fest that you can just put whatever you want to superimpose your own fucked up ideals on top of. I was listening

[00:56:31] to that episode that you did last the one about about Lewis and the metal music and everything and when you were playing the beginning of the version of this where the children are saying or the where the children are saying the pledge of allegiance I was just

[00:56:45] imagining like when they got to that last line of the pledge of allegiance some real corn-esque kind of metal riff comes in like. Yeah I started with the I still play that to Hayden sometimes when we're sitting around just cut them up.

[00:57:03] All right what else you got Blaine? I'm ready for YouTube and internet comments. Okay Kevin do you have anything specific about the song that you want to mention before we move on to that? I'm not specifically about the song I did try to look up uh I was

[00:57:17] really hoping I would come across I don't know how many I know that you two guys are familiar with it but if anybody's not familiar with the tank tank performance where Hank Williams Jr. got so drunk

[00:57:27] that he couldn't even remember the words to country boy can survive and it turned into Oh and many other songs. Yeah country boy can survive turned into country boy Carolina

[00:57:36] I believe in that but I was really hoping I could Sony boy can be alive. Yeah it would just know I was really hoping I would come across Lee Greenwood's shit face trying to sing this song

[00:57:47] no such thing exists as far as I can tell but in my search for that I did find the story about this guy uh in Tennessee a few years ago who got drunk and naked and rode a log down a river

[00:58:02] in Tennessee singing uh God bless the USA in refusing anybody's efforts to get him out of the water so people were running bridge to bridge trying to save this man who was naked floating down the

[00:58:16] river singing God bless the USA throwing ropes and shit to him and he won't grab any of them and they finally get him out and the reason he said that he never grabbed any of those

[00:58:25] ropes was because people were yelling at him and it was hurting his feelings. Oh did he get triggered? Yeah that's that's uh that's the influence of Lee Greenwood anyway I just wanted to

[00:58:38] slip that story in there at some point before he moved on. I mean it is a perfect image of just a drunk naked man floating down the river attached to some logs. Belting that song at the top of his lungs.

[00:58:47] But just to follow up my dad is still embarrassed about that. All right oh sorry I forgot I had one more clip which a very short one this is actually my least favorite part of the song.

[00:59:05] This is the verse where he's just yelling or listing random places across the plains of Texas because we don't sing in Texas we spit our words out. Like what is he trying to do there? Just some sort of like faux masculinity I guess.

[00:59:23] Yeah yeah he enunciated that uh that was a choice. He's just like he's putting on a cowboy hat and like tilting it as he says it. I tell you what the good thing though is I do have living in America

[00:59:35] in my head now. Yeah that's something. That song it rocks. Yeah that should that could be like a sort of agreement we make every time you play God Bless the USA you have to bookend it by

[00:59:51] lift every voice the Black National Anthem. Okay yeah and then James Brown living in America. Because he shouts out places too randomly. Yeah. Detroit, Atlantic, City. Probably all places he's been to I don't think Lee Greenwood probably spent a lot of time in the places that he

[01:00:09] lists in this song you know. I also got the picture that he said that like when he was living with his grandparents he did quote farm chores and stuff but you just watch him riding that tractor

[01:00:21] in that music video it's like you didn't like the actors you got all look like they could be farmers. I mean I'm pretty sure he got the the woman from American Gothic to play the grandma.

[01:00:36] But like he just does not seem like he's got the farmer sort of swagger to him. I don't know yeah and he doesn't that man's hands are softer than pillows. I'm surprised he's from he's from California right? It shocked me. Yeah. I thought Missouri or like

[01:00:53] Arkansas or something. I thought he'd at least be a country boy of some sort. Yeah I don't I don't think so I mean I think his his sort of early start in his music career was him trying to

[01:01:04] get the fuck away from wherever he was which he said that he did quote farm chores with his grandparents in Sacramento so maybe there was some sort of you know country boy style life there

[01:01:15] as much as you can get in Sacramento. He'll pick the grapes for the wine. You see him he's like nine with a little snifter just like this has got a good nose.

[01:01:29] All right Blaine so since Hayden's out for this one I asked you to do a little YouTube dig in so we got we got an addition of Blaine's YouTube corner for this one. And it's not good it's actually

[01:01:40] so depressing it's really depressing because here's what it's exactly what you think it's exactly what you think it's so the official music video from his account has over two million views and a

[01:01:53] lot of redundancy as far as the comments the song gave people chills people not a lot of people being American and loving it that was like a theme. Is this is this the original music video version

[01:02:07] that you're looking at okay yeah because there's also the music video versions for like the Gulf Wars and I looked at those okay okay so I mean and they but they're all the same all the comments

[01:02:19] just basically overlap so it doesn't really matter which one you look at but as you might have even been able to guess there were Q and on supporters in the comments get out can you

[01:02:30] believe it yeah the whole where we go one we go all or something that was referenced at least twice and I'll quote a few a beautiful sentiment from Elena just my thoughts says I love this song

[01:02:48] and when I attend church that plays it I stand up God bless my beautiful America so glad my family and I were born into this nation thank you father comma God okay because I would be thinking

[01:03:01] my father Roy Duncan who is like sticking it out in America here buddy okay fair there's a lot of revelations that this song has played at certain ceremonies such as completing basic training and

[01:03:14] naturalization mm-hmm I didn't know that and that's creepy do how many how many people that you think got naturalized they heard that song they're like I've made a terrible mistake

[01:03:24] I hope a lot I hope I've heard one of them I did come across it that as part of like Homeland Security's you know method that they go through as part of American citizenship is that

[01:03:37] everyone who becomes a new American citizen has to watch a video in which this song is included I just it makes me wonder if anybody's like made it all the way to that point and then

[01:03:48] they start playing the song and they're just like I'm out yeah never mind you don't really know anything about the country you don't need to read the Federalist papers any of that shit you know like enlightenment thought from Europe just listen to Lee Greenwood's God bless the USA

[01:04:02] you've got it molds it down and anybody that doesn't stand up when they hear that song no citizenship for you that's the part that annoys me the most it like people look at you if you don't stand up for this song sometimes they really do in

[01:04:19] situations I've been in and I'm gonna just like fuck you yeah but my guy Ricky bungalow on YouTube this is some of my favorite part of this is just these names Ricky bungalow yeah he has the most

[01:04:34] badass statement with imagine if this song played in the courtroom of the biggest second amendment trial of the century is that badass which trial is that I don't know this is a hypothetical

[01:04:45] trial in his mind okay yes I mean that's all it says shire 39 I guess this song is almost as good as the old Soviet anthem which one would that be that I don't know but that I thought that was a

[01:05:00] brave choice well I can guarantee you that it was probably a better composed song I mean those Soviet guys they got beat if they didn't write a patriotic enough song actually after this I'm gonna have to send you something me and Michael McCain a guy who once

[01:05:15] beat up a gunman while he was being robbed a man held a gun on his in his face he beat the shit out of the guy and the whole things on a 911 call beside the point we wrote a new when

[01:05:28] a Russian athletes weren't able to use the Russian national anthem we wrote a new one for them yes send it oh man wait if we can share that on the on the blog I would love to yeah oh yeah

[01:05:40] yeah absolutely you might not want to you're pretty open yeah uh I don't know who this is Charlie Hoyt something writes this song fixes me up whenever I feel down this song gives me hope

[01:05:53] which I found inspiring because it's usually only drugs that fix me up when I'm feeling down but just I mean this song what about like Sly and the Family Stone celebrate good times

[01:06:05] you know like so many other songs you could pick yourself up with several of the comments read like propaganda bots wrote them it might be a language barrier okay they really read like that

[01:06:18] Bane with a Y writes it saddens me that we actually live in a time when this is all trying to be taken away from us we can't let this happen what again what is being taken away from you I have no idea the song only talks about freedom

[01:06:32] you still have all that I love this person King zilch I love this person I want to hang with this person reach out to us buddy I can pick I can just picture Lee Greenwood sitting at home waiting

[01:06:45] for another national tragedy so he can trot out this crappy song one more time yes King zilch man we're gonna have him on the podcast yeah I know I'll leave it at this Susan are

[01:06:59] I'm gonna give her the final say on the matter she writes quote fight CRT in schools because we freed freedom that's that's all you got on on the on the YouTube comments for this one

[01:07:13] yeah they were maybe Hayden's better at digging than I am but they were just all sadly redundant but well maybe his capacity for finding the drags of human society is a little greater than

[01:07:26] your I feel like he's adjacent to them quite often I mean he loves like digging into a really bad Facebook comments this is before the podcast even and reddit was a barren site for anything

[01:07:42] but it was just a bunch of people posting the video in different subreddits and not many comments about him interesting you didn't you didn't dig into eight Chan on this one oh god no

[01:07:52] I'm scared I'm scared of that place oh goodness well Kevin you got anything to add before we call it on this one no I think I'm good thanks for having me though I've enjoyed myself yeah

[01:08:04] it's been good was enjoyable why don't you tell the folks about your podcast where we where they can listen to it uh it's called where is the line you can find us on any

[01:08:13] of the podcasting platforms Spotify or anything else it's a show generally gets described as two true crime but it's basically any disturbing story you can think of so we've got shows on

[01:08:25] bestiality on women who have set on the toilet long enough to be fused to it and have to be surgically removed that kind of thing fun so yeah yeah if you're looking for something gross

[01:08:36] to listen to uh you could do worse well I in preparation I listened to a couple episodes and you're not most recent but the one before that uh where you interview the the body picker uppers

[01:08:48] the corpse wranglers the people who picked oh that was a good one yeah I didn't I mean the subject matter was good enough on its own but you had I guess part of your family in the

[01:08:56] background drinking and heckling you the whole time as well yeah well I had to go there it was my family's neighbor so I had to go down to Walker County Alabama to get that story and uh yeah

[01:09:10] my family were there and had been drunk drinking and probably doing other things before then so they were they were ready to go by the time we started all right that is where's the line with

[01:09:22] Kevin Hamburg Kevin thank you for joining us Blaine thank you for joining us again it's always a pleasure uh you can direct all hate mail to Donovan Reinhwald that's the man thanks again guys we'll see you next time