The All American Red White and Blue Mixtape

Over time we've gotten stuck with a handful of great but overplayed songs that cherish the American experience.  Neil DIamond's best song is about coming to America.  Paul Simon will always be looking for America with Kathy.  Ray Charles would have made Katherine Lee Bates blush.  And of course, the deeply patriotic American Woman, get away from me-he-he.

And love those songs as I do, I wanted to dive deeper, seeking other observations, other beliefs, other snapshots of the too big, too majestic, too fantastic American experience.  In a time that craves only a right wing or a left lean to every talking point, what would an hour of unconnected American songs, related only by their collective independence, sound like?

So we begin with the Beach Boys wanting to be the Four Freshmen on graduation day.  From there we land in a tiny airplane with Chuck Berry, stroll a small town courthouse lawn with Johnny Cash, hop on the back of Peter Fonda's doomed motorcycle, and take a spin around the block with Blitzen Trapper on a Honda.  Excuse me, has anybody seen America?  Great country, fabulous people, best movies ever...?

John Prine cautions us about bumpersticker politics, Alice Cooper hungers Velveeta and Mount Rushmore in the same sentence, and Stan Freberg satirizes the signing of Thomas Jefferson's greatest text.  The Boss sings a little heard version of Born in the USA (if there is such a thing), Cat Power thinks about her flag from down under. Ry Cooder recalls FDR in the land of the hummingbird, Bob Dylan sings Woody Guthrie writing an open letter to Eleanor Roosevelt.  Crosby Stills Nash and Young yell at kids to get off their suburban lawns, Spinal Tap trades Stonehenge for another vision, and James Brown freely associates into a thumping Prince song.

And all in all, they echo the America of the contemporary musical mind.  The All American Red White and Blue Mixtape, guaranteed to fill a 4th of July (or Flag Day, or President's Day) hour of radio time with a lot of great USAlways music that hardly ever sees, or hears, airplay. 

One more thing, you can listen to it any time of the holiday--while you prepare the backyard barbecue, while you relax, while you do yardwork, while you keep it on in the background under conversation with 4th of July friends.  Every now and then, you or your guests will hear the words "America," or "USA," or "freedom," or any of a handful of patriotic buzzwords that find their ways into these songs.  No goggles or helmets required.  It's fun, it's thoughtful, it's unpredictable, and in so doing, it is all American.