#freebird

If it were any other hero, Freebird might have stood a chance.

In lieu of poetry, which my brain is ardently refusing to produce, I present a brief case study of the colorful differences in American cultural regions.

Once in small town South Dakota at a VFW bar (note: I am not a veteran, that’s just where the locals took us) we commandeered the jukebox. And as any other southerner would eventually, perhaps inevitably, do, I played Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd. The crowd went wild and most of us played air guitar for the entire solo. The energy was palpable and joyous.

Roughly a year later, at a bar in California wine country, which genuinely shared a parking lot with the windmill-bearing motel made famous by the oenophilic movie Sideways, I repeated the experiment. This time, however, the song was met by a murky, annoyed silence punctuated by the bartender who, in a loud voice, asked:

“Who put this hillbilly shit on?!”

I’m not sure what factors led to such a marked variation in reaction, nor what it suggests about our ongoing struggles to find common ground as a country and a community. And yet there’s something so illuminating about the difference, even if it’s frustratingly difficult to quantify. I suppose more tests are necessary.

I had my revenge on the Californians later that night, revenge demanded of me by my memories of the Dirty South, when I convinced a drunken stranger to play The Diamond Sea by Sonic Youth, which is an awesome song with a twenty minute outro of Grunge-style feedback. The looks on their faces was the balm I had craved.

Ain’t nobody scoffs at the Skynyrd.

Doodle

I fucked it up last year.