(10-11-2021 11:15 AM)demiveeman Wrote: Yes...this is what kills me the most. People that want to shove this song down our throats don't even know what it means. Good Old Boys was a concept album about the South in the late civil rights movement era. Go look at the lyrics of the song that precedes it on the album titled "Rednecks" if you want to get the picture.
Birmingham is about a guy thinking life is great in Birmingham and ignoring basically everything that is happening around him. Even his "big black dog" being referred as the meanest dog in the state is commentary about the subject's point of view.
So many Randy Newman fans that don't even know that his bread and butter is satire. Makes us look as clueless now as that song did in 1974.
You posted first, damn you! Here's what I had:
I had a really good time Saturday. I had craft beer and I saw my team win. I don’t think I was counted in the crowd – the guy with the metal-detecting wand just pointed to an open gate.
I’ll be back for every game this season. I’ll drink craft beer and I’ll have a good time. What I will not be doing, is singing along to Randy Newman’s
Birmingham. And not just because it’s a stupid song. I will explain.
Birmingham is found on Newman’s 1974 album,
Good Old Boys, a collection of songs about the racist, backward South. Let’s look at the end of the song that comes just ahead of
Birmingham on the album, titled,
Rednecks.
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks
We don’t know our ass
From a hole in the ground
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks
We’re keeping the n*****s down
We are keeping the n*****s down
Newman does not use asterisks, by the way, and he snarls the word when he performs it. His point is clear.
Now, how does
Birmingham end?
Got a big black dog his name is Dan
He lives in my backyard in Birmingham
He’s the meanest dog in Alabam’
Get ’em Dan!
So. We have a song about siccing dogs on people. In Birmingham. From an album condemning Southern racism. Do I need to post a picture, or do we all know how the Birmingham-Dog connection works?
This song is no celebration of Birmingham. It’s a damnation. Using it as a sing-along is perverse, and trying to make it into a tradition is . . . I lack the words for it.
At least Vince McMahon had the sense to rename his crapulent fourth-rate football team the moment he realized what “Birmingham Blast” evoked. Whatever idiot decided on this course has no business marketing our program. I will not be singing this song, not with those lyrics.