Thursday, August 23, 2007

Lyric Controversy and Lost Wallets...

One of my big things about having this blog is that I was always going to mainly use it to catalog my life and not worry about readership or what people would care about. Which is kind of why I told Jew of I didn't want to have a blog at all now that other bloggers knew my real identity. But anyways, my point is - if I blog something boring I don't care - this is for me!

So today I had two unique problems, The first was that I forgot my wallet at home and only realized when I was about 20 minutes away. I figured I was just going to starve all day, but then I found 5 dollars in my purse -yes! I was set - I mean I brought my little snack and everything so I should've been fine. However, I am a huge coffee drinker and I had to get an iced coffee. That brought me down to $3.50 total. No biggie. At lunch time I strolled over to my huge new employer’s cafe to see whatever I could get with $4.47 which is what I had with change. Luckily the veggie burger w/fries was only 4.45 and there was no tax. Unluckily, the burger dude put tomatoes on without asking and apparently sliced tomatoes cost $.40 cents. So I got up there and was about .35 cents short and standing in front of some of the higher ups... I was just a little embarrassed!! But the cashier took pity on me and waved me through.

My second little issue was more of a crisis of conscience. I just started working at a Music Label which is what I've wanted to do since I moved up to New York. So anyway, I pretty much love music, and I love learning new stuff/back-stories on songs. Today somebody mentioned something about the song "Sweet Home Alabama" and how it was rather odd that they used it for a KFC commercial. I was sitting in my cube thinking "Why is that wierd? - it's a southern food!" (My family is totally from the South). So I googled – this and it brought up a number of sites/blogs that have discussed the potential racist lyrics of the song.

Lyrics in Question:

Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow

Chorus

In Birmingham they love the governor
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell the truth

Apparenly “A Southern Man” is a Neil Young song…and if you misinterpret the lyrics it sounds like Lynard Skynard is hating on Neil’s Song which makes them racist. But their not, there is stuff in the background and deeper meanings and blah, blah, blah notracist, blah. I don't want to just reiterate what they say so I will direct you to here ------ Here are some links in case you don’t believe me though:

Wikipedia page and a disagreeing page

I went through a 10 minute period reading all of that a little scared that the song I enjoyed singing at the top of my lungs in dark bars was completely non-pc. I mean, whatever! I'm pretty liberal and I don't care too much if a song is offensive sometimes but - the way a couple of sites put it Lynard Skynard were complete racists or something. It's completely not true! But I was just surprised because I had never really listened to the lyrics, and I never heard about any sort of controversy...

End mini crisis of conscience.

2 comments:

golfwidow said...

My bit of weirdedoutedness over that commercial was because why are they using a song about Alabama to advertise chicken from Kentucky?

I guess I didn't give it nearly as much thought as you did.

Lynn said...

And unfortunately I completely ignored that fact! That is a completely valid point, and definitely trumps my "southern food defense..."