Crapped Out

Love him or hate him -- there rarely is a middle ground -- Pat Green is the biggest thing to come out of Texas since, well, George W. Bush. And now that Pat is entering his second term as a major-label artist with his Lucky Ones CD, it appears that quite a few of the Texas fans who helped put Green in the big time are not so happy with what he has become.

Green's hard-core fans are nothing if not fervent. When this writer slammed Green in the Dallas Observer a number of years back, some 160 of his followers posted on the paper's Web forum in his defense. Or rather, accused me of knowing nothing about Texas music and being a Dallas yuppie and/or a New York faggot.

But current postings on the Web indicate that the tide is turning on Green. "OK, I know many of you have been haters for a while," notes poster "PUT_SIMMS_IN" on HornFans.com, a University of Texas alumni board, after learning that Green will be touring with Kenny Chesney. "[A]nd some, like me are gradually more disappointed that Pat was changing his music and becoming… well, gay… not that there is anything wrong with that."

Something is wrong, however, for many listeners who once liked Green's music. On HornFans.com and LoneStarMusic.com, a major online retail outlet for Texas music, the description "sucks" appears again and again in reference to Lucky Ones. About half of the 53 customer reviews on LoneStarMusic.com are negative, though it should be noted that Green still has his fair share of avid defenders.

A review by "Bobby" on that site notes, "Wow, words can't explain how disappointed I am." Others on LoneStarMusic.com have less of a problem putting their feelings about Lucky Ones into words: "By FAR the worst album from Pat Green ever," says "whiteyford."

On a thread titled "Note to Pat Green" on HornFans.com, "HornyRingman" writes, "Your new album sucks ass!" This from someone who says he's "been listening to his stuff since day one, as well as catching a few live shows a year."

"Not even country," says another listener. "Some sort of poppy, bubbly, teenybopper soft rock."

Even among customer reviews at Amazon.com, the disgruntled are griping. A self-described "diehard fan" from San Angelo, "thegeneral09," writes, "after the past three pieces of trash that he has released, I refuse to listen to any of his songs anymore."

Maybe "Big San Daddy" on LoneStarMusic.com has the right idea. "At first I thought this CD was terrible, but then I listened to it this last weekend over a couple of beers, and I heard a totally different set." After all, Green is the guy who wrote a song with the oh-so-clever title "Beer."

Supportive Green fans contend in their posts that Wave on Wave and now Lucky Ones reflect his artistic growth. "Lucky Ones is Pat Green at his best. Pat has matured into the next John Mellencamp, Guy Clark and Willie Nelson combined," contends "sde322-Shawn" on LoneStarMusic.com.

But others aren't buying it. "Pat has matured all right," writes "MrMan." "He has matured right into Kenny Chesney."

On the DC Texas Exes Message Board, "dancehall dreamer" calls the new Green album "a piece of crap," going on to say, "To all the folks that predicted PG would sell out once he signed with Universal, I'm sorry I doubted your prescience."

The complaint that Green has sold out is a common one. In his defense, it should be noted that Green was already making the greenbacks hand over fist here in Texas before he inked a deal with Universal, the largest major-label group.

But former fans don't seem to care. "Ryan" on LoneStarMusic.com writes, "The stuff on this CD does not sound like Pat Green at all. It's just another product from Nashville. If the record label let him do what he wanted to, then why didn't he have his band play on this CD?" Or as "JR" writes, "This album is so bad that Kenny Chesney would listen to it and say 'wow, what a sellout.' "

Dismayed Green fans recall his song "Here We Go," about how he "gave up on Nashville a long time ago." (This was, it should be noted, probably before Nashville had any interest in Green.) As "Bt cat" writes on Amazon.com, "If you listen to Pat's earlier CD, he writes about staying true to his roots on many tunes. I was listening to it yesterday, and it amazed me at how much Pat Green has done exactly what he sang he wouldn't do on his earlier disc."

But up in Music City, it seems, they are happy to welcome Green into the fold -- or maybe onto the assembly line. In a review headlined "Lucky for us, Pat Green rocks without any mention of Texas," Tennessean critic Peter Cooper writes: "Pat Green used to be the gag-me-with-another-Texas-hill-country-reference guy. And, his successes have spawned genuine musical evil in the form of a bevy of untalented, bombastic, college-circuit Lone Star singer-songwriters who want nothing more than to bludgeon ears with artless frat music and then bellow in interviews about how much better Texas is than Nashville.