Note to lonesome L.A. cowboys (hangin' out and hangin' on): DO NOT put your too-trite, beat-up, scuffed-up, working-man's boots on the cover of your CD. Ditto your two-tone cowboy boots.
LA tonky David Serby has the Dwight Yoakam look nailed on his second album, Honkytonk and Vine, right down to turned-up collars on his Levi's jacket and the poofty little handkerchief tie around his neck. The whole thing just screams "LA phony." If you think image is everything, you need to check out Redd V
Back in the Near Dark Ages when LOM was in grad-school journalism, one of the things that stuck with me was a lecture on "the lunatic fringe." These are the people who call in to radio talk shows or send long, vitriolic letters to newspapers, magazines and blogs.
Negative reviews always bring out the lunatic fringe. Take, for instance, my recent review of David Serby's Honkytonk and Vine.
Statistically speaking (or writing), the Houston Press publishes positive reviews a good 95 percent of the
California, we have a problem.
It is much the same problem we encounter with the whole Texas music phenomenon championed endlessly by Best In Texas music magazine: calculated, paint-by-the-numbers music and writing. This was one of LOM's chief criticisms of L.A. tonker David Serby's latest effort, and the next case in point is the new Stand Up Man from L.A.'s Grant Langston.
"We're gonna have a knock-down, drag-out Burt Reynolds movie brawl."
Yeah, right.
