Big And Rich - Horse Of A Different Color (2004)

After all the great Blues uploads during the last weeks it's time to have some fun. Today Opfesoft requested Johnny Cash, so now it's time for "country" music :-)

WARNING 1 Main targets for this music are guys like Nagiants & Opfesoft

WARNING 2 If you're a true classic country follower, this might not be the right download for you

WARNING 3 If you hate country, give this one a try, you might like it

“

Country music had no bigger story in 2004 than the rise of the Muzik Mafia, a renegade group of Music City misfits led by Big & Rich (Big Kenny Alphin and John Rich, the latter formerly of Lonestar) and Gretchen Wilson. Both acts shook up Nashville's lethargic, formulaic format--Wilson with her take-no-bull brand of redneck chic, and Big & Rich with their eclectic, wild-haired blend of honky-tonk, rock, rap, ballad, and western, the shoot-'em-up motif for their traveling circus, i.e., Wild West show. Their debut, Horse of a Different Color, which showcases the pair's unusual high-low vocal harmony, is both funny and irreverent ("Kick My Ass"), not to mention clever. (They sing "bad word" in place of a rhyming epithet.) Boasting "music without prejudice" in their self-mythologizing "Rollin' (The Ballad of Big & Rich)," they reference Charley Pride as "the man in black," and trot out country music's first African American rapper, Cowboy Troy. Yet race turns to "racy" in the duo's hit single "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)," the disc's least interesting cut. The easy laugh and rapped stanzas overshadow the smarter lyrics on the rest of the record, which concerns itself not only with frontier justice, but, surprisingly, with old-time religion (Jesus, tolerance, and in a song about sexual abuse, "Holy Water"). Like many professional funny men, Big & Rich--accomplished songwriters and (now) producers--are dead serious beneath it all. Even if this horse opera of a novelty act doesn't last, look for them to shape much of what gallops out of Nashville for a good, long run. --Alanna Nash

”

The tracks are:

01 Rollin' (The Ballad Of Big and Rich)
02 Wild West Show (Single Version)
03 Big Time
04 Kick My Ass
05 Six Foot Town
06 Holy Water
07 Saved
08 Real World
09 Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy
10 Drinkin' 'Bout You
11 Love Train
12 Deadwood Mountain
13 Live This Life

(Track 04 special dedicated to Nagiants)


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Some might wonder about this upload, some might say "typical Bully". Both are right :-)

Next upload next week will be either classic rock ... or classic country ... let's see ...


And a final word to fenale AvaxHome members (if there really is at least one): Save a horse, ride a cowboy ;-)