414. "Taneytown" Steve Earle

"Taneytown"
Steve Earle
El Corazon
1997

Steve Earle is just an interesting cat. Started out in rockabilly, had a brief fling with mainstream country success, then became a crack addict. Went into recovery, released two of the best records of the 90's (I Feel Alright and El Corazon). Then he wrote a song from the point of view of the "American Taliban" dude, John Walker Singh, and for some reason that was controversial.
TANGENT KORNER:
For what its worth, I don't think America could ever fall under a totalitarian regime, either left or right. We are too diverse a country, and just too damn ornery to ever get 300 million people to follow a "dear leader". That being said, it was pretty fucking scary in the early to mid 2000s. Not so much the government at the time, but just the culture. Dissent was forbidden, again not by the government, but by our fellow citizens. I mean, the Dixie Chicks (who were the biggest country act of the decade) basically ended their careers because the singer said she was ashamed to be from the same state as Dubya. Steve Earle, a folk/country singer who sold 100,000 records tops with a new release, became a headline just for singing a song from the point of view of someone who was fucked up.
Oh yeah, and remember "Freedom Fries"?
So anyway, Steve Earle also played a recurring character in the popular HBO program The Wire. If you read the internet, you may have heard of this program.
The Wire is about a million times more popular now than when it aired. In fact, at this point I'm pretty sure that the local news stations in Baltimore don't even report on crime stories, they just have a moment during each telecast where the anchor says, "Hey, remember The  Wire? Yeah, all that same shit happened here again today. Coming up, Rocky Stone with the weather."