"Radical" DXC

The Dixie Chicks show in Minneapolis rocked. In early June, Dan Wilson, a Minneapolis songwriter I admire and who co-wrote 6 tunes on the Chix CD (so spent some time with them), wrote in his blog: "'Radical Chicks' the headline of Time magazine. Ridiculous. Those gals are true-blue lefty liberals, they criticize the president, and the press calls them 'Radical.' 'Radical' for speaking out against the war? That's not radical."

That pretty much sums it up for me. The show was pretty non-political, and the songs speak for themselves in a very personal way. They do a have a wonderfully ironic and sardonic opening. Four huge glaring red lights shine while in the dark, they take the stage to canned music playing "Hail to the Chief."

The audience was 3/4s women, which didn't surprise me. It did make me wonder, though, why they chose to pull in male songwriters like DW and Gary Louris (formerly from The Jayhawks) to co-write.

While I was pondering women and leftist politics in the Twin Towns, I tripped across a quote by Agnes Nixon, daytime soap maven, in Chris Lawford's book. She said, "Soaps are often the only education on social issues that the underbelly of America ever gets." A bit harsh, but it is interesting to ponder if there are women who do indeed get their only exposure to these issues (AIDS, gay rights, interracial, and for that matter, gay, marriage, etc.) because liberal TV writers manage to slip them into story lines.

Although I love the waves of estrogen washing over at the DXC concert, I needed a little testosterone counterbalance on the long drive home today, which I took in doses from John Mayer's "Try" and Mike Doughty's "Haughty Melodic."

Looking forward this week to more musical delights - Bonnie Raitt & Keb 'Mo and Tim O'Reagan (like GL above, formerly of The Jayhawks).