"The feel-good hit of this endless summer"

That's a line from "The Ballad of the Kingsmen" by alt.country musician Todd Snider. If you haven't heard the song, find it and give it a listen. Call your local radio station or visit your favorite CD store. Or buy it from Snider's record company.

The title refers to the song "Louie, Louie," by the Kingsmen, which was supposedly the subject of a long-ago FBI investigation because of hard-to-understand lyrics. Even if that's a myth, it serves an artistic purpose for Todd Snider.

According to reviewer Peter Cooper, writing this past Monday (August 16) in the East Nashville Skyline Snider is making a valuable statement about contemporary American life, sort of like the point addressed in Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine":

what messes up kids' heads isn't their music, but a conflicting, war vs. meek-shall-inherit, free-market vs. love-thy-neighbor upbringing that can make the world harder to understand than Louie Louie's garbled verses. ''The next time some latchkey kid goes wrong/ It ain't gonna be because Eminem gets to say the word (expletive) in his song,'' he [Snider] advises.

Cooper called the song "unbelievably, undeniably stunning" and also wrote that "stunning doesn't begin to describe" the CD.

Needless to say, Cooper gave the recording four stars.

Cooper's praise may be a little over the top but it is a damn fine song and I wish I could hear it again.

Right now.



The CD is on Oh Boy Records.

For my DC area readers, note that Snider will be in Alexandria, VA at the Birchmere on August 26 and in Germantown, MD on the 28th at the Black Rock Center for the Arts.


Note: This weekend I'll be taking in Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, who are touring minor league ballparks.

Cross your fingers for me as they did have one rainout.