Radio Sweethearts

Perhaps the thing I find most amazing about the fact that the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??” has been declared Oklahoma’s “state rock song” is that Tennessee doesn’t have one of its own.

I mean, not only is it criminal that we don’t have one, given our history, but it’s not like we’re suffering for qualified songs – I can’t even begin to count the songs named “Tennessee” (I’ve even written a couple), let alone the songs that just mention the state.

There’s the awesome Silver Jews song – even if it does praise Nashville a little too highly, but there’s the great Carl Perkins example of state pride. Granted, he too praises Nashville (where he probably should, in fact, be praising Memphis – a wrong Reigning Sound graciously rights in their version).

In fact, I’m a transplant. I could sing “Back Home Again in Indiana” to my heart’s content; it’s not g0ing to make me pine for the cornfields and motor speedways of Indiana any more than normal.

When I hear the Carl Perkins song, “Tennessee,” however, I pine for Gus’ fried chicken and the fact that there is always the smell of barbecue hanging somewhere in the background of the Memphis air. Even if I still prefer my iced tea unsweetened.

It’s a weird kind of state pride that really – because it’s about rock and roll and atomic bombs (it was written in the fifties, and really, what in the fifties WASN’T about the bomb?) – stretches into pride both national and individual.

I tried – to no avail – to dig up that Reigning Sound version to share with you, but I did find this hilarious version by a French band who clearly doesn’t speak ANY English. Which is only fair. If someone had videotaped one of the several times I’ve gotten drunk and tried to cover Serge Gainsbourg’s “Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus,” I’m sure they’d feel about the same way about that.