As you may have noticed, increasingly-rare reader, output has fallen off here. I’m in the middle of the busiest summer ever in the history of TFG. Typically, July & August are barren wastelands of un-returned voice mails and un-replied emails sitting around in shorts and tank tops doing shots of whisky at 2 in the afternoon, face-to-face meetings restricted to lunch-time gabfests of golfing, fishing, hunting and what-have-you. Not so this year — not so far. Over the next three weeks, I will be in Houston, Phoenix, Denver, and St. Louie. Chicago, San Jose, and Seattle still need to be shoe-horned in there, too. I’m bloody well happy about this, as I detest the Euro penchant for vanishing off to summer estates and Spanish beaches in the summertime. For a while there, America seemed to be slipping into that disgraceful mode, and since it’s only July 11, it could still happen this year. For now, though, it seems we have our game face on. Being as generating wealth is what we not only do best, but do better than anyone else ever in the history of Ever, my cold, black capitalist heart sings.

The Tiny Bidness is suffering as a result of my relative inattentiveness, but that is naught but a holding pattern until somebody pulls their head out of their ass and builds a pipeline so that we can drill for the natural gas that the entire world wants. As I said to Sr. Fireant the other day, there is right now money laying on the ground and I’m trying to grow longer arms. As a fall-back, I’m undergoing surgery to put some metal rods in there. It’s killing me to see chances go by the wayside only cuz I gots no cash. It’s not like I have many prime earning years left as it is, so I’d kinda like to get it over and done with, one way or the other. Rich or poor, doesn’t matter to me. In-between and stuck in neutral is pretty damn sucky, though.

The Master of Sparks has his now-annual list of 100 Greatest Country Songs of all time posted. I’d never in a million years bother with such a list as I am much too addle-pated to narrow it down to 100. I might, in a pinch, with a gun to my head, be able to do 100 albums, but I’d have to spend days on it.

As always, Jack has brilliant commentary to go with his picks:

Here’s where I make my point about all this phoney baloney shit that I do on here and on the radio. Right now, the money grubbing losers in Nashville are trying to sell us a bill of goods called Big & Rich under the guise of the whole thing being an edge to embrace the edginess of hip-hop, punk, grunge, whatever. It’s all pretty sad and ad hoc, mind you, but it’s an attempt nonetheless. The point is, they had a very natural and organic opportunity back in the 90’s with the music of Jay Farrar in both Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt. The man was and is a real bridge between the musical types and cultural phenomena, and they flat out fart-fuck missed it.

Everybody knows I can’t stand Small and Crappy and that mindless, empty pearl-snap they’ve spawned, Cowpie Troy. I will pick up and leave if that shit comes on. Weekends, I do some dining around the town, and one place always has that god-awful CMT video channel on the toooob. It’s abso-fucking-lutely inevitable that one or the other will come on in the middle of my meal. I need to pick my restaurants better, I guess.

Of course, I have my kicks about the list. No Eagles should ever be on a top 100 list of anything, except as #1 on the list of hippy California suckage that ruined rock. Janis Joplin was a screeching doper who to this day is like a cheesegrater on my scalp. Far too much Kenny Rogers for my tastes. But there’s good stuff, too, of course: acknowledging Marty Robbins, and Charlie Robison, and Waylon and Billie Joe. It wouldn’t be right to not note the inclusion of ZZTop, way down at #93.

Lookie here — back in the day, you had a choice — you could buy ZZTop albums, and you could buy Eagles albums, and you could let them fight it out on the 8-track in your dad’s station wagon, while you cruised around with your pards and your illegal beer. It’s not difficult to see who won with me. Sure, you keep the stupid Eagles around in the big 8-track box on the off-chance you get lucky and get to make out with a girl (such a rare freaking occurrence, and I’m still not sure it ever did happen). But I never pass up a chance to play a ZZTop tune on a juke-box.