Well, let’s test that theory. I go and find a listing on one of my favorite job sites, Media Bistro. The NRA’s publication is seeking a writer/editor… How hard could that be? I like guns. I grew up with a father who is an avid gun collector. I’ve even spent my fair share of time in the Bisti Badlands shooting cans off of stumps and sandstone hills.

But while I sit in my fantasy of making my daddy proud by becoming a writer for one of his favorite publications, I realize my knowledge of firearms extends to knowing the difference between a rifle and a handgun– oh, and knowing the pain of a BB piercing my right shoulder (yeah, my brother shot me once while we were playing in the backyard… at least he gave me a running start).

Well, there is one area I can actually offer some expertise, and that’s the subject of firearms and music. Do you know how many great songs are out there mythologizing holster-happy cowboys, bottle-shooting rednecks and gun-loving everyday Americans? There are a few vigilante tales of murder and woe in there, too. Take a listen to these tunes, and if they don’t make you wanna head to your local Walmart to buy a gun rack, I don’t know what will …

Song: Janie’s Got A Gun
Artist: Aerosmith

Lesley Ann Warren never looked so sexy as she did in her Aerosmith video roles. Her brief appearance in this one gives a little throwback to her character’s wardrobe in “Beulah Land.” Here she plays Janie’s mother, who finds out the titular girl is being abused by her father. The tune details Janie’s angst telling people about her daddy issues and, finding that no one believes her, taking matters into her own hands. The song’s heavy topic is somewhat cheapened when viewers see Steven Tyler crawl around on a grate and flip his microphone scarves all over the place (I need some of those for my own mic stand), but the tune’s still a classic and a worthy entry on the list.

Song: Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Artist: The Beatles

John Lennon got the idea for this tune from a magazine cover he saw. Writing about this particular song, Lennon said he thought the headline of the article “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” was so fantastic he had to write about it. But one has to wonder if the “Imagine”-singing peacenik realized at the time that a warm gun usually means someone’s fired it.  Still, the concept was a hit in the making as Lennon took three songs he’d been working on previously and formed them into this now-classic Beatles tune (for the record, I do know it’s not about firearms and is a sexual metaphor).

Song: Gun
Artist: Uncle Tupelo

Using a gun as a metaphor for your heart is always a bad sign. Uncle Tupelo “sold his guitar to the girl next door” and wrote a song about his quick-fire, now-empty heart. This tune even gets those rifle-hating liberals using the “G” word while singing in the shower.

Song: You Give Love A Bad Name
Artist: Bon Jovi

It’s an anthem of a generation who embraced a New Jersey boy, his great hair and the tightest pants on the face of the earth. Jon Bon Jovi, thank you for those glorious pants. Whenever I hear “Shot through the heart and you’re to blame, you give love a bad name,” I think about how many Bon Jovi posters used to grace the walls of my bedroom as a teenager. Sometimes I can still hear my parents yelling “Deanna Marie Murray, turn that music down now.”

Song: Beer for My Horses
Artist: Toby Keith

Willie Nelson and the patriotic Toby Keith team up for this fun-loving cowboy tune touting justice for all and putting evil dudes in the ground– well, that and delivering liquor to four-legged, saddled beasts of burden. Just a quick question, though– what kind of citation can the police issue a horse for trotting under the influence?

Song: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Artist: Gene Pitney

All hail the western. Who doesn’t enjoy classic tales celebrating good versus evil, the love of a hardy woman, and the king of cowboy cinema, John Wayne? I throw this nostalgic tune in especially for my Gramps who is a Wayne aficionado and actually owns a John Wayne collector’s rifle. Both a film and a song, this song tells the story of a cowboy who gave the ultimate justice to the baddest of dudes. You have to wonder if Liberty Valance turned evil because the school kids made fun of his name– just a wild guess.

Song: I’m Gonna Get Me A Gun
Artist: Cat Stevens

This is simply the hokiest song I have ever heard. Musically, it’s silly, strange, and carnival-like. Yet Stevens’ exuberant delivery is absurdly comical, so I had to include it. You can almost imagine Pee-Wee Herman singing this in Stevens’ denim work shirts instead of the doofy bow tie. I can literally envision a person skipping along the sidewalk to the local pawn shop, singing, “I’m gonna get me a gun (doo doo doo doo doo), I’m gonna get me a gun.”

Song: Cleaning This Gun
Artist: Rodney Atkins

I think every dad in the world talks about the fact he’s going to buy a shotgun before his daughter starts dating. “Cleaning This Gun” is an ode to the fear of God every father wants to put into the teenage boys taking his little princess of the house. The song’s lyrics revel in the image of Daddy sitting on the porch, rifle in lap, laying down the law and making sure to reiterate he’ll be up when the boy returns with his daughter only to find the old man “still cleaning his gun.”

Song: Give Me Back My Bullets
Artist: Lynyrd Skynyrd

The title track to Skynyrd’s fourth studio album, “Give Me Back My Bullets” was the band’s best charting record, reaching #20 on the U.S. charts. This tune is a prime example of a song proudly proclaiming a person’s right to own guns. Lynyrd Skynyrd contrasts the stigma of being a gun lover with the pride of ownership. It’s a serious responsibility, as he lets us know he “ain’t foolin’ around.”

Song: Gunpowder And Lead
Artist: Miranda Lambert

This sweet girl has a kickin’ edge. One of Miranda Lambert’s first songs to hit the charts is a gritty tune of a girl taking control of her own destiny after being abused by a boyfriend. Obviously, we don’t condone this type of violence, but we’re all in favor of a great country tune performed by a beautiful woman, right? I can’t think of a more feminist, pro-girl-power line than “his fist is big, but my gun is bigger.”

So, there it is. You might not think these tunes deliver the same kick as a Desert Eagle .44 or a 300 Weatherby Magnum (for those big game hunters out there),  but they’re as exhaustive a list as I could come up with. No worries, I won’t recoil (another gun term, points for me?) from your own suggestions. Fire away…

But before I sign off, any sure shots out there willing to teach a girl to point and shoot?

Within seconds of Michele announcing she’d decided to launch a bid for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, it became clear that not one iota of liberal negativity toward conservatives has abated.

Over the past few days, the rock world has joined the fun by publicly stepping forward in an effort to send a message to the latest object of targeted political ridicule, Michele Bachmann. The goal is to drive home the point that liberal rock musicians disapprove of both Bachmann’s politics and her audacity in thinking she actually has a chance to send honorary rock star Barack Obama back to Chicago.

Following Alec Baldwin’s Twitter tirade, Tom Petty, a Mad Hatter in sunglasses, decided it was his turn to deny Bachmann, without explanation, the use of one of his hit songs. Petty is so anti-GOP he forbade Michele Bachmann from playing  “American Girl” as a musical backdrop to her announcement to run for president.

Apparently, the last thing Tom Petty wants to be associated with is writing the signature anthem that could accompany a female Republican candidate on the trip from Minnesota to the White House.  So, to prevent that from happening, the rocker sent a three-word message to Michele: “Cease and desist.”

It’s doubtful that Tom Petty would decline $275 per person ticket proceeds based on who concertgoers supported in the last election. Yet, rock musicians who refuse, due to partisan politics, to let conservative candidates use songs for campaign backdrops forget that many of their fans are conservatives.

It’s no secret: Tom Petty isn’t a fan of the Right. When George W. Bush ran for governor of Texas, the genial GWcomplimented the songwriter by using “I Won’t Back Down” as a campaign song. The unappreciative Petty had his publisher warn the campaign that using the ballad could send a false impression (Heaven forbid) that Petty endorsed Bush, and ordered the gubernatorial team to pull the song.

Tom Petty is one of a large herd of liberal singers and songwriters who sell their wares like capitalists on steroids to anyone and everyone, but when a conservative candidate identifies with one of their songs, out of fear of being perceived as leaning to the right hawkers of concert T-shirts and tacky glassware suddenly become all partisan and possessive.

Yet when Democrats like Black Socks Spitzer of New York and John “My-Wife-Has-Cancer-While-I’m-Having-an-Affair” Edwards used Heartbreaker music as campaign anthems, Tom the Petty fully endorsed both Lotharios using the extremely apropos “Won’t Back Down” ditty.

The “You Can Call Me Al” and “Don’t Stop” crews are proud to have signature songs associated with Al “Crazed Sex Poodle” Gore and impeached adulterer Bill Clinton, but Sarah Palin shaking hands and hugging babies in time to “Barracuda” irked female rock group Heart so much that the duo threatened a lawsuit if Sarah didn’t pick another tune.

Truth is, in the world of rock and roll, the liberal malady is endemic. In the 1980’s, Bruce Springsteen took on the Gipper over Reagan’s use of the song “Born in the USA.” During the 2004 presidential election, in an effort to save the USA from a second Bush term, Bruce partnered with über-liberal left-wing group MoveOn.org to headline a star-studded caravan of whiners in a Vote for Change Tour.

The 2004 MoveOn.org/rock-and-roll effort failed and Bush won reelection, which proves there are more Republican voters than liberals realize.  If, as a group, conservatives boycotted downloading music from iTunes and stopped buying concert tickets, many artists who feel comfortable insulting Republicans for sport would definitely take a hit in the pocketbook.

Then again, one has to wonder if someone like Bruce Springsteen even comprehends the concept that the people he slurs with his political invectives have the monetary power to affect The Boss’s bottom line.  After all, didn’t Springsteen say Obama “speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years”?

Even still, the liberal Step Away From the Song list goes on and on: Pretty boy Jon Bon Jovi told Sarah Palin not to use “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.”  The Foo Fighters and Van Halen dissed John McCain; Bruce Hornsby felt Sean Hannity’s use of his song “The Way it Is” shouldn’t be the way it is; and rock group Rush informed Rand Paul he’s no “Tom Sawyer.”

By now, Republicans should know better than to provide ammunition for the left by failing to stringently follow copyright laws and respect property ownership rights. Yet, a politically partisan situation still presents an opportunity to learn a profound lesson for those on both sides of the political aisle.

Liberal musicians should understand that having a fan base largely made up of those without the ability to pay $1.99 to download a song or lay out close to three bills for a concert ticket isn’t going to ensure their rock star lifestyle for very long.

For those heartbroken by Petty Heartbreaker, conservatives must take their eyes off the “Yes We Can” free-for-all where liberal politicians sway and wave in time to music amidst showers of balloons filled to capacity with Democrat hot air.  It’s time to realize the same standard does not and will never apply to Grand Ole or Tea Party candidates. Just because liberal musicians become gazillionaires with the help of Republican fans doesn’t mean those same rich rock stars will show appreciation by treating conservative candidates with respect.

For those on the right, the salient point is this: liberal politicians are never denied rights to artists’ theme songs; quite the contrary, they are encouraged to use them. Conservatives politicians should not be so naïve as to assume similar rules apply to the likes of Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann.

With that in mind, Bachmann and Harley-riding Barracuda Palin should rethink forgoing the mud wrestling fight Michele claims the media is itching for and hit the ring to work out which lady will seek permission to claim Carrie Underwood’s “All-American Girl” and whose anthem will ultimately be conservative rocker Kid Rock’s “Born Free.”

Many feel this ballad is a touching hymn that gives voice to man’s yearning for a better world.  They are wrong.  “Imagine” is a cloying, boggy, sonic swamp of numb-skulled sentiments that sound like they were recycled from a bong-fueled, 2 a.m. bull session between a couple of pampered, credulous UC Berkeley lit majors.  It’s the national anthem of the hopey/changey crowd — all at once pretentious, smug, tiresome and intellectually bankrupt. 

“Imagine” should – no, must – be banned and all remaining copies of it destroyed.  Its continued existence makes mankind a stupider, more boring race.

Some shortsighted people might consider this assessment a bit harsh.  They are wrong.  Sure, it was a hit in 1971 and still today Imagine remains a radio staple.  It has sold millions of copies and inspired a legion of cover versions.  Rolling Stone even ranked it third on its roster of the Greatest Songs of All Time.

But these are not testimony to the song’s transcendent quality.  They are signs of the apocalypse.

The song begins with a dull piano chord progression that telegraphs to the listener that Something Waaay Profound is in-bound.  Then Lennon’s atonal voice pipes up.  Let’s leave aside the lyrics for a second – he sounds awful, like some over-earnest troubadour trying too hard to impress the four friends he guilted into coming out on a Wednesday to see him play his new tune over at the Common Grounds coffee house’s weekly open mike.

It’s so ponderous and booorrrinng, seeming to go on forever.  It’s the musical equivalent of passing a kidney stone, only not as much fun.

What was Phil Spector, who produced this mess, thinking?  Right now, he ought to be thinking that “Imagine” was the second biggest mistake of his life.

And the lyrics – give me a break.  Never have so many fawned so shamelessly over such utter nonsense.

The first lines are: “Imagine there’s no heaven/it’s easy if you try.”  No, it isn’t, because if there’s no heaven then there’s no hell, and we know that there’s a hell because when this song is playing we’re in it.

And how about “Imagine all the people/Living for today?”  Yeah, he’s put his finger on our problem – too many people planning ahead and preparing for the future.  This is the kind of powerful, incisive reasoning that led a guy who could take his pick of pretty much any woman in the world to shack up with Yoko Ono.  Let me put it another way for emphasis – this guy chose to see Yoko Ono naked.  Many times.  The only response to someone with that kind of judgment is to listen carefully to what he says and then do the exact opposite.

There’s also the gratuitous commie babbling:  “Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can/No need for greed or hunger/A brotherhood of man/Imagine all the people/Sharing all the world.”  To quote a better song by the infinitely more talented Frank Zappa, a man with an admirable lack of patience for such treacle, gag me with a spoon.

I’m not sure of the Lennon timeline, but didn’t he write this nonsense about the same time he ditched England because of the tax bite he was taking to help pay for its socialist welfare state?  Sure, depriving a rapacious lefty government of revenue by moving to someplace with a more sensible tax rate is clearly the morally correct thing to do, but isn’t the transparent hypocrisy of this poser a bit much to stomach?

And if all that’s not insipid enough, we also get:  “You may say that I’m a dreamer/But I’m not the only one.”  Oh, please.

The most galling thing about “Imagine” is how it urges the listener to assume the mantle of that “dreamer,” thereby joining the ranks of the free spirits, bohemians and other assorted loafers, chislers and social parasites who are only too happy to belly up to the table that is our society but who are nowhere to be found when the check arrives:

“Sorry, I can’t be bothered to work to build something or to fight to defend anything – you see, I’m a dreamer, so you just let me know when you’ve gotten everything ready for me to enjoy.  Until then, I’ll be here relaxing on my parents’ sofa, pretending to read Gravity’s Rainbow. ”

The only bright spot is that so few folks actually seem to pay attention to its inane lyrics.  How else could one explain American Idol’s David Archuleta, the all-American Mormon kid, covering an ode to atheism that even Lennon conceded was pretty close to being the Communist Manifesto set to music?  Simon Cowell should have slapped him.  Several times.

Fortunately, there’s plenty of music out there that rejects this kind of hippie crap.  Sadly, for every one kid whose mind is opened by, say, The Clash or Husker Du, dozens more will sit slack-jawed and nodding vacantly at the moron-bait songs like “Imagine” dangle in front of them.

For me, I smile when I imagine a world without “Imagine.”  I guess that would make me a dreamer, except I have a job.

–

Where this…                                          meets this.

Now let me get this straight:  there are a number of protests by free citizens who think the government confiscates too much of their money and spends it unwisely, and the angry rock anarchist Henry Rollins is on the government’s side?  What the hell happened to Rollins?  He was head of the band Black Flag in the 80s, a hell-raising, system-smashing anarchist punk band.  He wrote songs like Family Man, and lyrics like “swimming in the mainstream is such a lame dream,” for crying out loud. But now, in his dotage, he spends his time ridiculing anyone who speaks up against the almighty State, and calling out anyone who refuses to kiss Presidential ass with him now that his guy won.  Then again, maybe he’s just feeling guilty and trying to make up for writing White Minority way back when.

Sadly it’s not just Rollins. John Mellencamp recently incoherently blamed Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics for ruining the music business, proving that he knows nothing about economics or the music business (which might explain why he hasn’t had a hit since he covered a Van Morrison song fifteen years ago).  Oh, wait; unless you count that Chevrolet commercial, where Mellencamp became a tool for an evil American corporation by singing a song pretending that he loves America, a double scoop of hypocrisy with sprinkles and whipped cream that is so rich and multi-layered that it’s hard to stomach all at once.

Bruce Springsteen pushed his 2007 album “Magic” on “60 Minutes” by foolishly reciting a list of President Bush’s “crimes,” including illegal wiretapping and “no habeas corpus“, and yet now that President Obama has continued these very same policies  (making them not only legal, but possibly divine), the Boss’s mouth has been noticeably shut, probably because it’s very hard to speak when your lips are fervently puckered up and moving respectfully toward the nearest powerful Democrat’s ass. 

Jon Bon Jovi, among other distasteful acts of sucking up to various Democrats, went on Larry King in 2006 and called Al Gore “the smartest man I’ve ever met…. We do get together socially and I just sit in awe of him.” 

Good Grief, Jon, what happened to “Livin’ On a Prayer“?  What an anthem of self-reliance that was!  “We’re halfway there, take my hand, we’ll make it I swear?” Now you’re sitting in AWE of some hack politician who won’t even turn off his own lights for Earth Hour?  Mellencamp?  What happened to “I fight authority, authority always wins“?   “Ain’t that America, home of the free”?  And Springsteen?  What happened to “I’ve got this guitar and I’m learning how to make it talk”?  Did a government program teach you to play, Bruce?  “This is a town full of losers/and I’m pulling out of here to win”?  If the government guarantees that there will be no losers, how the hell will anyone ever win?

What happened to the rock and roll I grew up with that was about freedom and individuality, about working for a living, taking pride in your independence, making your own way, not letting anybody tell you what to do, etc. etc.?  Or even about ”YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PARTY,” for God’s sake?  What happened to good old-fashioned rock ‘n roll rebellion?  When did these big rockers, who made it by their talent and their hard work, with no help from the government, all turn into big government-worshipping statists?  

Maybe Rollins and Springsteen and Mellencamp and all the other members of the new breed of hell-raising rock ‘n roll ass-kissers were never the big rebels we thought they were.  Maybe they never believed that stuff they sang about.  Maybe the whole point for them, all along, was just to be popular.  Maybe they were just guys suffering from short-man syndrome who wanted everybody to love them and think they were cool.  And now, since they’ve lost the knack for writing cool songs that people dig, they have found the ultimate easy path to coolness just by being a cool Obama supporter. 

But then again, maybe it’s not even that complicated.  Maybe they’re not that unique, even though they can sing and play the guitar.  Maybe they are just some typical self-righteous liberals, who think to themselves, “I am so great because I voted for that BLACK GUY!  He was BLACK, and I’m so cool and non-racist that I voted for him ANYWAY!  And look at all those RACISTS over there who voted AGAINST the BLACK guy!  I am SO much way cooler than them!”  They call conservatives who have a principled stand against Obama’s policies racist, when in fact it is they for whom it is all about race.

Because there are basically two kinds of Obama voters:

1) True believers who want a powerful, totalitarian state that enforces fairness by confiscating property from one American and giving it to another, and that provides all basic needs for every American so that noone suffers, and…

2) People who don’t really care what Obama does or says, and just like him because they think it makes them cool.

You can at least respect the former as adversaries.  The latter are just trifling thinkers, who don’t care if their President quadruples the spending of the last President, or if he sends more troops into battle.  Because it’s not about policy to them.  It’s about how Obama makes them feel.

So pucker up, all you aging rockers out there.  It’s a new, exciting time in rock history. Gone are the days when the Young Rascals sang “People Got To Be Free” :

All the world over, so easy to see
People everywhere just wanna be free
I can’t understand it, so simple to me
People everywhere just got to be free
If there’s a man who is down and needs a helping hand
All it takes is you to understand and to see him through
Seems to me, we got to solve it individually
And I’ll do unto you what you do to me
There’ll be shoutin’ from the mountains on out to sea
(out to the sea)
No two ways about it, people have to be free
(they got to be free)

Sadly, these Old Rascals, like Springsteen and Mellencamp and the others, are singing a much different tune these days, and it goes something like, “People everywhere, just kiss ass like me!”