the matthew show revisited: week twenty nine
I always seem to need a preamble for this one.
Back in the early aughts, I was working in east Dallas, taking the bus every day. At that time, in that town, when I would tell other white people I had taken the bus, they thought I'd lost my mind. That reaction made me look around at who was on there with me, and it turned out I was in fact the oddball. Dallas is a town obsessed with economic status, and if you weren't driving your deluxe crew cab or Lincoln Town Car of Death around town, you were the Other.
Given my fondness for being the underdog, I wrote a song making fun of the people making fun of me. In the process, I came up with two of the most rip-roaring guitar solos I've ever pulled off, and to add yet more chaos, recorded a drunken game of Quarters at my pal Mike's house. It made a fitting ending to my first album, and was the first of my songs I ever heard someone else cover, upon my return to Texas from NYC. Big thanks to Chris Allen Curtis for that honor.
Twenty three years later, I still have to explain it before I play it. But if you know, you know.