Song Of The Day 3/4/2015: The Bottle Rockets - "Indianapolis"

Actual Country Week:

I’m going back a ways for this, outside of the 2000’s even. Funny how the most contemporary songs I’ve put up on this blog so far this year are country-esque. Find me a narrative about dubstep that I can latch onto and I’ll – well, I’ll at least read your proposal without laughing like a hyena. I might laugh like a drunk horse, but I’ll keep the hyenas at bay.

The Bottle Rockets had a bunch of fantastic songs in the ’90s, and as far as I know they still have them. I may have played their album 24 Hours a Day even more than Wilco’s A.M., which was a very risky thing to do back then. Brian Henneman (who actually got a lot of help from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy early on in his tenure) wrote some great songs about the end-of-the-century compromised Everyman, rummaging through attic boxes, settling for the six-month-old can of Old Style left in the rehearsal space, happily employing himself catching speeders in his radar dragnet. You love a man in uniform.

“Indianapolis” is my favorite song by the Bottle Rockets. The worst-case scenario for working band in charge of their own touring van. Contains a hilarious dig at a certain Indiana-identifying blue-collar rock star in verse three. I respect that American Fool, but I’ll bet even he admits it’s a good line.