Daddy, What's An ' 8-Track' ?

I used to plug the Charlie Daniels Band 8-track into the player of my dad's truck, and turn it up loud as I drove to my girlfriends house. Sixteen years old, full of sass and pretending I lived every lyric of the song "Long Haired Country Boy. "

Listening to a song over and over on the 8-track was no easy feat, but I wore that tape out in just a few short months. So I felt a surge of nostalgic excitement when I read The Charlie Daniels Band will be playing at the West Virginia State Fair on August 14th.


Then I remembered: These days, I'm pissed at Charlie Daniels.

My frustration has nothing to do with Daniels being an ultra-conservative who appears regularly on various Fox News shows, and who shares the stage once in a while with Sean Hannity. Nope, I don't begrudge anyone their politics, regardless. My frustration has to do with the idiotic tinkering Daniels did several years ago to my favorite of his songs.


The original contained the lines: "I get stoned in the morning, I get drunk in the afternoon," and later "I don't want much of nothing at all, but I will take another toke."

Daniels cleaned it up. He now sings "I get up in the morning, I get down in the afternoon." And instead of taking another toke, he sings about telling "another joke."

"But I will tell another joke." What the fuck?

Every time I hear the new version, I want to scream. It's Charlie's song, of course, and he can do with it what he wants. But when he changed it, he changed my memory.

Bastard.

Changin' lyrics of a decades-old hit song to reflect a change in personal values...And you never did think that it ever would happen again, in America, did you?