Posted on 09/06/2006 4:46:17 AM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck have crafted an insightful and heartfelt look at the experiences of the Dixie Chicks over the last three years, chronicling the often bizarre consequences of singer Natalie Maines' anti-Bush wisecrack on a London stage. Maines' statement is captured in "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing," as are the meetings where they plot how to circumvent the core country audience and, eventually, how to reroute a tour and cancel shows due to poor ticket sales. It's the rare thorough documentary on a musical act whose dilemmas are faced in the here and now, one that should win over fans of the Chicks on the fence and of music docus and perhaps create a little cultural stir as well.
Filmmakers have created a nonchronological story to emphasize the Greek tragedy behind the Dixie Chicks' spiral into country music's public enemy No. 1. The Chicks vs. President Bush, the Chicks vs. Toby Keith, the Chicks vs. country radio -- every antagonistic angle is covered, and yet Maines, Emily Robison and Martie McGuire persevere, with their chroniclers providing a sympathetic tone to their every struggle.
"Shut Up" identifies the Dixie Chicks as sincere and honest, a self-contained matriarchal community that doesn't back down and, per the doc's p.o.v., deserves support for its integrity alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at variety.com ...
amen!
I expect the ending to be similar to This Is Spinal Tap. (With the girls playing Beirut instead of Japan.)
By that standard, so would Neville Chamberlain, though that guy at least later came to see the error of his ways.
If support, the author means I'm supposed to purchase their music again, sorry, I'm not buying it.
Larry the Cable Guy stated their plight best. Paraphrasing:
Natalie, your fan base is country music lovers. These are the most patriotic people in the country. You might as well have gone to a trailer park with a magaphone and hollered, Wallmart Sucks! .....If it weren't for those other two cute sisters, Natalie would be selling cloths at a Lane Bryant in Nashville.
Oh good. As if not buying their album or going to their concerts wasn't enough, now I can not watch their whiny ass documentary too. That's nice...
Hey Natalie....
"How do you like me now?"
She has a fan base? Why?
I love the smell of schadenfreud in the morning...
Variety, of all publications, knows full well that initial distribution figures have absolutely nothing to do with sales. The fact that Taking the Long Way debuted at #1 means the company pushed a lot of records out the door with a big promotional push. But it sure doesn't mean a lot of customers plunked down money on the counter to buy it.
"Long Way," they discuss with regularity, was designed to expose them to a new, noncountry audience. Primarily, McGuire notes, "The record is our therapy."
It may have been wonderful therapy, but it sucks as a CD. I like the Dixie Chicks' music, but Taking the Long Way is just about unlistenable.
If they were attacking Clinton, the MSM would be piling on them as evil Clinton-haters.
Natalie, your fan base is
Nobody wants to pay for someone else's therapy, or to see it up close.
We have a rule in our house. I don't get to make many so when I do it sticks. If a Dixie Chicks song comes on, where ever we are, the station gets turned or we leave for the remainder of that day. On a recent family trip of about 3 hours, we had to turn off 3 country music stations. I finally switched to talk radio. My wife is no fan of political talk radio. She actually called a radio station and told them to apologize on the air for playing Dixie Chicks so her husband would turn off talk radio.
We never found out if they did. I stuck to my guns.
Aside from their asinine political remarks, the Ditzy Chicks would probably not have survived long in a music business that is constantly looking for new stars. I would have expected them to be doing concerts in remote Indian casinos in South Dakota by now anyway. However, because of their stupid remarks even that venue will not be available to them.
Natalie. "I don't want to be played on those [Country radio] stations," she says. "And when I watched people smashing our CDs I just thought, Good. Smash 'em. Please don't listen to me. I had no idea you thought I was one of you, because I'm not."
Wait. She's not done. "And I don't want to go to any [country music] award shows. And if we did win, what would I get up there and say? I have nothing to say to these people." In fact, Natalie, who issued an apology at the height of the dustup, says that today it is the apology, not the original offending comment, that she'd take back if she could. "It was all mine - nobody made me apologize and nobody wrote it for me - but when I look back and read it, I don't stand behind what I said. That will make people extra-mad, because some were like, Well, at least she apologized."...
from "Heroines Among Us", Vogue Magazine, December 2003, p. 279/333.
So tell me why they are still whining again? They got what they wished for, and they got it in spades. Deal with it bitches!
The authors of this article slipped up by admitting poor ticket sales. It's the proverbial pink elephant at the shopping mall for sure, but it's been euphemistically talked about as a "scheduling conflict", "adjustment in response to a changing fan base", or some such nonsense. No, people are responding to Natalie's namecalling. As an author in another article stated, the Dixie Chicks filed for divorce with their comments that most country fans are just a bunch of dumb rednecks that don't get it. Country fans heard it loud and clear and responded as expected.
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