If you listened to this guy for 20 minutes without being offended, then you weren’t paying attention. As he said, what do you expect from a guy named Kinky? It was easy to do a parody of Merle Haggard’s redneck anthem Okie from Muskogee, and many people did. Friedman’s version though included sex with animals. The first song of his I heard was The Ballad of Charles Whitman, a mass murderer who shot from the tower at the University of Texas at Austin. Friedman’s obit in the New York Times included a line – ‘the chancellor cried, it’s adolescent/and of course it’s most unpleasant/but I gotta admit that it’s a lovely way to go’—that showed his word choice and rhythm and rhyme were like Tom Lehrer, a witty guy who never gave offense.
I believe he got trapped in the entertaining caricature who inhabited his songs. He wrote crime stories that were really just another way for him to reach people who shared his displeasure with smoking bans, speed limits, and rights for women. He received 13 percent of the votes in a six-candidate primary for governor of Texas. Good for him, but too bad it took him away from singer-songwritering.
Dear Abbie is a sweet song from a guy asking about love. It mentions backyard fireworks on July 4, so I’m including it now.
converselyspeaking 