Music Review - Recordings For Deviants

The Louvin Brothers

Satan Is Real

Hey you! Satan! Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, you punk-ass piece of dog mess. You think you’re so big, huh? You think you can just waltz into people’s lives and screw things up for them?! Make ’em burn in hell?! Well … you can’t! I didn’t use’ta believe in you, but I heard the Louvin Brothers recently and I been listenin’ up on what you’ve been doin’ in the world. Yeah, you remember them, don’tcha? Them good ol’ boys from the fifties who sung songs about God and Jesus and you. They made really good tunes usin’ both kinds of music — country AND western — and they put out a whole album about how you’ve been carryin’ on! I can’t believe that you was responsible for all that and I didn’t even know!

You’ve been destroyin’ people’s homes and makin’ them act all selfish and un-neighborly, makin’ their children take paths into a world of sin. Now, I know it was wrong what I done with that Lou-Anne girl who lives down the road, what with her bein’ sixteen and all, but I didn’t know that YOU made her do all of those things! You’re an evil son of a bitch, Satan. I mean, it’s one thing to take a fresh, nubile young girl and make her squeal like a slaughterhouse sow while pushin’ her around like a wheelbarrow but it’s another to mess with her mind and damn her soul like you done.

I understand that you’re makin’ all the people that drink go to Hell, too! Yeah, the Louvin Brothers filled me in on that one in their song, “The Drunkard’s Doom.” Sure the song’s mostly about how some guy’s baby dies, but he also says, “It was on one dark and starless night / I heard and saw an awful sight / The lightning flashed, the thunder rolled / Across my dark denial soul / I saw a gulf far down below / Where all the dying drunkards go.” That’s good enough for me. If you’re taking people who drink and keepin’ them in Hell, then I’m just gonna hafta creep up on you with a lead- filled sock and hand-deliver a helpin’ and a half of high-grade Whoop-Ass! You just can’t come between a man and his friends, and me and ol’ Jack Daniels, well, we’re about as close as they come.

So, you come by my trailer for a visit any old time you want, ‘cuz I’ve been lookin’ for an excuse to make sure my shotgun’s still in workin’ order. Besides, you and me we got some things to talk about, like the booze thing and my cousin Larry who’s in the state pen for stealin’ two hundred and seventy-eight Snickers bars, and I got a real personal interest in meetin’ you after I had to go to the emergency room for that lightbulb what got stuck in my bunghole. I know you’re responsible for that one, ‘cause I sure as hell ain’t.

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Satan Is Real

is available though Capitol Records Nashville. Chris Eng is also real and requests you send him your CDs of piety at P.O. Box 8332, Victoria, B.C., Canada V8W 3R9. Amen.)