JACK CHICK vs. LEONARD KNIGHT
Last of the first round, fast and furious. Chick drew Jesus comic strips that are ironically hilarious, yet the local baptist church still hands them to my kids every summer stapled to popsickles in a serious fashion at the Scottsville 4th of July Parade. I gather up as many as I can that get tossed on the ground. Knight lives in the desert of California, painting a mountain and trucks and anything in his way with donated housepaint in the name of the Lord. Stoner people you know have coffee cans full of Jack Chick pamphlets. You have to get in your car and drive to see Leonard Knight's roadside proselytizing.
Advantage: Leonard Knight.
GARY SNYDER vs. GIL SCOT-HERON
Look, Gil Scot-Heron is awesome as fuck, and if you've never heard of him you should get ahold of his music, especially the 1970s era stuff, as soon as possible. But Gary Snyder introduced me to about the only poetry that I think is not stupid and gay, through his translations of the collected works of Han Shan. And even though he's a long dead T'ang Dynasty poet, no one has had as much an influence on my adult life as Han Shan. If I could emulate one man who walked this earth surface, it'd be Han Shan.
Advantage: Gary Snyder.
GHOSTFACE KILLAH vs. MF DOOM
MF Doom is cool and all, quirky to be quirky, but Ghostface is the best rap show I've ever seen in my life, and he had the flu that night. And he's the best rapper alive. Period. He can switch phases and styles and remain himself and remain relevant. Period.
Advantage: Ghostface Killah.
DAVID LEE ROTH vs. JIM "DANDY" MANGRUM
You know all the tight pants womanizing lead singer over the top craziness that made David Lee Roth the man during Van Halen's for real years? It was all a carbon copy of what Jim Dandy did ten years earlier as lead singer of Black Oak Arkansas. And Jim Dandy still has long hair.
Advantage: Jim "Dandy" Mangrum.
NEK CHAND vs. VOLLIS SIMPSON
Nek Chand is an Indian dude ("Thank you, please be coming again" Indian, not "How, paleface, your litter make me cry" Indian) who built a giant rock city for no reason. It is awesome, but in India. Vollis Simpson builds giant metallic whirligigs (homemade things that move in the wind) in a field on his farm in North Carolina, which is not far at all. In fact, I should take the kids down there this Labor Day weekend, and look at his whirligigs, and dream up building 60 foot tall contraptions on my own compound because fuck the world especially my uptight neighbors.
Advantage: Vollis Simpson.
BILLY GIBBONS vs. ROKY ERICKSON
Roky Erickson is "man, this dude is crazy, fuckin' LSD, hunh?" awesome. Billy Gibbons is motherfuckin' Billy Gibbons. Were I to have bazillions from winning the fake lotteries three Fridays in a row, I'd build a college to replace my Rojonekku Training Compound, and Billy Gibbons is one of the first dudes I'd hire as a professor. We just wouldn't talk about all that electronic bullshit from the 1980s.
Advantage: Billy Gibbons.
SHARON JONES vs. SWAMP DOGG
Sharon Jones is amazing, and it'd be like my Lucinda Williams write-up with her too. But Swamp Dogg is Swamp Dogg, the most amazing R&B singer extraordinaire from Virginia that ever did exist, and with a voice that no one's ever been close to having one like. He is a state treasure, even though he's not claimed Va. for the last half of his life. God bless that motherfucker. And if you are a John Prine fan, and love that "Sam Stone" song, go find the same song by Swamp Dogg and pretty much ruin John Prine for yourself forever.
Advantage: Swamp Dogg.
DAVID ALLAN COE vs. MERLE HAGGARD
Merle Haggard is here because I needed 80 guys and I like him and all because he made a lot of songs about riding trains and used to live in a boxcar as a house when he was a kid, which has always been a dream of mine, and he lived on a houseboat in Utah for a while as an adult, which has also been a dream of mine. What is it about white trash types wanting to live in things other than houses? What the fuck is wrong with me?
But David Allan Coe is David Allan Coe. Jail. Outlaws biker gangs. Practicing polygamist. Underground records. Early Jerry Lee Lewis on acid meth albums. Old guy to this day playing flying vee guitar with rebel flag paint job and he sports a dreadlocked beard and writes song about how gay people are awesome. There are a lot of motherfuckers on this earth but there is only one David Allan Coe. In fact, I just found out he's playing a club in Richmond the weekend before my birthday next year, so start paypalling me money now, because we gonna tear some hotel up (or somebody's back yard if someone lets me crash).
Man, I could write a goddamn 2000 word essay just on wacky shit that has happened to me at David Allan Coe shows, much less about the guy himself. Having my hippie girlfriend decide to break up with me. Being the hippie getting laughed at by cowboys who were being stared at by bikers. Almost fighting an entire frat but dazzling them with my retarded drunken mantis style that then had one of them come bring me a beer and my wife be like, "what the fuck was that about?" although she's gotten kinda used to retarded shit like that going on around me now. I'm like Pigpen from Charlie Brown, except my dust cloud is an aura of retarded.
Advantage: David Allan Coe.
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