Pinkard and Bowden
Nothing lends itself to parody more than country music, as such masters of the genre as Homer and Jethro have long since proven. Richard Bowden, a guitarist with a mellow country baritone, and Sandy Pinkard, a bass player, have spent most of their careers playing straight. (Bowden played in Linda Ronstadt's touring band; Pinkard wrote such songs as You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma.) But they teamed up a year ago to form a comedy act. The main attraction of this sporadically funny album is a series of parodies of country hits, with Pinkard-Bowden lyrics set to the real tunes. Help Me Make It Through the Yard, for instance, begins, "Take the rose bush from my hair/Shake loose all them little thorns/What's the sprinkler doin' on/So damn early in the morn?" Blue Hairs Driving in My Lane includes the lines, "Someday on the streets up yonder/There'll be no old Chevrolets." Delta Dawg starts out, "She was just 16/But that's 112 in dog years." The new tunes are less entertaining, though Shirl Milete's ersatz gospel song about reptile worshippers, Shake a Snake, has its moments. But the between-songs patter is a real shortcoming. Before they do What's a W-4?, Pinkard asks Bowden if he knows what a long form is. "Yeah," Bowden says, "that's a place where they raise long cows." That's one of the better jokes. When they stick to cutting up musically, though, Pinkard and Bowden are more or less to the folks who wear plaid shirts and Stetsons what Weird Al Yankovic is to those who wear sequined gloves and Mohawk haircuts. (Warner Bros.)
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