"These boys are a hit"

If I am to believe recent site statistics, readers of this blog care about three things and in the following order: Trampled by Turtles, Bob Dylan’s Minnesota roots and scuttlebutt on the race for Minnesota’s 8th Congressional seat. So, like a lucky songwriter penning furtive screeds about the IRRRB, I must accept that the concert crowds will never love these songs. They are for me. Most will never understand. Now, to play the hits.

There’s a great scene in the Coen Brothers’ “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?” (an underrated film, I believe, after multiple viewings). The George Clooney-led gang of escaped convicts, having evaded yet another scrape with danger, arrive at a major cultural and political event back in their Mississippi hometown. There, they learn that a song they recorded as a ruse to make a few bucks some time ago is a huge hit, while the crowd sets their eyes for the first time on the unlikely stars.

The moderately corrupt and wholly self-absorbed Governor, Pappy O’Daniel, is running behind his populist (but white supremacist) opponent Homer Stokes in the upcoming election and is using this last gasp, a recording of his Pappy O’Daniel Flour Hour Old Timey Radio Show, to change his fortunes. Things are looking bleak, until Stokes self-destructs by rebuking the miscegenatin’ Soggy Bottom Boys.

Anyway, the scene (at 1:15 below) shows the rotund Pappy O’Daniel and crew looking up to the band, back to the cheering crowd, back and forth — understanding neither the band nor the crowd, but recognizing the power of what’s going on. Within moments he’s figured out a way to hone in on the band’s popularity in a way that represents politics as a lost art in our time.

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So back to northern Minnesota, where as in the depression-era South, fat old Democrats run like stallions. Actually, there are no Pappy O’Daniel types in the MN-8 DFL primary this year, which is as close to progress as it gets some days. But I have been noticing how with the increasing national profile of Trampled By Turtles the candidates are not above some blatant Trampled by Turtles link baiting in their social media feeds.

Oh, I’m not complainin,’ mind ya’. Better than the normal stuff for sure. So what am I saying? Trampled by Turtles are the Soggy Bottom Boys of MN-8. Long build-up. But you will enjoy Trampled by Turtles covering this Arcade Fire song on The Onion’s AV Club below, which I found in a MN-8 candidate’s Facebook feed:

Trampled By Turtles covers Arcade Fire

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