No matter where you stand on gun control, I think we can all agree that flag-fetishizing active-rockers Madison Rising — self-proclaimed as “America’s most patriotic rock band” — should probably be pistol whipped. (I kid!) First for
the gut-busting butchering of “The Star-Spangled Banner” they assaulted NASCAR fans with at the Nationwide Series race in Dayton in February. And now for the song and video above.
It’s called “Amazing America,” and it’s the theme song to Biggest Shit-Stain on Senator John McCain’s Political Legacy Sarah Palin’s outdoorsy new reality show of the same name — the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential hopeful’s latest rod-and-gun-wielding contribution to the pantheon of things that sometimes make it, well, embarrassing to be an American.
Madison Rising — a band that, rather amazingly, does not hail from Florida yet still is to America as Creed was to Jesus — drops the name of this great country no less than 20 times in the under-three-minute song, just in case you could ever mistake their brand of mediocrity as coming from any other country. Oh wait, that’s right, Nickelback is Canadian. Fuck.
And like a Nickelback song, “Amazing America” is, for anyone with a three-digit IQ and the ability to hear, about as pleasure-inducing as a hockey puck to the head. Atop a foundation of country-rock slide guitar, and post-grungy, Seven Mary Three-style, saloon-rock singer and Navy vet Dave Bray (who I thank wholeheartedly for his service, but not for his song) croons and over-enunciates lines like “We built this country called the USA,” “Red white and blue is our way of life” and “We like 'em bigger and faster and louder and mean” in a Scott Stapp-worthy, syllable-mutilating, gruff bellow.
In 2014, 12 years after Toby Keith but a boot in the ass of listenable music with his post-9/11, nationalist anthem “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” it’s hard to believe “Amazing America” (the song, not the show) is real and not just some long-lost Mr. Show sketch.
Fuck Madison Rising for letting their fruit hang so low. Or maybe we should thank them? This shit makes me laugh, and laughter makes me smile, and smiling means I’m happy. And happiness is good. So, thank you, Madison Rising. Thank you for this.
And just think, only two years ago y’all could have seen Madison Rising rock the Lower Broad bar Gavin DeGraw owns.
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