More Evidence Rascall Flatts Suck

Here's another review of someone who agrees with me:

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Rascal Flatts' '80s rock show a sellout
Concert review

By Chris Varias
Enquirer contributor
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Rascal Flatts is country the same way Shania Twain is country, which is to say Rascal Flatts is hardly country at all. Unless a flourish of mandolin here or banjo there is enough to qualify the group’s music as such, Rascal Flatts is a pop band not in the tradition of country music as it was once known but in that of ‘80s balladeer rockers like Journey or REO Speedwagon. “Country and roll,” the band likes to call it.

Of course, ‘80s rock is today’s commercial-radio country, and Rascal Flatts is positioned right where Twain was about a decade ago, standing tall as the hottest act in what passes for country music. The band – comprising two cousins Gary LeVox and Jay DeMarcus (both from Columbus, Ohio) plus Joe Don Rooney – played Riverbend Friday night in front of a sold-out crowd of 20,500.

Rascal Flatts is truly a phenomenon, and it’s hard to figure out why. Riverbend sellouts are rare. This year’s list is Jimmy Buffett and Dave Matthews and, now, Rascal Flatts. LeVox, the band’s singer, told the crowd the band just recently sold its seven-millionth album.

What are people getting for the price of all of these tickets and CDs? Cliché-riddled lyrics, sappy ballads, “rock” songs that don’t rock, mediocre musicianship, the guitar-face grimaces from six-string poser Rooney and his bass-playing partner DeMarcus. Worse of all is LeVox’s voice, a contrived country drawl wound so tight he sounded like one of the Chipmunks, as a person sitting near the reporter noted.

But that discerning Riverbend customer and the reporter were about the only two people who saw it that way. The crowd ate up Rascal Flatts’ 90-minute set, from the up-tempo show-starters “Here’s to You,” “Love You Out Loud” and “Praying for Daylight,” through versions of Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire,” the Beatles’ “Let it Be” and Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places,” on to the land of ballads – “Bless the Broken Road,” “I’m Moving On,” “These Days” and more.

Rascal Flatts isn’t the first group to be very bad yet extremely popular, but it really needs to address its encore of “Born in the U.S.A.” at the very least. The band joins the dubious ranks of those who mistake Bruce Springsteen’s song for a flag-waving anthem instead of a critique on how this country failed Vietnam veterans.

Blake Shelton played second on the bill and provided a more free-spirited set than the headliners’, kicking things off with the one-two covers punch of the Bellamy Brothers’ “Redneck Girl” and Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.”

Show opener Blaine Larsen proved he could write, sing and play during his 20-minute, new-trad-styled set. During the song “That’s Just Me” he sang that country music needs more “Alan, Brad and George,” a reference to traditionalists Alan Jackson, Brad Paisley and George Strait. It would be interesting to know if the fellers in Rascal Flatts agree.
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