Rev. Billy Wirtz
The Best of the Wirtz
Hightone

It's 8 a.m. and your Monday morning hangover is building a house and not a home right behind your eyeballs. The sun is far too bright, your sunglasses are underneath your ass, coffee is all over your lap, your seat, and your floorboard, and of course the freeway is anything but free at this hour. So you play with the radio, you got nothing better to do and you spent all the money you were gonna put into that killer stereo on beer instead. But there ain't no radio, just those morning DJ shows that provide an occupation for all those children who craved attention, but never got it because they weren't doing interesting anyway. They still aren't but the guy in the booth sittin next to that DJ is a 77" pianist named the Reverend Billy Wirtz.

Now I don't know about you, but I'll give anybody with the name Reverend at least a few minutes of a listen, and for my trouble I end up hearing some of the goofiest ass songs put to Vinyl, or CD, or whatever pathetic new format they happen to have thought up this week. Not the kind of songs I would consider dirty aka David Allan Coe dirty, but . . .irreverant. Especially for someone from the South. This guy has a song about a sex bout with a female midget wrestler, ie; "Teenie Weenie Meanie." Now midgets are all the rage in the mega-rock world, from Kid Rock to Blink 182 there are little people cavorting about left and right, but Wirtz's take on it is pretty damn funny. (Wirtz says there is a MTV style video for this song, now that might be worth owning) Maybe not slap your knee, guffaw funny, but a hell of a lot better than most of that crap on morning radio. But! then again at least one of the recordings on this "best of" collection is from one of those radio shows. Yeah this guy actually has #1 morning radio hits. Crazy innit?

This collection of Wirtz spans fifteen years, from bars to roadhouses to pro wrestling. That's right, the honorable Reverend was a pro wrestling manager in Florida for a while. There is a deciding tongue in cheek criticism of Southern stereotypes, from the Hank Williams, Jr knockoff "A Pinhead Will Survive," to "Partyin Mofo," which pokes fun at none other than--hey! wait a minute. . . well never mind. He goes after Rush Limbaugh and women who want to be "just friends."

The Reverend's music ain't nothing special, standard Southern boogie woogie blues. The concept of writing nothing but ironic songs that make fun of everybody including the singer singing the song ain't nothing new either, but what the hell this is a collection which means it ain't nothing new, although there are one or two tracks or interviews that Wirtz's fans may not have heard before. In the end, I think this kind of stuff should remain on morning radio instead of my CD rack, but I don't listen to much funny music so what the hell would I know about it. The Reverend Billy C. Wirtz "best of" kind of reminds me of those e-mail attachments that people, trapped in front of computers all day, end up sending to every Tom, Dick, and Dave they know just for a gas. It's funny, it passes the time, but it also passes quickly. I gotta say though. Drive on Reverend, cause so! mebody needs to be doing this kind of nutty shit for a living. This guy would be a riot to hang out with, so I might not buy his album, but I'd buy the guy a beer.

-excuse

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