Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 80

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The Popular Culture Review

quite similar. The harsh urban and rural existences have a hardening
effect which instead of deforming or destroying the beauty of their
depicted worlds, actually enhances their appeal and, indeed,
becomes an integral part of the artists' finished product.
McDonald's Texas is a place where "A man riding alone carries
his rifle for rattlers," but there are dangers worse than poisonous
snakes in his world, one of which is the emotional deadliness of
monotony. Boredom is an important theme both in McDonald's poetry
and ZZTop's music. In the song "Arrested For Driving While Blind,"
the speaker's struggle against monotony takes the form of drinking
and driving. "Now just the other night with nothin' to do / we broke
a case of proof 102 / and started itchin' for that wonderful feel / of
rollin’ in an automobile." Booze helps cut through boredom, and the
desire to drive "while blind," as the song says, gives the drinking a
sharper edge. At the beginning of the song, driving itself suggests the
sheer monotony, even futility, of moving through life; drinking, the
song implies, can provide rel ief by adding a dimension of danger and
unpredictability. But the speaker advises against his own solution:
"when you’re driving down the highway at night / and you're feelin’
that wild turkey's bite / don't give Johnny Walker a ride / cause Jack
Black is right by your side." The wild turkey’s bite, the craving to
drink, implies a need to combat the sense of futility, to discover
something worthwhile in the passing landscape. But as the speaker
says, the battle against monotony is dangerous; the harsh pain of
reality and the joy of beauty are inseparably interwoven so that
experience of one without the other is impossible.
McDonald's poem "Driving at Night Through Texas" is about
a similar struggle with monotony. Here the speaker is driving
through country described as "miles of the same / straight road
rolling beneath us / like a player piano cranking the same old /
country and western tune that takes us / home." McDonald’s speaker
is feeling "that wild turkey's bite," but instead of drinking, he
proposes a solution which is at least as risky as giving "Johnny
Walker a ride:" "I'd like to hit the switch / and drive in moonlight,
but you believe / in deer and cattle-crossing signs . . . " To drive
without headlights, essentially to drive "while blind," would
vanquish the harsh monotony of the landscape, but as in ZZTop’s
song, the speaker of the poem cautions that the consequences of such
an act are dangerous. In both the song and the poem, there is a sense