A Hillbilly Tribute to Mountain Love
OnA Hillbilly Tribute to Mountain Love, Hayseed Dixie, the trio  of hard-rock-loving bluegrassers who previously sworedevotion to AC/DC, offer us a  mountain-music version of the AOR radio format. Of course, there's something  inherently, and deliberately, comical about covering the songs ofBad Company,Aerosmith, andTed Nugentvia surging  banjo-driven arrangements and hyper-twangy harmonies--a point that becomes  doubly obvious when these modern-day musical butchers contribute an original  like "I'm Keeping Your Poop," a slice of lingering romantic spite so  preposterous that the only reasonable response is to bust a gut laughing. But  all this hilarity makes a couple of fairly serious points, too. First, most  people have had enjoyable histories with many different genres of music, so why  pretend otherwise? Second, anytime you re-imagine a familiar song, you focus  attention, once again, on its lyrics. If the Hayseeds do anything here, it's to  remind us just how horny and fun songs likeJoan Jett's "I Love Rock  & Roll,"Queen's  "Fat-Bottom Girls," andSpinal Tap's "Big Bottom"  really are.--David Cantwell