Yes!
Thirty seconds into the CD-opening title track of Chad Brock's sophomore effort, you realize where you've been consigned: a place where "fate" means forgetting to have your mail forwarded to your new address. It's a place where mundane guitar riffs and obnoxious guitar solos rule, where the sound of a live drummer makes you yearn for a drum machine, and where loving a woman is "just like breathing." Poor gal. Apparently, making an album is just like breathing too--an activity that doesn't require much thought or passion. That title track is one of two songs that Brock cowrote; the other one, "This," offers synthetic handclaps and couplets such as "Your lips just seem to fit me / All this love is makin' me dizzy." No reason to become fixated on lyrics, however--there's also the stock production and bland vocals. Then there's the ridiculous new "Y2K" verse onHank Williams Jr.'s "A Country Boy Can Survive" ("Computer man says it's the end of time / December 31st, 1999"), but we're back on lyrics again. Computers, incidentally, are just fine when they're used to post the two-bit animation on Chad Brock's Warner Bros. Web site. The real tip-off comes in the liners, when the very first thank you goes out to "Country Radio" (capitalized). Obviously, Country Radio is the primary receptacle for this kind of slight fare, so not sinceJohnny Cash's bird-flippin' full-pageBillboardad has a sentiment been more appropriate.--Marc Greilsamer