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David Allan Coe Took This Job and Shoved Off


Jahfin

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From The Washington Post:

Country singer David Allan Coe famously did time in jail -- he says he spent 20 of his first 34 years locked up -- and a check of recent police blotters indicates he seems to have put his lawbreaking ways behind him. Except for stealing his fans' money.

Sunday night at the State Theatre, Coe took the stage at 8:10 and departed at 8:52 after playing an uninterrupted stretch of song snippets accompanied by two guitar-slinging accomplices and a drummer. To its credit, the State Theatre's management reminded Coe backstage of his contractual obligation for a 90-minute show, but the getaway car was already gone.

At $24 a ticket and no opening act, Coe escaped with thousands of his fans' dollars.

It was pretty dry going anyway. Coe, wearing a waist-length blond wig and strands of beaded beard that dangled to his considerable belly, played a flying V-style guitar as he sang into a microphone attached at his throat, thereby immobilizing his head. With the considerable help of his young band, Coe sang the equivalent of the contents of a roadhouse jukebox -- hits by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and others -- and he did it as an aural montage, never finishing a song before blurring into the next.

If he played one of his best-known compositions, "Take This Job and Shove It," a No. 1 hit by Johnny Paycheck, we somehow missed it.

All in all, it was an outrageous show, but for the wrong reasons.

-- Buzz McClain

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I was fortunate the couple of times I saw DAC back in the 80s. The first was definitely better than the second but he still put on a full show both time. Stunts like he pulled in the article above are a fairly regular occurrence. Not so long ago he played a show in these parts and was too wasted to play but one of his road crew propped him up on a stool and the band proceeded to play anyway. Total showtime? Less than 30 minutes then they hit the road.

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