Charlie Robison

I liked the title tune better when I thought he was saying "don't let the fascists get you down" rather than "bastards," but it amounts to the same thing. Long a champion of country music that eschews both purity and virtue, here Robison writes like his life depends on it, which it does--the virtue lobby has all fun in its sights, his music included. On the one about eating his wife's cooking he finds a new shade of meaning for the word "brisket." And on the one about how his wife vamoosed anyway, words fail him: "But I still got my buddies and I still got my pals/And I still got my buddies and I still got my pals." (Grade: A-)