Cotton-eyed Joe. I sold the Rednex album "Sex and Violins" on Half.com for $3.00 and shipped it off to the west coast today. The Rednex brought us that awful, awful song "Cotton-eyed Joe" (listen via the link) that was like some hideous mix of techno and bluegrass. I first heard this song when riding back with Zack from Ft.Lauderdale over spring break 1995. We'd driven all day long, making an ill-thought stop in Vero Beach to try and hang out on the sand for a while on the way home after I astutely proclaimed, "You know, there are beaches along the coast." Turned out that it's hard to find a beach in Vero Beach. So around 2:00a.m. somewhere in the middle of North Carolina, having listened to "The Chronic" all the times one could stand to in one day, we were scanning the radio for something to listen to, and we happened across "Cotton-eyed Joe." It freaked us out quite a bit, and we weren't sure exactly what was going on. Little did we know that weekend after demoralizing weekend that we found ourselves at the frats that the Rednex would soon be playing, sandwiched in between Madonna's "Like a Prayer" and Ini Kamoze's "Hotstepper."
Why did I buy the Rednex album? I don't know, I probably got it for free through BMG or Columbia House as a joke. Who knows why I did much of anything that I did during the spring of 1995. That certainly wasn't a high-water mark for good judgment. But getting that album was the least of the bad decisions.
"Best Western. They have the best food."