The Dukes of Hazzard Original TV Soundtrack, Movie soundtrack (Columbia/Sony Music, 2005)

The producers of this lowbrow hillbilly TV show must have heard that a big budget silver screen remake was on the way, and they wanted to get a piece of the pie. They probably should have waited till it was released, since the movie is racking up Gigli-type numbers on rottentomatoes.com and more bad reviews than revenue.

But this thing was pretty poorly thought out when it was originally released in 1981. Johnny Cash's singing as though he were the Dukes' car General Lee is not one of Cash's finest moments, but not as bad as it sounds. The same cannot be said of Tom Wopat's butchering of "Up on Cripple Creek." Doug Kershaw's vocals on "Cover Girl Eyes" and "Keep Between Them Ditches" will remind you why he's primarily known as a fiddle player. Listening to Catherine Bach's "Down Home American Girl" will make even the most loyal patriot think of emigrating. Several of the tracks aren't songs at all, but Sorrell "Boss Hogg" rapping about what a big bad offensive stereotype he is.

On the plus side, John Schneider went on to a semi-successful singing career before moving to Smallville and adopting Clark Kent, and on "In the Driver's Seat" and "Them Good Ol' Boys Are Bad," he is much better than his material. Still not convinced that this was not well-planned? Well, one of the "bonus" tracks is the theme song as done by Waylon Jennings. That's right, on the original album it was done by Boss Hogg and the Hazzard County Boys.

The new moronic motion picture forced Rolling Stone Magazine to revamp its rating system to allow for a movie to receive zero stars and to proclaim on their cover: "Could Movies Get Any Worse?"

The soundtrack ain't much better. (And having to review both the TV and movie soundtracks of this bucolic bilge is a definite violation of the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.) You probably already own all of the good songs on this album, Skynyrd's "Call Me The Breeze," the Allmans' "One Way Out," the James Gang's "Funk #49" and if you don't have the more obscure tracks like Ram Jam's "Black Betty" or "Soul City" from the geniuses of Southern Culture on the Skids, you would be better served downloading them or tracking them down on their original albums. That way you won't have to put up with remakes like Jessica Simpson's sole-less version of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and Willie Nelson's "Good Ol' Boys" which will just make you miss Waylon Jennings more than ever.

Take the money you would have spent on this crap, triple it and send it to the Red Cross instead.