Pat Green at the Texas Motor Speedway, April 3, 2009

The Aggie and I got to hear Pat Green perform at the Texas Motor Speedway on Friday night.
Here's one of the best P.G videos that I've seen. All acoustic.



For the True Believers, here's an interview:



Here he is doing a radio promo in Ireland:



Even if Country Music isn't your thing, go hear Pat Green play. He will convert you.

A NASCAR Marketing Failure

The Aggie and I went to Texas Motor Speedway for the weekend, an event that I'll write more about later.

There were preliminary races on Friday (with a Pat Green concert), a 300 lap race on Saturday, and a 500 lap race on Sunday.

There were display/merchandising/advertising/driver trailers peddling stuff all around the track. Organizations like Jack Daniels, Nationwide Insurance, Jeff Gordon, The U.S. Army, Kasey Kahne, Red Bull, Dale Earnhardt Jr., The U.S. Border Patrol (who sponsored a car and driver), Sprint/Nextel, Tony Stewart, The U.S. National Guard, OfficeMax, Kyle Busch, and enough food vendors to fatten up Darfur.

Halfway through the Sunday race, The Aggie decided she wanted to go look at the souvenir stands.
There appeared to be more than 100,000 spectators watching the Sunday race. Organizations had paid a fortune to have a presence outside the track. 100,000 drunk people with money to spend, email addresses to harvest, mailing lists to sign up for, and good will to promote were about to come pouring out of the racetrack. It was marketing heaven.

Guess which three organizations were closing down and packing their trailers before the race was over?

If Obama and McCain had NASCAR uniforms

A writer named Bob Bader has a proposal in the Lodi News-Sentinel:

....for the sake of simplicity we should more clearly identify the primary players, their partners and sponsors. To start with, the various individuals who have their snouts in the public trough should be obliged to wear uniforms of a sort. The politicians' clothes might resemble those worn by NASCAR drivers and their crews, hard hats and all. Their political affiliation should be clearly marked by big "Rs," "Ds" and "Is" displayed on their chests sort of like the big red "As" that outed some less-than-distinguished persons many years ago. The politicos' sponsors' logos would be prominently sewn on their clothes and caps. That way, when you are out hustling their favors and votes on one matter or another, you'd know who else is kissing their rings to garner favors — it'd say so right on their uniforms. That way, you could temper your ardor based on the competition or lack thereof.

This is similar to something I once saw in "Good" magazine a couple of months ago.
Here's a picture of Obama and McCain with their NASCAR-style logos:

Click here to see the full-size original. Look at the logos that appear on BOTH uniforms. Bailout/bankrupt companies, one and all. Billions worth.

And people say that corporate sponsorship doesn't pay off....