It’s not exactly shocking that Donald Trump has been having well-publicized difficulties finding anyone willing to provide the music at his inauguration — Wagner is long gone, Skrewdriver’s singer died in a richly deserved car crash 20 years ago, Ace of Base seem to be on hiatus, and while those creepy Freedom Kids have joined the ranks of People Who Dropped Their Lawsuits Against the Donald Once He Became the Führer Daddy, they’ve also not performed since realizing that in Trump’s America, freedom means doing things for free. Last week, several outlets reported that Trump was so desperate to get someone, anyone, to play his very important big party, he was dangling ambassadorships in front of potential talent, a story that would have seemed utterly batshit even a couple of months ago, but now seems all too credible.
But! But! Trump’s party people have dutifully scraped the bottom of the barrel, and in doing so, have finally extracted some sort of gummy sediment willing to provide the soundtrack to The Donald’s ascension. Who’s playing? Not Ted Nugent, who one would imagine would be happy to sit down and swap stories of, um, sadly not getting to Fight for Freedom™ in Vietnam with Trump; not Kid Rock, whose brand of pickup-truck-cold-beer-casual-racism Americana seems like a perfect fit. Not even that red-white-and-blue asshole who made the months after 9/11 even worse than they already were. Nope, presumably such conservative marquee acts either wanted too much money or have some vague vestigial sense of decency (go on, guess which one.)
Instead, the line-up for the Donald Trump Very Big and Very Important Please Clap All-American Ball is as follows:
– Beau Davidson (some sort of country singer, notable for having a song called “Blessed” and eyes that are disconcertingly close to one another); – The Reagan Years (“one of the HOTTEST 80’s cover band [sic] in the US!”); – DJ Romin (“As of right now Romin’s current goals are to expand his reach and audience to a global level and begin traveling and performing all over the world” — that ambassadorship will no doubt come in handy, eh?); – DJ Young Rye (one of Just Blaze’s obscure cousins, apparently); – “DJ Freedom” (I swear I am not making this up); – The MIXXX (“The Mixx is the Mid-Atlantic’s hottest Party Band! The Mixx is a live playlist of the biggest hits of the past 5 decades!”); – The Star-Spangled Singers (40 likes on Facebook!); – A Place To Be Trio – Heroes Tribute, comprising the hitherto unheralded trio of Amy Stone (“Amy finds her Cerebral Palsy to be a gift not a disorder.”), Brendan Friedrich (“Brendan’s goal is to be an announcer and America’s first blind meteorologist”) and Forrest Allen (“Forrest had a severe snow boarding accident five years ago and sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury”); and – Buzz Aldrin (yes, that Buzz Aldrin).
The “honored guest/presenter” will be Oliver North, whose peerless ability to keep a straight face — honed by lying to Congress and a decade of calling himself a “novelist” — will no doubt come in handy. Tickets to this hilarious shitshow start at a trifling $250 if you get in quickly — but hurry, because they’re allegedly selling “at record pace”! Yes, people are apparently paying real American dollars to attend this thing; but then, perhaps that’s not entirely surprising, given that — as the website proudly notes — “America is rife with … amazing patriots.” Is it ever.