Dead Record Pool: Lou Waxman on Dolly Parton’s Here You Come Again

May 10, 2026

Every once and a while, Lou’s younger brother, Stu, will text him and ask if Lou has a record in his collection. One dayrecently it was Jellybean Johnson. Another day it was Jimmy Cliff. Lou ain’t stupid. He knew his brother was telling Lou something. With how you are living, all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll, the cigars and PBRs, crushing the can and being the man, your days are numbered. Lou may be too old for the 27 Club but double it and you might have Lou’s number.

Stu insisted that he wishes Lou all the best and he just thought that buying records of those about to die would be a fun endeavor. Stu called it Dead Record Pool. Sounded pretty sick to Lou, but Lou played along. Stu, how about Phil Collins? No, Lou, you have him covered already. Lou, you own any Dolly Parton LPs? She is about to go to the Grand Ole Opry in the sky for sure. Hit the nail on the coffin, Stu. Lou does not own any Dolly Parton LPs. And so, Lou went down to The Vogue on a mission, like he so often does.

Mission accomplished. Not very hard, really. Dolly is all over the Country bins in any record shop. You will probably even see her in the best little whorehouse that is the two-dollar bin trying to turn a trick for you to buy her tracks. For ten bucks, you can get Dolly’s nineteenth studio album, Here You Come Again, from 1977, on RCA Victor. The LP was a monster hit, going to number 20 on the Billboard 200 and number two at the year-end Hot Country Album chart. The title track climbed up to the top five in the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number three. Number one on the Country chart of course. Dolly won a Grammy at the 21st Annual Awards for Best Country Vocal Performance Female. It was nominated the year before as well. Naturally,the album was nominated for all the big Country awards as well.

Well, Lou listened to it. The first album of Dolly’s to go platinum and Lou does not fucking get it at all. It is absolutely terrible. “Me and Little Andy” was somehow released as a single, but it did not chart, which is not surprising since the song must be a parody, right? This song could be on SCTV for real. And Dolly wrote it. There is not a good song on the entire album, including the title track. To be honest, Lou does not care for singers known by their first name, male or female. Prince, Bruce, Michael, Dolly, Cher, Adele, Madonna, Barbra. That said Lou loves Nico.

What is it with Dolly? Why is she so popular? Why does she have an amusement park? With a song like “As Soon As I Touched Him”, Lou would much rather listen to the Bizarro Dolly Parton: Samantha Fox. A short, buxom firecracker. Samantha Fox delivered if you know what Lou means. Samantha Fox, never just Samantha mind you, was voted the top Page 3 model of all-time in 2008. What has Dolly done that compares to that? Dolly was on The Muppet Show a bunch of times. You look at Dolly on the cover of Here You Come Againand she gives off real doll vibes like what you would buy at an adult bookshop down by the railroad tracks outside of Nashville. Clearly, the Dolly on the album cover is not a living, breathing human being. Is she? Samantha Fox doesn’t breathe, she moans by the way. You can take Dolly’s “As Soon As I Touched Him”, but Lou will go with “Touch Me (I Want Your Body)” every time. It is just better. If Lou wants to have some fun, he will put on “I Wanna Have Some Fun.” And always remember naughty girls need love too. Samantha Fox’s first three albums are all killer and no filler: Touch Me (1986), Samantha Fox (1987), and I Wanna Have Some Fun (1988). She was on fire. Even Madonna doesn’t touch her. Madonna had one good album: her first one. One of the best debuts of all time without a doubt, but she never approached that level again.

Speaking of great debuts, the first movie in the Dirty Harryfranchise is so far superior to anything else in the series that you wonder if the other movies ever should have been made. Lou is of the camp that believes that Dirty Harry is fascist, and up there with Triumph of the Will in terms of great fascist cinema. It truly is a masterpiece. One wonders, give how bankrupt all creatives are for ideas, why Dirty Harry hasn’t been remade for Netflix. It fits the times perfectly. Lou could see a Dirty Harrymovie with an illegal immigrant subplot for sure. Go ahead make my bed. And do my laundry. And gardening and mow my lawn. And clean my pool.

As for pools, The Dead Pool was where the Dirty Harry franchise went to die. The movie concerns a serial killer who works his magic around a dead pool game premise. Lou remembers dead pools as being extremely popular when he was younger. Now he never hears of them anymore. This may be because Lou is dead inside or the entire world is populated by the undead. There is something there. The Dead Pool had a great cast: Eastwood, Liam Neeson, Patricia Clarkson, and a young James Carrey, who is Ace Ventura to you and me. Carrey plays Johnny Squares, a rock singer who dies of a heroin overdose that was actually a murder. Members of Guns N’ Roses appear in the film and Slash steals the show by firing a harpoon through a window.

Guns N’ Roses are like Dirty Harry and Madonna. It is all about the debut. The band was cast in The Dead Pool because Appetite for Destruction was a massive worldwide hit. One of the greatest albums of all time, but when you are really honest with yourself, that is all GNR did. The rest is all filler and trash. “November Rain” is a bloated corpse of a song. The other reason GNR was cast is because at the time everyone thought someone in the band would die at any minute. They truly lived the rock and roll lifestyle. Steven Adler came closest to hitting the dead pool probably. In fact, if you look on the internet, you can find stuff that says that Adler and Izzy Stradlin have died. Their careers have, but they live on. None of the original members have died, which means in 1988, you would have lost the dead pool. Who knew? And who knew that GNR as a band would already be dead by 1988? Lou would say that GNR is a band that you only need their greatest hits, but that is not true. You only need their first album. They are like The Sex Pistols, except The Pistols did it right by releasing only one album. GNR, Madonna, and Dirty Harry should have done the same. But as even the Sex Pistols prove that filthy lucre is just keeps the creatively dead alive. Dolly just might live forever.