Neither Altman nor his stars understood country music. The author having insinuated politics into the film was both gratuitous and useless--adding nothing to the story but more cynicism. It was as though Mr. Altman threw a lot of balls into the air, hoping one of them would hit. The music was dreadful--might pass for drugged-up folk music but had no melody. Poor Johnny Gimble, Texas's best fiddler, who looked pained but characteristically pleasant while trying to save bad, fake "country & western" music--he doesn't even get a credit on this site, while Vassar Clements does. The movie was full of inaccurate interpretations of the country music style and milieu. While attempting to be a send-up of hicks and small-minded rednecks, they even got THAT wrong! Cartoonish pastiche on that theme, while being hackneyed and unfair, could have been achieved with little effort, but wasn't. It is as though Altman and crew were ALL on psychotropic drugs during the making of this film. I also pitied Merle Kilgore, who is a true song-stylist of high quality, having written many big country & western hits including "Wolverton Mountain". He and Mr. Gimble were cynically invited to participate in a movie that not only had no point, but which, in its stab at ridiculing the country music scene, only succeeded in exposing the bad taste and ignorance of Hollywood itself. The plot sickens--oh no, wait: there wasn't one. Mr. Altman thought he could cleverly use the "One Day's Chronicling" device to conceal that deficit. That dawg don't hunt!