Who Is Going To Fill His Shoes?

We had some time to kill before the season premiere of Mad Men (the story of a 1960's ad executive desire to bed down every woman in the state of New York), so the wife and I took in the The Academy of  Country Music Awards. The next time this happens, just remind me to stick needles in my eyes.

The show started with a galaxy of country music stars singing a song about chewing tobacco. This included Sheryl Crow who I didn’t know was a country music star. The last time I heard anything about her, she was complaining about George W. Bush and teaching us about toilet paper.

The show's “hosts” then appeared. The hosts were Blake Shelton, who is married to Miranda Lambert who is worried about Sheryl Crow. (FYI, Sheryl Crow has had "relationships" with a billion famous men including Eric Clapton) Shelton is also on the American Idol brain suck rip-off show called The Voice. The other host was Luke Bryan, an alumnus of Georgia Southern University. Hail Southern. He sings a song with the stirring lyric, “If you ain’t a ten, you’re a nine-point-nine”. Of course, it sounds like, “If ewe ainna tan,yer a nan-pert-nan”.

Shelton and Bryan proceed to tell a couple of jokes that would have been rejected in the Hee-Haw writers room.  They also told jokes regarding the size of their Porter Waggoners. I asked my wife if she could imagine Conway Twitty and Johnny Cash making crotch jokes.

That’s the way Country Music is today. Somewhere along the line it became more about the product and less about the song. Who do you blame? Several people come to mind.

One person to blame is Bob Dylan. Back in the 60’s when all of the hip people  thought country music was just something the boys of the Ku Klux Klan dance to, Dylan came to Nashville and recorded the classic Blonde on Blonde. He used Nashville session men like Charlie McCoy (the band director of Hee-Haw) and Harold "Pig" Robbins.  Soon the rock and rollers were treating the country people with some dignity and the country people were loosening up and growing their hair out. By the end of the 70's, the most popular country music act was Willie Nelson, a man with pig tails. By the mid 80's country music became bad rock music.

Another person to blame is Shania Twain. She was huge in the 90’s due to such songs as “Man, I Feel Like a Woman”. Every time I saw the video for this song, I was reminded of the old Charlie Rich song that said “She makes me glad that I’m a man”. However, Twain was about as country as a Macy’s department store.

The person I really hold accountable is Garth Brooks. I tend to hold Garth Brooks accountable for everything. There is just something about Garth Brooks and his big old Garth Brooks head that was on all of his albums that get me. Brooks seemed so manufacture. It was like there was a focus group and they decided that this is how all country singers must look like and they have to wear a cowboy hat.

That’s the problem with country music. The audience is no longer the guy that works the grave yard shift or the waitress at The Waffle House. The audience is now sorority sisters at the Universities who all have been told all their lives that they are a “Nine-point-Nine” when really they are a "Six" when they have their make up on.

That's what made the death of George Jones so depressing. He wasn't classy. He never wore a cowboy hat. He wasn't what would come out of a focus group. "Here's a song from a man that plans on being married a hundred times and may not show up at his concerts. Oh yeah, he wants to ride his lawn mower to buy his booze." He wouldn't have lasted a minute in front of Simon Cowell. "Now tell me, 'Possum', how do you think you can win a musical competition with a song about White Lightning?"

But he was a guy that knew the meaning of the songs he sung. "Just because I saw her and fell all to pieces, she thinks I still care" is a lyric borne of genius and pain. Can anyone say that about any country song now?