We are living in strange and unusual times, my faithful readers. What was once concrete and immovable in the mind, looming there in the gray matter like a towering monolith of 38 years of amassed knowledge, now finds itself being tickled and teased by outside forces, and much like a dog being fed a grape, it doesn't know quite what to do with the damn thing.
But I am making no sense, so I'll start at the beginning.
I have spent a lifetime (well, a 38 year lifetime, that is) poking fun at country music. Yes, I realize that it's a cheap and easy laugh, with lifetimes of quick and predictable jokes ready and waiting in the whirling rolodex of my mind, but when you live in a place like I do, you must be armed and ready at all times. You see, I live in rural America, a place where you say howdy to your neighbor with a piece of hay shoved into your mouth, and you find yourself trapped in lengthy conversations on such varied topics as corn yield and potato leaf hoppers. A dusty, overly bleached place where men are REAL men, women are REAL women, and old folks who sit in rockers on the porch in the evening are REAL old folks who sit in rockers on the porch in the evening. The cow says Moo, the duck says Quack, and toothbrushes are something out of myth and legend.
But I choose to live here, and I kid the good and kind people of my backwards little cracker town.
But getting back to Country Music, it seems to be the one staple of country living that I just can't seem to embrace in a big old sweaty stacking-hay-in-the-barn-on-a-June-day hug. I am quietly rebellious in nature (you know, I plot and scheme but don't actually do anything), and I seem to need my music somewhat rebellious as well. Given a choice of thrusting out my elbows and walking bowlegged to a country beat, I'd rather beat my head and fists against a wall of Rock sound that seems hell bent on hurting me, possibly maiming me. This I do with great respect and reverence. The very idea of getting ho-down-funky, clapping my hands and kicking up my manure-stained heels along side people three times my age, seems to just leave me in a cold, nervous sweat. The idea of me and my parents shopping for the same albums quite frankly scares the living feces out of me.
So when I found myself standing in line to take my girlfriend to a Toby Keith concert (she just loves Country music, and that's ok), it dawned on me what a strange place the universe really is. So many crossroads in life, so many choices of right or left, up or down, in or out, through the twisting corridors of my decision-riddled past, to find myself deposited in the right here, right now of a reality that was about to see a big arena country music spectacle.
I was a whole heap of nervous, I was.
I've spent a lifetime going to big arena Rock shows; loud, screechy and enough to make old women two towns away ask "What in tarnation is that ruckus, Edgar". After awhile, you tend to notice certain patterns in the way in all comes together. For starters, they can be real freak shows. You see, I am one of those people who can love something with all his heart and still not feel like I need to change my personal appearance to prove it. I've never quite "looked" the part of a blistering, thrashing, Heavy Metal lunatic, and I have been known to chuckle, quite openly at times, at the people who feel the need to look the part. I find these people (and in general, most people) an endless source or howling laughter, even though I am right along side them, screaming until I am hoarse and beating my raised fists to the beat. But go overboard trying to LOOK the part? Spare me, please. I mean, I love breakfast cereals more than anything else on this planet (it's true, you know), but I've never felt the need to prove I am a fan by dressing up as a raisin.
And don't even get me started on Harley bikers. That's a whole other article.
So, while the "standing in line to get into the arena" aspect of the evening felt very familiar to me, I couldn't help but feel like everything in the universe was just as it should be..... only SLIGHTLY askew. It was almost as if I was in some kind of "Twilight Zone" alternate reality where it looks much like our REAL world except for the fact that in all the onion skin layers that make up our reality, one or two of them had been removed and Roquefort cheese had been put in their place. It was like walking a path through the woods I had traveled 100 times before, but discovering some of the trees had been replaced with stalks of celery. It gave the entire evening just an eerie feeling. Even if Rod Serling has stepped around the corner and told the viewing audience that I was about to step into a strange place were the rules don't quite apply, he would have been wearing pointy boots and chaps.
But there I was, just like at my wonderful Rock concerts, gaping opening at the "freaks". If I had set up a table there selling "Ronco Rhinestone and Stud Setter" kits, I could have retired this year. Talk about a missed opportunity.
In my head I played a little game called "real cowboy, fake cowboy". It goes without saying that there were many people there in goofy looking cowboy hats, all trying their hardest to look like they had just, in fact, slammed the gate shut after a 200 mile cattle drive across the plains, dusted off their jeans, pulled themselves up onto their horses and rode to the concert with their Marlboros glinting in the evening darkness. And so I made notice of them, and worked hard to categorize them into one of the 2 lists. Sadly, none of them made the "real cowboy" list, and I felt disappointed. I mean, it's hard to take a guy serious in a cowboy hat, when you are pretty sure his name is Trevor and he lives in an apartment with a cat and drives a Hyundai. Cowboy after cowboy strutted past me wearing boots so pointy that a 9 year old Japanese ballerina would have had trouble cramming her toes into them. It made me wish that just ONE of them had just gone the extra mile and done something totally Country, yet completely original, and come dressed as a School Marm, or maybe wearing a blacksmith's tool belt.
But alas, the demon of conformity had claimed them all.
And that in itself is one of the problems I have with Country Music. It's all so RIGID and tight, a starched little subculture where originality has no place. You choose either a white hat or a black hat, you give yourself a good old American name like "Billy Wayne Johnson" or "Debbie Lynn Baxter", and your music falls right in line with what has been done for decades before; standard 4-beat blues (I'm not a musician, so blast me for my grammar before you blast me for my non-musical-terminology, ok?) and twangy riffs, all to backup a goofy play on words vocal like "Standing in the dollar store with only 50 cents" or "She's picking out furs and cars, and I'm here picking my butt". Now Rock music? Well there is something that is never afraid to take chances. Rock music, while crashing and plummeting out of the same blues based apple tree that Country fell from, finds itself constantly doing something wild and strange, yet still being musical and entertaining. I mean, you could have four idiots dressed in caveman costumes beating on garbage can lids and setting the works of Shakespeare to it all, and you've got yourself an unusual and fun Rock band. I mean, imagine a band where the lead guitarist dresses like a Nun and calls himself (it's a guy) "Stanky Poozle", and a lead vocalist named "Crusty Udder" who dresses in a full body cow costume, and have them slam through powerful and angry rock songs with oddly timed beats, and while you may not have a Top 10 song, you've got something that STILL fits into a musical genre that's been around awhile and had thought it had seen everything.
Don't laugh, that's a real band.
As for the concert itself, well it was unique and entertaining. While I love to pick on Country music, and it will never be my "thing", I must point out that these musicians ARE quite talented. I've been to shows with great sound and production, and some that left me angry and wanting my money back, but the 3 country acts, Toby Keith, Jamie O'neal, and Emerson Drive (who looked and sounded to me like a country version of Matchbox 20), that I saw that evening were musically right on top of their game. Sound quality was beyond excellent, stage productions and execution were top notch, and they each gave the crowd it's moneys worth. These people are talented, they work hard, and they love their fans. I tip my ten gallon hat to them, because my ass is about as musical as bricks in a clothes dryer.
But it's all so WEIRD!!!!!!!!!!
Our seats were down on the FLOOR of the arena. Now, if you've seen some of the bands live in concert that I listen to on a regular basis, you'd know that the floor, the DREADED floor, is a war-blasted no-man's land. An unpredictable place of pain and suffering where anything can happen and usually does. It's a good place to get hurt, if that's your thing (or even not your thing). It's a battle zone of pushing people, fights, and maybe even someone urinating. It's Mad Max's THUNDERDOME, all in the tight confines of a hockey rink. So, there I was sitting in SEATS (seats that weren't being ripped out of the floor and thrown at the stage) on the floor, thinking once again that the alternate reality had me firmly in it's white-knuckle clutches. I saw little kids sitting next to senior citizens, people sitting all in nice rows, and nobody tossing artillery shells. In fact at one point, when some girls a few rows in front of me stood up to dance, an older woman sitting behind me yelled "sit down!".........
AND THEY DID!
Bizarre. Completely bizarre.
When it was all over, I found that I had enjoyed myself overall. There was no way I was going to be a fan of country music, but I can't lie, it made for a fun evening out. It gave me a new appreciation of how the world must have looked to my girlfriend, and her love of Country music, the nights I took her to see Alice Cooper and KISS. Country music is still something I don't quite understand and will probably mock for the rest of my days (hey, I am who I am), but you can't help being in a packed arena with 4000 people and not enjoy what went into the production, or get caught up in their enthusiasm. Toby Keith asked us all "How do you like me now?", and to that I must honestly answer "Occasionally in a recorded song, and occasionally live for a couple of hours".
If only we could have fired our guns into the air to ask for an encore, I just might have had to convert to Country music. But it wasn't meant to be.
Ten Gallon Torgo