Awful fucking night.
First time, maybe in 25 years, I wasn’t in Nashville for the CMA Awards. Couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t afford going to Nashville once this year when I used to go at least three times. That’s what happens when you work in a dead business with a dead medium. [Once again, I shamelessly implore any readers here to subscribe to my page there and click every time they alert you to a story. You don’t have to read it. Just click on it. They pay by the page view!]
What made it worse than having to sit at home and watch the CMAs on TV last night (actually, I watched it on DVR, since I was at a screening of the God-awful rock movie “Pirate Radio”) was having to also miss the BMI Awards dinner the night before, when Kris Kristofferson was given the BMI Icon Award. Kris and his wife Lisa are the most wonderful people in the world. I’ll always feel that my CD booklet notes to “The Essential Kris Kristofferson” (2004) is one of my career highlights; just knowing this great singer-songwriter/humanitarian is a top career achievement in itself.
I walked into one of the neighborhood deli’s that night to buy a bag of discounted chips and grimaced when the Arab owner asked, “How are you, Brother?,” then feigned a smile and asked how he was. “Life is good, God is good,” he smiled. The newspapers he sold were still full of the Fort Hood massacre. The suspect reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar!” —”God is great”—before opening fire. Many in the papers wanted all Muslims kicked out of the military.
“Thank you, my Brother,” I said as I took my change and headed home to watch “House of Bamboo,” Sam Fuller’s 1955 crime drama in post-war Japan, which shows cooperation between American and Japanese anti-crime forces in dealing with a vicious American criminal gang.
The CMA Awards fell on Veterans Day. Big military presence on the show—lot of thankyou’s from artists to “our soldiers.” Presumably, no one wondered what they’re doing or why. Those questions, however, were voiced Monday night at the Riverside Church memorial for Mary Travers, which I attended—when I should have been in Nashville at the SESAC Awards dinner. I wrote about it for examiner.com (and implore you again to go there and click on it. You don’t have to read it!). But I will tell you that the big song that night was “Blowin’ in the Wind,” that God was not mentioned once as a justification for killing innocents of any pursuasion—nor was he/she thanked for siding with an award winner. And I got to personally thank George McGovern, a decorated World War II hero, for his service to the country (didn’t get the chance to do the same to John Kerry and Max Cleland, who also attended and spoke).
The CMA’s opened bad. Everything I hate about award shows. An arena full of bored music buzzers and screaming fans/shills wildly cheering TV network celebrity presenters, artificial artist matchups, poorly scripted co-host drivel and fake banter, and typically overblown production numbers.
It all worked against the night’s big winner, Taylor Swift. Her “Forever & Always” opener—a news show interview start followed by the silliness of her throwing chairs and sliding down a pole and into a Madonna floor pose—sounded bad and was surprisingly low energy, especially considering it was shamelessly trying to ape the MTV Awards vibe. She took this to the extreme when she returned to do “Fifteen” while swarmed by young teen girls waving themselves at her; then again, that’s her audience, not ornery old men like me who grew up listening to Conway Twitty, when country songs really were about “real people with real life feelings that make them truly timeless,” as Brad Paisley told his co-host Carrie Underwood before they joined in some tiresome song parodies of in fact truly timeless country songs like “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” (a predictable slap at Kanye West) and “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” (okay, Brooks & Dunn are splitting up—I get it).
Maybe if Brad and Carrie stopped goofing and smelling each other up they could have fit in a few more country classics. And no, I don’t mean “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” that the Zac Brown Band covered. Even though they pulled out all the stops, the music bizzers looked rightly bored (give it up for Kris and Lisa, though: They stood up and cheered at the end and I know it was genuine). I don’t mean “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool,” either. I’m happy enough for Barbara Mandrell’s induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, even though she was never a Loretta or Tammy or Dolly. Indeed, her kind of country was pretty bland for the most part. But “IWCWCWC” did give Martina McBride a chance to sing, and a second chance to the perennial George Strait, whose earlier performance of “Twang” was one of the few true twang moments of the night.
And it was wrong that Mandrell got to speak and fellow new inductee’s Charlie McCoy (who did get to play harmonica on “IWCWCWC”) and Roy Clark (who wasn’t even there) didn’t. Wronger was that Strait and the always wonderful Vince Gill were the only Hall of Famers who got to perform (not counting Little Jimmy Dickens, whose comic Kanye bit with Brad and Carrie was the only one that worked, and Kristofferson, who at least got to co-present).
Speaking of Gill, his duet with Chris Daughtry was surprisingly good–even if Gill can do no wrong. Also among the older guard, Reba McEntire was solid, and it was great to see The Judds again–if just as presenters. And speaking of presenters, the most important ones were clearly “Good Morning America”’s Robin Roberts and the clueless stars of “The Middle” (“This award show totally rocks!” said the woman)—whoever they were, whatever the show. They were all from ABC-TV, and that’s all that matters when it comes to “country music’s biggest night.”
But Kid Rock actually was an appropriate presenter. He’s shown more love for traditional country music than any of them, and returning to join Jamey Johnson on “Between Jennings and Jones” made perfect sense.
And the rest of the performances? Nothing memorable in the trumped-up “once in a lifetime” Kenny Chesney-Dave Matthews duet on “I’m Alive.” Billy Gibbons’ teaming with the retiring Brooks & Dunn was okay—which is about the best that can be said for the young country artists, though Tim McGraw’s “Southern Voice” was one of the best songs of the night, if marred by too-busy camerawork and constant flashing lights. And Keith Urban’s “‘Til Summer Comes Around” was quite good, if more of a nod to the Eagles than Alabama. Same with Miranda Lambert’s “White Liar,” though its tunefulness and her performance had greater impact.
But Billy Currington’s “People Are Crazy” is the song that really resonated with me—all things considered. Not because it’s such a great song or he’s such a great singer, but because of the timeliness of its all-encompassing line: “God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.”