You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
The CMA awards.
New acts. Old acts. Some we know. Some we don’t.
Unless you are a country fan, you need a program to know all the players.
Sure there’s Keith and Carrie and Luke and Miranda.
I know those stars.
They are on the cover of People magazine donating a spleen to science.
The National inquirer follows these stars around with a magnifying glass questioning their sexuality and their sobriety and their dedication to God and country.
But the rest of the pre-show red carpet experience? Well it’s a mind-boggling whose who of whose that?
“There’s Steven Tyler,” I shout as the red carpet cameras pan the hall.
“Oh my God he’s gross,” My son says aloud. “How old is he, like 70?”
I laugh. That’s a damn good question.
My mind searches back to a record player by the window in my room. The 33 rpm is spinning and I’m holding up the Dream On album cover.
There’s the band, long hair, coked up, posing against a wall of clouds.
Dream on was released in 1973, that was 42 years ago.
So 70?
Yeah maybe.
Damn.
I thought he looked pretty good, kind of like an Indian medicine man who paints his hair with Peyote.
At least I knew who he was.
“Hey there’s Garth,” I shout.
I’m excited Another guy I know.
“Whose that big woman with him?” my son asks.
I stare at the screen.
I see a large rump that’s covered in sequins, I mean a lot of sequins. I’m hypnotized, looking at an ass that reminds me of the Mirror Ball Trophy on Dancing With the Stars.
I swallow hard. “Ah that’s Garth’s wife, Trisha,” I say.
“That’s too Bad,” he says in a snarky 16-year-old kind of way.
“Look it’s Sam Hunt?,” he says proudly, knowingly.
I stare at the screen. Sam Hunt? Whose that?
I don’t want to show my ignorance. I stare at the screen eye balling a tall, good-looking country dude.
“Come on dad, It’s Sam Hunt.”
Sam Hunt?
That doesn’t answer a damn thing for me.
He could be Sam Elliot, Sam and Dave, Last Samurai, or son of Sam.
I stare blankly, drool forming in the corner of my mind.
“Come on Dad, It’s Sam Hunt. Get real.”
And so it goes.
The old and the new.
It’s a blatant exercise in old and new, young and old, hip and GET OFF MY LAWN.
The show opens with Hank Williams Jr.
Hat pulled down low, dark glasses, and big beard.
“Now that’s country” I say
I grew up on Hank Jr. when I wasn’t rocking to AC/DC.
I use to come home to my house at 2am in L.A. on Scarff Street and Hank would be spinning on the turntable.
My front door would be wide open, the lights all on, and nobody home.
Honey I’m home.
“Tell me Hank why do you drink? Tell me Hank why do you roll smoke?”
The apartment was alive and rockin all by itself.
Yep – I remember it like it was yesterday.
That doesn’t carry much weight in the restricted driver’s license bureau.
“Who is that old crusty guy with the beard?” he says.
“That’s old school son. That’s old-time country music.”
“He’s just old,” he says.
Next up; Keith Urban and John Cougar Mellencamp.
“Little Pink Houses for you and me.”
“That’s cool,” I say.
Old school is rocking the CMA’s right out of the gate.
“When is John Cougar going to play? my son asks.
“Are you sniffing markers again? That was his song,” I say.
“That old guy who just sang Ain’t that America? He is John Cougar Mellencamp?”
“Yep I saw him in the LA Sports arena, in 1986.”
“When was that? The paleolithic era?”
And so it goes.
Young performers have me scratching my head.
Old performers have him asking me how close to death that guy is.
At the end of the night, we both laugh, just as
Brad Paisely twangs “And we’re just one big country nation.”
He’s about to say something smart.
I put up my finger and give him a look.
“Oh you know him? Good dad. Good.”
Life’s crazy™