Featured Country Music News

I can't not spew out industry cheerleading pabulum such as the stuff I read in a few Music Row trade and consumer publications.

Here's what I am upset (or at least concerned) about:

I want country music to do great. I want the stars to be the biggest stars and the Row return to its Garth glow of the mid-'90s. Not everything about it, but the success of the TNNs, the sales at retail, the studio boom days and video production boom. It was a great time.

NOW is a great time, too, but the management and industry trade associations are so weak, they are nearly impotent.

Example: "Nashville!" The Fox TV show comes to town. They don't work out any deal with the musician's union. The show is marketed half-ass, placed on Friday night and is bound for doom. Why would the barrios of East LA and Harlem care about a bunch of white kids trying to be in country music? It's a niche show that should be on CMT, GAC or USA -- but air it on a broad-appeal network especially one totally alien to country Music? It's set up to FAIL.

Example: Kenny Chesney's new CD. Put out on 9/11 ... not the best day anyway, but can overlook that call. Put it out on the same day as two huge rappers, who get almost all the national press for their so-called feud and get the MTV Awards two days before the release. Kenny sales 107,000 first day, which is good, but it doesn't look as good when 310,000 go for 50 Cent and something like 450,000 for Kanye. Set up to fail. Kenny could have opened #1 most any other week in the last three months. Now Kenny won't be #1 on the pop charts. Set up to fail.

Example: "Nashville Star." Airs too late, and radio never really helps it get the fans stirred up. Has an okay audience, but look what they leave on the table not doing a really cool big show. Compared to "American Idol," the whole thing makes the industry look cheap and not successful. The fact that only a runner-up has broken out is weird! Set up to fail!

Example: The country concerts jam the ticket offices this summer. Huge shows and all over the US including NYC. The CMA still can't break these sold-out artists to anything but the U.S. and Canada. Urban a little bit outside but not what should be going on. The CMA is going backward in this area. Garth and Shania were international. What happened?

Example: Sales are off 30% off, with hopes that they'll get better with all these fall releases. BUT why hasn't the industry embraced and really pushed digital technology? Why weren't the CMA nominations streamed LIVE on the Internet? Why are music consumers going away from CDs, while a lot of Country institutions have not? Of course, there are a few forward-thinkers, but the industry should be on major campaigns to modernize. I don't see it. Buggy whips are out of style.

How can this business be so with it in some areas and so out of touch and backward in others?

Everyone is trying to do more with less. Right? How does CMT and its mothership make money sense out of doing a Hank Williams Jr. salute in Los Angeles? It has to cost twice as much, if not more, to tape it there -- and Hank Jr. is not an L.A. kind of guy. It would get more attention in NYC, frankly. When MTV cuts more employees, remember the money they shot out the cannon on this show taped 1,797 miles away from anything that historically makes any sense. Set up to fail!

I could go on, but it gives me a headache. People and leaders here are just like Washington leaders. They are interested in not the big picture, but their immediate self-interests. All politics are local. We need a Commissioner of Country Music like they have for the NFL. Let he or she smack the Pacman's and the videotaping idiots at the Patriots of country music.

Great job in this head-banging column to the Sugarland music video, "Stay." Wow!

Good luck to Lonestar and their new singer. George Jones' surprise birthday party this week reminded me about all the right things about this great industry. Dierks and Trace, with Sonny James and the Oaks, with Tom T Hall, Naomi Judd and Mark Chestnut all tipping their hat for the Classic Coke of Country Music. Hail, hail Nancy Jones for getting him on track!

Did Mindy ever get out of jail? Talking about set up to fail!

My ... my ... my....