Luke Combs At Stagecoach

Live music sucks on TV.

We all know that, and anybody who's tried to turn it into a business has lost their shirt. Turns out you have to be there.

And now that's where everybody wants to be, THE SHOW!

So I'm returning to a series on Amazon Prime last night and I see the logo for Stagecoach on the home screen. This I have to check out. After all, it's about ten, when the headliners go on. But what I get is a T-Mobile advertisement that's so offensive... The host is not endearing, it's endless and I turn it off and go back to my show.

But when that's over...

I go back to the stream to see Luke Combs on the Mane Stage.

Now I just finished watching the Ron Delsener documentary earlier in the day. And they showed Simon & Garfunkel's concert in Central Park in 1981 and the audience size was OVERWHELMING!

That's the way it was on TV last night.

This ain't no Coachella, this is closer to JazzFest, where people park their asses all day in front of the main stage waiting for the headliners.

The configuration is completely different from Coachella. And by time the headliners take the stage, everybody in attendance is watching, it's an endless sea of people and that's impressive and I felt left out.

I don't want to see influencers parade their wares, I've got no problem eating gourmet food, but what I enjoy most, what I go to the show for, is to be a member of a mass-attuned multitude, all on the same page, paying attention to the act on stage.

I mean most people are so far away that it's not even worth shooting video. Sure, you can take pics of the screens placed strategically throughout the crowd, but what's the purpose in that?

No, at that point, you're just there for the music. It's been a long day, you're talked out, you've been waiting for this...

For such a long time.

And the guy on stage...

Doesn't look like anybody in the Spotify Top 50. Oh, these people exist in real life, just not in entertainment, not where you can see anybody's body. And if someone even slightly overweight appears on television, they make a big deal out of it. But Luke Combs... Looks like a guy you went to high school with. And one of the great things about him is he evidences no charisma. And that makes him even more attractive. Big time music has become all about artifice...outfits, makeup, hard drives...Luke Combs looks like he dressed to work on his car.

But he's into it.

And he calls Bailey Zimmerman on stage to do their new single, "Backup Plan" and I get it the first time through, and that almost never happens anymore.

And then Luke turns it over to the band and...

They start playing Skynyrd's "Gimme Three Steps" and...

That's when I start to wonder...why don't we have this in rock?

Oh, we've got Active Rock. You need to go to school to understand it, know all the history of how we got here. Maybe its fans like being outsiders, because one thing is for sure, they're passionate but this music is not mainstream.

What is mainstream? Hip-hop and overproduced pop. Everybody's fearful of AI, but this music sounds like it was made by AI. You read the fantastic press and then you hear the track and you go back to the oldies, this stuff is so bad. I know, I know, it's commerce, but there's not much art.

And then we've got country music.

Which lost its twang long ago.

Country is the rock of the seventies. With tons of Fenders and Gibsons... And not so many hard drives.

Sure, there's a ton of drivel. Written by committee numbers about babies and church and lame dates, but...that's not all of it.

I know, I know, you hate country because its epicenter is in the south and all those people are rednecks, but...

They're not. At this point in time, country is a big tent. It's truly the sound of America. Hip-hop? You can talk the talk, even dress accordingly, but most people's lives are far away from this paradigm, too often the music is a cartoon.

But this guy Luke Combs... He looks like you and me. He's fronting a band of real musicians and this is quite the opposite of Charli XCX, who we had to hear about ad infinitum last summer who played Coachella sans band...at least that's what I heard. Singing to track. So you can dance and prance... Once again, that's commerce, but it's far from the essence of music.

Now after I shut the TV off Garth Brooks came out to sing "Friends in Low Places" and...

If you were there you swooned. This was the surprise magic you were hoping for.

But what resonated even more was Luke's subsequent appearance with the Backstreet Boys to sing "I Want It That Way."

"You are my fire
The one desire"

I had to buy that CD, entitled "Millennium," just to hear "I Want It That Way" whenever I wanted, which turned out to be quite a bit.

It's got 1,744,938343 streams on Spotify. That's right, almost TWO BILLION!

But the act was poohed-poohed by the skinny jeans/leather jacket crowd.

All I know is I used to blast that CD in my car, starting with the opener, "Larger Than Life," which then slipped into "I Want It That Way" and "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely."

You know what the triple-header opening of "Millennium," nearly as good as the three songs that open "Slippery When Wet," have in common?

MAX MARTIN!

The best producer of the last thirty years, who started in a metal band and can write and sing hits seemingly at will.

A hit is a hit is a hit, but there are very few one listen records anymore.

But just like the boy bands were put down at the turn of the century, dismissed as dreck by the supposed cognoscenti, the same thing has happened to modern country.

And country is a big tent. There's not only the radio stuff, but Chis Stapleton, Willie Nelson, even all those Americana acts like Jason Isbell. This is where it's happening, but just like the media missed Trump, they're missing this music story.

If you're hiring a million writers, putting so much in that the cut can't breathe and remixing the track ad infinitum...

You're missing the point.

We want humanity. Life. We want to feel connected.

And I felt connected with the crowd last night.

Didn't matter what anybody's politics were, because we're more alike than dissimilar. It's the power of the music.

When done right it lifts you up and makes life worth living.

And even though the audio sucks, the excitement of the audience is palpable in this Backstreet Boys/Luke Combs video:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DI-1cd8RloL/

Everybody's singing along. They all know the track whereas today's number ones elude most everybody.

Sure, the landscape has changed, but so has the music.

I WANT IT THAT WAY!


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