Gone Country, Gone Crazy

What an appropriate place to be that is so NOT Country ... whatever Country is anyway. This is the week that we tapped our tow to a Snoop Dogg Country song, "My Medicine."

After watching the video about 10 times over the last few days, I sort of like the song and found myself humming it in the LaGuardia airport this afternoon. It truly is the end of the world.

The Snoop song with Brad Paisley doing some guitar and Willie Nelson using a bad word is a rapping nursery rhyme. The point here is radio won't play it. I don't think Country radio will play it. It is sort of a video happening. If I was confused about the big tent of Country Music before this week, I really am now.

I did see Lee Ann Womack is coming back into the game. Thank God for that. She is the real deal and I hope her new CD in the Fall is a smash.

The "Pop goes the Country" chart right now does show a huge diversity. From Snoop we go to bluegrass and everything in the middle. I did hear an excellent bluegrass band this week, The Steeldrivers. Heard them LIVE at Belmont University. They are going to be on Conan here in the Country capital of the world, New York City, in July.

$5 gas, Snoop at the Opry on a video, Jessica Simpson wearing "Real Girls Eat Meat" T-shirts. Our heads will so spin like the little girl in "The Exorcist."

Today, Jones Radio/Jones Media sold out. I, along with hundreds if not thousands of fellow employees, we go into the weekend wondering what the New World Order will bring.

It's a pretty whacky place, this world right now. Lots of things that shake your comfortable buttons. People are wired to resist change, but it in the long run is mostly good. Everything we are about right now in the music business. Media is about transition.

How in the world do record companies keep going with the low sales figures? Radio certainly needs business from the local car dealer ... and they are hurting! TV stations see their audiences all spread out and, in some cases, simply gone. It's a rock and roll time and not for the faint at heart.

Music is everywhere. Someone's just got to figure about the business plan again. Information is on our phones, in our ears and all over us. The business plan for the traditional media has to adapt. $5 dollar gas just doesn't work for folks driving 50 to 100 miles a day commuting.

Meanwhile, Snoop keeps singing that he needs money to buy his medicine. Whoa. Me, too.

Oh yeah, the media of 2008 is everything from the NY Times to someone with a laptop in Australia making up stories about people they've never met. Talk about nuts. See the one this week about a bodyguard lying in the road in front of the paparazzi chasing Nicole and Keith, or the new gal pal of Kenny Chesney. No one knows what to believe anymore. The poor Cyrus family is still getting slammed for those Vanity Fair pictures. Enough already.

This "make a star to tear them down" and the total insanity of "a camera everywhere you go is" creepy. Privacy is for sure a thing of the past. Anyone with a job or, God forbid, in the public eye everyday looks around for the next big wave to knock them off their surfboard. Riding the wave would be what we hope will happen.

Snoop's Country might just have been as far as the rubber band can go. Stress can be thrilling, but it can kill you, too. Job insecurities are simply not fun. But life in 2008 ... who could have predicted just about anything going on? Temperature today in Phoenix is 114!

Music Row is a work in progress more so than anytime maybe in it's history. Right now it seems like everyone is juggling a box full of cats! It will settle down ... Didn't new Nashville resident Ms Crow say a little change will do you good? Key words there: "a little."

Snoop Dogg lovin' on Johnny Cash ... That's nice. "Nashville Star" is still not a lot better in week two. Saw the Steeldrivers, then 15 minutes later the Turtles! "Happy Together." Life in Nashville this week is like going on a vacation with Forrest Gump!