Fan Fairrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Enough Dixie Chick talk, its Fan Fair time!!!!!!! The industry's most unusual time of the year.

Yes, I know it's called the CMA Music Festival but I've never heard a fan call it that. It's a classic gathering that is really a whole different animal now. Better in many ways, soul less would be a good description when you really compare the two events.

Today's Fan Fair has little interaction with stars. That was the thing that made the event such a world renowned crossroads of culture. The fact that stars would sit in a booth and face their fans was something to see.

Maybe that was a simpler time. Maybe that's not possible today because the world is full of nuts, perverts and stalkers.

Maybe the stars of today are a little too big for their britches. Maybe the people who control things just wanted it bigger and cleaner.

Whatever, the event now is classier. Cleaner, swept clean of the cow barns where we sweated but saw big stars sign everything from a slip of paper to a bald head. Some of that still goes on but the thrill is gone.

What we do have is a young person friendly concert. If it's music you have come to hear you will overdose and be forever a listener to talk radio if you try to do everything musical.

The stars would never miss this event. Now if they can book a date out of town so they can avoid the pesky morning radio remote that requires a star to come in very early in the morning after a very late night fan event. This is supposed to be about one on one with fans not about radio but again that's yesterday. It's just too crazy and hard to please everyone so you have to leave town. I don't need to name names we all know who they are.

The missing acts, the corporate sponsors, the 5 dollar bottled water, it's just a big festival concert now like many others and that's ok.

I guess.

Country music is very big business now. The stars at the top are multi millionaires. The music is often more pop than what used to be called country music.

The CMA Music Festival is a fine event. You just wish you could turn back the hands of time, just a little.

It all reminds me of what a country radio station is like today. A computer runs the program and on weekends nuclear war could occur and the hits would just keep on coming. You can talk a little a few times in the morning but of course people just want to hear the same 20 songs over and over again because they are apparently insane when it comes to radio habits.

The songs are recorded in pieces and few dare to record a performance. Radio stations are voice tracked days in advance sometimes. Fan fair is a big concert where you can wave at one of your almost favorite stars from a distance of several dozen yards. It's the world we live in today. Art reflects life or is that vice versa.

Don't you wish sometimes the floor had some dirt on it? The songs had a scratch and the music still came out of a jukebox while you sipped on a cold long neck beer. You wore that old pair of boots and that old comfortable pair of jeans. I think that world pretty much only exists in the movies.

I still remember seeing Charley Pride sit in that booth in that fairgrounds cow barn for hours sweating and signing. We didn't know it then but those were the good ole days.