Max said:
Those guys really could play, and there's something about Jerry I like a ton.
You don't really see those fun duets on guitar anymore, with excellent players just having a great time.
Sadly, we're in a day where music variety is not on TV the way it used to be. You'll see it occasionally at a gig or something like that, but its not as prevelant as it used to be. Growing up, pretty much til the late 80s/early 90s, you'd see shows like Hee Haw where you'd have some musician jam with Buck and Roy on stage. Also, in the seventies, anyone who had more than two or three hits had their own variety show in the day. Jerry Reed had one, Glen Campbell had one, Porter Wagner had one (Dolly Parton made her start there), there was Hee Haw, which was loosely based around Buck Owens and Roy Clark. The days of that kind of died when country music went MTV when networks like TNN, CMT, GAC and the others really came on the air and you saw Alan Jackson water skiing in his cowboy boots and the ladies drooling over Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney all metrosexualized and fake-tanned. This was also the time that Garth Brooks made it so big and his songs were so over-played (Friends in Low Places was good--I'll admit that, but the rest of it was all overplayed cowboy pop). Plus, around that time, the focus shifted from the guitarist/musician to the singer. Brad Paisley and Keith Urban are really the last of the electric guitar singers, or really the first in their era. So much stuff is based on studio and festival work, that everyhing musically is, for the most part, based on session musicians. That's why Brent Mason is so popular in Nashville.
Personally, I hate what has become of country music. The world cheers when a good, macho song comes around, or a respectable musician, like Shooter Jennings, comes out, yet the industry keeps shoving pretty boys and songs about being in love and being dads and stuff. To me, the way country changed in the early 90s was a lot like how Van Halen changed when Sammy Hagar came into the band. Garth Brooks making it big was like
5150 came out. To me, that album was the rock equivelant of getting your girlfriend preganant. You had to go from being hot for the teacher to asking why can't this be love.
Sorry for putting you guys through my rant, but I had to vent.