F@#!- in' Wapner! Part II As some of you already know, and most of you hopefully don't (it wasn't something I was exactly proud of), I recently had the opportunity to actually be on a reality TV show. "Nashville Star", about to start its second season on USA (and sponsored by Sony Records), was holding auditions in Austin. I got an email from a "biz" pal here in Austin who knew one of the Sony people that was going to be one of the judges. In addition to the giant "cattle call" auditions, they were going to have a "showcase" of several invited acts to audition as well. I then talked on the phone to the Sony gal, and I was apparently invited to be in the showcase. So, I did it. Why not, you know? I didn't see last year's "Nashville Star", but I heard (from people not inclined to think so) that it was actually not too bad. Most of the acts were fairly talented, and the guy who won last year was Buddy Jewell, a guy in his 40's who ended up with a #1 hit (I think) and is now doing really well in Nashville. So, what could it hurt to just do the audition? Nothing, right? It might even really help me out. And at least I'll get to play in front of some TV and major label folks, which can't hurt either. That's what I thought -- until I made it past the first round.

After the showcase/audition, they called and said that I needed to fill out the actual application now (they said I didn't need to before), and they wanted me (and 3 others from Austin) to compete in the regional competition in Ft. Worth. So, I filled out the 15-page "What's your favorite breakfast cereal" application, and was told I would have another small bit of paperwork (song rights stuff) to fill out before the regional, which would come in a packet in the mail. Me: "I'm going out of town for a couple of weeks for the holidays. Can I send it back in after that? Network Guy: "Sure, no problem." When I got back home and opened the packet, I found out that I had to fill out another 30-page application, complete with questions about my job history, medical history, dating history, and life philosophy. Jesus! Can you believe that? I considered calling the ACLU, but I thought that might be frowned upon by the media gods. Oh yeah -- and I had to make a freaking video about my life. Nice, huh? This assuming, of course, that everybody in the world has time and money to do that, or even owns a damn video camera. And since I couldn't show them 10 minutes of me sitting around playing Playstation and eating Chee-tos, I had to actually get out and do something, and put it on film. Since I had a grand total of about a week and a half to do all this, I solicited the help of the kind and generous Miss Dana Lynn and her photography skills (and video camera) to help me. We ran around town doing stuff, she filmed it, and I edited it with two VCRs. Real pro, huh? But that's what you get with no money and no time. One more little tidbit -- on this season's show they were going to kick it up the reality TV "obnoxious scale" a bit, and make the final 10 contestants live in a house together for 2 months, and make that part of the show. Those of you that know me found that part particularly hysterical -- can you imagine me living in a house with 10 people I don't know? "Hey guys, where's Roger?" "He's still in his room - he hasn't come out since he got here. And it smells funny in there."

Then came the real fun part -- Ft. Worth. For the competition, each act got to do 1 minute of a cover song (off of a "pre-approved" list) with the "house band", and 2 minutes of an original song, solo acoustic, at Billy Bob's, in front of a regular bar crowd (a few hundred people) and 4 judges. There were 28 acts, and everything was alphabetical -- so of course I was next to last. For the "registration", I had to be at the Radisson (couldn't stay there - $150 a night - so I stayed a couple of miles away at a Ramada) at 8:00 a.m. to wait in 3 separate alphabetical lines to: 1) sign in & take 1 photo 2) "rehearse" with the band - consisting of going into a hotel room with 3 rock musicians, one of whom had a guitar, to go over my allotted one minute worth of cover song for about 5 minutes, and 3) do a 10 minute on-camera interview. Thank God that D.B. Harris (one of the 3 other Austin winners) had a hotel room there we could hang out in. We also tried to go eat some Mexican food, but when we sat down they brought us tomato paste "salsa" and Fritos, so we had a beer and left as quickly as possible. We went to Chili's. All in all, I had to wait around a hotel for 9 hours to do 15 minutes worth of stuff. I finally got to go back to my hotel at 5:00 so I could change clothes and be at Billy Bob's by 6:00. The show started at 7:00.

One attendee described seeing this show at Billy Bob's quite nicely, as "somewhere just north of listening to Zamfir while drinking non-alcoholic beer and chewing tin foil." To put it diplomatically -- it was a freakshow. Some of the acts (maybe about 5 - there were 28 of us) were decent, but most of them made Kenny Chesney look like Merle Freakin' Haggard. I had to sit there and watch 26 teeny-bopper chickies, college-age floppy-haired model/actor slackers, redneck rockers, and cutesy singer-songwriter dudes, most of whom brought their whole families and hordes of obnoxious drunken friends to scream for them and hold up signs like "Nashville Bound" and "Mike Rocks". Another slacker-hipster-type MTV pipsqueak named Jeremy or Josh or something sang a Steve Earle song (really badly), and some little teenage chickies went "EEEEEE!!", and he made to the next round. Too bad he sang like Steve Earle too -- don't get me wrong, I dig Steve Earle and respect him as an artist, but he's done for bad singing what Lynrd Skynrd did for the mullett -- he's given an excuse for bad singers everywhere to just keep on singin' bad. Anyway, I finally went on at about 11:30 (after the 2nd set break), and had 4 guys from Ft. Worth, K, Teri Joyce., D.B., and his wife hollering for me, and everybody else wondering what the hell I was doing there. Oh yeah, and 2 other acts had already done the cover song I was going to do (Lovesick Blues). I did OK, I guess, when my turn finally came. To top it off, they had the judges all sitting right up front with microphones, and they would comment after every act just like on freaking American Idol. It was Tracy Gershon (the Sony gal and actually the only voice of reason in the group), a Dallas radio guy, and two other dudes I didn't recognize. They pretty much said "Wow! Great voice! You look great! Country radio would have no idea what to do with you. See ya." D.B. did pretty well, but they called him an "Elvis impersonator" and said he sounded like "Chris Isaak's drunken uncle". Real observant. They loved most of the teenybopper acts with the screaming parents, of course.

Out of the 4 regional competitions (Ft. Worth was #2), they were to pick 20 acts to go on to the "semi-finals" in Nashville next month. Then they would pick the final 10 winners out of that to live in the house and be on the TV show. They picked 1 "overall" winner each night of the regionals, and the winner of ours was a girl that was kinda poppy but pretty good. At least she looked like she was over 20 years old. Needless to say, from the fact that I'm writing this sour-grapes Soapbox at all, I didn't make it to the semi-finals. And every time I see a commercial for a reality TV show, I'm a little less sad.

Actually, I was surprised I even made it that far, considering the rest of what I saw in Ft. Worth. I realized really fast that if this is what Nashville's looking for (this is actually how Sony is launching their new artists now), then I don't stand a chance. One comment I kept hearing from the judges during several of the performances was that they "didn't know if what you do would fit into today's radio." What they unbelievable still don't get is that, in a business where trends change monthly, if you are looking for what's "hot today", you are going to be a step behind. It's what's "hot tomorrow" that counts, and will keep a business thriving. That's why Nashville's in the predicament that they're in today, making them resort to using reality TV to launch new artists. They've been trying to cash in on what's "hot today" for about 15 years now, and it doesn't work any more. It's like they don't even do the math -- they could net 3 million dollars on the next "country Justin Timberlake" in one album, or they could net 20 million dollars on a good artist, one with staying power, in 4 albums. They act like going even more towards the pop realm is a "new direction", when it's really the same old direction that's sent them into the downward spiral that they're in. They do market research of 5 million record-buyers in malls, instead of the 10 million that don't buy their music at the mall.

Have you noticed? You don't hear country radio in public any more. As few as 3 years ago, you could walk into any convenient store, sandwich shop, or supermarket and they would very often have on the country pop station, just for background music. Now it's either a classic rock station or a Top 40 station. The fact is, people are tired of hearing the same country music that they've heard for the last 15 years. I've said this before, but the real victims of this are the hard-core country radio fans, ones that have listened to country radio their whole lives, and will listen to virtually nothing else. They've been cheated and lied to for years, because Nashville (Clear Channel Radio) is telling them that this is what country music is today. They don't even have the chance to hear people like me -- they think we don't exist, or that we're an "underground movement" that they can't relate to. I've talked to so many people in the last couple of years -- people that don't even know I'm a musician or what I do -- who say that they've liked new country radio for years, but they're just tired of it now. I even heard this from a cab driver in Ft. Worth -- I was going to Billy Bob's, so we started talking about country music in general. Then I told him I was a musician, and sang Jones and Hank and stuff, and he got all giddy and didn't shut up for the entire ride. Talking about how he liked Alan Jackson and Toby Keith and all that, but he wished he could hear some of that real country too. Again, I didn't give him some big militant "anti-Nashville" speech -- I barely talked at all -- he just got all excited on his own when he heard that people are still making real country music. That's what I'm talking about. He's a true country music fan -- he believes in Nashville, but misses why he loved it in the first place.

I blame it on Wapner.