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Show Fccef safes or riots-who con tell the difference ??? A store clerk descnoea uie scene as "pure chaos"...Young men crowded around storefronts in late-night late-night revelry... Police were called in after hearing reports of people hoisting guns.. .Arid by morning, one could hear cries of outrage. Cyclops by Bryan Gray I understand her anger. And I also understand the Garth Brooks phenomenon since I was present at its prophecy more than 20 years ago. Garth Brooks, a bona fide Oklahoma hayseed, will sell more tapes and CDs this year than any other single entertainer. He may also attract more viewers since his NBC special drew that network's highest ratings for any Friday night show in the past five years. And it's not just Garth. Country music's numbers are Heavens to Betsy staggering. People with household incomes of $40,000 or pnore rate country as their favorite radio format.. .Utah's most listened-to listened-to radio station plays country.. .The number of million-selling country albums has increased 400 percent in only three years.. .Despite the recession, reces-sion, advertising revenue on country coun-try television networks soared 70 percent in 1991. ..The Judds' recent pay-per-view cable special drew more viewers than similar specials by the Rolling Stones or New Kids on the B lock. . .In 10 years the number of country music radio stations has increased 50 per cent.. .Waylon Jennings is now headlining in England, Dwight Yoakum is pushing McDonald's, and Johnny Cash is hyping Taco Bell. Country's rise coincides with rock music's fade. Rock, once a generally literate voice of a generation, genera-tion, has become either ghetto rap for the uneducated or hard-rock babble for the brain dead. There's little one can leam about life from Top 40 radio, except that loud noise makes the intestines chum. Gone are the solid beat and harmonies of the Supremes or the poetic trailings of Bob Dylan. Instead, we have the frenetic obscenities of Ice T or the hard-to-understand ravings of Nirvana. Nir-vana. But long before rock became obnoxious, ob-noxious, I heard a prediction that country music would prosperand it came from an unlikely source. It was the late 1960s and, as part of an experiment to reverse declining declin-ing attendance, the Utah State Fair featured name musicians. Most of these acts were fair-friendly country icons, but the Fair Board also booked book-ed a then disintegrating rock group (the Byrds) which had mysteriously played country music on its most recent album ("Sweethearts of the Rodeo"). Despite disappointing sales of the record, Byrd leader Roger McGuinn wasn't fazed. Standing behind the Fair grandstand, McGuinn looked into the future. "You'll probably laugh," he told me, "but country music will someday some-day become the hot new sound. Country appeals to everybody who has ever worked a job, lost a girlfriend--or ever lived. There will eventually be a few country singers who will outshine even the most successful rock musicians, and maybe these future stars will give us credit for taking the gamble and introducing the music to our rock audience." Within the year, the Byrds broke up. "Sweethearts of the Rodeo" never climbed higher than No. 77 on the music charts, and Roger McGuinn was soon relegated to "oldies" shows. I wrote a newspaper story containing con-taining McGuinn's predictions. The editor laughed. Garth Brooks would have probably prob-ably laughed, too. But back then he was probably too busy on the school playground. When Roger McGuinn and the Byrds saw the future, Garth was in second grade. No, it wasn't Los Angeles. It was Utah as thousands of people thronged around Smith Tix outlets for the hope of plunking down $17 for Garth Brooks tickets. In Davis County, country fans camped out 24 hours in advanceyet only one in every five were able to buy tickets. "Sure, it ticked me off," said a 42-year-old Farmington woman. "Here my kid missed school and I took off work so we could spend the day and night on a concrete sidewalk And we returned home without tickets. ' ' |