monday night, thanks to the 'cma music festival: country music's biggest party, i hadda terrible realization.   (this would be monday, july 24, 2006 for those of you who, a couple years from now, happen to find this post resurrected through the arcane agency of spambots careening wildly and forever from server to server, some of em reconditely tagging archives with cryptic combinations of consonants & symbols while others solicit suckers to discover the joys of online hold-em sites or, perhaps,  purchase do-it-yourself catheterization kits and the like)

sorry and pitiful as things may be already, they're gonna get worse.  (said cma festival had less than 10 seconds of redemption during which little jimmy dickens appeared onscreen.) 

no awards will be goin home with the performers who've not merely mastered, but damn sure exude the essence of what is today considered country music. 

take a listen for yourself: Link

those who have a clue about what country was like when country wasn't cool and then when it was (as opposed to whatever the hell it is now) may find it disturbing as well as amusing in a 'just as i ran outta gas, a tire blew out' kinda way.

those who love what country music hath become should be sorely chafed by their loss and demanding an immediate change that'll get these guys on the air (or, dare i say, aired out?). .

...but none could sing the old songs like bradley kincaid
with his ol hound dawg guitar and that famous 'bluetail fly',
stringbean with hank snow and ol fiddlin chubby wise