BS: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines

Subject: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 17 Nov 99 - 12:35 PM

Chris Gaines is a moody alternative rocker who dresses in black and peers out from beneath chin-length bangs. He has a best selling album ,is in the regular MTV video rotation, and recently hosted Saturday Night Live. He has also sold millions of Country/Western albums. He is Garth Brooks in disguise.

I was curious as to what other Catters might think about this interesting approach to crossover into rock by a CW stalwart. I for one am getting a kick out of it. Although I've never been a fan of Brooks, I like the "hoax" aspect of it.But is this just a bold commercial move by him?Or a publicity stunt to make sure he stays in the public eye? Or is it a way of saying that any public personna is primarily a manufactured one, and the public is gullible enough to buy it if packaged properly?

Subject: RE: BS: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines
From: Mudjack
Date: 17 Nov 99 - 01:28 PM

Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines could S#IT (P or H) on the side walk and some promoters would figure out a way to market it for a cool million. It's just how the hype and business end of things work. Garth has real talent, but his managers and production people know how to hype the masses into buying his package.
Mudjack

Subject: RE: BS: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines
From: Vixen
Date: 17 Nov 99 - 01:41 PM

It's my understanding that Hollywood wanted to make a movie about a rocker, so they got Brooks to play the part, complete with CD releases and concert footage, to film for the movie. This way, Hollywood writers don't have to "backscript" and dub existing footage of somebody else to achieve the cinematic continuity so essential to the viewer's "willing suspension of disbelief." By scripting the role, and having Garth play it "live," (with all the attendant [pre-production]hype) Hollywood is hoping to produce a mega-blockbuster.

From this perspective, it's an exploration of the musician as performing actor that Brooks must find excitingly challenging.

Please be advised that these are my own thoughts about rumors I've heard; they are unsubstantiated by any research whatsoever.

V

Subject: RE: BS: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 17 Nov 99 - 02:05 PM

M and V...I think what we are witnessing is a new approach to the sales and marketing of entertainment, one that blurs lines between reality and illusion. The Blair Witch Project was a notable example of this phenomenon. It's tremendous success was not due to it's clever plot or scripting(having neither), but to the illusion that it was real. This began with the internet buzz on the Witch website, sustained it's momentum in the early viewings when there was still a perception that it was true, and kept up as it attained blockbuster status,even though by then everyone was on to the hoax.Are we living so vicariously through our entertainments that the manufactured realities they give us are supplanting our own? Or is it all just good fun, a sort of realized bit of April Fools that we all like to participate in?Where is the line between false advertising and a good-hearted joke at public expense?

Subject: RE: BS: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines
From: Vixen
Date: 17 Nov 99 - 03:40 PM

Blair Witch, and Chris Gaines, and, for that matter, all fiction, most movies, and some music, visual art, and writings other than fiction are the results of humans "playing with" the perception of "reality" by using imagination, both the creator's and the receiver's. Computer animation has made the process easier. Role playing games from D&D to Live-Action Role-Playing are also part of the phenomenon. Haven't given much thought to it, though...interesting ideas to ponder here.

V

Subject: RE: BS: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines
From: Helen
Date: 18 Nov 99 - 03:26 AM

On the other side of this discussion is something I have been thinking about a lot over the last couple of years: the explosion of real people/real situations, manufactured entertainment. Not just the Guinness Book of Records stuff which can be spectacular and definitely dangerous, and therefore exciting (to some, not me) but all of the real people shows like Oprah, and her kind, and also the "Most Wanted" shows where real situations are reenacted and viewers can ring up with information.

But more interestingly, the type of situation which is set up specifically for a tv programme. In Oz there was a programme called the House From Hell. A group of young people were offered the chance to make $5000 if they could manage to live in a share house with each other for a few weeks. The person who devised this idea tried to select a group of unrelated individuals who would clash with each other so that it would be good television viewing (in his opinion) but the people were getting on all right together so he started devising some pretty crass and provocative events and situations for them to endure. The majority of them managed to stick it out to the end and get their money.

The money bribe reminded me of the film They Shoot HOrses Don't They, about dance competitions in the time of an economic depression where people were so desperate for money they would do just about anything to get it.

What really interested me in this topic, though, is a sci-fi book I read about 20 years ago called The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, but someone called Compton. A woman is dying of some sort of terrible disease and agrees to have her last few weeks of life filmend, 24 hours a day, so that it can be broadcast live. Does it remind you a lot of the film Truman?

It's scary, I think, that tv and film producers have arrived at the point where they think that fiction is not as interesting as real life (or should I say "real" life?) so they have started manufacturing their version of reality.

Food for thought. I think it would make a very interesting sociological study.

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines
From: John of the Hill
Date: 18 Nov 99 - 11:58 PM

As one who was taught that precision in language leads to precision in thought, I think that the linguistic symptom of this intentional blurring of fact and fiction is the now seemingly universal use of the the word literally when figuratively is meant. John

Subject: RE: BS: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines
From: ddw
Date: 19 Nov 99 - 01:04 AM

Interesting tho'ts, Helen. I heard just a snatch of conversation in the newsroom the other day about a TV show that's apparently running in the New York area in which the put a group of people in a house with cameras everywhere except the showers and let them run continuously. Each week the audience gets to vote on which person in the house they like least and that person is out. From what I gathered, there is some time limit on this and at the end whoever is left wins a prize.

Maybe some of our NYC-area catters can tell us a little more about this, but what struck me about it was that there are apparently a whole AUDIENCE of people out there who have nothing better to do with their lives than sit and watch total strangers with an eye to judging them.

Are we really that sick?

But then some people might think the same about people who sit around and send arcane messages back and forth about puffing on a possum's but a little strange too.....

cheers,

david

Subject: RE: BS: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines
From: Terry Allan Hall
Date: 19 Nov 99 - 09:32 AM

Just my opinion...Garth Brooks is to REAL country music what Michael Jackson is to Child Protective Services.

In all honesty, I ignored his "pop-pseudo-country" until I got suckered into taking my niece to one of his concerts...the swinging on the ropes like somewhat inbred Tarzan was sorta amusing, but the guitar-smashing (even if it was only a Takamine) offended me greatly.

Believe I'll stick with Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Robert Earl Keen, etc...

Subject: RE: BS: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines
From: Frank of Toledo
Date: 19 Nov 99 - 06:57 PM

Yesterday, here in Toledo Oregon, Nancy & I had David Mallett here for two concerts, one in the afternoon for a Kid"s show at the library and an evening concert for the adults. Both of these perfomances were absolute fabulous, and after the evening was over I sat with David and had a long talk about the status of country music. David spent nearly ten years on the Nashville scene, and had some great insights into what was happening there. God Bless the Merle Haggards, Johnny Cash, the Hanks both Williams Snow, Lefty Frizzell, Ernie Tubb, and I don't include GB (don"t even want to print his name), or CG his alter ego. Sorry folks but he's the worst thing that's happened to music in my lifetime, bar none. There I've done it again and by golly I'm not the least bit sorry.....Frank!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines
From: catspaw49
Date: 19 Nov 99 - 11:26 PM

Hey look ddw.....Cleigh's real cute little guy and every bit as real as Cletus, Paw, Buford, and the Reg boys! I have pictures of him at a picnic, hot tubbing, checking in a motel, viewing Niagra Falls, all kind of stuff. I admit he may be a bit anal, but he's not arcane.

Spaw