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This one car represents a reasonable cross-section of the crowd around the stage at Liberty Memorial. It was white, patriotic, and definitely peppered with a few people that the casting director for a Civil War-based drama would be interested in interviewing, plus this guy:

He told me his name was Bob Pemberton. “I spell it B-A-W-B,” he said. Bawb Pemberton has been a huge fan of Big & Rich since before their first album, back when the duo was releasing less-successful solo albums. To Bawb: You are completely awesome, and I simultaneously feel like saluting you, and folding you up into a triangle and handing you to a grieving war widow.

Jane Fonda: American Traitor BITCH!

Thousands of people came for what turned out to be less of a performance and more of a colorful background for Harry Smith and the CBS Morning Zoo, to which they could cut between trapped miner updates and cooking segments.

Obviously, you can’t deliver sober news about a Utah mine collapse – or even barbecue demonstrations – when a band is loudly playing generic corporate country-pop behind you. So the band, and the crowd, were hushed by an Early Show crewmember who resembled Jimmy Altieri from The Sopranos. He’d make broad, music-conductor “shut up” gestures, and the crowd would stop cheering. Then, when Harry Smith was done talking, Jimmy Altieri would make broad, vaguely evangelical lifting gestures to pump the crowd back up again. WOO-HOO! Jimmy Altieri sleeps with the fishes because he wore a wire, and rats gotta suck the pipe.

Besides national celebrities, like the unbelievably serene Harry Smith and douchenozzley weatherman Dave Price, I saw a number of local celebrities: Kansas City Star reporter and KCUR host Steve Kraske was extremely friendly and approachable as he stood, wired for sound, waiting to be interviewed by Smith about local politics. The Q-104 Tailgator looks even taller in person, like Harry Smith, but unlike Kraske, the Tailgator thinks his shit don’t stink. Hey, Tailgator: Save some money, it’s a short ride. See you at Chuck E. Cheese in three years.

Howler, the mascot from 106.5 the Wolf, is obviously really old and frail because whenever he walked down the steps at Liberty Memorial, he had to have a nurse assist him, like Walt Bodine. Here’s a picture of the aging wolf with his professional caretaker:

And, by way of illustrating the difference between an actual concert and this morning’s bizarre hybrid carnival/news program, here’s a picture of Howler with a Kansas City Chiefs cheerleader:

ASS, GRASS, OR GAS: Nobody Rides Free

The CBS Early Show came into town with a giant van, which they needed to haul in all their preconceptions and stereotypes about Kansas City. This is clearly easier, from a newsgathering perspective, than actual reporting. From a speaker somewhere, I hear Harry Smith telling the viewing audience, “You can’t come to this town and not talk about barbecue!”

Down at the Early Show van, Dave Price is interviewing Rumblejetts bassist Pedro Mora about Kansas City’s musical heritage. Mora, whom I suspect just wants to play a goddamn song, finds himself citing jazz greats like Charlie Parker and Count Basie, before Price allows the band to play.

The respect afforded to headliners Big & Rich is in short supply down at the Early Show Fun Bus; the Rumblejetts don’t even get the stage to themselves. Price, who got his Master’s degree in Wacky Uncle Meteorology, does some deliberate, unfunny nerd-dancing for the camera, even grabbing a girl from the crowd like a niece at a wedding reception.

If he’d been wearing a bow-tie, it would have been the kind that spins around.
The last time I set eyes on Price, he’s waiting to do an interview segment with some model railroading enthusiasts who have set up an O-scale train set on the Liberty Memorial lawn. He’s wearing an engineer’s hat which hides his male-pattern lack of dignity.

If the screams from my trunk bother you (TURN UP THE RADIO)

Like I said, Big & Rich weren’t there to perform; They were pre-arranged background color for a morning news program, playing multiple sets of one song each. It’s therefore kind of hard to review as a music performance. The crowd would cheer, and then when the cameras cut back to the anchors, Big & Rich would exit the stage and sign autographs for a while. They were really nice about this. John Rich even posed for pictures with some girl scouts:

“Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” descends from a long lineage of retarded country novelty songs like “Let’s Get Drunk and Screw,” and “Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Post of Life,” but they did not play it for the CBS Early Show audience. They did, however, play a song called “Love Train” which opens with a blatant rip-off of a guitar riff that Green Day blatantly ripped off from the Kinks' song “Picture Book.” Note to musicians: Henceforth, you will send $10 to Ray Davies each and every time you play that crunchy acoustic guitar riff.

Big & Rich seemed like really affable dudes, for Iraq Quagmire supporters, so I’m sorry to have to say that I think their music is all predigested generic Clear Channel crap. Actually, that was a lot easier to say than I thought it would be. Not my kind of music, bros, but Harry Smith obviously thought otherwise, as his enthusiastic air-guitar performance clearly illustrates: