Paladin and Mick Jagger

by Leo of Mars

The wife and I attended a Montgomery Gentry concert Friday night.

For the uninitiated Montgomery Gentry is a country music duo, Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry. But their concerts are more like rock and roll than country, with smoke and flashing lights, keyboardist, drummer and seven (count 'em, seven) back-up guitarists. Eddie Montgomery jumps around the stage like a cross between Paladin (Richard Boone TV Series from the 1950s) and Mick Jagger.

Two moments in the concert touched me. They sing "Something to be Proud Of". The song relates how the singer's father would, any time he could work it into the conversation, tell the story of him and his brother during WWII. The singer comes to appreciate over time that this was something to be proud of. During the song a fan at the front of the stage handed Eddie something. Eddie held it up for the crowd to see. It was a photo of a Marine in dress uniform. Was he a son? A brother? A husband? All of those? I don't know. What I do know is that it was something to proud of, and so did the crowd.

"My Town" is one of Montgomery Gentry's signature songs. It tells the story of a man who has a falling apart with his father and leaves home. Later he comes back and stays because it is the place
"Yeah, where I was born, where I was raised.
Where I keep all my yesterdays.
...
Where I came back to settle down,
It's where they'll put me in the ground"

There is a tremendous emotional charge in the crowd sparked by this song. Yet, looking around, as the crowd sings along, I'm sure, like me, they really aren't living "where I was born, where I was raised". Instead, like me, they long for the connectedness that comes from that sense of extended family and tight-knit community. The closest I ever came to that was when I worked and lived in Los Alamitos. I was an experiment. An attempt by the local cable company to put a human face (mine...strange choice) on its customer service efforts. I had knocked on every door in that (relatively small community) at least twice. I had solved problems. People knew me. It was pretty much impossible for me to go to the post office or the store without running into someone I knew.

That connectivity has an effect on you. In your personal behavior. In how you think about a place. It's not just bricks and concrete. It's those people you helped, who helped you, and the smiles you shared. I don't have that where I live now, but I intend to work on it. Maybe that's what Internet social communities are about. Is Twitter the cracker barrel?