There were five or six of us getting seated for dinner and we entered a narrow fuselage of a hallway that led past the side of the stage and opened up into a dance floor, a bar and a dining area.
As we sat down I commented on the first disturbing sign.
“Did anybody notice that gal in the wings with a Macintosh PowerBook?”
I was talking about Buck’s teleprompter operator.
The prompter screens were mounted on silver metal stands, transparent and unobtrusive and invisible to the typical hard-partying patron. This set-up was the modern equivalent of cue cards and the same devices used by Presidents during State of the Union addresses. But this was not about any State of the Union. This was so Buck never forgot his own lyrics.…
Before Buck took to the stage, an opening micro-set by his modern Buckaroos drowned out any attempt to place an order. A massive, booming drum kit went DOO-DUH-DOO... DOOO-DOOO as the drummer completed a roll that served more as a salvo that any time-keeping device.
This was the Sound of Bakersfield? As performed by field hands and cowboys?
After an aural assault that lasted for a half-dozen songs or so, a tall sparkling figure sauntered across the lip of the stage and commandeered a microphone. It was Buck. Immediately, there were signs of chinks in the armor.
“Is that a real person? Or a hologram?” somebody asked.
It was hard to tell. If it was a hologram, its movements were animatronic and as jerky as a home movie. If it was a human being, it could just be drunk.
Whatever it was, the voice was the same as the first wave of Bakersfield Sound. But Buck was trying to make himself heard against the sonic armada of a generic rock band as he struggled to read the lyrics off of a screen.
“They’re gonna put me in the movies...”
A conservative estimate is that Buck Owens has performed “Act Naturally,” his signature song, 4,800 times since he first recorded it in 1963 and a British rock and roll band known as the Beatles appropriated it on their "Yesterday and Today" elpee. And he can’t remember the words to the one song that made him more money than minerals rights?
It was difficult to tell what we were seeing exactly, but it was easy to know when it was over.
Buck exited stage right and the band played a chunka-chunka overture to his departure.
“There’s not going to be any encore,” I observed.
“What makes you think that?”
“The chick with the laptop packed up her gear and went home.”
The Buckaroos kept on pounding away for a few more generic modern country songs, embracing the sonic elements that make modern country music far more bombastic yet much less believable. And just like his teleprompter operator, Buck Owens had left the building.
A couple of weeks ago, he died on his ranch, downwind of where the aforementioned vintage Top Fuel cars rumble like thunder on fat loads of nitro. Except when it rains. 
| (Cole Coonce is the author of INFINITY OVER ZERO, as well as the forthcoming TOP FUEL WORMHOLE...) |  |
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