Garth Brooks Televised Special Fun, Disappointing All at Same Time

by Julian Spivey
The “Garth Brooks: Live from Las Vegas” concert special on CBS on Friday, Nov. 29 was the rare case of something being both fun and disappointing all at the same time.
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The show was a televised performance of the one man shows Garth Brooks has done over the last few years at the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas, during his semi-retirement form music, where he goes through his life and career and performs for the crowd bits and pieces of songs and artists that helped to influence him. The songs and artists range from the hardcore classic country of George Jones and Merle Haggard to singer-songwriters like Paul Simon and James Taylor to soul singers like Marvin Gaye and Gladys Knight.

There were some real gems performed during the night by Garth Brooks, who seemed to be the same raving maniac on stage that fans knew and loved throughout the ‘90s, such as Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind” and George Jones’ “The Grand Tour.” Brooks also performed snippets of his own classics throughout the night and a duet with wife and fellow country singer Trisha Yearwood on “In Another’s Eyes.”

It was also incredibly fun to hear Brooks talk about his childhood and family and what music people like his father and mother enjoyed listening to and how their musical tastes affected his and his future career. It was nice to see how funny Brooks is, even if at times he’s a little too corn pone, and at times throughout the one man show it almost seemed more like stand-up comedy than a concert special.

Despite knowing the special was going to mirror his Las Vegas shows and that he would be performing mostly cover songs this is where the disappointment came in.
I really would have much rather preferred Brooks to perform entire songs, even if they weren’t his, and I think he could’ve done a good job at still letting us into the stories behind how these songs influenced him. Sure, he wouldn’t have covered so much ground as far as quantity of songs, but the quality of the special would’ve been a lot better. However, you could tell that the extremely excited Brooks loved playing stand-up comedian and storyteller for the show and it appeared that the live audience as well as many watching from home, judging by social media output, enjoyed it, as well.

Seeing Garth Brooks again was a huge part of the fun of the CBS special, but it also almost seemed like just a way for him to advertise and sell his current box set “Blame It All On My Roots,” which are covers performed by him during his one man show, something that’s only available at Wal-Mart.

Watching Brooks having a ball onstage and his voice sounding as great as ever on the snippets of songs he did sing was worth the watch, but I never could get over the feeling of being robbed of actual concert performances.