those who have the audacity to stick around well past their prime just make it uncomfortable for the rest of us. we're obligated to invent creative ways to venerate them and glorify their tiny contribution to musical history. we're subjected to an endless series of tribute concerts, lifetime achievement awards, and very special episodes of 'mtv unplugged'. we have to listen to them brag about the dissolute and unhealthy ways they spent their youth, then suffer their preaching about how all of it was wrong. we witness them becoming ugly parodies of themselves. it's hard to be the angry rebel when you have mansions in beverly hills and the south of france. their music starts to take on manilow-esque qualities, and they don't even notice. we buy their albums out of politeness, or maybe just habit. we figure if they keep putting up the cash, we won't have to feel the shame of seeing our teenage idol's name on the marquee at the local casino.

if they had any decency at all, they'd do the right thing and just die young.

today kicks off aging rock stars appreciation week and it would be silly not to write about the man i saw tonight, who, while aging, transcends all american popular music. the man: willie nelson.

there are approximately 40,000 things i could say about him, aside from his tremendous talent and songwriting ability. his maroon new balance running shoes, his creased levi's, the bandanas he kept throwing out into the audience, the ladies he gave shy smiles/waves to, the fantastic audience he attracts, the two and a half hours of music he plays at his advanced age. but what really struck me was his guitar. no guitar on the planet sounds like that. and no one plays it that well.

the defining characteristic of that guitar is that he's played it so much that he wore a hole in the body. that's going to be the thing that sticks in my mind when i remember this show. the hole in willie nelson's guitar and 'angel flying too close to the ground'.