Garth Brooks

Imagine, for a moment, that you're a fully vested member of a classic English rock act. Yours was one of the biggest bands of the '60s, and continued to have hits through the '70s and '80s. Your last album was not a hit, but your back catalog continues to sell, and the band remains one of the best-known names in rock.Now here's the question: You've got a big American tour coming up, and there's a Lamborghini you have your eye on. Do you spring for the sports car now, knowing you'll make millions on the road?

VERO BEACH, Fla. -- Tradition died hard at Dodgertown, where the stability of the staid Los Angeles Dodgers organization used to be reflected in the familiarity of the faces that populated training camp each spring.Turnover was a dirty word in the glory days of one of baseball's most storied franchises. The Dodgers were slow to join in the free-agent frenzy of the 1970s and '80s and stubborn in their emphasis on player development. They clung to the ways of the past until time began to pass them by.Not anymore.

The weeks before Thanksgiving are traditionally a busy time for the recording industry, as big stars race to get new albums out in time for the Christmas rush. But today's slate of new releases is so star-studded that industry pundits have already dubbed it "Super Tuesday." Among the biggest stars coming out today are Garth Brooks, whose "Double Live" recaps his 1997 Central Park concert; Jewel, who follows up her septuple-platinum debut with "Spirit"; and Mariah Carey, who celebrates her string of chart-topping hits with "#1's."

These days, when we see a guy in a cowboy hat with a guitar, we immediately think: country singer.But it wasn't always that way. There was a time when what we now think of as country music was divided between two camps.One belonged to the so-called "hillbilly" singers, artists like Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, and relied on old Appalachian tunes and what came to be known as "the white man's blues." The other was the province of cowboys, a sound that drew on camp songs, gold-rush ballads and the sweet, sad norteno sound of Texas and northern Mexico.

Garth Brooks is a master of cliche.That's not meant as an insult, either. Like a lot of country singers, he prefers playing on the tried-and-true, working with recognizable characters and familiar situations because that's what the audience expects. Cowboys and honky-tonks, faithful love and broken hearts -- these are as much the stuff of country music as fiddles and steel guitars.What makes Brooks such a master is that he can play on these cliches without your even noticing how familiar they are. Had it been left to Hank Williams Jr., a song like "Friends in Low Places" would just have been another rowdy, honky-tonk rouser.

For most people, looking at a catalytic converter doesn't bring thoughts of Chopin, a transaxle seems a long way from Tchaikovsky and a water pump isn't even close to Wagner.But they all come together at Johns Hopkins Texaco Service Center in Fulton. That's because every other Saturday, part-time mechanic Bob Trolinger works on cars while he blasts classical music from a small but powerful boombox at the service station on Johns Hopkins Road."It's soothing, inspiring, stirring," the 41-year-old Ellicott City resident says of the music playing in the service bay. "It puts me in a very good mood to do my work."

Country music is said to be the sound of America's heartland, and as such, is nowhere near as wild and crazy as rock and roll.That may be good for the music, but it was certainly hard on the 31st annual Country Music Association Awards. Seldom have stars shone as dimly as they did last night.It was so boring that it almost came as a relief when WJZ cut away from the show to broadcast the news that the Orioles had clinched the Eastern Division championship.Granted, some of that lack of excitement had to do with the utter predictability of the winners.

NEW YORK -- Interested in cornering the aluminum and plastics markets? Just show up in Central Park after the Garth Brooks concert tonight. Doug Blonsky predicts there will 1 million soda cans and 2 million water bottles left by 150,000 to 250,000 spectators. In all, the estimated 76,800 tons of garbage could pack an empty five-story apartment building.We're talking TRASH, and it's Blonsky's job to throw it away. As vice president of operations for the Central Park Conservancy, Blonsky oversees the cleanup of the park's mega-spectacles.

It would be easy enough to find fault with the show that opened Garth Brooks' six-night stand at the USAir Arena.For starters, Brooks was not in particularly good voice Tuesday night, and his operator-style microphone kept malfunctioning. Moreover, the sound was badly mixed, the spaceship effects built into the lighting rig never really took off and the greenhouse-style drum cage just plain looked silly.But if you think all that added up to a bad or even a disappointing performance, you'd be wrong.

Most people think that Garth Brooks' secret is that he plays country music as if it were rock and roll.That's different from playing country music like rock and roll, cranking the guitars until the band sounds more like Lynyrd Skynyrd than Lester Flatt. The rock and roll element in Brooks' music is more a matter of attitude than instrumentation, a sort of go-crazy delivery that's miles away from the well-mannered reserve most country stars convey. That's one of the reasons Brooks seems so at home on the arena circuit -- his performance is built around oversized gestures.