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obligatory bright eyes entry

I didn't go see Bright Eyes when they were in NYC this week because I was in a temporary but brand new kind of b-r-o-k-e (which of course resolved itself the day after the show). But, I did write a review of the new album for Blogcritics, and my interview with Conor will appear in the next issue of Backstreets, which is out as of next week.

But the real reason for this post is the new song he's been doing (which of course isn't on any record) called "When The President Talks To God." And in a stroke of absolute, utter genius, you can
download it for free at iTunes. It's a great, biting, eloquent talking blues, in the spirit of Woody and Arlo and Steve Earle. Writing a song like this is tough to do, it's not just the lyrics that are important, it's the tune and the performance and the delivery, and it's freaking masterful.

Conor Oberst has gone so far past his original image that it amazes me that people can't see it, and can't let go of their vitriol and preconceived notions. I touch on this in my review, but he's pretty much allowed himself to grow up, both personally and artistically, in public. To me there was always a visible progression evident, and I guess I'm the rare bird who never expects (or wants) an artist to remain static and in the same place making the same kind of record or music for their entire career. I thought he carried himself extremely well on the Vote For Change tour, and have been thoroughly in love with I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning since I got the advance back in October (when I interviewed Conor).

When The President Talks To God

when the president talks to god
are the conversations brief or long?
does he ask to rape our womens' rights
or to send poor farm kids off to die?
will the president reccomend an oil hike
when the president talks to god?

when the president talks to god
does he ever think that maybe he's not?
that that voice is just inside his head
when he kneels down in the presidential bed
does he ever smell his own bullshit
when the president talks to god?

"have you ever had the feeling that you've been cheated?"

UPDATE, 1/31:: U2.com has announced that they will be providing refunds to anyone who hasn't used their membership code to buy tickets. Nice egomaniacal spin to the press release, but I don't care; all I care is that I can get my money back and use it for something else. It's still the biggest ripoff ever.

First, I guess I have to apologize for being so non-trendy and unhip that I care about seeing U2. I had gotten worn out with the hype, but then I went to Brooklyn, for old times' sake, and it was actually brilliant. They could still play, just the four of them rocked it out hard.

Yes, I am such a fangirl that I will pay $40 for a fan club membership. I had a Propaganda membership years and years ago, didn't keep it up. But for priority ticketing, yes, I would pay $40. This isn't the Rolling Stones fan club, they are going to do this right. I expect the Rolling Stones to take as much money from me as they can. I don't expect this from U2.

Or so I thought.

At least 90,000 people joined the new Propaganda (this according to several reports of people who talked to Fanfire, the merchandising arm of Sony Entertainment, that handled the fulfillment of memberships). There was no way they could accomodate 90,000 memberships, but yet, when they sent out the tour date announcements, they made sure to mention that members as of the night before the presale would be eligible for tickets. That should have been my first clue that something was very, very wrong.

Or maybe my first clue should have been what a trainwreck the official web site, U2.com, ended up being. I don't have much faith in any band's official web site, but somehow, stupidly, I thought this band might actually do things differently. The fact that it was buggy and crashed constantly when it went online - why test it? it's only music fans. who cares if they have a bad experience? it's not like they are valued customers or anything like that - and that you couldn't sign up for a membership if you wanted to, and then when people did, they got charged double - no, none of that mattered.

I had hopes that there would actually be exclusive content that I cared about, that maybe a lesson was learned from other band web sites, that U2 would embrace the web and be pioneers, that their site wouldn't be an embarassment, like most official musician web sites are. But instead, there's one bad screensaver and some photos. The promised web mail doesn't work. Fans put together better video compilations - which, again, doesn't surprise me, but I paid $40 for a membership. $40 x 90,000 is a lot of fucking money.

Now we move to the presale. I can get tickets to pretty much anything I want, not because I'm a journalist that can get on a guest list, but because I've been playing the game so fucking long that I know how to play it. As a recent example, while most of the world bitched about Springsteen playing a club in Asbury Park, or didn't even try to get tickets, I managed to get tickets to both shows. I am not a child. I am not a newbie. I know how to do this.

By 9:59 a.m., the Ticketmaster (why TM? Why not Musictoday?) server was swamped, and not only were there no GA's, there were no tickets to speak of within 9 minutes, 10:09, when the error message said that there were no tickets left.

From the U2.com FAQ:
Q: What are the benefits I receive when I become a U2.com Member?

A: A special introductory gift - a U2.com members card metal key chain. Priority ticketing for the 2005 tour. You will be able to buy two tickets for any indoor U2 show or four tickets for any outdoor U2 show during your membership term.

Not "a chance for tickets," not "the opportunity to purchase tickets," but You will be able to buy two tickets for any indoor U2 show. Bad language on their part. Very bad.

This should be a scandal, it should hit the media, but it won't. Because it's "just" fans and it's "just" a fan club and they're such a big band, we should know better. If this were a sporting team, this treatment would never be tolerated, but music fans let themselves get walked over time and time again.

I am done being a U2 fan. I will not buy tickets, I will not go, and I took all their music off my iPod earlier today. I know, it's childish, but I can't stand listening to them now, and I don't know when I will. I feel utterly jaded, and stupid, and foolish. My faith has been tested, and tested hard. I still *had* faith in this big crazy thing called rock and roll. I am a big proponent of artists being able to make money, tons of it, even, from their art. But this is just a ripoff. And from the depth of the response all over the world (see the links at the bottom), many people feel the same way, and are sending many faxes to Principle Management (212-765-2372, if you care).

"Have you ever had the feeling that you've been cheated?" Johnny Rotten asked the audience at the end of the Sex Pistols US tour, almost thirty years ago.

Yes.

Other links:
U2 Page.com: An Open Letter To U2
U2log.com: How to Dismantle a U2 Fan
@U2.com: Money Changes Everything
@U2.com: An Open Letter To U2

this week's nostalgia discussion

"Nostalgia is the critic's heroin," claims Sasha Frere-Jones. In his context, he's talking about old school hip hop and his reactions, mental, emotional and physical, when he recently encounters a blast from the past.

What he describes in his blog (see above) is how I felt the night I walked into the awful Doc Maynard's in Seattle's Pioneer Square with my friend H., who was there to see her friends play in a conglomeration they refer to as "English Disco" (and I'm feeling generous this morning, so I'll give you the reference). We had gone out drinking, she had to cut out to see her friends play, the name alone made me willing to tag along for the hell of it (despite the venue, which is AWFUL, think bridge and tunnel except this case, it's redneck B&T). We walked in just as the band was taking the stage (Rick Friel and Chris Friel, who are practically a Seattle music dynasty at this point). The two of them set up, and launch into a dead-on (and I mean DEAD ON) rendition of Johnny Thunders' "Pipeline" and I am flabbergasted, I am immediately transported somewhere other (well, other than Seattle, anyway), I am overwhelmed with delight and surprise and at the same time, fighting the wave of memories that come flooding into my brain as a result of this musical cue. I turned to H., and yelled, "This is the music of my people!" (She promptly spit out her drink, she was laughing so hard.)

Now Jessica Hopper offers that nostalgia is not heroin, it is cocaine, and I started this entry because I was going to offer my thesis that nostalgia is neither, that it is Valium or even worse, Prozac, because nostalgia can be (and I stress that greatly) that thing that lulls you into a comfort zone. In that zone everything is warm and wonderful and comfortable and you never want to leave it or have it change (and I'm sure someone will now write to argue with me that this is heroin, but my only real experience with that drug is Velvet Underground lyrics and "Chinese Rocks" and some people in my past that are, well, in my past).

Going back to that night in Seattle, the entire repetoire of the aforementioned English Disco is, well, what I would consider to be the music of my youth, the music that was a huge part of shaping my musical belief system and who I am today. They did it for fun and because they love the music and they grew up on it and it inspired them -- both individuals having, like every Seattle musician at their level, at least half a dozen other musical projects going on at any one time. So it was Thunders and Iggy and Cheap Trick (which doesn't really fit, but Cheap Trick always fits, and they are obsessed) and the Dolls and the Ramones and others, and for me, it was this blast of Absolute New York in sleepy foggy Seattle that made me happy.

Nostalgia scares me (well, there it would fit into the heroin analogy) because too many people I know (fans AND critics) just sit there in it and never leave, like this woman I was eavesdropping on at the Patti Smith show referenced below. They were discussing the opening act (Graybar, the band Jackson Smith is now in) and the comparisons they used were, well, wrong (Rancid? What crack were you smoking). Then the woman qualified her statement by saying, "I really don't know anything about any bands from the 90's, and I really don't care to." And I thought, How sad. And I thought, how can you be a fan of this woman's music, because from what I remember, it's not like being a Patti Smith fan in real time made you a lot of friends, the way she spit the statement out, it was an epithet, it was how people talked about Patti's music back in the day.

Or it reminded me of waiting in line to see Springsteen in Vancouver two years ago, where I was behind a guy who owned a club in Toronto, and we were delighted to be in each other's proximity because we could talk all day about current music, something that generally doesn't happen in that setting, ever (unless of course you're talking about a band that Bruce has blessed, like Marah or Jesse Malin, and then the fans in question like to think they are suddenly on the cutting edge of the new and happening music scene. Anything else sucks, though).

So I've decided that, for me, nostalgia is alcohol, because it can temporarily lift my mood and make me happy, it can also make me sad or morose, and its effect is highly temporary, and I'm going to refrain from indulging in it excessively because I don't much like what it does in any kind of permanent basis or large scope.

Now I have probably really beaten this horse to death, but I think a lot about this nostalgia thing, since I love me some Classic Rock to a certain extent (i.e., dig the name of this blog) but am also still consumed with finding out what is going on right now that speaks to me, still buying new music, hunting down cd's by bands that aren't on iTunes and may not play outside of, say, the Sacramento area. And my frustration continually with people who are one dimensional and denigrate those that aren't, or with people who once could intelligently describe to you ever band reviewed in Matter but now are so overwhelmed they don't even try to keep up - you'll never be as consumed as you were when you were 20 and had no other responsibilities, sure, and I am not either, but the hunger to discover and to listen and love or maybe not love, so what, at least now you can afford to spend $12 on a cd you are less than crazy about, it's not the commitment it once was, when you were broke and a new record could be a choice between dinner or carfare.

And while I'm here, I'll tie this into what I did Tuesday night, when I found myself in the odd position of actually wanting to defend Green Day (and then Amy Phillips did it for me, thank god), when a bunch of people decided they were appointed the Official Representatives of what Punk Rock Is Supposed To Be, and listened to someone, who was supposed to be an expert on the Clash, tell us that punk rock was about paying respect to your elders. How he reconciled "No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones in 1977" with that statement is beyond my comprehension, and clearly he remembers a different punk rock than I do, but there you go. And they are not any better than the Classic Rock nostalgists who insist that if you didn't see Springsteen before 1975, you didn't really see him when he was any good, or the Rolling Stones fans who brag about how they've never seen any of their opening bands (Foo Fighters, Ryan Adams, Pearl Jam, etc.), because there's no point.

(But is that nostalgia or is that just stupidity? Interesting point.)

be still my heart

Uptown Lights aka...

http://www.myspace.com/uptownlights ... and I quote:
"Armed with a setlist featuring the songs of their heroes, like O.V. Wright, Joe Tex, the Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and many, many more, this show is not to be missed... "

If I could get on a plane, I would. Dulli singing Otis? Kill me now.

we like birdland : Patti Smith's Birthday Show

Patti Smith & Band
Bowery Ballroom, NYC
12-30-04

I wish I could say I chose the birthday show deliberately, but alas, I did not. After I got over not being able to justify the money for all three nights, I picked the middle night because it wasn't the first show and it wasn't the extra money for New Year's Eve.

Every year for the last six, I missed these shows because I would be getting on a plane back to Seattle the first night. I always wanted to be home for New Year's (more like, I hated flying home and going straight to work the next day). And every year, I would kick myself, because I would go back to Seattle and do pretty much nothing, or at least nothing that came close to seeing Patti Smith.

[Of course, this would be the first or second year that there was another show booked after her show, thus disabling any ability for anarchic rock and roll takeover of the Bowery Ballroom by the Patti Smith Group circa 04. Nothing says New Year's Eve by being firmly ushered out of a venue so the Drive-By Truckers can take it over. (Feh.)]

I deliberately went to experience and not document so I don't even have a setlist for you. But I was and am still struck by her continual validity, her presence, her energy, how the fire still glows in her eyes, and how you still do not want to fuck with this woman, at all. She diffuses with more humor now than she did when I was 15, but that's a function of life and age and growing.

The keyboards on the first number - which I didn't recognize - tipped me off that it had to be a Doors song ("The Changeling"). I can forgive Patti her obsession with Jim Morrison, really, it is her fault that I traipsed out to Pere Lachaise the first time I was in Paris.

Decided highlights were "Space Monkey" (Patti on guitar, fierce as ever, I got my Fender Duo-Sonic in attitude), "25th Floor" (for much of the same reasons), "Broken Flag" with the dedication to Susan Sontag. Another song was dedicated to Robert Quine but the absence of notes prevent me from noting exactly which one.

But the ultimate moment came early in the show, when the roadie brought out a lyric book, Patti put on her glasses, and began:

"His father died and left him a little farm in New England..."

and my jaw hit the ground. Hard. "Birdland"? She's going to do fucking BIRDLAND? And then the part of me said, man I wish she didn't need the book, but you know what, it kept her focused and made it a more forceful and direct version, there was honestly no loss of energy or that feeling of stream of consciousness that it always used to have. There were nights she would do "Birdland" and you would think she was going to float away up into the belly of the ship she was talking about, and now she stays firmly on the ground, thanks to those boots, and the book in hand.

It was absolutely stunning, it took your breath away, if you were willing to just let go and follow her along. That performance of "Birdland" was that kind of magic that you sort of give up hoping for when you go to see artists from your past. Somehow, Patti always manages to bring it back, every time I see her - last time in Seattle (with Sleater-Kinney opening, still one of the best bills ever) it was "Rock and Roll Nigger" where she ended the night by pulling the strings off her guitar (and I knew her road crew at the time, so they ended up in my hands, I gave four away to fans on the spot and kept one, it's still some of the most powerful talismans I own).

There were stories, of course, and a few readings, and she played the clarinet (later apologizing for going off in a different key than the rest of the band). I walked in upset that I wasn't going to more than one show, and I walked out feeling like I had gotten more than my share. It was enough.

At 57, Patti Smith still remains a role model I can realistically aspire to. Okay, maybe not realistically in terms of talent or influence, but I hope to be kicking ass the same way she does now, and grow into being as beautiful and powerful as she still is. May I be able to stalk the streets in ripped up jeans and combat boots and grey hair.

Linkage:
12/31 show on EZ Torrent [same taper promises 12/30 soon]
12/30 photos
Fantastic article about the 96 tour w/Dylan - they don't write articles like this any more
"Birdland" lyrics