This is about as convincing as “Robert Goulet’s Cajun Christmas.” You can practically hear investors calling their chips back in.
What’s next, Andy Dick in “Hamlet”? Lindsay Lohan in “Godspell”? (Defamer)
August 2007
Monthly Archive
Yes, I’m living up to expectations/cliches by posting “Drivin’ Me Wild” by Common and Lily Allen, but honestly — Staticblog being Lily Allen Central and all — if I didn’t put this one up, its absence might be construed as evidence that I had gone missing, kidnapped by anti-Lily gnomes. Or by Amy Winehouse doing her best Pete Doherty impression.
Throughout my career, I have taken great pride in never being a “fanboy,” but in a busy shopping district in Kansas City, Mo., my celeb-stalker resistance reflex utterly failed me.
My wife, Laura, and I drove to Kansas City over the weekend for Crowded House’s Monday concert at the Uptown Theater, a pilgrimage that might seem patently ridiculous to people whose sole appreciation of the New Zealand band is for its 1987 hit single, “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” After that brilliantly Beatlesesque hit and its follow-up single, “Something So Strong,” Crowded House ceased to exist for most of the U.S. radio-listening population.
Subsequent releases such as 1988’s “Temple of Low Men” and 1991’s “Woodface” — considered by most fans the group’s hands-down masterpiece — were all but ignored on these shores. This is due in part to staff shuffles at Capitol Records but mainly because the group’s bright and brief flash of domestic success was an outlier. Crowded House was never part of a trend, and lead singer-songwriter Neil Finn never tried. There was a brief moment when his former band, Split Enz, found that its art-pop leanings meshed with the New Wave movement when songs such as “I Got You” and “One Step Ahead” became minor hits, and that group’s baroque visual sensibility worked beautifully in the early, anything-goes days of MTV. But beyond that, Finn has traveled his own road, creating classic pop music that almost defies actual popularity.
But for me and Laura, Finn is a superstar of the highest order. We fell in love to “Woodface” songs such as “Fall at Your Feet,” “Italian Plastic” and “She Goes On,” and that perfect disc will always be enshrined in my personal Top 10. We saw Crowded House at the 1994 EdgeFest in Dallas — just a few days before the group broke up. Most of the audience was there to see Tim DeLaughter’s pre-Polyphonic Spree band, Tripping Daisy, and Finn looked like he wanted nothing more than to leave the stage.
I had followed Finn through his decade as a solo act and his recordings with brother Tim Finn, who founded Split Enz in the early ’70s and joined Crowded House briefly for “Woodface.” But when I heard this spring that Crowded House were reuniting for an album and tour, I knew I would drive to the closest concert, and this one coincided with Laura’s birthday.
This brings me to my moment of geekdom. Hours before the show, we were shopping in the Country Club Plaza district when a middle-age gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair walked out of a shop with his family. Laura did not immediately recognize him, but I let out something on the order of “Oh my God” and started calling after him.
“Mr. Finn,” I said from several paces back, and he paused briefly and walked on. Then I yelled, “Neil!” and he stopped, and I recognized his 23-year-old son Liam, who would later play as his father’s opening act. I told him we had driven from Oklahoma City to see him, and then we exchanged some blather about weather and such. I was a Chris Farley-like fool — nothing edifying came from me in those brief minutes. I was just happy to meet the man, though I’m certain he thought I was possibly insane, and he didn’t need a Mark David Chapman moment in Missouri.
That night, Crowded House performed as if no time had passed. The show was mercifully free of nostalgia trappings: Finn played “Don’t Dream It’s Over” about one-third of the way into the concert instead of trotting it out as a fair-weather fan climax during the encore. The band played a few songs from its new disc, “Time on Earth,” but the set spanned the full range of Crowded House’s discography and included many songs that appealed mainly to hard-core Crowdies, including “Italian Plastic” and “There Goes God.”
Throughout that concert, I thought of what I should have said during my time of meeting Neil Finn. That his music with Split Enz helped expand my tastes as a teenager and that his later music became a sound track for the first months my wife and I knew one another. That I consider the general public’s failure to acknowledge him as one of the greatest songwriters in the history of pop music one of the chief disasters of modern pop culture.
That might have been a tad extreme. But if I didn’t say it during my insipid fanboy meltdown, Mr. Finn, I want to thank you.
Oh, and remember that time when you recorded “Woodface” with your brother? That was awesome!
According to Billboard, Morrissey turned down $75 million to “tour under the Smiths name in 2008 and/or 2009.” The only proviso to the deal is that Johnny Marr would have to be part of the band — Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke are apparently devalued on the Smiths financial index.
To which I say, “Come on!” How much do you have to hate someone to turn down that kind of money? Personally, I don’t care if they ever reunite — Mozz’ band is perfectly capable of playing those songs — but I would get onstage and pretend to like just about anyone for $75 million.
Maybe it’s that “just about” that is the deal breaker, and if that’s the case, these guys must want to take welding torches to one another’s heads.
Who would you get onstage with for $75 million?
Over at CNN, there is a great article about record labels placing imperatives on artists to deliver “best-of” or “greatest hits” collections, often too early to be any kind of realistic career capper or marker. There have always been jokes about “greatest hits” collections for artists unworthy of such collections (”A Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods ‘greatest hits’ album would be a one-sided single,” etc.), but these days, collections are actually happening at hyper velocity — does Hilary Duff really merit a greatest hits collection?
So anyway, CNN talks to Cake about the pressure Sony/Columbia placed on them to deliver a greatest hits after fewer than six albums into the band’s career, ultimately prompting the group to leave Columbia and start its own label. It also discusses the relative lack of merit of “best of” collections in the iTunes age. Why buy a “best of” when you can make your own?
Well, there is one argument for it, at least with regard to iTunes purchases of said collections: If Cake were to deliver a “best-of” to iTunes with 15 songs on it for $12.99 or lower, then that is a hell of a deal compared to going at it a la carte.
The biggest news in the concert business came yesterday via Variety, when a leaked internal memo from Ticketmaster revealed that the concert ticket behemoth would not be re-upping with the concert promotion behemoth LiveNation at the end of the year.
How this will affect concertgoers remains to be seen. Maybe attendees at LiveNation events at the Ford Center won’t be saddled with vaguely justified handling fees for two tickets to the October Fall Out Boy show. Then again, if you’re buying tickets to Fall Out Boy, caveat emptor, mascara boy.
I cannot add much to this, other than to say that this almost certainly smacks of an early “Late Night with David Letterman” bit.
Bill Murray refuses to take breath test after driving through Stockholm in a golf cart
AP Photo NYET180
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Bill Murray could face a drunken driving charge after cruising through downtown Stockholm in a golf cart and refusing to take a breath test, citing U.S. law.
Police officers spotted the 56-year-old actor-comedian early Sunday in the slow-moving vehicle and noticed he smelled of alcohol when they pulled him over, said Detective-Inspector Christer Holmlund of the Stockholm police.
“He refused to blow in the (breath test) instrument, citing American legislation,” Holmlund told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “So we applied the old method — a blood test. It will take 14 days before the results are in.”
Murray, who had been at a golf tournament in Sweden, signed a document admitting that he was driving under the influence, and agreed to let a police officer plead guilty for him if the case goes to court, Holmlund said.
“Then he was let go. My guess is he went back to America,” Holmlund said.
“Deathly Hallows,” U.K.-style
As you might imagine, J.K. Rowling went through a depressive period after delivering “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” She told USA Today that the finality of delivering the ending volume of a 17-year project left her with a certain emotional void — something many of her readers are probably dealing with now.
Finishing “Deathly Hallows” was unlike any other “Potter” experience, since (SPOILER ALERT FOR LATE-GAMERS AND SLOW READERS) there was no suspense or cliffhanger at the end, and Rowling included that epilogue that took us 19 years into the future and an idyllic, “everybody’s family now” wizarding world. There is no obvious foundation for follow-up books, unless you consider the mere presence of Potter-Weasley progeny the basis for a new series.
So, it’s over. This was a great series that ended with one of its best volumes, but I’ve spent the better part of the past six years as a devotee to the series, and the post-Hogwarts reality (okay, semi-reality) will take some adjustment. Granted, I will get to revisit the “Harry Potter” series when my 2-year-old son starts reading in a few months (I know, I know. I’m not one of those parents. Much.), but for those of us who plowed through the seven volumes more-or-less as they arrived on the racks, these books are already book-ended.
So, I’m a tad “meh” these days, and wanting to dive into a new, great book to get obsessed over. Those with suggestions should pipe up right about now.
Thanks to regular reader/antagonista Tony, I am now in possession of the new M.I.A., “Kala,” which improves on 2005’s “Arular” — as if it needed improvement. It might not have that immediate shock of the new that we experienced with “Bucky Done Gun” and “Galang,” but the melodies are stronger and the vocal performances show greater range. “Boyz” is the first single.
