Have You Ever Been To A Concert?

While I agree that U2 peaked in 1989, Amy Holmes just sounds silly in her attempt to bash them:

Dems love them some Bono, even though U2’s best anthems are long behind them.  I went to a U2 concert years ago at the MCI Center (is it called that anymore?) as a guest of Bobby Shriver who was escorting Bono around town.  I told him that it says a lot about a rock star’s appeal when all of the black people at the stadium are outside scalping tickets.

Umm, have you ever been to a rock concert before. I’ve been to plenty – and from the Rolling Stones to the Arcade Fire (even The Streets and Lyrics Born), the dynamic was the same. White people inside, black people hawking tickets. Hell, for every event that has tickets, it’s black people scalping them, in the Bay Area at least. This is as true for sporting events as for concerts. For some reason, the overwhelming majority of ticket scalpers are black (in the Bay). And the overwhelmingly majority of rock music fans, of all ages, are white. Nothing shocking here.

Woah

The Sad Truth About Lil Wayne

As we all know, Tha Carter III is starting to look like the Chinese Democracy of rap albums. It was originally set to be released in December, but then the tracks leaked and Wayne decided to push back the album until June. But if you listen to the youtube of clips from the album and Lollipop, the lead single, you’ll realize that TCIII probably isn’t that great. Sure, it sounds good, and considering the dearth of signifigant rap albums we’ve had lately, you can expect Weezy to dominate the radio, Tv and blogs all summer. But III isn’t going to be anything approaching Stankonia, The Black Album, College Dropout or even the most recent Clipse release. That’s because for all of Lil Wayne’s charisma, star power and work ethic, he isn’t a very inventive or interesting lyricist. He’s good at projecting “I’m a totally badass, if not slightly crazy motherfucker” but not that good at expressing it.

With Jay-Z simply treading old ground, Kanye going pop, 50 turning shitty and TI getting into acting and going to jail, Wayne was able to dramatically up his profile by releasing more than 50 tracks in 2007. Because of the proliferation of mix tapes, internet only releases and remixes that could all be posted on hip-hop blogs, Wayne made the appearance of being everywhere at once and of dominating the game. But with a real album, people are going to expect some consistency and a remarkably high average level of quality, something that Wayne hasn’t really been able to deliver.

Tracing The (de)evolution of Vh1

It all started with The Simple Surreal Life. When Flava Flav and Brigitte Nielsen formed the strangest couple in recent memory, the Vh1 crewed decided to premiere Strange Love, a show that mostly followed the mutual jealousy of the two and their deteriorating relationship. But while Nielsen went off with her Italian beau, Flav still searched for love. And thus, Flavor of Love was born. But this show also bore strange fruit – namely the supremely strange fruit of New York, the incredibly loud and flamboyant woman who was the runner up on the first two seasons of Flavor. So Vh1 gave her a show as well, I Love New York. But some great honcho at Vh1figured that white people weren’t being embarassed enough by their network, so they decided to give washed up, bandanna wearing Poison frontman his very own program, Rock of Love.

Was that enough? Could they find more celebrities and pseudo-celebrities to have on their network? Yes, yes they could. As usual, the contestants on all these shows were way more entertaining than the main characters, and so they threw them all together in a Road Rules/Real World clone and give 250,000 dollars to the winner. The five minute trailer is here. The end of the world, incidentally enough, is also here.

Coldplay Produces Big Ass Music, The Sun Freaks Out

It’s too easy to hate on Coldplay – they’re so earnest, Chris Martin is so transparently lame and it’s clear that they gave up on being diminished Radiohead and decided to become Mega Travis or Ultra Keane. Which, you know, is good for them, I respect their gangster. But the music has always been…meh.

But if Gordon Smart, The Sun’s music crtic is right, their new album is amazing. “The band have really pushed the boundaries of what we expect from an album, producing a beautiful, serious and sometimes testing 45-minute disc.” Uhh what?

I don’t want to cast aspersions on Mr. Smart, but isn’t it possible that the reason he was able to review the album first is because EMI knew he’d write such a sycophantic review? Just saying…

The album is called Viva La Vida, it’s going to drop on June 12th, and here’s a youtube of the song we’ve been hearing on those iPod commercials. Watch it now, it’s probably going to get copyright claimed by EMI really soon.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Here’s the  trailer for the new David Fincher directed, Brad Pitt Oscar vehicle that all the Indiana Jones viewers got to see over the weekend.

Preliminary Thoughts

1) This not only looks good – aside from the inevitable “Fincher and Pitt Back Together” hype – it’s also pure Oscar bait. At least Brad Pitt will get his first nomination for this one.

1A) A little bit more on Oscar bait: this is a classic gimmick acting performance. We get to see Brad Pitt be old….and young! Like, really young. These types of make-up heavy performence generally tend to bring home the gold for women (Nicole Kidman in the Hours, Charlize Thereon in Monster, Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby), but there’s no reason the same formula shouldn’t work for a man as uneblievably gorgeous as Pitt*

2) Because it’s a movie in which Brad Pitt is the one megastar, it will not do well at the box office. Brad Pitt star vehicles tend not to bring in that much money, yet he’s still a huge deal.

*Brad Pitt being a gorgeous man is crucial for him getting the “Woah, he sure looked weird!” Oscar. When Adam Sandler got old and fat for Click, no one really cared.