The Boss On Spectacle

Well, color me impressed!
I sat down on a Saturday morning and watched Elvis Costello’s Spectacle on Sundance and wasn’t overwhelmed by pretentious snobbery. In fact, the show featured Bruce Springsteen and the pair dished out a great set and some interesting conversation.
The highlight(s) were a stunning medley of The Boss’ “Radio Nowhere” and Elvis’ “Radio Radio.” I always hated that Springsteen song too, so imagine my surprise at how much I liked this version.
Watching Bruce with the backing band showed him in a very frisky mode-it reminded me of his backing band for the Human Touch/Lucky Town tour, when he made the set extra rowdy to compete with the dirty grunge supporters. He was great, for what it’s worth, and the performance on Spectacle seemed to suggest a fire that I haven’t seen him play with on recent E Street Band clips or with that dismally pedestrian Rock & Roll Hall of Fame show.
Could it be that Bruce is a man in competition with the cash cow that is his longstanding band and with where his heart wants to go musically?
He spoke at length about how he felt when his youngest took a liking to Dylan, recalling the Newport show as “Epic” and secretly hearing “Chimes of Freedom” through the door of his son’s bedroom.
I can’t wait for that type of shit.
Today, I caught the little man singing “All aboard for fun times” today as Iggy Pop’s The Idiot blared on the way to Lowes.
I’m tryin’, Boss.

Fever Ray At The P3 Guld

Snagged this one from Lefsetz, who is strangely enough a fan of Fever Ray. It's a great album (and according to Karen Dreijer, it may be the project's only release) and it recently won an award in Sweden for something.
All I know is that when Karen walked up to accept the award, it was obviously an attempt to mock Lady Gaga's outrageous sense of fashion.
When suddenly it turns into a weird, David Cronenberg moment.
Long live the new flesh!

Danny Kortchmar Tells Fall Out Boy To 'Get Off My Lawn!'

As much as I enjoy reading the Lefsetz Letter, there’s always a prevailing sense of fogeyism lodged in between the articles of technology, the end of days of the recording industry and the constant reminders to people throughout the record industry to shit or get off the pot in terms of how they market their product.
And it is about product in Bob’s mind-a number one like Vampire Weekend’s current offering, Contra, isn’t really a “hit” based on the tepid sales figures. Ten or so years ago, the sales results that Contra is putting up wouldn’t be enough to earn a #1 spot. Letsetz points this out in a way that occasionally borders on hostility-I mean have you actually seen pictures of Vampire Weekend? They’re not the kind of kids that are going to put up much of a fight, so why bother taking a swing at them with the “let’s see what sales they can do next week” kind of post.
We all know that it’s going to fall off the radar from here on out and it will probably struggle to get near gold status. The fact that everyone’s talking about them and they can only throw up a little over 100,000 in one week speaks little to the band’s hype machine but it speaks volume of how fragmented all of the outlets are in actually getting the word out to the mainstream.
They’re not, but you know what, neither is radio, network television, magazines, etc. etc.
The real story is Heidi Montag’s dismal debut of “Superficial” which posted 658 copies last week.

Where are the gloves there?
The song practically begs to be given an internet beatdown because it actually declares that Heidi “rock(s) the latest fashions and I set the latest trends” when-after looking at those embarrassing totals-she obviously doesn’t.
And then there are the occasional emails that Lefsetz receives, like a recent one by Danny Kortchmar:

Hey Bob,
Fuck all this bullshit….
A message to the Killers ..the yeah yeah yeahs .. mgmt…fall out boy..etc..try writing ONE song that has the power and truth of The Pretender, or Millworker by JT, or anything by Bruce or "Not Dark Yet" by Dylan or "Won’t Get Fooled Again…how ’bout it,"Monsters Of Folk? Do you have enough ass in your britches?
Don’t look like it…
The Supreme Court just decided to turn over the whole policital process to the corporations…any one got any thing to say about that? Ting Tings? Killers? Lady Gaga? Anyone?
It’s not bad enough that our leaders are of no help…where are the "artists"?
If you have nothing to say except "look at me" then… fuck you…remember when music used to mean something? Get your head out your collecitive asses and write something that speaks to the hearts of men (and women) or go away..
DK

For those of you not familiar with Mr. Kortchmar’s work, he’s a notable guitarist who’s played with many famously talented people. You can check out his work on Tapestry, which should be enough to get you to understand that he was kind of a big deal.
But am I the only one sensing a bit case of fogeyism with Kortchmar’s apparent displeasure over some of alternative rock’s most notable artists? I know, it’s hilarious how he lumps Killers and Fall Out Boy into an obvious disconnect as to what’s hip, but it’s bizarre how he chastises those artists to produce something on the level of Jackson Brown, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and James Taylor.
By the way, Kortchmar was actually a part of James Taylor’s first band-the Original Flying Machine. The band was in their twenties, a war was raging and the political process was in disarray. Kortchmar and Taylor were actually around the same age as those artists that he recently lambasted.
So what were they doing to “speak to the hearts of men?”
They were knockin’ around the zoo on a Thursday afternoon according to one song. On another, they declared themselves to be night owls who enjoyed sleeping all day long. And Kortchmar-in an act that screams “look at me”-wrote a song and titled it “Kootch’s Song.”
It’s presumptuous and fairly egotistical to believe that music no longer means something today, and I may add it's common to hear baby boomers lecture other generations about doing more after squandering their own beliefs of the sixties.
Most people Danny's age are more like their Eisenhower loving fathers than they were.
Kortchmar sounds like he feels entitled to light a fire under the younger generation’s ass to do something while he couldn't find a Bic to burn his own to actually get up and find the exact kind of music he’s throwing a temper tantrum about. It's out there, but like an old man in the gaming section of Best Buy, he doesn't know where to find it.
His idea of who rock’s left-field spokespersons are is skewed because his fact checkin’ cuz is Rolling Stone, Billboard, that Spin he bought in the airport on the way back to Martha’s Fucking Vineyard, and the curmudgeon commentary of Bob Leftsez.
So why don’t you go fuck off yourself, Kootch. I’m paying for your goddamn social security benefits and I am tired of hearing your generation’s opinion on things that it has no business on offering its “advice” on.
Just look at the shit that you've started.

And by the way, nice dick move that you and Taylor pulled on the Flying Machine album. You want full album price on just an ep’s worth of false starts and studio chatter wrapped around three or four mediocre sock hop rock songs?
The ass in your britches reeks of adult undergarments and sour grapes.

Tune Yards - Bird Brains

DIY don’t mean shit if you ain’t got the chops to back it up. I’ve got boxes full of “DIY” cassettes in my storage room of captured crap, but thanks to limited ability, you won’t be hearing any of my collected “works” anytime soon.
You should, on the other hand, spend a few moments checking out the project of Merrill Garbus’ Tune Yards, a collection that deserves more than finding a resting place in the storage room or on the oxide of the tapes she sells at shows.
4AD has come to the rescue with issuing Tune Yards’ Bird-Brains on a larger scale, but not before treating those familiar with Garbus’ quirky persona with a limited edition screen-printed release.
To be fair, Garbus can be an acquired taste; I saw a video of Tune Yards’ “Hatari” on You Tube once-seemingly recorded in a small apartment-an immediate felt sympathy for the neighbors enduring her yells and howls while remaining transfixed at the beauty that her near-tribal delivery offered. Sealing it for me was how oblivious Garbus was in this performance-for-one; she was in another realm, channeling something fortunate enough to be captured.
For all of the DIY ethos running throughout Bird-Brains, there’s a sense that once a particular sound, rhythm, or chord is struck, Garbus has the good sense of capturing the moment and revisiting it. What’s even more exciting is the possibility of hearing how these songs have progressed in a year or two. There’s nothing to suggest that what we’re hearing in Bird-Brains is indeed the final word, note, or sound.
Her ukulele-evidently a family hand-me-down that spurred this foray into music-is ever present alongside homemade rhythms of breath, hands, and found objects. The back story suggests that the entire project was funded on the cheap with handouts and freeware, and it sounds as such accordingly. But the entire record is rich with passion and artistic vision, and it’s a rewarding headspin as Bird-Brains leaps from continent to continent, genre to genre, while managing to patch everything together in a sonic quilt that’s as precious as a family heirloom.
Of course, family heirlooms mean more to those it speaks to and Bird-Brains is designed to speak more to those who find value in the places and things that may be right in front of them.

This review originall appeared in Glorious Noise.

Superchunk Performing "Cast Iron"

Goddamn these guys were good, and woefully underapreciated.

The OCD Chronicles: Hairspray-"Mama, I'm A Big Girl Now"

I’ve heard this song at least ten times today. That’s on top of the dozen that I endured yesterday. This is in addition to the reality that the song may end up as the most-played song on my wife’s IPod as well as mine.
Blame my parents.
They are the ones who introduced the Hairspray musical to my daughter. At 2 ½, she doesn’t know all the words, but she can sing the phrasing and inflections, hitting the critical spots and giving a true theatric production to her performances.
“Mama, I’m A Big Girl Now” was originally restricted to my folk’s house. It was a cute little “Grandma’s House” routine, much like her princess skirt and tiara. She’d request the song and Grandma would put in the cd in their Bose Wave Radio with optional cd player. In case you’re wondering, they do sound pretty good, but I’m not convinced of the high asking price.
For Christmas, she received her own copy of Hairspray and a barely-functioning Coby cd boombox was acquired for her room. The song is now played endlessly and, on occasion, the version gets longer depending on the number of times the song skips while being played.
It’s reached an epidemic point where I’m mouthing “If I get a hickey then don’t have a cow” while also making more inappropriate lyrics that I struggle to keep out of earshot from the little girl.
As for right now, The Runaways “Cherry Bomb” remains as my IPod’s top track, but there’s a very good chance that this will change before summer returns.

Husker Du Live In London 1985

Check out the first song, "Every Everything," where it looks like Greg broke his bass strap and someone is physically holding the bottom of the bass for him. The song charges ahead and with a deep breath, they kick out "Makes No Sense At All."
As powerful as the band was on record, they delivered similar results on stage.

Two interesting observations:
1.) Mould doesn't look like he's wearing any hearing protection (having seen Husker Du live, I can attest that this is a very bad decision).
2.) This is professionally shot footage and it would be great if cleaner copies were made commercially available. Husker Du is a band who's legacy is going underserved with a lack of posthumous material.

Nikki Sixx - The Heroin Diaries

So I finished Nikki Sixx’s The Heroin Diaries after looking at the book, snickering, and then looking at it again for another 10 minutes. When I got tired of looking like a cheap bastard by reading the entire thing in the store, I bought it. It has occupied the top of my toilet tank and a trip to the in-laws with positive results.
Can I recommend it? If you’re a fan of the Motley Crue biography, The Dirt, then yes. If you’re not, then I need to recommend reading The Dirt again, because it’s fucking awesome. Seriously, you can be the world’s biggest Crue hater and still enjoy the piss out of The Dirt because it’s better than anything in their catalog.
The Heroin Diaries follows a similar pattern of interviews and quotes from various band members, management, record company executives, and anyone who seemed to get in the way of Nikki Sixx’s penchant for self-medication.
It just seems so hard to believe how a guy who professes inspiration from several well-deserved sources could be the man responsible for much of what was wrong with 80’s music. The decadence sometimes overshadowed the music and Sixx even supports that claim himself. The Heroin Diaries explains how a pointless and piss poor live version of Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock” actually made it on Girls Girls Girls: they rain out of ideas.
With such contradictory information (buying into the Motley myth while acknowledging that much of it was merely a turd of complacency) being admitted, one has to wonder if he’s throwing his brand under the bus. Does Motley Crue even have enough material to make a vital entry? Do we take it for what they appeared to be: a decent metal band from L.A. that started out with a promising debut, followed it with a more aggressive bit of imagery and then discovered a formula for funding a never-ending vacation without ever having to consider a world based in reality. Want proof? That aforementioned album of mediocrity made it to #2 on the album charts and fueled a sold-out arena tour. Could it be that a lot of what fed Sixx’s addiction was knowing that, despite the success, Motley Crue was turning into a corporate machine, the same kind of beast that Sixx rebelled against while growing up?
Probably not, as Sixx continually rails against his Mother for abandoning him throughout the book, offering a half-hearted “I’m not mad anymore” response at the end of the book while suggesting that most of his bile originated from her irresponsibility.
He also tiptoes around the idea that he may be repeating exactly the same kind of harm to his own children as his mother did to him. Of course, not of the same degree, but I find the fact that Sixx wasn’t able to develop a healthy relationship with the mother of his own children as incredibly telling.
He goes on to project an almost congenial and pedestrian attitude for his band. I can’t understand how he could see all of vocalist Vince Neil’s inadequacies under the haze of heroin, but now that he’s clean and sober, he doesn’t seem to notice that the vocalist has become even more limited in his abilities and even lazier in his performances. Is Sixx merely trying not to rock the money boat or does he even give a shit anymore?
With that being said, The Heroin Diaries mirror The Dirt is the sense that it barely talks about the Crue’s music. From that perspective, it is highly entertaining while shedding no insight on why we’re even talking about Motley Crue nearly two decades removed from their limited impact on rock music.

Neil Young "Pants On The Ground"

Jimmy Fallon worked his great Neil Young impersonation last night for a cover of General Larry Platt's American Idol viral hit "Pants On The Ground." In case you haven't seen it, I'll leave it to you to seek it out. It's essentially a sixty-two year old dude making fun of teenagers walking around in baggy pants. I had no idea they were still in style, but evidently the old fart had something to say about the youth's fashion faux-pas.
Once you've located the original version, put it up against Fallon's Neil Young version.

Jimmy Fallon Features All Ringo Episode

Holy shit! Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is still on the air! I've seen it once, but then got frustrated and turned the channel. Every subsequent viewing prompted the same reaction until I finally gave up on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon completely.
Until last week when I was caught up in the late-night wars and notice that Fallon was having an hour-long show with nothing but Ringo.
I lasted about 15 minutes.
Ringo gets props for putting up with Fallon's awful interviewing, but it's quite apparent that Starkey is not as quick as he was before and his jokes are remarkably unfunny. In short, he's getting along in years and the "peace and love" bit is getting as tired as grandpa's war stories.
He's got a new album out-which is probably as good as his last one-which wasn't worth your time at all.
Here's a fairly embarassing version of "I Wanna Be Your Man" from the show. If anyone can explain why Ringo needs a back up drummer, feel free to share. Check out the part right before the piano solo where Ringo forgets the musician's name and then resorts to a scream of "Piano!"

Teddy Pendergrass R.I.P.

I’m burning a copy of Teddy Pendergrass’ Anthology for a co-worker. She’s a single, black woman in her mid-thirties who moved to Iowa from the South side of Chicago. She’s working to support her two school age boys and-from what I’ve heard from others in the office-she’s also dealing with her Mom’s health, causing her a few drives back to Chicago and a few days of FMLA. She’s a hard worker and she doesn’t suffer fools well. She’s the one who told me about Teddy Pendergrass passing.
I have to credit Brad Company for even considering Teddy. He worked for a record store and a used copy of the album Teddy came across the counter. Brad praised Teddy’s prowess and knack for knockin’ the ladies.
In short: Teddy Pendergrass should definitely be on the shortlist of your mixtape for coitus.
Don’t believe me? Check out the “Live Medley” on Anthology, where Teddy does a goddamn suave into to the band and backing singers and then proceeds to kiss the audience on the neck and behind the ear by telling them how important they are to him. Then Teddy reminds the crowd how he began with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes and he proceeds to start a medley of some popular songs with them. He starts with “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” and you can literally hear all the women in the audience orgasm after he utters the first three words of the song.
He got my co-worker talking, that’s for sure.
“Luther’s (Vandross) gone. Now Teddy’s gone. There’s no one left.”
She did go on to say how she saw Freddie Jackson on an old rerun of Family Matters and how her two boys think Michael Jackson is the shit-just like she did when she was their age.
I remember thinking it was a bit weird that there was a transvestite in his car the night of his car accident. Now I understand that if you’ve fucked as much trim as Pendergrass did, you probably go out of your way to find new forms of excitement, including befriending chicks with dicks.
Idiocyncracies and fetishes aside, Teddy had a great set of pipes and an impeccable sense of drama. That climaxing crowd was not much of an exaggeration and Pendergrass did it all by continually projecting that those songs were as intimate as if he was undoing the back of their bras.
Plus, as my friend Brad pointed out “Teddy doesn’t just ask you to do something…he tells you to do it.” It’s not ‘Could you turn of the lights please?’ it’s ‘Turn ‘em off!’ Pendergrass had such authority that he could drop the drawers on nearly anyone in earshot of the speaker and that’s what made him a badass on top of being a remarkable vocalist.
See you later, Teddy.
Heaven better lock up the daughters now that you’re there.

Jay Reatard - Watch Me Fall

“Here in this bedroom/Is where I sit/’Cuz I don’t really/Give a shit” goes the first single (“It Ain’t Gonna Save Me”) from Jay Reatard’s Watch Me Fall. But giving a shit doesn’t necessarily mean that Reatard’s bedroom time isn’t productive. Judging by the whirlwind of recorded output he’s bestowed on us for the past few years, he’s been pretty busy with bashing out an impressive repertoire of manic punk/pop.
Enter the “pop” era of Reatard, and someone’s on hand to make sure the needle doesn’t go into the red so much. Is that a bad thing? I guess it depends on your perspective; I mean, Blood Visions was certainly a breath of fresh air even when it wasn’t anything totally original. It-and the Singles collections that followed-were a testament to how incredibly influential the Buzzcocks were, and how little their formula has changed when artists like Reatard re-interpret them.
Watch Me Fall may be the first effort that begins to transition Jay from that easy tag, but it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. After all, punk rock’s a dangerous game-it causes morons to jump on stage and pull out your guitar cord and it incites others to simply grab your Flying V and slam it on the floor for no reason-and who wants to put up with those shenanigans as they approach 30?
Better to plan for a long-term plan now instead of well into a new decade of lofty and strident expectations. So Reatard delivers Watch Me Fall with hints of his past and glimpses of where he may travel.
It’s obvious that New Zealand is in his itinerary, with hints of Tall Dwarfs (whose co-founder Chris Knox recently suffered a stroke) and Kiwi stalwarts The Clean making noticeable impacts on Reatard’s new direction. These are all admirable building blocks, if one devotes the necessary care in delivering smart hooks with attention to detail.
Early on in Watch Me Fall, Reatard succeeds in spades before quickly losing steam by the albums second half-immediately after the deliciously infectious “Wounded.” Thankfully, the album is just around the thirty-minute mark so that right around the time you’ve become dulled with fake British accents, squeaky falsettos, and incessant whines-the album ends.
It’s the record’s “side A” that will keep you coming back, and they’re so downright good that you’re forgiven for letting them overshadow the album’s weaker moments. There’s no evidence that Reatard has actually fallen with his latest, but perhaps he has stumbled a bit while finding solid footing into adulthood.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

Jay Reatard R.I.P.

Twenty nine years old is too young to die. Everyone needs to endure the weirdness that is the 30’s, and then by 40 you finally realize you'll never become a rock star.
Jay Reatard wasn’t a rock star, and it’s unlikely that he’d ever become one. But he was one step ahead of the rest of us because he had talent and he made some nifty punk rock songs that were wonderfully infectious. Of course, I’m old enough to namecheck the influences and I’m old enough to not get hung up about it.
I don’t know much about his past and I can’t identify his demons. All I know is that fucking around with his Flying V generally got you in trouble with Reatard and that’s a completely logical reason to resort to violence.
Throw on Matador Singles 08 and think good things about those around Jay who are probably more shocked of his passing than the rest of us.

The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien 2009-2010

“Good evening. My name is Conan O’Brien, and I may soon be available for children’s parties.”
And with that, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien-post NBC/Jay Leno scandal-began with absolutely no regard for job security, probably because there is no job security for Conan O’Brien.
Admittedly, I wasn’t impressed with O’Brien’s Tonight Show debut, but I never dreamed NBC would pull something so shitty as pulling the plug on him seven months into his tenure.
I mean, didn’t they have seven years to work out this transition?
And if it was about the ratings, didn’t one of those highly compensated executives at NBC notice that O’Brien wasn’t pulling good ratings at his Late Night time slot?
It was almost like NBC was trying to assure everyone that they had learned a lesson from the Leno/Letterman fiasco by securing a plan for the future of one of the most recognizable brands on their network: the Tonight Show. On the surface it looked like Leno was ready to retire as King of the Late Night mountain, but there apparently something bigger than Jay’s chin at play here: his ego.
It was obvious when NBC wiped the entire M-F schedule for a prime time Leno monologue. And when that failed, the network spun it with “It makes us money.” And when the ratings tanked further, the local affiliates bitched because it didn’t make them money.
Rather than chalking it up to experience and admitting defeat, Leno sidestepped any accountability and went after his replacement. In a word: Leno threw Conan under the bus and took his wallet in the process. Leno is betting that the TV babies have a short memory being a witness to his shittiness and Conan is left with the “Kick Me Hard” sign taped to his back.
The unbelievable thing to me is how people who make a lot more money than you and I still have a job after creating this public relations nightmare. At the end of it all, this fiasco will ultimately ruin Conan’s career, tarnish Leno’s legacy, completely gut the Tonight Show brand and ultimately have no impact to NBC’s overall viewership.

Live Nation/Ticketmaster Merger

Any fan of live music would probably be instinctively apposed to the idea of Ticketmaster/Live Nation/Comcast merger, and you should probably send your thoughts on the proposed merger to the department of justice.
Anyone who’s ever wondered what a “convenience fee” is on their ticket purchases, grumbled at the idea of an $8 beer, or has reservations about the idea of this entity having complete control over the concert business should drop the DOJ a line. antitrust.complaints@usdoj.gov
And don’t forget: when the venue/ticket outlet/promoter conveniently runs out of your already exorbitantly priced ticket, you can always visit their in-house ticket re-seller where you can get raped even more.
http://ticketdisaster.org/

All About Soul, the 2010 Rock Hall Nominees, and that asshole Billy Joel

My Dad brought up the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame concert to me over the weekend, completely unapologetic in his fondness for the proceedings. “You know me,” he said, “I don’t know anything about today’s music, so I like it when those old guys get together and do those old classics.”
We laughed at how my Mom thought the audience was yelling “Boo!” when Lou Reed came out on stage.
I praised how Iggy and the Stooges are now in the HOF while questioning why Abba should even be allowed it.
I told my Dad about Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello.
You read that right.
It was my Dad who asked about him. “Who was that guitarist playing with Springsteen?”
“Tom Morello. He’s in Rage Against The Machine.”
“Man, he is good!” my Dad admired. “I don’t know any of his stuff. Is it worth anything? What is ‘Rage Against The Machine’ like?”
“They’re this lefty revolutionary heavy rock band. They’re pretty full of themselves.” I explained.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” I continued, “I don’t know what to think of a band that encourages everyone to ‘rage’ against corporations while signing a contract with Sony, one of the planet’s biggest corporations.”
I went on to explain my whole thing about Abba and the Hall, which I’ll revisit now.
I’ve got no quarrel with Abba, in fact, I kind of like them. Oh sure, I was a kid when they were making hits in the late 70’s and I had an opinion about them then too. You see, I was a big “disco sucks” kid, which was really just a way to align myself with some of the older, rocker kids in the neighborhood. I didn’t have anything against disco, but it took a few years to admit that.
Fast forward to Abba Gold. The radio station got a copy of it and since we didn’t play Abba anyway, I got to take the disc home.
Feeling a bit nostalgic, I put the disc in and pressed play. For over an hour, I was able to recite song lyrics that I hadn’t heard in well over a decade. Song titles that I didn’t recognize sudden became familiar the moment I heard the song. Even in hatred, Abba had successfully planted their music into my head where they took up permanent residence. You have to admire a band that can do that.
But the thing I discovered about Abba was within their arrangements. They sounded unique and I’ve yet to find another band that is comparable to the way in which their songs were arranged.
It’s because they seldom used traditional R&B arrangements in their records, one of the primary ingredients of rock and roll. Listen closely and you’ll hear similarities with European classical music but very little in terms of the two basic ingredients of modern-era pop hits: R&B and C&W.
As a result, Abba belongs nowhere in the halls of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame because they don’t fulfill a basic necessity of that honor: rock.
It looks like Iggy is finally on the way in, even though it’s a bunch of shit that they’ll make it after Ashton died.
Kiss is stirring up interest, but before they even touch that band, the Hall needs Alice Cooper in.
And as always, not even a peep about Rush.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame concert? It may have pleased my Dad to no end, but for me it looked like a bunch of phoned in performances by a few artists who haven’t tried hard in quite a while. It was a spectacle of entitlement, a set list by people who looked like half the milestone was getting signatures on the performance contracts.

Someone needs to tell Billy Joel to shut the fuck up. For real, the dude hasn’t written a new tune in years (and that classical shit doesn’t count either, dude. You and I both know that’s only your ego talking, that the dude who started in a silly hard rock duo called Attila has no place tinkling the ivories on classic gas), hasn’t written a decent album since Glass Houses (sorry, The Nylon Curtain sounds like it was written by overdramatic college freshman who probably got his ass beat by a few rubbernecks from Allentown) and who’s penned three of the worst songs ever written in the past 50 years (“We Didn’t Start The Fire,” “Leave A Tender Moment Alone,” and “All About Soul”).
Fuck you, Billy Joel. Nice one on letting your (then) old lady paint your album cover. Did you look at that thing before you sent it off to the art department at Columbia?
Anyways, the Hall of Fame is a joke, the concert sucked, and Billy Joel’s a douchebag.