Talking Ticketmaster and Commerce Digression Rant Blues

Over at the Consumerist blog, there's a story about Ticketmaster, and how they're evil.  This is not news, but it did get me thinking, in particular about Pearl Jam's Quixotian attempt to destroy ticketmaster back in the mid-1990s.  It's hard to imagine Pearl Jam succeeding in that attempt, even if other acts that would have been imaginably sympathetic had joined them (say, Springsteen, R.E.M., Neil Young, U2 and Green Day, let alone other acts like Metallica or The Stones or the Eagles, who have generally been more shameless in their interest in filthy lucre).  Ticketmaster was, and is, simply too big to be brought down by anything less than the government.  But that, along with my continued frustration with the entire concept of the third disc of the new Dylan Bootleg Series entry essentially costing an extra hundred bucks, led me to ruminate on music and money and a bunch of other things.  

Let's start with the new Dylan album.  I've long since given up trying to make sense of the things that Bob Dylan decides to do.   Trying to understand the mind of a man who chooses to put "Joey" on an album while leaving "Abandoned Love on the cutting room floor is a mug's game.  But still, one does wonder exactly why he would only include the third disc of outtakes with the 150 dollar "deluxe" set that also includes a book of his artwork, instead of just putting out a three disc version for forty bucks, which would have been a no-brainer purchase for lots of us who try and think up new ways to give this man our money (I bought Live at Budokan for god's sake.  I'm not choosy when it comes to the recorded output of Mr. Zimmerman).  In the Entertainment Weekly review, the critic suggested, perhaps half-jokingly, that this was Dylan's sly way of encouraging fans to bootleg the Bootleg Series.  I don't really think this is true (although, that does involve me trying to decipher Bob's thought process, which I have sworn to myself that I won't do), but it's probably as good of an answer as "Bob just wanted more money" which also seems wrong to me.  (This is not to say that I don't believe that Dylan's in it for the money.  Of course he is.  He just is usually in it for the money in weird ways.  Dylan generally does nothing in the way that anyone else would, and this goes for selling out too- that Victoria's Secret ad for example.  It's almost too weird to be offended by, if you're like me and still get a little offended by hearing a favorite song used to hawk a product.  My point is, the easy way would be to sell "Like A Rolling Stone" to Rolling Rock beer, "Lay Lady Lay" to Viagra and "Mr. Tambourine Man" to Pepsi.)  This isn't the first time that I've been frustrated by the way that Dylan releases his outtakes and rarities- the Dylan collection that sells on iTunes, where for two hundred bucks or so you can download his entire catalog and about forty rare cuts, still drives me mad, mainly for the sheer inanity of it- there is no person alive who wants to hear both versions of the "George Jackson" single who doesn't already own the entire Dylan catalog.  That's just common sense.   (As opposed to how Neil Young maddeningly refuses to release most of his rarities and outtakes at all, but in a lot of ways Neil Young can make Bob Dylan's thought processes look normal). There really isn't a moral to this story.  In the end, I broke my own rule about illegally downloading commercially available music for the third disc.  Every Dylan bootlegger will, at some point, quote "Absolutely Sweet Marie" when defending their actions- "To live outside the law, you must be honest", so I'll just use that too as my defense, to the extent that I feel the need to defend this action, given how much of my money Dylan already has.  (For the record, anyone who takes a stance against Dylan here is morally obliged to also criticize Radiohead.  When they did their "pay what you want" deal with In Rainbows, they also sold a second disc of the album as part of a package that cost quite a bit more than I was prepared to pay for it.  Just saying.)

But I digress.  I was talking about Pearl Jam.  Everyone here read Sandman, right?  For the sake of spoilers and simplicity, I'm just going to assume the answer is yes.  Anyway, remember Lucien's theory about how Morpheus put all of the events of the series into motion deliberately, because he wanted to quit being the anthropomorphic embodiment of the concept of "dream"?  I sometimes feel that Pearl Jam did the same thing.  I mean, when you consider some of the decisions that the band made- fighting Ticketmaster and essentially not touring at the height of their popularity, refusing to make videos, their gradual shifts from grunge into a territory more closely resembling a jam band, initially releasing what would become their biggest single as a fan-club only issue and then, when radio stations began playing it anyway, releasing it as a charitable single giving all of the proceeds to Kosovo refugees- these are not the kinds of decisions that, say, Brian Epstein or Albert Grossman would have made.  It's almost as if they saw how Kurt Cobain got out of being the biggest act in the rock world, and thought "he has the right idea, but let's be a little more subtle".  

Shoestore Friendly Unit Shifter

It's funny how the little things can set you off. For example, I was reading the sports blog Deadspin today, and there was a link to this story about new Kurt Cobain Converses. Now, the fact that Courtney Love would license her dead husband's name and writing for a pair of shoes doesn't surprise me at all. I'm more or less prepared for the day when Nirvana songs are used to sell everything from cars to life insurance. In fact, about the only thing that Courtney could do now to surprise me would be to put out a new, good Hole album. And while I'm bothered by the existence of these shoes, given how much Kurt would have hated it as well as my own knee-jerk reaction to the use of art to sell shit, that's not what I really began thinking about. Instead, I began thinking about how genuinely strange it all is- the mere fact that a rock star who has been dead for fourteen years is being used to market shoes, of all things, and how interesting the cult of Kurt really is.

Since his death, Kurt Cobain has become something of a profane saint, a symbol of all that was good about the music scene of the late 80s and early 90s and a symbol of how the music industry and marketing eat their young. He has become a martyr, a pure artist who had stardom pushed upon him, James Dean and Rimbaud and Elvis and Holden Caufield all rolled up into one person. And most of this is as full of shit as the endless conspiracy theorists who refuse to believe that a depressed heroin addict would ever kill himself. I don't find Kurt's life and death to be full of any particular meaning, nor do I see it as some sort of post-modern grunge Passion Play. Chris Bell and D. Boon both died at the age of 27, in a pair of car crashes, and I don't see Kurt's death as being especially different from either of those, except for the fact that Kurt's death wasn't an accident. Okay, so Kurt didn't like the nature of stardom or the way that music industry works. I can name a dozen other people this is true of, and none of them killed themselves. In fact, I don't believe that Kurt's distrust of fame and his suicide are connected. I think that Kurt shot himself for essentially the same reasons that Richard Manuel hung himself in a hotel bathroom- a cocktail of personal demons and addiction and depression. I could probably construct some elaborate theories about Manuel's death- Robbie Robertson killed him because Robbie can be as unlikable as Love, or he was upset about the way that Woodstock generation that Manuel was associated with had turned from peace and love to greed and materialism, and it would be just as hollow as the idea that Cobain's suicide is deeply significant on any level other than the literal level- a great musician killing himself.

In his excellent book Love Is A Mixtape, Rob Sheffield (who used to write for Spin, but I think I read he gave up and took a gig with Blender) writes about the now legendary Nirvana unplugged show, which has retrospectively become Kurt's real suicide note, superseding the Neil Young quoting doggerel that Courtney Love famously read aloud to that huge crowd of mourners (and people who just saw the gathering as the place to be) after Kurt's death. Sheffield doesn't buy this interpretation, and neither do I. (On a purely literal level, if the show was a suicide note, why didn't the band play some bizarre acoustic version of "I Hate Myself and I Want To Die"?) Sheffield writes:
"The Unplugged music bothered me a lot. Contrary to what people said at the time, he didn't sound dead, or about to die, or anything like that. As far as I could tell, his voice was not just alive but raging to stay that way. And he sounded married. Married and buried, just like he says. People liked to claim his songs were all about the pressures of fame, but I guess they just weren't used to hearing rock stars sing love songs anymore, not even love songs as blatant as "All Apologies" or "Heart-Shaped Box." And he sings, all through Unplugged, about the kind of love you can't leave until you die."

When I listen to the album, I'm more interested in the little moments where Cobain seems to be having fun. "This is off our first record, most people don't know it" is a great way for a suddenly famous band to introduce their act. Or the story Kurt tells about trying to get David Geffen to buy Leadbelly's guitar for him. Or the way, before "Pennyroyal Tea" when Kurt asks "Am I going to do this by myself?" I'm not trying to say that the album isn't moving, or that it doesn't churn your emotions, especially looking back at what happened after the album was recorded. I'm just saying that I don't see the album as being any more packed with meaning than the Who Are You album cover, which features Keith Moon sitting in a chair with "Not To Be Taken Away" clearly written on it, and this being the last Who album before Moon died.

I worry about things that are somewhat silly. It's kind of my deal. But I do worry that the gospel according to Kurt has completely overshadowed just how great the albums, especially Nevermind and In Utero, really are. I feel like when people hear "Come As You Are" now, the only line that really connects is the weak irony of "I swear I don't have a gun". While Jim Morrison's death has somehow conferred a level of seriousness onto the essentially silly lyrics of Door's albums (which is not to say that silly songs like "The End" or "Riders on the Storm" or "Break On Through" are wholly without merit), Kurt's suicide bestowed a level of meaning onto the Nirvana albums that obscures just how legitimately good they really are. Most people can listen to the Sex Pistols rail about nihilism and "No Future" without connecting it to Sid Vicious murdering Nancy and then killing himself with a needle, but can't hear "All Apologies" as anything other than a parting epistle from the only pure soul in all of the music industry. People claim that Cobain never wanted to be famous. I call bullshit. Of course he wanted to be a rock star. He might have discovered, upon achieving stardom, that it wasn't what he wanted, but that makes him just like every other rock star who took their music seriously (except for, maybe, Paul McCartney. Just a feeling I have). I feel like the worst of the Cobain mythology has passed us by- the last time I saw a huge display of posters for sale in the Brickyard, Tony Montana outnumbered Kurt by at least four-to-one, which is a rant for another day- but every time something like this Converse deal comes to pass, there will be a little flare-up. Yes, you should be irritated about this. But you should be irritated in the same way that you're irritated when Jaguar uses "London Calling" to sell cars, or when "Fortunate Son" shows up in a commercial for jeans, or when, inevitably, the Velvet Underground is used to sell Roth IRAs. I'm saying that Kurt Cobain was a fantastic artist, and might even have been something of an unofficial spokesman for a generation, but he wasn't a saint to be canonized or the last angry man standing up against the corporate takeover of rock and roll.

Besides, everyone knows that's Neil Young's job.

The picture is a Kurt Cobain action figure. When I did a Google Image search, it came up, and it was too ridiculous not to include.

Okay, this is obscure

But there's a new ad for one of those bullshit body sprays that are aggressively marketed towards "guys". The kind of "guys" who read Maxim and think that Anchorman is the best film that Will Ferrell was ever involved with. The kind of guys who think that Family Guy is the funniest show on television and think that Cee-Lo Green's name is Gnarls Barkley. The kind of guys who see the ads and assume that spaying this shit all over their bodies will instantly result in more anonymous threeways. This line of advertising is inherently offensive, I suppose, but I've lost a lot of my ability to be offended by implied misogyny. No, what's irritating me is the song being used in the commercial. "Can't Seem to Make You Mine" by the seminal sixties garage band, The Seeds. The Seeds are one of those bands who were almost big in the sixties, but are now only remembered by music history nerds and compilers of overpriced nostalgia cd box sets that buy infomercial time at two in the morning, but dammit- that doesn't mean that they deserve this treatment. (I suppose that it's possible that the band approved the use of the song in exchange for their first payday in about thirty-five years, but I like to believe that they were screwed out of the publishing rights for their music by an corrupt record label or sleazy agent. Call me a romantic, if you must.) I'm beginning to resign myself to the day when I hear the Replacements or Husker Du in a Diet Dr. Pepper commercial.

While we're on the subject of the desecration of rock history, does anyone here care about the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame?

No? Oh. Well, that won't stop me. New inductions in a few days, and here are my thoughts:


Madonna- Not actually rock and roll. But she did put out some good stuff early in her career (Borderline and Live To Tell come to mind) and is second only to Dylan and maybe Kiss in her ability to manipulate the media and control her own image. And since only about two-thirds of the inductees are really rock and roll (I like Billy Joel fine enough, but only a couple of his songs could honestly be said to rock) it's hard to complain too much.
John Cougar Mellencamp- Really? I mean, Springsteen is already in the hall, so do we need the inferior version of him? Shouldn't be in.
Leonard Cohen- Yes, yes, a million times yes.
The Ventures- Sure. We need someone in to represent surf rock (although Dick Dale isn't in, which is kind of weird.)
The Dave Clark Five- Really? I'll go tell the Zombies and the Troggs to expect their invitations next year. Seriously, Dave Clark Five shouldn't be in before the Stooges. Last year, they apparently got more votes than Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, but the rules were jiggered with to put Flash in and keep Dave out. I guess this is a sort of make-up call.
Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff- Key to Philly Soul, so that's fine.
Little Walter- Played harmonica for Muddy Waters and a bunch of other Chess artists. So that's good enough for me.

I just died a little inside.

On the television, there was an ad for "Beaches" resort (which is just foolishness. We all know that Sandals is the only resort approved by Michael Scott of Dunder Mifflin) that used a cover of Weezer's "Island in the Sun". Now, "Island in the Sun" isn't my favorite Weezer song (That would be "Across The Sea"), but that doesn't mean that I want Rivers and company to whore it out. I mean, if they needed money that badly, I would have bought the overpriced 2 disc version of the Blue Album, or a third copy of Pinkerton. (I bought one regular version of the album, and then a twenty dollar copy at their concert that had been signed by the band. I think I've bought the Green album twice too, actually- one American version, and one import version with an extra track.) This is not as bad as when "London Calling" was used by a British car company (Jaguar, maybe?) or when Dylan makes a bizarre appearance in an ad. And it's not as bad as I'll feel when Courtney Love goes ahead and sells the rights to "Lithium" to Pfizer (or whoever makes the drug lithium.) But still. I've put up with three straight albums from Weezer that were ultimately disappointing. I put up with two of the shittiest opening acts I've ever seen when I saw them tour (Ozma and Saves The Day, but James was subjected to the Get Up Kids when he saw them, so maybe I'm ahead on that count.) When Rivers publishes the book of largely terrible short stories that I think we all secretly know is coming, I'll probably buy it and pretend I care about stories set in Japan as much as he does. But I think I'm reaching the point that most Weezer fans probably reached six or seven years ago.

Oh, and this game is as addictive as Dane Cook is annoying:

Learn exactly how little you know about African geography, then feel slightly racist.

I am NOT a Demographic...

So I was just listening to All Things Considered, waiting for a story about used CD stores, but first I have to listen to a piece on the lastest devious, insidious brainchild from the mental terrorists of Madison Avenue. Now, the bastards, not content with all of the evil they already unleash on television, radio, print, the internet, any public space they can find and within any other medium that exists, have begun hiring "Brand Ambassadors", collaborating, whoring bastards who travel around college campuses and other such places attempting to build word of mouth for corporations not content with the mindfucking already accomplished.

I couldn't listen to the whole report. It was much too much. So I retreated to my computer, put Bruce Springsteen's "Badlands" on, and googled (is the verb google insidious advertising? Probably. But google is only slightly evil)"Used cds", and decided that the story is probably about new laws demanding fingerprints of sellers of used cds to stores, in a classic heavy-handed attempt to deter the transfer of stolen goods. Which probably won't do more than hurt legit sellers of used cds, since who the hell wants to go through that while trying to make 20 bucks selling their old Zep cds. But I digress.

I found that story and concept so abhorrant, but then I got to thinking about the show I went to Sunday night, which was completely underwritten by whichever car company makes the Scion (you can see how effective that bit of "branding was) and the bag I gladly took and used today. Am I just another hypocrite? Almost certainly. But, in my defense, I would point out that at the show, there was only one mention of the car company, a rather off-hand and arguably slightly derogatory thank you from (I think) Dready Kruger. And the bag is quite nice, and the logo on it is quite small. I doubt anyone who saw me carrying it today noticed it. (Of course, the Carolina Hurricanes t-shirt I wore and am still wearing is another bit of advertising, when you think about it at all, but I think we can all agree that sports teams get the same pass as bands or movies we like and wish to use our shirts to communicate our appreciation for to others).


(Of course, anyone who wants to advertise on Obviously 5 Readers is welcome. Hell, I don't care if you sell child porn and dangerous drugs to puppies and Panda bears, a blogger has GOT to get paid...)

The Anatomy of Boredom

I already miss Christopher Moltisanti.

I'm half-watching 24, which I'm begining to believe might not actually be a very good show. I amused myself by reading the iTunes review of the audiobook for the new Christopher Hitchens book, God Is Not Great. I love the negative reviews that consist of nothing but poorly worded attempts to refute Hitchens' atheism. I actually still haven't read the book, but I intend to very soon. I love Hitchens, I love evangelical atheism, it's win-win, baby.

Words cannot express my loathing for this Diet Pepsi commerical that tries to be ironic/retro/cool by referencing Beverly Hills 90210. Irony -or rather, shallow irony or faux irony-is usually a poor subsitute for humor, and in this case this faux-hipsterism is unbelievably irrititating. Argh. I just want to hurt someone on Madison Avenue very badly.

I'm toying with the idea of using the money that people were far too nice in giving me for graduating only three years behind schedule and going to New York for three or four days in June. But I'm worried that the idea is appealing largely as a result of my incredible boredom. I've got to start looking for a proper job, just to save my bloody mind.

Sorry this post was so self-indulgent, but that's how boring tonight's 24 is. And this is supposed to be part of the climax for the entire season.

Update: Argh! The Braves lost again while the Mets won. This drops us into a close second place, if I'm not mistaken. Who knew that Washington had a pitcher who could take a no-hit bid this deep? And is it just me, or has there been an unsual number of near no-hitters this season? After that long stretch without one that lasted from Johnson's perfect game (5/18/04, against the Braves, which I had the misfortune of watching on television) until Anibal Sanchez's no-no last year (9/6/06), it seems like there has been a deluge of nearly no-hit games so far (along with Mark Buehrle's actual no hitter). And Smoltz had to leave the game early after hurting his hand tagging out a runner. If we lose Smoltz for a stretch of time, we're in a little trouble, especially with how well the damned Mets are playing.

Top 5 Things I would do in New York:
1. Go see a Yankees game before they build a new Yankee Stadium
2. See Spamalot on Broadway, despite the extravagant ticket cost
3. See the Brill Building
4. Pilgrimage to former site of CBGB's.
5. Central Park- the Obelisk and the reservoir and the zoo.