Comments

I don't see how canceling a show that her fans are no doubt looking forward to constitutes respect for them.
I guess "assless chaps" is a redundant tautology (/s) on par with "brimless yarmulke," now that you mention it.
Prince did the assless chaps at the VMA show in 1991, and 30 years later, even the goddesses of fashion haven't caught up!
Really nice reference to/incorporation of Bill Conti's "Rocky" theme here. She needs to release a new record!
I saw them in San Diego last night . . . An evening of high-brow fun all around, and the new songs kill!
Only something this trashy could get to the utter Truth of the relations between men and women as well as this does, and as well as the original 2 Live Crew song did. This is our species, love it or hate it (I choose to love it, but it's difficult sometimes).
I will be stoked if they return to this insane bubblegum aesthetic. "Bonito Generation" is a classic, but they got a little too dark for me on "Time 'n' Place." I like my KBB when it sounds like an entire Dave and Busters is imploding.
Tours like these also book the most soulless corporate venues imaginable. Consumerism is king at these places, although the consumer is constantly getting nickeled and dimed in them. The consumer resents the whole thing, as does the artist. Not a recipe for transcendent musical experiences. She's probably old enough to know what this tour would equate to, and she's wise enough to take the paycheck. She's likely driving around in a BMW that these middle-class suburban kids funded.
Let the weirdos be the weirdos. None of them are hurting anybody. Allowing legal constraints on people for being unconventional or making choices that the rest of us wouldn't make is a recipe for abuse.
It is so strange that they'd have played the outdoor Pat O'Brien Pavilion at Del Mar in late December -- Del Mar is a horseracing track that is a couple hundred yards from the ocean. It is cold there in late December, windy and blustery. I wonder if this was an afternoon show maybe? Even so, why outdoors? Maybe it was a radio-station festival?
This story about people injecting others with hypodermic needles full of drugs is some "stashing razor blades (or LSD) in candy and giving it out to trick or treaters" shit. Next thing you know, we'll be hearing about how kids were throwing bricks off of highway overpasses during this festival. The odd thing is that a crowd stampede is fully believable, perhaps even inevitable, to anyone who's ever been in a large crowd. Yet some people apparently need the tragedy to be spiced up with urban-legend dystopian boogiemen.
What I mean by demonstrates his lack of ideas is that it's something a talented-but-smug high school senior could come up with. Pissing on Christ? There's no twist, there's nothing surprising, it's just crass disrespect. (I'm not at all religious and am the last person to take offense to any art. I just think it fails as a piece of art.)
The font size-choice on this poster is truly fucked up, beyond just the obvious disrespect for hometown heroes Built to Spill. I looked at this poster for 5 minutes and didn't even notice her! Idaho is one of the greatest places ever, and I'm super bummed that this festival is the week before my spring break, because otherwise I'd be there.
Piss Christ is pretty shallow as a piece of art. The provocation was the whole deal. Total edgelord work. Not much in the way of aesthetic value, and the fact that the artist was Christian himself demonstrates his lack of ideas.
If we're going to mock Kanye for changing his name, which we should, mocking pronoun puritans for similar levels of narcissism seems to me to be fair game. Honestly it also seems a tad misogynistic to be offended at female pronouns (is it so bad to be referred to in feminine terms?).
Correction: Demi Lovato are fucking morons. (She goes by plural pronouns; haven't you heard)
That is true, but I have been to many, many, many shows where the performers seek to hype up the crowd and get the craziest possible reaction. Often these are the shows that are memorable because they end up with this mass hysteria that is thrilling but they don't end up with people's deaths. It seems like part of the thrill of being in a huge crowd is the madness of the crowd and the teetering between danger and the warm safe embrace of others. We should probably be heartened that instances of tragedy and death are so rare considering how these tragedies seem to happen in this bafflingly organic way that Tom discusses in this piece (Chris Richards in the Washington Post has a piece today about how anyone who's ever been at a big festival can simultaneously understand exactly how easy this would be to happen and also be utterly perplexed at the fact that it actually happened here). People seem to want to get caught up in the Dionysian frenzy of the crowd, and when performers cool them off, it does sort of take away the immediacy of the experience. The last time I saw Titus Andronicus, their lead singer Patrick Sickles kept reminding the crowd to be gentle and to avoid getting out of control. I am guessing that this was based on fronting a rowdy touring punk band for well over a decade and lasting long enough to be mature about the dangers. Most musicians' careers don't last long enough for that perspective to develop, I guess.
I didn't see a ton of this interview, but I did catch these parts randomly when I logged onto it. He was actually pretty conciliatory and tempered with these comments in the full context of his remarks, especially the parts where he discussed Jay-Z. Pretty difficult to call Just Blaze a trailblazer (bad pun), artistically. But as Ye pointed out, he's good at what he does, much like Travis Scott, whom he discussed in exactly the same terms in the same breath. Obviously the basis for rap music is narcissistic shit-talking, at least for the generation that Ye represents, so laughing this off like Big Sean does here is the correct response. (I actually kind of forgot Big Sean existed, to be honest, but it's good that he still does.) It was all just drunken and pretty much good-natured. In sum, it's better than having to see another pop-up ad for Jay-Z endorsing some 1%er luxury brand.
Are you saying sexual assault isn't a taboo? I would strenuously disagree
He is one free-thinking, free-ass motherfucker. The proper role of the artist is to zero in on taboos and shatter them so that the rest of us can reconsider our perspectives. This dude goes all-in on that ideal. I am here for it, personally.
That SXSW comparison is what I thought of, but then SXSW is at least as much an industry event as a festival . . .
Looks good, but a 7-day festival in February? With like two shows scheduled each night? Is that even a festival anymore?
Shakira is truly the modern Kitty Genovese
From each wild boar according to his ability, to each Colombian pop star according to her needs
Where do grown adults go that they're constantly hearing Ed Sheeran songs? That's an honest question. I am guessing the grocery store I go to probably plays his music (I don't know what any of it sounds like), but I can't think of any other place I might go with any sort of regularity that would play stuff like that.
He's just gonna do his own research, once he gets time. No need to rush into ending a pandemic that's been dragging on for two years
The Rickenbacker is awesome though . . . Good on him for affording that on a schoolteacher's salary, especially with a drinking problem too
The spooning in the Tool video is much more homoerotic than the Morrissey clip
Her belted trenchcoat/dress here is not far from the garbage bag that Missy Elliott wears in the video for "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)." '97 vibes all around . . . fake plastic textiles
It's so easy to shrug, it's so easy to shake/It takes guts to be gentle and kind
Because we all know that the bespectacled, NPR-addled white-collar white liberals at any given Americana show are notoriously homophobic
As you can see in her statement, people of color, of course, built the genre. Seriously, only white, white-collar liberals would ever think a platitude like that isn't completely condescending. Plus, if your goal is truly to increase visibility for marginalized people, why in the world would you rather stay in a moribund niche like Americana instead of being viewed as pop?
I saw him on Joe Rogan a few years ago and he seems like a pretty interesting, forthright dude
If it's too loud, the band's too old! (I think that's how the cliche went?)
I for one am shocked at how close in age Snoop is to Cube and Too Short -- the latter two were already so well-established by the time Snoop came out that he felt like an entirely separate generation to me.
"Ice Ice Baby" was the "Old Town Road" of its time. Part cultural appropriation, part trolling, but really at its heart expressing a love for what it appropriates and trolls. I was in fifth grade when "Ice Ice Baby" hit, and believe me, the effect it had on 5th graders was exactly like the effect "Old Town Road" had on 5th graders a few years ago.