Tarfumes

I Was a Roadie for an Adult Contemporary Band, day 5: Charlottesville, VA

Today I woke up in the parking lot of some radio station called "The Corner" in Charlottesville, VA.  I love it when stations use these goofy-arse nicknames, like "The Edge" or "The Rock" or "The Pancreas."  This performance at least served a slightly more tangible purpose than the one in Nashville, as it would actually be broadcast.  The load-in wasn't particularly bad, but the night before I had a nightmare that I'd gotten locked in one of the bus bays.  I literally woke up pounding on the ceiling of my bunk.  I'd never been the least bit claustrophobic before, but I was now.  I couldn't get back to sleep, so I was again in a surly mood when we unloaded at the station. 

ACB played a couple of songs and the singer was interviewed by a DJ.  I never understood why the other musicians weren't interviewed (much less acknowledged by the singer), considering how much they contributed to ACB (although recent articles I've read focused more on the keyboardist and drummer, so this seems to have changed).  The interviewers were always asking the same questions, and always focused on the fact that the singer is 22.  Apparently ACB's management doesn't realize that once the singer turns 23 (or 24, or 25 or...gasp...30!) the age thing isn't gonna be so novel anymore, and about 2/3rds of their sales pitch will be useless. 

The irritations were piling up, and I was still upset at how massively the job had been misrepresented to me.  Add to that my newfound claustrophobia, and I made the decision to leave the tour. 

After the radio station we went over to the Charlottesville Pavillion for the Rufus Wainwright show.  This was by far the smoothest load-in I'd done.  The venue had its own forklift.  A forklift!  This meant that I got stuff offstage and loaded into the bus quick enough to finally catch all of Neko Case's set.  It was something of a wonder to behold.  You know how sometimes you'll listen to a record over and over, and then when you see the performer live it's a dramatically more enveloping experience?  That doesn't always happen, of course -- the times I'd seen Evan Parker live, for instance, were major disappointments; his sound fell completely flat, and listening to one of his records would actually have been preferable.  But a number of times, particularly with Bill Dixon and Green (and particularly with Jeff Lescher's singing) it was a complete revelation.  I'd only heard bits and pieces of Neko Case's records, but her live set was a steamroller with flowers.

The venue seated 5000, and Rufus Wainwright had sold about 1/3rd of the seats.  The reasoning was that Dave Matthews was playing in town the same night, and that's where Rufus' potential audience was.  His set was identical to the previous night's.  The overriding concern of the performers seemed to be hitting their marks, and absorb whatever passive affirmation might happen to accidentally waft up onto the stage.

There now arose the cult of the semi-popular performer; that is, one who had an audience but remained elitist, whose cachet depended on a series of near-misses with the mass audience but whose lack of any broad base could be considered chic (and profitable).  The semi-popular cults...were attractive because they allowed insiders to snub other groups of rock fans.  The counterparts of those cults were the passive individualists who wanted only to be entertained, to "boogie," to get down, and these were the fans who constantly shouted for "Magic Bus" and "Boris The Spider" no matter what else was going on.  This part of the rock crowd was less pretentious than the style cultists, but they didn't listen at all.  If the snobs on rock's right were obnoxious, these fans were pitiable, for they'd been cheated out of the best part of what the music had to offer -- its sense of interaction.

Everyone, no matter where they found themselves in this process, was trapped and diminished by it.  Even the musicians didn't really gain, for as they became more popular in a less meaningful sense, it became inevitable that the next generation of listeners would be more fickle and fewer in number.  Since rock no longer mattered as much, it no longer kept a firm hold on its fans.
...

Thus rock's limits were set.  The bands could not break past them; they lacked the will and the incentive.  Neither were the kids able to summon up the energy to make a change.

--Dave Marsh, Before I Get Old: The Story of the Who

 

I Was a Roadie for an Adult Contemporary Band, day 4: Nashville, TN

I realized that I've been repeating myself in these posts, almost to the point that it's like a Philip Glass piece (rimshot).  And I also realized that I may have oversold the Day 4 drama.  It's really not that exciting, which, in a way, is part of the point of these posts (as is alliteration, apparently).

Sleeping on the bus was starting to become a challenge.  I was in one of the top bunks, which are much more susceptible to violently jarring movements and vibrations than the lower bunks.  I nearly fell out several times, and there's no restraining bar or anything to keep you in the bunk.  So after minimal intermittent sleep we arrived at a radio station in Nashville.  But not to play on the air: to play for the DJs, program directors, and staff.  Huh?  Yeah, apparently in-office performances have taken the place of garbage bags full of cocaine as incentives to get stations to play a record.

We loaded the keyboards, drums, and PA onto dollies and got them into the station's offices on the second floor.  We were met by the Virgin Records rep for the mid-Atlantic area, whose name was probably Bob (all these reps are named Bob and have horrible hairpieces).  I didn't catch the whole conversation between him and our tour manager, but I kept hearing the word "markets."  That made me laugh and cringe simultaneously.  Linge?  Craugh?  Anyway, the way this guy was talking about ACB it sounded more like he was desperately trying to convince himself of their sales potential than to convince others of it.  I felt kinda bad for him.

After three songs the Virgin rep addressed the station staff, and stressed that "Song With A Video That Looks Like A Commercial For An Air Freshener" was the single off ACB's album.  He said, "It was the haunting ballad you heard in the middle of their set."  Hearing him say that just made me want to tear out a vital organ and throw it at him.  Did they do test-marketing on "haunting ballads"?  Is there a graph that shows a direct correlation between sales and hauntosity?  I stumbled around the program director shmoes (whose office walls proudly displayed gold records given to them by such bands as Counting Crows and the Dave Matthews Band -- which is like being really proud of off-white linoleum) disassembling the PA and wrapping up cables.  It was a weird atmosphere to be in, and having gotten no sleep, I was in a deeply surly mood.  I immediately realized that these kind of goofball radio shenanigans, presided over by people named Bob who've spent so much of their lives championing blandness that it's grown into a tumor where their soul used to be (I was reminded of the PR person who described Vanilla Coke as "an innovative refreshment experience"), were something I'd have to get used to on this tour.  And I wasn't prepared to do so.

The show that night was at the historic Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry.  I've always wanted to see the Ryman, but unfortunately had precious little time to seriously take it in.  Apparently these days they just let any old motherfucker play there.  I assumed it was held in reserve for special occasions like, say, a Merle Haggard concert.  Or James Brown*.  But no, every Wilco, Coldplay, and Interpol gets to play there.  The catering room had posters on the wall from past shows, all done in the same old-timey style; so it'd advertise a Coldplay concert using the same font they'd use for a Willie Nelson poster ("Yee-haw, pardners!  Come on down for some good ol' honky-tonkin' with Coldplay!").  The room itself was actually quite stunning.  The original pews were still in place, and the original advertisements for Nissan and Infiniti were still there, projected onto the walls on either side of the stage.  Ah yes, who can forget those Grand Ole Opry radio shows from the early 50s when Hank Williams would extol the virtues of his brand new Infiniti ("Friends, I've driven a lot of cars, and odds are I'll die in one.  When I do, I hope it's in my brand-new Infiniti M45 sports sedan.  After a night of drinking and painkillers, it's nice to relax into the hand-stitched leather seats, knowing that the side-curtain airbags will most certainly save my life when I nod off at the wheel"). 

I don't remember too much about ACB's set -- in a way, I think that was the point, as the sets of ACB and Rufus were designed for consistency above all else, and were very effective as such.  But the load-out was faintly hilarious.  Since the Ryman was built before the advent of huge-ass PAs and lighting rigs, it wasn't equipped for easy backstage load-outs.  So we had to roll the piano shell through the lobby during Neko Case's set (which I fucking missed again).  I swear I overheard someone say, "I was all set to buy ACB's record, but now that I know she wasn't playing a real upright piano, forget it."  Yeah, we blew the illusion.  Anyway, I caught most of Rufus' set again, right up to the Judy Garland number towards the end.  The one part of his set I made sure to catch each night was when he did "Between My Legs," as there was a different YouTube contest winner doing the spoken word bit every night (the best was in Austin).  But he plays a pretty long show.  The Ryman audience wouldn't have it, and the hall was maybe one-third full by the end.  What would you rather do as a performer: leave them wanting more, or leave them wanting less?  Then again, three hours of solid entertainment for $45 is a colossal bargain these days.

We had another radio performance in Charlottesville, VA the next day, and another night of shaky sleep and an early start.  I was starting to realize that I was in the wrong place, that not only was I not a good fit for this job, but I wasn't a good fit for any sort of work in the "music" "industry."  I didn't think I was really so naive as to think industry goofballs didn't actually talk about music in such crass terms, but apparently I was.  This was my first full exposure to that world, and while such exposure was useful as a sort of confirmation of Really Obvious Shit ("Wow, Mr. Burns really is evil!"), it also confirmed that I wanted no part of it.

There was nothing new or challenging or even the least bit vital about the performances (which is not to say they weren't entertaining -- they were, and I think in a way the consistency was what was supposed to be entertaining about them), and for me the whole experience was basically reinforcing a lot of negative feelings I'd had about this kind of machinery at this level.  The audience weren't there to make any sort of contribution to the experience (apart from financially, and apart from the token acknowledgment of audience members with the YouTube contest), and not only did that not bother anyone, but even the fact that the audience was an afterthought was itself an afterthought. 

Most rock musicians had no objection to being placed upon pedestals, given great privleges and mammoth incomes, even though they knew...that without the interaction with their audience their power would be nonexistent.  While a number of relative visionaries had suggested that another mode of rock presentation must be created, one which decentralized the performance, there was not enough dissatisfaction with the current modes to create such a change.  The fans and the stars were both quite satisfied with rock as it existed.  There was no outcry (or not much of one) from the mass of rock listeners to have their contributions recognized, and there was little or no incentive for the performers to spell it out for them. 

-- Dave Marsh, Before I Get Old: The Story of the Who

*"Brown said it was clear from the shrinking number of white faces at his shows that "Say It Loud" cost him much of the crossover audience his mid-60s hits had built. Yet the overwhelming power of Brown's music and message kept leaping racial boundaries (even on "Say It Loud" the children's chorus was made up entirely of whites and Asians). Later, country stars such as Barbara Mandrell and Porter Wagoner waged a lengthy and ultimately successful campaign to bring James Brown to the Grand Ol Opry. James got up on that hallowed stage and did a couple of country songs and spoke about the impact of the Grand Ol Opry on his work. He was greeted warmly by most Opry fans who, in addition to enjoying the music, may have felt a kinship with Brown based on a common background of Southern poverty."  --Rock & Rap Confidential