U2/Saturday Night Live/ Nov. 20, 2004

I like stage shows. Dancing. Costumes. Wardrobe malfunctions. Moving, mechanical parts. If Madonna's gotta lip-synch to pull it off, so be it. This is spectacle and a good spectacle is a mighty thing to behold.
I also love performance. I tend to think of this as a more stripped down thing. The moving mechanical parts are humans. Humans attached to instruments. A rock band in its most basic form would fit here. Rappers in a cipher, too.
Can a spectacle feature performance? Yes. Can a performance veer into spectacle? Yes. But the main thing is, they both can stand on their own.
I don't want to get into one of these debates. They both have their merits. Hallelujah!
That said, one of the most inspiring bits of performance I've witnessed recently is U2 on SNL this past week.
Usually a performer offers up 2 songs at most to the late night tv crowd; on this particular Saturday night, u2 took the stage for a third time during that goodbye period when the cast is all on the stage.
The Edge kicked into the jagged chords of "I Will Follow," the band's king clarion call from its clarion clogged song file. Bono dropped into all the requisite rock star poses (the toe-to-ground, the cross, the it's-cold-outside). The Edge slid up and started singing the chorus into Bono's mic. Bono slung an arm around his shoulder and said something like, "I'd follow you anywhere." Feels cheesy to write it, but it felt sweet and real when it happened.
Then Bono walked off the stage and started heading toward the audience. Clearly this wasn't planned. The camera people seemed confused. This wasn't part of the master plan. The Edge followed Bono out into the audience. A kerfuffle unfolded on live television. A joyous kerfuffle. How rare.
Bono started grabbing the camera and pulled it along in Zoo TV fashion. He straddled some woman in the front row and she looked like she might explode with happiness. He then headed toward the main stage where the cast members were jumping up and down. He pulled Amy Poehler to his chest and she looked like she was crying.
The song ended and the audience crackled and convulsed. Just as the show was about to go off the air, I could hear Bono say, "One more! One more!" The crowd officially went kablooey. Cut to commercial. Only in my imagination could I guess what the rest of that set was like.
I was sweating when it was over.
Now, your turn. See it here.

Doobie Brothers et al/Hammerstein Ballroom/Nov. 10, 2004

Reviewed by Mac Montandon

Not since the Big Chill soundtrack hit record racks in 1983 has so much baby-boomer rock been seen in one place.

The New York City-based nonprofit Boomer Coalition wheeled out some of pop music's creakiest heavy hitters on Wednesday night at the Hammerstein Ballroom to raise awareness and funds for their fight against cardiovascular disease, or CVD. At times the R&B and blues-leaning lineup---anchored by the Doobie Brothers,Los Lobos, the Taj Mahal Trio, and Patti LaBelle---slung enough overcooked noodle to satisfy an Olive Garden franchisee. But the forgiving and nearly filled house happily stuck with the if-it-feels-good-do-it vibe of the night.

From very early on it was clear the late-arriving crowd came out more for the music than the message. Before the show, lobby lingerers buzzed, as two computers set up for new member registration sat lonely and unused. The multi-culti crowd, thick with older guys stroking graying goatees and younger, GAP-clad latte-lovers, seemed primed for pleasure. LaBelle kicked things off with a short and bizarre set. Before begging off, saying she was "sick as a frog," the 60-year-old soulstress dolloped a taste of her soaring, molasses sweet jazz riffs on an adoring audience. Her frothy act dissolved soon after she invited five men from the crowd to dance with her onstage and sing along to "Voulez Vous Couchez Avec Moi, Ce Soir?" A rail-thin exhibitionist named Earl briefly stole the show with emphatic, comically twitchy dance moves.

Taj Mahal was up next and his heavy, straight ahead blues rescued the night from its initial Gong Show flavor. Los Lobos provided the evening's biggest burst of raw power, cranking out Latino-tinted garage rock. The seven-piece outfit enhanced their crackly, distorted sound with a three-guitar front. Taj Mahal joined them for a rumbling version of the blues standard, "Sweet Home Chicago," that had the crowd shaking in their 501s. Perhaps the shows most apropos moment came during Taj Mahal's set, when a waft of marijuana smoke blanketed the balcony. If nothing else, this proved that the Boomer Coalition was on to something when they ran ads in the New Yorker magazine that read: "If you smoked pot at Monterey in '67, you might have CVD."

That and a ticket to a mid-week dinosaur rock show.

Jimmy Eat World/Webster Hall/Nov. 8, 2004

I thought I’d be over it by now, but I’m still smarting from the election. Even though I’ve made public promises to be optimistic (and I do have my moments), I’m still sore and sad and mad and snippy. Thank god for the music.

In moments like these, I like nothing more than a lil’ jangle pop to put a snap to my step. For those born after, say, 1980, jangle pop (or jangulius populis) is the early bud of what later blossomed into radio-friendly alternative rock. Sprung from The Byrd’s jingle jangle morning (Mary Lou Lord later wrote an ode to that phrase), with just a few harmonies and some rattle and hum, jangle pop at its best is wildly optimistic yet defiantly angry. Starkly stubborn yet unapologetically vulnerable. Radically land-grabbing yet torn from the universal songbook. Lots of yets. Think REM’s “Radio Free Europe” with its insistent drumming urging on Stipe’s whine or Crowded House’s love poem “Something So Strong.”

One of today’s torchbearers of the jangle pop aesthetic is Arizona’s finest, Jimmy Eat World. Awful name, yes. But pretty, pretty songs. I needed to get a leg up from these sad times by seeing them live. Amy and I headed off to Webster Hall.

It was packed and Amy and I (being serious shortees) nudged ourselves in downstairs to the side. A pack of girls crammed up right on our asses and started giggling and doing a lot of up talk. “So, like, after class I went to the library? And it, was, like, empty?” I hate when girls do uptalk or speak Valley Girlese. It’s my own personal prejudice. There’s no way that you can sound smart while engaging in these activities. Even Kathleen Hanna. And I don’t buy that reclaiming the whatthefuck bullshit.

So, anyway, these girls are behind us and I think, “Great, they’re going to have inane conversations behind us the whole show.” But from the moment the band started with “Bleed American” through even much older material, these girls sang along, every word. Every word. And not in that self-conscious Dashboard Confessional audience way, but in a full-throttle spirit release way. And I loved them then, I really did.

Jimmy Eat World seem to be a play-by-the-book live band. Jim Adkins, the main singer and guitar player, is the energy force of it all (and his floppy, sweaty bangs just may be the fifth member of the group) as he jumps up and down and hunches his shoulders just so.

In a weird way, I got what I wanted from the show, but it wasn’t handed to me by JEW, necessarily. Yes, the meta moment when the band played “Praise Chorus,” (their homage to music that’s inspired them and includes snippets of other songs) while the audience sang back its own form of appreciation, that was part of it. But it was the little praise chorus behind me that lifted my spirits. Their energy and commitment was irrefutable. And that’s the least I can bring to the party.