Lou Reed: 1942-2013

By Deborah Sprague and Kara Tucker

Deb
In the wake of Lou Reed’s death, a lot of folks came forward to say that the man was a great artist despite the fact that he didn’t give a damn, which isn’t the case – he was a great artist precisely because he didn’t give a damn.

Oh, he cared plenty about the work he was doing – in nearly a half-century of making music, it’s hard to pick out more than a handful of things that came across as half-assed or tossed off, not even in the days when he was a piece-work staffer hired to jump-start a new dance craze or conjure up images of the wild surf from a warren in the bowels of the Big Apple. What he didn’t care about was what you – or me, or anyone else for that matter – cared about the finished “product” (a word that’d no doubt elicit an epithet from Reed if he heard it applied to his work).

That tunnel vision didn’t translate into pretense – well, not too often – when it came time to actually put his ideas into practice. That’s because Lou Reed was his generation’s archetypal New York musician: Not only did he constantly write about the city – sneering at the slumming debutantes of  “Downtown Dirt” and celebrating one of its culinary treasures in “Egg Cream”– he embodied it.  His sense of place was immutable. Reed  absorbed the sounds that surrounded him, from the street corner doo-wop that permeated the Brooklyn streets of his earliest youth to the sentimental journeys of the post-Sinatra balladeers that sprang up all around the tri-state area in those ostensibly fallow years before the Beatles and Stones came along to shake things up again.

Reed never discarded the lessons he picked up in those early days, the harmonies, the lyrical economy, the straightforward structures – remember, he’s the guy who matter-of-factly noted that when you get to “three chords, you’re into jazz.” He applied them a lot of different ways, ways that his progenitors probably never would’ve dreamed of (although Dion, who Reed would lovingly induct into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, knew the needle and the damage done every bit as well). But even at his most ostensibly outlandish, Lou Reed bared, as he put it in one of his most straightforward songs, a rock and roll heart – a leather-cloaked, but infinitely vulnerable spirit not all that far removed from Brando’s Wild One character, who, when asked “what are you rebelling against,” shot back, “whaddaya got?”

Rebellion was everywhere in Reed’s work. Allies, virtually nowhere. In  the Velvet Underground, he and his bandmates created a counter-counterculture that was as alien to the hippies on the left coast as it was to the so-called squares in middle America. They did their best to disperse the mellow haze of weed and good vibrations conjured up by those peers by painting red doors – and everything else – black, then pulling the walls in and practically force-feeding the listener the brown acid that the “good guys” tried to warn people away from.

Heroin, violence, obsession, sado-masochism and other alternate sexualities – these were Reed’s lyrical stock in trade, but rather than make them seem exotic, he took them at face value and presented them as part of everyday life. There was no rubber-necking in something like “Waiting for the Man,” just a sense of, well, time to go grab the 6 train and my wallet, I need to go grab a bag of smack. His deadpan delivery sealed the deal. The guitars might’ve screamed through “Sister Ray” with monumental violence, but Reed never raised his voice above a calm monotone, making things all the more foreboding.

He took that aesthetic with him when he split the band to embark on a solo career that clearly harkened back to his roots, a self-titled first album that kicked off with the Brooklyner-than-thou “I Can’t Stand It,” resplendent with mop-wielding landladies and blaring radios – but a nod to his own reality in the form of asides to Candy Darling, the transsexual Warhol superstar that remained dear to him even as he discarded his other peers from the era.

Throughout the early ‘70s, Reed wrangled with rock and roll -- with his audience, with the world for that matter – like a champion boxer, thrusting and parrying, sometimes playing rope-a-dope and sometimes stinging like a bee. He knew how to tease, how to please and how to infuriate, and his mercurial nature made figuring out which he’d do on any given day something of a crapshoot.

But even those who thought they could predict when Reed might zig or zag were likely given whiplash by his most divisive, spectacular, ugly, beautiful project – Metal Machine Music.  The four movements of that set  -- created, as the notes sneer, with "no instruments, no synthesizers, no panning, no phasing" -- split the difference between machine-shop audio vérité and the sort of eerie drones one can hear walking beneath transformers in the middle of nowhere. Move around the room while it plays, and you'll be amazed at the subtle but discernible differences created as the air shifts. Of course, you may find that it works just as well if you're merely trying to scare off a den of pesky squirrels.

Reed used that album the way old-fashioned farmers used controlled fire – to burn off the chaff around him and start over, charting a clear path with steely-eyed precision and sticking with it for the next decade-plus. Yes, he ventured into the abyss (on much of Street Hassle and The Blue Mask), and occasionally steered into the seas of cheese (on the oddly bouncy New Sensation, one of the mercifully few documentations of Reed seemingly paying attention to popular culture), but for the most part, he cast an aura of a man who was – to borrow the title of one of his more underrated offerings – Growing Up in Public.

By and large, Reed removed himself from the rock and roll arena a while ago . He’d made his peace with John Cale --  a reunion that redoubled the poignancy of Songs For Drella, itself an olive branch of sorts to Andy Warhol, who was both a mentor and a bête noire in Reed’s life – then stepped to the precipice to address mortality in an even more close-up fashion with Magic and Loss, a painfully elegant dissertation on death that conjured both of the titular elements in spades.

By the dawn of the new millennium, Lou had settled into an odd-but-appropriate position as an elder statesman of the “other” – a guide, not to the self-conscious, flamboyant outré stylists that command headlines, but to those traveling art’s underground railroad, those who move unblinkingly into the storm, like modern-day Flying Dutchmen. In death, as in life, he and his work reveal the most to those willing to peel slowly and see.

Kara
At some point on his 1978 spoken word/Lenny Bruce-inspired standup comedy/live music double album “Live: Take No Prisoners,” Lou Reed deadpanned the line, "I do Lou Reed better than anybody, so I’d better get on it.”
Reed passed away Sunday at the age of 71, less than a year after he had a liver transplant.
While it wasn’t the sudden shock of, say, Joe Strummer’s passing years earlier, that didn’t keep it from feeling like a punch in the gut to anyone who had the slightest bit of appreciation for Reed’s career.

One could make the argument that a good chunk of various strains of rock would not have existed in the way and time they did had Reed not opened the door. Of course, Reed would probably bristle and cop an attitude at being given a sobriquet like “Godfather of Alternative Rock”, “Godfather of Punk”, “Godfather of Glam” or any other such title that would be extremely apt and correct.
Reed could often come off as a pretentious, prickly jerk in interviews and other situations. He knew his stuff and gave off the air of someone who didn’t give a shit, because, well, he didn’t. This was no practiced air of indifference. He really didn’t give a shit.
In retrospect, it’s easy to see that it certainly served a purpose. By keeping some things at arms length, Reed was able to maintain a level of artistic freedom few get to enjoy. He took full advantage, both musically and lyrically.

The Velvet Underground were Reed’s first serious foray into music of his own, with some songs having been written on the side while he worked a day job as a staff writer for Pickwick Records, a label known for cheesy capitalizations and outright knockoffs.
Their four albums with Reed came out from 1967 through 1970. Television was squeamish to show married characters sleep in anything other than separate beds and here were songs dealing with subjects like homosexuality, sadomasochism, transsexuality and domestic violence.

Reed’s material wasn’t just running counter to the prevailing mainstream, it also wasn’t in line with the prevailing counterculture, either.
Lyrically, it’s a different sentiment to go from “Turn off your mind. Relax and float downstream” as Lennon sang in 1966 to “I don't know just where I'm going.  But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can. 'Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man, when I put a spike into my vein” as Reed sang a year later (in a song written before the Beatles’ one, mind you).
Whether lyrically or in the presentation, dressed in black and wearing shades on stage, it all seemed to say, “Fuck this hippie shit.” Given the response to the VU’s live act in San Francisco, the feeling was mutual.

Musically, the material was in uncharted waters as well -- dissonance from Cale’s viola, the primitive drumming from Tucker, the loudness with which they all played, the distortion and feedback, the mix of arty ambitions and pretensions with basic primitivity (basing some songs off two chords or three).
Given the climate these albums were released in, you’d probably say that it was not the wisest commercial strategy. You’d be right. Only one of VU’s albums hit the Billboard chart at the time of release and it peaked at 197.
Unlike perhaps his closest contemporary in terms of following one’s muse no matter what – Neil Young – Reed didn’t always have huge chart success. He only had one chart single, 1972’s “Walk on the Wild Side.”
Of course, even then, he managed to put some very risqué subject matter into a song, as no doubt some fans (and even the censors) got so caught up in all those “Doo Doo Doos” to pay attention to, for example, the line, “But she never lost her head even when she was giving head”, let alone the fact that the she in question was a trans woman.

Reed did manage to one-up Young in another department. The latter basically spent a good chunk of the ‘80s effectively giving the middle finger to his label (and perhaps some of his fans) were either weak genre exercises or lesser versions of turf he’d he traveled before.
As for Reed? He took care of it in one double album – 1975’s “Metal Machine Music.” To a select few (like Deborah); it’s a solid effort exploring the concept of drone and No Wave, territory later explored by bands like Sonic Youth. To the rest of us, it’s an unlistenable endurance test of nothing but minutes of feedback loops without the slightest bit of songs to tether them. They owe more to Reed’s admittedly chemically altered state of mind at the time than any sort of great art (and, plus, he did cacophony better with “Sister Ray.”).
He may have told Lester Bangs, “My bullshit is worth more than other people’s diamonds” but this all-time infamous major label album smells more like an industrial feedlot than West 47^th Street.

While Reed did not have hit songs in the conventional chart sense, he wrote songs that became standards and songs that were highly influential. Even if they weren’t songs that sounded exactly like Velvet Underground or Lou Reed (although there were a ton of those), chances are you heard songs by artists and bands influenced by parts or all of Reed’s songs and approach to artistic integrity.
There’s a certain level of freedom in not having to give a damn as an artist, to being able to maintain that detachment. It allowed Reed to tackle subject matters almost with the eyes of a documentarian as much as a poet. It didn’t matter whether the subject matter was a junkie strung out in some New York City park or the 1 percent (well before that term came into being) or whether it was about the lives of people in Reed’s life or Reed himself.

He tried to avoid judging a lot of the people and scenarios he wrote about, trying to preserve the detachment. But while the metaphorical camera didn’t blink, Reed’s approach, where he chose to point the lens, didn’t necessarily lead to emotionless ironic detachment. He could write songs as affecting and tender as anyone. There was “Pale Blue Eyes”- an achingly lovely, bittersweet song about a love that any sensitive ‘70s singer songwriter would have killed for -- or “Hello, It’s Me,” about Andy Warhol’s death with Reed at his most vulnerable.
Whether that muse, that desire to document what was in the path of the lens was turned inward (“The Blue Mask”), towards the city that was his actual and spiritual home (“New York”), expressed through concept (“Berlin”, “Raven”) or through relatively unbridled happiness (“New Sensation”).

Wherever it was pointed, the results taken as a whole resulted in a body of work that, along with that desire to maintain the detachment and become all navel-gazey, certainly could have played into Reed’s aversion to dealing with the press a lot of the time. Or for that matter, to write anything resembling a memoir.
He told Rolling Stone in 1987, “All through this, I’ve always thought if you thought of all of it as a book, then you have the Great American Novel, every record as a chapter. They’re all in chronological order. You take the whole thing, stack it in listen to it in order, there’s my Great American Novel.”
While Reed had a better career batting average than most with few outright misfires – the aforementioned “Metal Machine Music”, the somewhat tossed off “Sally Can’t Dance”, the ultimately clunky and ill-conceived “Lulu” album with Metallica – the misfires kept it from being THE greatest American Novel.  And heck, even “Sally” gave us the powerful “Kill Your Sons” and the poignant “Billy.”
It also couldn’t be the Great American Novel because Reed’s body of work was also part memoir. Whether he maintaining his detached gaze outward or inward, the career, taken as a whole says a lot about who Reed was than a book would and did so without diverting from wherever his musical desires took him next.

Taken as a whole, Reed was a man who, yes, could come off as an egotistical and needlessly grumpily contrarian at times, but he had the body of work to back it up – an often amazing songwriter and a terrific and influential guitarist behind that career’s worth of material. Behind the detachment and the occasional arms length-inducing assholery was often a man with real heart, kindness, intelligence and integrity and a truly unique giant in the world of rock and roll.
He may have said it with more than a little sarcasm and irony back in 1978, but damned if the man wasn’t right. He DID do Lou Reed better than anybody.

2013 VMAs: As They Happened

By Kara Tucker

Tonight’s MTV Video Music Awards in live blog form.
9:00 p.m. – Is Lady Gaga the Eggman? Goo goo ga joob.
9:03 p.m. – Gaga is clearly premiering her Vegas act. Multiple costume changes on stage..well…a jacket on and off and a variety of bad wigs.
9:04 p.m. – On to the clam shell bikini. Her homage to Botticelli or perhaps Ed’s Clam Shack on Route 52.
9:05 p.m. – That was…underwhelming
9:06 p.m. – Did that guy from One Direction just say, “Whatsup, Brooklyn?”..he did it again. Please don’t say “homies in the hizzouse.”
9:08 p.m. – Selena Gomez wins “Best Pop Video.” Bruno Mars more surprised than Taylor Swift.
9:17 p.m. – Miley Cyrus, apparently appropriating Japanese TV Commercial culture now.
9:18 p.m. – Drake bobbing along to the beat…of a Miley song.
9:18 p.m. – “We Can’t Stop." Is the song subtitled "(Dancing With Furries)"?
9:19 p.m. – One Direction is unimpressed.
9:20 p.m. – Robin Thicke here to do his creepy hit song…with Miley Cyrus.
9:20 p.m. – Miley shaking her butt next to Thicke’s crotch and doing masturbatory moves with a foam No. 1 finger. Robin Thicke is 36 years old. Miley Cyrus is 20.
9:22 pm. – Is this a high school production with these props? Seriously cheap.
9:23 p.m. – Robin Thicke forgot his straw hat to go with that striped outfit.
9:24 p.m. – Song medley is over…ending opportunity for Miley Cyrus to embarrass herself further. Seriously, she was doing something cringeworthy whenever the camera showed her again.
9:27 p.m. – Drinking game…every time Macklemore says “homies,” do a shot.
9:27 p.m. – Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, clearly glad not to be part of that hallucinogenic medley that preceded the presentation for the Best Hip Hop Video award.
9:28 p.m. – Announcement: “Kanye West will be onstage next.”…at least he’s supposed to be this time.
9:36 p.m. – Did Kevin Hart basically do a joke implying Robin Thicke would kidnap a child? Ugh.
9:37 pm. – Jared Leto onstage. Evidently Anthony Kiedis had a garage sale.
9:38 p.m – Kanye West performing the worst song on his new album, the execrable “Blood on the Leaves.”
9:39 p.m. – Please, God. Let his Autotune break down so we have to hear his real voice.
9:40 p.m. – He’s doubling down on the imagery from the “Strange Fruit” sample with the trees. Kanye, your troubles with women (apparently all of them are money-grubbing groupies according to this song) have nothing to do with lynching.
9:41 p.m. – Stop it, Mr. West. For the love of God.
9:41 p.m. – Miley Cyrus came across more dignified than Kanye West did. Okay, no she didn’t. But the fact that Kanye’s even in that ballpark speaks volumes.
9:48 p.m. – Nile Rodgers!  Awesomeness.
9:48 p.m. -- Pharrell, mentioning who Rodgers has worked with but not mentioning Chic? * Cue shaking of head *
9:48 p.m. – The two gentlemen from Daft Punk not speaking. If only Kanye West did the same.
9:49 p.m. – Random thought..that could be anyone inside those Daft Punk masks.
9:50 p.m. – Best female video to Taylor Swift. Somebody clothesline Kanye if he approaches the stage.
9:51 p.m. – Best video with a social message..what? Miley’s twerking video not nominated? Ohh…
9:51 p.m. – Macklemore and Ryan Lewis win for “Same Love.” Good.
9:52 p.m. – Did Gaga just high-five Will Smith?
9:56 p.m. – Commercial break. It just occurred to me that none of the people Kendrick Lamar called out in that verse performed onstage with the Miley Cyrus Furrypalooza.
10:00 p.m. – Justin Timberlake is the “President of Pop” now? Umm…
10:01 p.m. – Timberlake performing as the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award winner, per-recorded segment of him in the Barclay’s Center. Lip sync-tastic!
10:02 p.m. – What happened to the sound feed on this medley? Sounds like a radio station not tuned in correctly.
10:04 p.m. – Seriously, someone needs to fix this. It sounds unlistenable.
10:04 p.m. – A shame because this would be halfway entertaining if the sound worked.
10:05 p.m. – A Super Bowl Halftime Show has broken out onstage at the Barclays Center.
10:10 pm. – Apparently JT is doing a snippet of every song he ever recorded.
10:10 p.m. – Worst-kept secret of the weekend. Onstage reunion of N*Sync. What a shock. Sound still not fixed.
10:11 p.m. – You can tell the audience is into it. Even one of the One Direction members managed to not look bored.
10:12 p.m. – Reunion over. Timberlake leaves his former bandmates behind. Literally.
10:13 p.m. – “Suit and Tie” or, perhaps more accurately, “I’m The Star Now, Guys.”
10:16 p.m. – The Distorted Timberlake Medley is finally over. Seriously. Who butchered the sound on that?
10:18 p.m. – “N*Sync. What was that?” About two minutes of screen time, Mr. Fallon, if we're being generous.
10:18 p.m. – If Lance Bass and JC Chasez had been under those Daft Punk masks, they’d have doubled their onscreen time.
10:26 p.m. – Kevin Hart back on, playing catch-up in an effort to get more screen time than Timberlake and as many laughs as Kanye.
10:28 p.m. – “Song of the Summer” nominees. Should be Daft Punk. It won’t be.
10:30 p.m. – Of course, it’s One Direction. They win one for the Shipper.
10:32 p.m. – “Hating someone for their sexual orientation is the same as hating someone for the color of their skin”..good sentiment. Incomplete sentiment, but it’s a start.
10:33 p.m. – Macklemore and Ryan Lewis performing “Same Love.” Cue predictable outrage from the usual cast of characters on the Far Right.
10:34 p.m. – “Have you read the YouTube comments lately?” Not if I can help it.
10:37 p.m. – It IS a little easier to avoid crying on Sunday when you have a Moon Man.
10:38 pm. – “To learn more about marriage equality…”graphic on the screen. Times have changed.
10:42 p.m. – Adam Lambert, sadly only a presenter this year. Emili Sande for that matter.
10:43 p.m. – Austin Mahone, a pop flavor of the month. wins Best New Artist.
10:44 p.m. – God gets His first shoutout of the night.
10:45 p.m. -- If you did a shot any time a white person said “Homies” tonight, you’d be dead of alcohol poisoning.
10:46 p.m. – Drake’s turn to perform…getting videobombed by some dude in a backwards adjustable baseball cap and shades. Again, an adjustable cap.
10:50 p.m. – Seeing the house DJ at the VMAs answers the question of “What happened to Robin Thicke’s straw hat?”
10:50 p.m. – Amazingly, this is the first time most of these videos have appeared on MTV when it wasn’t third shift hours.
10:55 p.m. – Time for the Best Male Video. Bruno Mars and his hat win.
11:03 p.m. – Mars (and hat) back onstage to perform his new song. And it has an actual hook. Not sure about the lyric on it, though.
11:06 p.m. – A planetarium laser show has broken out at the Barclays Center.
11:15 p.m. – Video of the Year goes to Justin Timberlake for “Mirrors.”  Thank goodness it wasn’t “Blurred Lines.”
11:15 p.m. – Timberlake has switched to what looks like a bowling shirt.
11:17 p.m. – Timberlake dedicates the award to his grandparents, a genuinely sweet moment.
11:18 p.m. – Katy Perry at the Brooklyn Bridge performing “Roar” doing the boxing theme.
11:19 p.m. – I can’t really begrudge this one. The song has a pretty strong hook. I would have been shocked if it hadn’t been a big hit.
11:21 p.m. – Jumping rope? Mmmmkay. Waiting for "Mama Said Knock You Out" to break out.
11:21 p.m. – Singing from the turnbuckle now before bringing the hook back for the rest of the song.
11:24 p.m. – As the show rebroadcast starts, all in all, no huge surprises. A lot of live “performing”, but not as much singing. Lady Gaga seemed conventional. Miley Cyrus was a trainwreck creating buzz for the wrong reasons. Kanye screamed his way through an autotuned monstrosity of a song that is the worst on the worst-selling album of his career. Timberlake’s performance took over 15 minutes and seemed twice that long because of horrendous sound that was never fixed. The N*Sync “reunion” lasted all of two minutes and wasn’t worth two seconds of pre-show hype for that short of an appearance.
Given how much time the network gives over to shows like “Teen Mom,” it felt like a music show designed by people who hate music – a cynical “let’s put out whatever” affair that offered a few decent performances, but almost no inspiration.

First Listen: Franz Ferdinand, Nine Inch Nails

By Kara Tucker and Deborah Sprague

Franz Ferdinand: Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action
DEB: When Franz Ferdinand slipped off the radar a few years ago, fans were left wondering what the heck was keeping them out of the fray – was it something pedestrian, like garden variety artistic differences, or a more intriguing predicament….say, Alex Kapranos battling chronic gout due to that restaurant critic moonlighting gig?

The emergence of Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Actions doesn’t answer that question, but it does deliver the same sort of synaptic jolt the quartet seemed capable of mustering up in their sleep around the time they threw down the gauntlet with “Take Me Out.” Just in the nick of time, too – the band’s unlikely blend of urbanity and hyper-activity is sorely needed in these days of faux-hick folksiness and geekily ironic twerk-fests.

The sleek-yet-sweaty tone is set within the first few bars of the de-facto title track, “Right Action,” which lopes along like some sort of bastard grandson of vintage Duran Duran and “Heart of Glass”-era Blondie – propelled by an irresistible bassline and Kapranos’ arch tones (which he wraps around such teasing lines as “come home, practically all is nearly forgiven”). It’s playful, but not altogether jolly, his smile framed by a slightly menacing wisp of Gauloises smoke.

“Evil Eye” ratchets up the rhythmic intensity and the verbal paranoia a level or two, conjuring a mood reminiscent of the Clash’s dancefloor endeavors circa Sandinista –without the unconvincing hip-hop veneer. That vibe, airy without being breezy, has long been a FF trademark, and they capture it more effectively here than on the disappointing You Could Have It So Much Better.

While the band uses a lot of primary colors here, concentrating on stark landscapes without too much detail, there are some bracing dayglo interludes as well – notably “Love Illumination,” which tosses simple, angular solos (both guitar and keyboard) into the mix, adding a spoonful of sugar in the form of lovely swinging sixties backing vocals.

Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Actions isn’t without its missteps – “Stand on the Horizon” aims for a languid ripeness but ends up collapsing under a leaden lattice of synths. “Fresh Strawberries” falls similarly short in its Kinks-wannabe jauntiness, a hollow sort of exercise that’s all too fitting for Kapranos’  blasé assertion that “I believe there’s nothing too believe.”

But that snide mindset doesn’t last long. The spaghetti-surf  “Treason! Animals” – which could pass muster on one of those lost-gem garage collections, if not for Kapranos’ affably cool croon – ranks among their grooviest offerings, while the closing “Goodbye, Lovers and Friends” pokes the listener with lines like “I hate pop music…I hate bright colors,” all the while presenting both, deftly wrapped in a tantalizingly tasty shell and shimmering sexily in a way that would make Bryan Ferry smile.

KARA: Scotland’s Franz Ferdinand is perhaps testing to see just how short attention spans can be in the world of 24-hour news cycles and 140-character bursts of response.
There was a four-year wait between their second album – “You Could Have It So Much Better” and 2009’s “Tonight.”
Now comes the Glaswegian’s fourth album after another four year wait.

Franz Ferdinand’s breakout hit  – “Take Me Out” – off their self titled debut was a song full of hooks that also set the template for much of its approach. They specialized in angular post-punk you could dance to with hints of the UK pop of their forebears. Start the album, bop your head, shake your booty, maybe even a little air guitar to the occasional riff, done.
“Right Thoughts..” is not really a deviation from the bands formula for better and worse. When the songs click, catchy smart fun ensues – the kind to get you moving. When it doesn’t, the seams show.
Luckily, Franz Ferdinand has a pretty solid ratio of hits to misses.

“Right Action” starts the album off with an intro ready-made for handclaps and the album title being sung twice in the first 45 seconds. The lead single, it should fit nicely on a future best-of compilation for the band.
“Evil Eye” follows with a funkier feel. Alex Kapranos asks, “What’s the color of the next car?” and the backing voices answer “Red, ya bastard” and the song is off-and-going headfirst into ‘80s Land. The pull it off without feeling dated (no overly boomed up drums here).

Indeed, there’s a bit of spot the influence one can easily play with “Right Thoughts..” – “Oh hey! There’s a Bowie-esque croon! Oh, there’s a little New Order-style guitar!”
But to their credit, Franz Ferdinand manage to keep things from sounding too derivative, in part because they keep things moving briskly enough and in well-crafted fashion as to not sound like copycats.

“Stand on the Horizon” goes from a quiet ballad start (a relief in pace) before going into more familiar territory with that croon, even if it could use a touch more swoon.
Not every song works. “Fresh Strawberries” has the promising line of “Soon we will be rotten, We will all be forgotten, Half-remembered rumors of the old”, but the darker, gothy feel is lost with a sunny-sounded chorus. It’s a graft that doesn’t take.

“Brief Encounters” opens with a track that could be used to the theme for some basic cable show about space in the ‘80s before going into almost reggae-inflected Britpop. Again, the seams show.
On the other hand, the insistently catchy “Bullet” is about as subtle as its chorus implies. They WILL hammer this song into your brain, but it works in spite of its obviousness.

The final song on the album might just be the best, as it combines craft with refreshingly pulling back a touch. There’s a more subtle chorus to go with the reverbed vocals on the percussion-driven verses. It’s enough to make you wish for more subtlety elsewhere on the album.
At the end, Kapanos sings, “So sad to leave you. When they lie and say this not the end, you can laugh as if we’re still together/But this really is the end.”

It could be a break-up with a lover song or it could be a song about the period where the band was facing breakup rumors a couple years ago. Or it could just be more irony piled into a song where he croons about how he hates pop music.
It’s for the best that it’s not a song about FF’s current state of internal affairs. “Right Words…” isn’t quite a return to form as much as it is a simple return. A welcome return it is with pop featuring Brofolkian mandolin circles, teen pop with hip-hop-for-hire bolted on and, well, a certain celebrity offspring’s creepfest.
For its occasional faults, “Right Words…” is another solid effort.
Consider your head bobbed, your booty shaken and your air guitar strummed.
 
Song – Nine Inch Nails: Everything
“
Hesitation Marks”, Trent Reznor’s first album under the NIN name since 2008, will be released Sept. 2.
Three songs have been put out so far. “Came Back Haunted” is a mixture of synths a plenty, a chantable title in the chorus. The song’s over halfway through before the guitars kick in. It was a solid initial shot.
Copy A is somewhat of a grower with its paranoid feel, even if it isn’t prime NIN and sticks more to the light dance side of things.

Now comes…Everything. And, um, it’s, um, different.
It’s Trent Reznor goes pop. Seriously, the verses musically sounds like something someone would write for Katy Perry and the pitch altering on Reznor’s vocals becomes distracting.
Even when the distortion kicks in on the chorus, it doesn’t last, as guitars off a Cure record and layered harmonies appear.
Then distortion, then the “Hey, Think Katy Perry Would Like This?” verse again and then the Cure guitars and it’s all just disorienting.
Of course, odds were that Reznor wasn’t going to write the same way in his 40s that he did in his 20s. And maybe “Everything”, with its lyrics of trying to assure one’s self that things are good, fits better in context of the album.
Or maybe he’s just prepping us for a Slam Bamboo reunion.
But for now, we are left trying to absorb the fact that Trent Reznor has written a song you can do The Carlton to.

What Did Yeezus Do?

By Deborah Sprague and Kara Tucker

It’s been a few months since the self-promotional machine that is Kanye West began to emerge from a cocoon of secrecy.
He stood amidst a hype machine that included a performance of two new songs on the season finale of “Saturday Night Live” and a New York Times interview that amply displayed an ego so large and vast it could apply for statehood.
But while the ever-so-modest West was busy comparing himself to Steve Jobs, Henry Ford and Anna Wintour, among others) or backpedaling further from his fauxpology for crashing the stage to interrupt Taylor Swift’s acceptance at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards and turn himself into an “Imma Let You Finish” instant-meme punchline, there was the matter of one thing..the product.
West was looking to continue a run of five straight No. 1 albums (his debut, “College Dropout” peaked at No. 2). He’d come back from the artistically awkward “808’s and Heartbreak” (full of wretched Autotuned “singing” and a mostly bleak backdrop which still sold very well) with the more expansive “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” and semi-placeholder “Watch the Throne” (an album shared with Jay-Z and various other guest stars) that held up better as art while holding up commercially.
There was much secrecy  for a long time surrounding the album (which would be released with the potential eye-rolling title of “Yeezus”). There were reports claiming that West and producer Rick Rubin were still finalizing work on the album a week before its release.
Was the work worth it? Would West have another hit on his hands? Reviews tended to run heavily in the positive camp.
The album leaked four days prior to its release, but the album still debuted at No. 1 with solid numbers for a hip-hop release, although sales were less than projected. More ominous was the sharp drop (80 percent) in sales in the albums second week, the fourth-largest drop for an album to debut at No. 1 in the SoundScan era.
To date, the album has sold less than half of what its immediate processor. Was this a case where the majority of critics missed the boat or was this a case of a fickle fanbase not able to appreciate a quality effort.
First, let’s look at the album itself.

DEBORAH'S TAKE


Kanye West has never come across as bolder, louder or more aggressive than he does on Yeezus, the most in-your-face album of his career. But as the disc’s final notes resonate their last, it’s hard to escape the thought that the whole endeavor is merely, to borrow one of Shakespeare’s most enduring lines, a tale…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Not that West is, as the skipped part of that quotation would put it, an idiot. Far from it. He’s sharp enough to orchestrate the press as dexterously as he does the samples that he’s woven together over the course of his career, brilliant at marketing and yes, an on-again, off-again master of that amorphous entity known as flow.

 Kanye’s problem, however, is that he’s really only capable of writing about one topic – Kanye. When he first came onto the scene, he was a middle-class kid with a chip on his shoulder about the same sorts of things most indie-rock middle class kids had chips on their shoulders about – all delivered while wearing the ugliest sweaters since Bill Cosby’s heyday.

These days, things are a lot better for West – in terms of bank account and fashion sense – but you wouldn’t know it by listening to Yeezus. To his credit, he’s taken his bitterness and poured it – like some sort of alternate-universe honey – over some of the most sustained sonic anger hip-hop has seen in years. While there’s nothing particularly new about an MC incorporating elements from the world of hard rock and metal, most have divined their inspiration from guitar tunes that cleave closely to the tenet that it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

Yeezus ain’t got that swing. It’s got unrelenting thump, screech and discord, a mix that, at its best – the neo-horrorcore “I Am a God” and the hung-over sounding room-spinner “Guilt Trip” – leaves the listener roiled and flailing, without a center to hold onto. It’s a pretty impressive trick to pull off, the beckoning of the sound waves outweighing the sense of doom, luring the listener like a siren.

At times, West and his synth-slinging compatriots channel the spirit of confronto pioneers Suicide to the point that he seems almost willing to see Alan Vega and Martin Rev as co-equals in terms of musical divinity – a holy (smokes) trinity of sorts. That legitimate grittiness transcends studio boundaries, mixing the vibe of a Spanish Harlem street corner, a Crenshaw soul food joint and a tenement rooftop slaked with summer breezes, replacing ‘Ye’s usual constricted coldness with a genuine humanity that plays nicely off the minimal futurism of the backdrop.

But just when you think he can pull you in, West pushes you away violently – well, if you’re female, gay, Asian or (most ironically) wealthy. His misanthropy pokes through the surface of a half-dozen of the pieces here, sometimes in cartoonishly frat-boy fashion (the eye-roll worthy yellow-fever segment of “I’m In It”), but more often in a way that’s more infected than infectious.

When he gives in to his id, the old-enough-to-know better rapper allows himself the “luxury” of wading into a fetid pool of violent sexual imagery, where he wallows with meat-headed glee. His tin ear clangs especially atonally when the aforementioned “I’m In It” reaches its vortex, threatening to “put his fist in [a woman] like a civil rights sign” (a metaphor that no doubt has Malcolm X, not to mention West’s activist mom, spinning in the crypt).

 He hits similar bum notes with “New Slaves,” on which he seems to conflate his own addiction to luxury cars and trophy women to the problems facing actual addicts in the prison system – on which he can be found lingering acidly on the homophobic he-doth-protest-too-much aside “I’d rather be a dick than a swallower”

He saves his worst, however, for the best-constructed, most sonically gripping track on the disc. “Blood on the Leaves” uses the sparse, mournful tenor of the Billie Holiday popularized hymn “Strange Fruit” – a musing on lynching that painted a hellishly dark picture of “black bodies swinging in the southern breeze” – as a vessel to carry his First World grudges about alimony  (“Gold Digger” redux) and the unwillingness of “bitches” to let him put together a harem.

 Kanye’s musical radicalism is undeniable – and he’s to be commended for not merely pushing, but shredding the envelope on that front. But when you pare away the screaming synthesizers and pounding sequencers, the little man behind the curtain sounds suspiciously like a typical Tea Partier – all too ready to point fingers at those who are out to get him, and kick wildly at those on lower rungs of the ladder in order to make sure they stay in their place.

 In other words, Donald Trump, you may have a new golf buddy.

KARA'S TAKE
“Yeezus” is the latest and perhaps purest distillation of West, as the man can be thought-provoking and infuriating, capable of getting both reactions in the matter of consecutive lines.
The album is often hard and abrasive, recalling more spare electronic music and industrial alternative than anything else. Even at first listen, the challenge was apparent – where were the singles going to come from?
The answer to date is “nowhere.” The lead track, “Black Skinhead” only reached No. 69 on the Billboard chart and thus far, no second single.
“New Slaves” is a perfect example of the getting it right, then derailing it that pops up throughout the album.
It starts off as a critique of consumerism (which might strike some as rich given that West hasn’t exactly been a champion consumer restraint before, but I digress).
He finishes the first verse with “Used to only be niggas, now everybody playing/Spending everything on Alexander Wang/New Slaves.”
Could this be a new Kanye rethinking his..oh wait, there’s the hook line “You see there's leaders and there’s followers/But I'd rather be a dick than a swallower.”
Am I detecting a whiff of homophobia there? More than a whiff?
West makes an even stronger (and justified) statement going after the private prison complex, but instead of raging further at the unjust nature of that complex, he brags about taking the privateers’ women with the line – “I’ll fuck your Hampton spouse. Came on her Hampton blouse and in her Hampton mouth.”
Because, after all, what are women there for but Kanye’s sexual pleasure with a side order of revenge..and apparently derailing what he was trying to say about the prison system. And what better way to show he “ain’t a swallower” by coming in the mouth of some woman in the Hamptons? Yeezus is protesting way too much.
“Black Skinhead” is one of the album’s standout tracks, set to a tribal beat that you could almost drop the “Rock and Roll, Part Two” riff over. It’s full-on braggadocio with shots at racism. It’s a strong moment overall.
But Kanye can’t resist and undercuts later with “Blood on the Leaves,” a low point on the album.
It’s a bold move to start with a sample of Nina Simone’s version of “Strange Fruit,” one of the most heartbreaking songs ever written and one of the strongest about racism.
It’s a bad sign when West chooses to start his Autotuned mewling over Simone’s sample vocals. The effect is unwelcome, but once the words he’s tunelessly warbling sink in, it becomes like smearing the waste product of a hog operation over the most sublime meal.
It’s one of the strongest backing tracks on the album..but West opts to take a song and turn it into invective aimed at those evil women who are just after his money or wanting to crimp his or his buddies’ concubine-accumulating style.
Oh, and there’s the whole uneasy introduction of the woman telling her she loved him while under the influence of ecstasy, creating  blurred lines, if you will.
Even though he takes the drug with her in the next verse, it still comes off as extremely creepy and disturbing that he relies on the woman telling her she loved him when she was drugged up.
While a literal interpretation of the themes of “Strange Fruit” might have been obvious, the decision to use its sample to build a rant at groupies, twodels and gold diggers is a poor choice. Not as poor as Lil Wayne’s execrable “poppin’ pussy like Emmett Till” line from earlier in the year, but poor regardless.
“I Am a God” is another standout – claustrophobic, full of pounding (and not just from Kanye’s fists to his chest). It’s an arresting boast track, cut with a smidge of humor (most gods don’t whine for their croissants).
Then again, “I’m In It”, turns to the cringe-inducing side with its line about oral sex about Asian women that wouldn’t be out of place on THAT Day Above Ground song, not to mention the “put my fist through her like a civil rights sign” line that isn’t as clever or transgressive as West probably thinks it is.
Then there’s the part where he raps “Uh, you know I need that wet mouth/Uh, I know you need that reptile” in a single entendre, dexterity-free couplet that wouldn’t be out of place on an old AC/DC album (or a new AC/DC album, for that matter).
“Yeezus” is a fairly claustrophobic affair with its minimal sonics (reportedly a late-in-production decision by West), electronic and industrial noise and general aggro feel. It manages to be arresting much of the time, but the lyrical fumbles make the album feel less immersive than it should be and more like you’re being cornered at the bar by some guy talking about “all the bitches who’ve done me wrong” and about what a “badass” he is. It makes the album feel longer than its relatively short (for the modern CD era) 40-minute (and pretty much single-free) running time.
The ultimate frustration with West is that he seemingly lacks the self-awareness to truly wrestle with the darker demons of his nature or to edit what he’s trying to say. Rather than confront the challenges his ego presents, rather than look in the mirror at the misogyny, homophobia and other –isms he traffics in too easily, rather than look at anything in the world that doesn’t directly affect Kanye West -- he’s intent to lay it all spread out there and insist that it’s all “awesome truth and awesomeness - beauty, truth, awesomeness.”
No, no it isn’t. Some of it is ugly. Some of it is stagnation. By insisting that it’s all a strong statement, ultimately none of it is.
The “Yeezus” experience can leave one teeming with the frustration that West is so drunk on his sense of self-importance that he can’t always tell the difference between wheat and chaff or, more tellingly, that he doesn’t want to.
The result is that one is left being all too aware of West as one thing above all else – aggressive marketer of the Kanye brand.
A fair amount of the time, West gets out of his own way enough to produce product that succeeds as both product  and art anyway. This time, he couldn’t get out of the way and the result is an album that is frustratingly close to great, but so deeply flawed that it leaves one more exhausted than exhilarated. The album is one that not only is, at its best, easier to admire than enjoy, it is one that failed commercially to a degree that none of West’s albums have before. What could have been a career peak is, at the end of the day, an interesting misfire.

First Listen -- Neko Case, Travis, Lady Gaga

By Kara Tucker

Neko Case – “The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You”
The new album, Case’s sixth studio release plays like a greatest hits collection, both in its overall quality and in the way its tracks reflect various moments of her career.
The lead single, “Man” is a stunner, exploring gender politics (or perhaps even identity) over a propulsively hooky track that would have made for a killer contribution from her on any New Pornographers album. Oh, and  "I am the man in the fucking moon/ 'Cause you didn't know what a man was/Until I showed you” ranks as one of the better drop-the-mic-and-wipe-dust-off-the-shoulder lines.
“I’m From Nowhere” features Case’s gorgeously timeless voice in a reverb-soaked sound that recalls her earlier days, even if the song itself goes more into soulful classic pop than torch-and-twang.
“Local Girl” goes farther into classic girl group sound (bells, glockenspiel, etc.), tinged with twang.
“Bracing For Sunday”, a swaying mid-tempo number with horns wouldn’t have sounded out-of-place on 2009’s “Middle Cyclone” or, with a more spare arrangement, on her first couple albums.
“Nearly Midnight, Honolulu” goes spare, going a capella with a chorus of Case’s vocals multitracked.
The languid lovely “Calling Cards” would have fit nicely on “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.”
Case trots out a wonderful cover of Nico’s “Afraid.” It shows that more spare instrumentation  suits her just as well as more elaborate. It’s as gorgeously beautiful as anything she’s recorded.
Things get a little less straightforward at the end of that album. “Where Did I Leave That Fire” evokes different moods in 3:27, including the line “I wanted so badly not to be me. I saw my shadow looking lost, checking its pockets, looking for some lost receipt.”
Ragtime starts off like it’s going to be a  subdued guitar pop track, but manages to be inspiring and cacophonous at the end (as the song picks up even if not in clichéd fashion), as Case repeats the last lyrics of the album -- "I am one and the same / I am useful and strange.”
For its varied styles, the album remains cohesive, tied together by that voice and by Case’s sharp songwriting, where she’s capable of loveliness and cutting sarcasm, accessibility tempered by enough artsy touches to keep things interesting.
Case hasn’t released a bum album in her career. With the always engaging and often excellent “The Worse Things Get…”, she might just have put together one that tops “Fox Confessor” as her best yet.

Travis – “Where You Stand”
It’s the first album in five years for the Scottish band who, at various times in its career, represented a more polite Oasis minus the coke or, more often, a less overtly anthemic Coldplay (the latter’s Chris Martin referred to Travis as “the band that invented my band and lots of others.”)
The second album from Fran Healy, Andy Dunlop, Dougie Payne and Neil Primrose, 1999’s “The Man Who” represented the career peak with some top-notch songcraft. They had some high spots in the intervening years, but sometimes seemed too settled, too comfortable in its niche.
“Where You Stand” shows that Travis still isn’t back to the peak of its early years, at least it’s starting to round back into form.
It has a better combination of energy and hooks than it’s had in a while, even if it doesn’t…quite…reach..the old spark.
“Mother” is a catchy enough beginning, avoiding the bombast of pop acts like fun. and, well, Coldplay.
The album deviates from its immediate predecessors, fittingly, in the little details – the whistling on the intro to “Reminder”, the combination of almost-Portishead intro to “These New Shoes” or the way the latter gets into a slinky (and here’s a word not often associated with Travis) groove.
“On My Wall” is one of the album’s highlights, as punchy as they’ve sounded and years and in service of a good tune to boot. “Warning Sign” gets the head bopping. “A Different Room” shimmers in the way that Travis excels at in its best moments.
The album can’t quite sustain its momentum to the finish as “The Big Screen” sort of lays there looking pretty without sinking in or soaring. The preceding “Boxes” would have made a better choice of album closer, even if it doesn’t kick much up must dust, either.
Even if Travis isn’t a band that screams “Wow Factor” or “rocking out,” it’s not a band without its charms. “Where You Stand” manages to be pleasant without (for the most part) being bland.
It’s not “The Man Who”, but it’s worth checking out. It’s enough to make fans of the band or even people who remember their salad days to say, in response to what Healy sings in the chorus to “Mother” – “Yes. Why DID you wait so long.”

Single: Lady Gaga – “Applause”
The first single of Gaga’s third full length album had its official video release Monday.
As one would expect, it features numerous costume changes, a number of which feature toned down makeup. But don’t worry, she’s also seen wearing clam shells as a bikini and a leather hands bra. There’s the effect with multiple Gagas on the screen veers too close into Beyonce’s most narcissistic territory.
Actually, given the quick cuts and the massive array of outfits and looks, the whole effect screams “Look at me, I’m Lady Gaga” anyway.
Then again, Lady Gaga’s certainly been all about the fame from the beginning (what with the title of the first album and follow-up EP containing the word). So it’s no surprise to hear her repeat that she “lives for the applause.”
Rest assured, the video contains its usual dancing and over-the-top bits, too, none of which make sense other than to say, “Ooh, that looks cool, doesn’t it?!?!” The track works as a catchy enough dance tune even if the lyrics are have all the depth of an 8”-by-12” cake pan. It should be a hit, but Gaga has done better and, more to the point, one wishes she had tried a little harder than having top dollar spent on costumes, makeup and effects for a filmed version of a glossy fashion magazine slideshow. She’s always going to be glossy, but would it kill her to throw in a little more grit, a little twist, a little more depth? At this point, we’ve seen Lady Gaga. Catchy single or not (and it is catchy, make no mistake), it’s going to take her to do more than basically yelling, “Look at me!!!!” for a lot of people to keep looking at some point.

Gaslight Anthem/The Hold Steady, Pier 26, New York, July 28, 2013

By Kara Tucker

A matter of minutes.
That's all it took for what had been the best concert of the many I'd been to in almost 10 months of living in New York City to take an unfortunate turn.
These were two of my favorite new bands of the current millennium and it was my first chance to see each of them live.
There was The Hold Steady, ripping off a terrific opening set with songs ranging from their first album to songs off the record they're recording now.
Then came the Gaslight Anthem, similarly crossing the material from their four-album career, doing their last batch of shows in support of 2012's  "Handwritten."
Gaslight Anthem was in good form throughout the main set. The crowd, at least in our vicinity, was as joyous as I've seen a crowd be at a show here, even though they got soaked by rain.
That all changed when it came time for an encore.
Brian Fallon, the charismatic front man for the band, started if off with a little bit of banter and sing-along action. It worked well at the start, as a good number of folks kicked in with, yes, "Ice Ice Baby" off the cue.
The audience had also sung along when Fallon started the show with a bit of "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" as the crowd was getting soaked by a line of showers and storms moving through.
With the Vanilla Ice success, Fallon started with another sing-along attempt, "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga. Unlike the previous night at Irving Plaza, it didn't really take off.
Fallon's response, "Dude, that sucked. You want to try something else?"
Now, at this point, one could hear the odd voice yelling for "Bruce!.
He responded, "Please, dude. Yo, I tell you what. Those days have passed. If you're with me,  you're with me. If you don't like it, go see him (pointing across the Hudson to New Jersey). No disrespect, but seriously, get over it. That was MY awesome thing. Not yours."
A lone voice can be heard on a YouTube clip yelling for "Born to Run."
Fallon sarcastically responded, "Yeah, why don't we pull that out after what I just said. You gotta pay attention to what I'm saying. I'm not just talking up here to be an idiot."
The singer said, "We also did Bon Jovi's 'Livin on a Prayer.' You wanna do that?" which drew a mixed reaction from the crowd.
Fallon raised his left hand, extended his pointer finger out and said, "Or"
With that one word, opened the door for some in the audience, with a distinct dudebro accent, to start yelling, "Bruuuuuuuuce!"
Still, it was not a majority of the crowd yelling "Bruuuuuuuce!" Indeed, voices on the clip can be heard yelling things like "Johnny Cash!" and "American Idol!"
He ended the sing-along attempt (which had been a lead-in to a sing-along in the first encore song at Irving Plaza). He said, "You know what? Maybe we won't play anymore songs. Maybe I'll pull an Axl Rose. You wanna hear that? I'll go. You wanna hear that or you wanna listen to what I'm saying?"
His last words, with the first song starting -- "We're not going to do it. You ruined it."
That were the last words Fallon spoke to the band's audience. He had enough and was going to make sure the crowd felt it. It was that same once-joyous crowd, the majority of whom had not invoked the offensive-to-Fallon name of Bruce Springsteen at all Sunday night.
With that, the Gaslight Anthem became the Gaslight Perfunctory.  The happier crowd vibe was gone. Fallon clearly had an air of wanting to get it over with.
The band did its four encore songs, closing with, ironically enough, a cover (of The Who's "Baba O'Riley").
When that final song finished, Fallon, still clearly displeased, walked off the stage without the slightest acknowledgement to the crowd, not a word or a wave. Gone.
Now, for those not familiar, this was not like some idiot yelling "Freebird" (although I heard that and avoided temptation to go over and nudge said individual into the Hudson).
Springsteen's one of the band's biggest influences, quite obviously so on some of the songs on the band's breakout second album, "The '59 Sound" (down to a bit of lyric quoting).
To his credit, Fallon never denied that Springsteen was an influence. The band and The Boss would go on to have occasion to cross paths as well.
That said, four albums in with work on a fifth not too far away, it's understandable that the Gaslight Anthem would want to not be so tied to an image being "Springsteen acolytes" (or acolytes of any of its influences). Of course, being a Jersey band with THAT Jersey artist as an influence, it's not going to be 100 percent shakeable. You are going to get fans who, no natter what, are going to want some of that connection to be made more obvious.
In other words -- Gaslight Anthem, "Bruuuuuuuce!" is your "Freebird!"
This is not to say the band should placate such behavior. They're under no obligation to ever perform a Springsteen cover ever again for as long as they exist. That's not an issue.
The disappointment, however, is that Fallon let the behavior of a vocal minority of the audience affect the rest of his performance towards ALL of the audience. Perhaps he reached a breaking point, but the fact is that, on this night, he let the dudebros get to him.
The net result was a lingering bitter, acrid aftertaste that colored the perception of what had been a sweet experience up until then.
Fallon responded through social media, first posting a picture on Instagram with the words in type-written font.
"Tonight...
you have broken my heart.
7.28.13
nyc"
A post to the band's Tumblr page followed a few hours later.
Fallon's post is thoughtful and it becomes clear that tonight's dudebro-heavy chanters represented a breaking point for him. It's easy to see where he's coming from and agree with him on a lot of what he said.
That said, a couple of points.
First off, it's unfortunate that some people in the crowd didn't listen when Fallon told them a Bruce singalong wasn't happening. But it was certainly not everyone in the audience, Not even close. The majority of the crowd at that point had come to see what the Gaslight Anthem was doing that night. It was not there to see  Bruce or to hear covers.
Even if Fallon didn't intend it, it comes off as painting the entire crowd with the same brush.
While Fallon is correct that no fan "owns" their favorite bands or artists, the fact is that fans do have some degree of ownership. If they don't particularly care for what that band/artist is doing, they'll decide not to buy their music and/or attend their shows.
This is not to say an artist should continue to grow and improve, but the fact is that not every fan will stay along.
Almost anyone with a long career is going to have misfires -- Dylan had some doozies, Neil Young had most of the '80s, David Bowie had Tin Machine, REM had "Around the Sun."
Heck, Fallon's beloved Uma Thurman appeared in "Movie 43."
There's a difference between ownership and entitlement. Just because I cringed every time Rod Stewart put out ANOTHER "American Songbook" flogging didn't mean I was entitled to go to his shows and yell, "Play 'Miss Judy's Farm'!"
But on the other hand, there's a chance that if you're fortunate enough to have a long, successful career, you're probably going to hear requests from the crowd. It might be songs already on the setlist or songs you have no interest in playing. Some artists even put in requests into the set. Grace Potter's been known to accept submissions for upcoming shows to add to the setlist.
A reminder -- the guy asked questions like "Wanna do something else?"
The bottom line is that the artist is obligated to put out the best show possible and the fan at said show is obligated to not be rude to other concertgoers or the band. Ideally, said artist won't take it out on all fans in attendance because of the actions of one or a minority.
Barring some sort of horrific tours into the world of Autotune or dubstep, it's hard to envision the next Gaslight record being some overwhelming departure. The band has already been growing past the overt influences on display five years ago.
I hope to be in attendance when the band plays in support of its next album, but now, as Fallon said, it's a gamble.
Now, I don't know if I'll get the very good-to-borderline transcendent band I saw during the main set or if I'll get a band whose frontman gets pissed off because somebody yells "Bruuuuuce!" earlier in the set and the show takes a nosedive in quality as a result.
It was always going to be a gamble, but it now feels like a little less of a sure bet than it should be. And that's a shame. Because it shouldn't have been that way.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

By Kara Tucker

Picture this.
You're Brad Paisley. You have had a long, successful career with both critical and commercial acclaim. You recently turned 40, what better time to try to stretch your boundaries a bit?
After all, you're a skilled songwriter and guitarist, so why not attempt some new things, maybe deal with tougher topics.
You wore a T-shirt of one of your favorite bands, Alabama, and got called a racist on Twitter for it, because the shirt that depicted a Confederate battle flag.
You think "Am I a racist? Is that all it takes?"
Somewhere along the line, the term "post-racial" came out, a laughable term, definitely a premature one.
To this day, there exists racial distrust, not just in the South either, mind you. Granted, that part of the country has a portion of its citizenry that makes it an easy target, but there are racists as vile as any one else in the blue states and thoughtful, decent, intelligent human beings in the red.
Where to go if you're a Southern songwriter, though? Scratch that, a Southern white songwriter. Scratch that again, a Southern white male country songwriter.
How do you address pride in where you come from (Paisley's from West Virginia) while addressing that the part of that pride, if not yours specifically, comes from a dark part of this country's history.
That's where that flag imagery comes in. While it may have morphed in some people's minds to a version of regional pride, it is still very loaded imagery because it represents a pride at the expense of other people. Literally.
It was the symbol of those in the states who fought for the right to keep owning other people as slaves, as property. It continued to be used after the Civil War, through reconstruction into Jim Crow, into the defiance against civil rights for African-Americans in this country.
Try as they might, the apologists for it could never change the fact that most people see the Confederate imagery as an expression of white supremacist attitudes, of the United Confederate States.
Which brings us back to Paisley. He decided to tackle a post-racial America that's not post-racial at all. He's capable of nuance, even facing up to this impossible task. In reality, there's pretty much no way to tackle a topic with so many angles and centuries of history behind it in one song. A whole album? Maybe you get closer, but no way in one song.
Still, Paisley was more than capable of avoiding the trip that ensnares some songwriters, whose expression of Southern pride comes across as little more than unapologetic jingoistic buffoonery or bumper sticker level sloganeering.
He came up with a song with help from LL Cool J, who has managed career longevity in the hip hop field, no small feat for those of his generation even as his music career has taken more of a back seat to his acting in recent years.
The result of Paisley's endeavors with LL is "Accidental Racist", a song off his just-released album "Wheelhouse."
The moment the track hit the internet Monday, a rather substantial negative response quickly ensued. We've seen some quick negative feedback for others (as with the leak of Beyonce's egofest "Bow Down.") lately, but not at the level of reaction this track received.
Is the negativity deserved? The honest answer to that is that, yes, a fair amount of it is. The track ultimately falls apart as a well-intentioned failure.
Lets start with the music itself. The track feels like a Kid Rock 45 played at 33 speed at times. It fails to dig deep with a real hook in any real fashion. The whole thing comes off slick and rather lifeless, especially with the muffled "Sweet Home Alabama" snippet that kicks off the track. Not a good sign to remind folks of a far superior song.
That is a forgivable offense though, in comparison to what happens with the lyrics.
The sad part is that, even there, Paisley has occasional moments that hint at what could have been. At one point, he sings, "We're still picking up the pieces/Walking over eggshells/Fighting over yesterday/And caught between Southern pride and Southern blame."
Stating the situation, that's good. Paisley's character in the song goes on to talk about putting himself into the shoes of the black man working at Starbucks who took offense to his Skynyrd shirt with the flag logo.
Again, a willingness to see the issue through the other person's eyes. Considering the issue gets ignored altogether too often, this is promising?
Where does it go wrong? Hoo boy.
To start with, Paisley's getting a lot of blame because the track is his idea and it's on his album, but LL Cool J's contributions are highly problematic at best.Now, one could make the point that LL is not anyone's first choice to drop a socially conscious rhyme. He doesn't have the track record of Mos Def,Common, KRS-One, Chuck D and others in that department. But, he is skilled and savvy enough that he should have been up to the task, right? Sadly, no. No he wasn't.
The worst might be the jaw-dropping false equivalencies that he shouts out as the song plays out.
"If you forget my cold chains/I'll forget the iron chains.", he says. Because, you know, Mr. Smith's bling is just as scary as shackles used to make sure that people were kept as property.
Seriously, forget about the laziness of rhyming "chains" with "chains" and think about it. Did LL really mean to equate racists with people who hate racism?  Because that's exactly what that lyric does.
That howler comes on the heels of "If you won't judge my do-rag, I won't judge your red flag" Translation: "If you don't complain about my fashion choice, I won't complain about you wearing a long-standing symbol of white supremacy." Again. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
It's enough to make one long for the mind-numbingly simplistic "Side by side on piano keyboard/Oh, Lord, why don't we" that Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney gave us.
Not that Paisley escapes blameless on the lyrical front. He sings, "Our generation didn't start this nation/And we're still paying for the mistakes/That a bunch of folks made/Long before we came."
Somehow I doubt that Mr. Paisley, suddenly forgetting to check his privilege, is personally paying for the mistakes of his ancestors that much. Wait. Did he say "mistakes"?!?!?!?
Losing your car keys is a mistake. Using salt instead of sugar when making a cake from scratch is a mistake.  Years of slavery and the years of racism, institutional and otherwise, that followed is a little more than a "mistake." Jim Crow deserves a little more than an "oops, our bad."
Granted, most of those who truly had to answer for such things are dead, but their deeds need greater heft from a word than "mistakes."
While the song sprang from real life, it still seems odd when Paisley acts unaware that the shirt he wears in the lyrical story (with Skynyrd subbing for Alabama) contains loaded imagery. ("What? Black people don't like the Confederate flag? Who knew?").  He's old enough to remember the fights that have gone on in our lifetimes to take down Confederate flags that flew in front of some state capitols.
Or maybe he's unaware of the irony of a West Virginian wearing Confederate imagery, but I digress.
With the sometimes awful, cringe-inducing turns this song takes, the biggest disappointment is that as well-intentioned, as open-minded as Paisley seems to be, he and LL try to wrap things up too neatly.
Even in 2013, almost 150 years after the Civil War ended, things aren't anywhere wrapped up or "post-racial" in this country. Even with all the progress, things are much trickier, thornier and open-ended than this song seems to suggest.
Yes, it would be nice if more folks would buy each other beers (or some other beverage), converse and start clearing the air, but that's going to take a lot more time, many more conversations and a heck of a lot more beverages.
The net result feels more like an excuse for absolution of white guilt than it was intended to. Hell, the first line of LL's rap is "Dear Mr. White Man,"
As the song runs through its home stretch, Paisley hints at the business unfinished, singing lines about trying to understand and wanting to make things right. But then LL Cool J comes back with lines like "Let bygones be bygones" and "The past is past, you feel me."
Actually, no, I'm not feeling you and neither are a lot of other people.
This song will go down as a punchline, a Chris Gaines-level career misfire. That's unfortunate, because the subject matter has many serious topics worthy of musical exploration. It just deserves better than the ham-fisted earnestness (at best) and clueless to its own offensiveness (at worst) on display here.
It's also a topic that shouldn't require "bravery" to take on. It shouldn't be seen as "radical" or "having cojones."
Brad Paisley does deserve credit for trying, but his own internal sense of quality control should have kicked in well before this saw the light of day. Hopefully more artists take on the challenge, including Paisley.
In the meantime, back to the drawing board.
And that's what's real and what's truth.