Same Old Song

Last night I was given tickets to a James Blunt concert at Radio City Music Hall. Who was I to say no? I love free stuff and I wanted to see this guy. What I know about James Blunt : 1) His song is overplayed 2) His other song is dangerously close to becoming overplayed 3) He was a soldier in the British Army 4) His girlfriend is a supermodel named Petra Nemka-Something who I never heard of until the Tsunami, and 5) Oprah loves this guy.

He was good, in an "acoustic guitar guy you could have gone out with in college, but would never admit to" kind of way. Regardless, he was trying to work it big-time. One guy and a guitar aren't enough to fill that huge space. He kept asking the crowd to stand up, but it's really hard to rock out to "You're Beautiful". And the jokes about getting the crowd to take off their clothes so he could "have something to look at" came off as creepy rather than cheeky. (I mean, really. You're already dating a supermodel. How much do you need at this point?) When he played his one song everyone knew, there was a huge screen that played a video of him swimming shirtless with supermodel mermaids. It looked like a Vogue inspired homage to the movie Splash. Odd. Pasty white Brits shouldn't make those kind of creative decisions. I don't know if you can be a British solo act anymore. It seems like those people do better in groups.

See, I love seeing concerts at Radio City because for reasons unknown to me, people aren't going ass-crazy, jumping up and down, and yelling woo-hoo after every sentence the artist mutters. The only part that has gotten funny to me is the obligatory speech every musician makes 2 or 3 songs into the set that goes something along the lines of, "Wow! This is a dream come true. I'm playing Radio City Music Hall. Hello New York! Woo-Hoo....." Okay dude, I get it. You are excited. We are all excited. Let's keep it going. I have work in 10 hours.

When I lived in some of the worst places this country has to offer I could tell nobody was ever excited to play my high school sports lovin', K Mart shopping, Hardee's eating town. In my mind, I imagined the artists playing had gotten stoned out of their mind at some Hollywood fancy pants music producer's home and lost a bet or were dealt a bad hand of poker and the only way they could get out of it was playing this shit gig. It always felt forced on the part of the musicians and I would feel sorry for them. I feel bad for people in Mud Lick, Kentucky that have to hear a defeated Billy Ray Cyrus slur his way through an Achey-Breaky Heart remix and say, "This is a dream come true! I'm in my home state playing Mud Lick!", because they all know he would much rather be at a place like Radio City...Woo-Hoo!