Voting with Vedder
It's my first shot at blogging via an WebTV connection (from the Westin at Detroit's airport), but I'll give it a go.
Saturday afernoon found me bound for lovely Toledo to catch a leg of the Pearl Jam/Death Cab for Cutie run of the Vote for Change tours. (Can't make hyperlinks with WebTV. Sucks to be me.)
Toledo's sports arena is a venue with all the charm and elegance you'd expect from a mid-70s structure in a rust-belt town.
The crowd is 99% white, 90% under 30, 100% Kerry. (I do my best to suss out a single Republican, but come up short.) This is a blue-collar crew, girls with bad bleach jobs and guys in pants that are fixed-income poor instead of frat-boy faux faded. They paid fifty bucks for these tickets, and some of them will be borrowing gas money before the month is out. Everyone I interview swears that they are already registered to vote with the exception of a Jehovah's Witness kid from Indianapolis who says voting is against his religion.
Vedder comes out first for an acoustic version of Steven van Zandt's "I'm A Patriot," before announcing that "in accordance with the Fairness Doctrine," he's giving equal time to the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Bob Roberts. The crowd erupts in boos as "Senator Roberts" is wheelchaired onstage, draped in an American flag anthem. "Here's a song for all you liberal freaks," he yells as the kids shout him down. Two songs later he's out of the chair and rocking out in ripped jeans, dedicating "Drugs Stink" to Rush Limbaugh and roaring through "Masters of War." It's all well and good, except that there are no video screens, so more than half the crowd doesn't recognize Tim Robbins. Those that do are too young to remember "Bob Roberts," which was a small film to begin with. The concept: great. The execution: eh.
Death Cab for Cutie's publicist tells me the band is the next U2. I don't think so, but when they cover a Psych Furs tune I realize that there are worse directions for a band to go in. The crowd's reception is lackluster except for spirited applause whenever the band mentions that Pearl Jam will be on soon.
The headliners come on strong, making me wish I hadn't forgotten the earplugs the nice people from ASCAP give out at SXSW. This is definitely an evening for music. Vedder's politcal speechifying--statistics on job loss in Ohio over the last four years and an exhortation to vote, "For you. For me. For the soldiers."--is much shorter than the guitar solo on "Even Flow." For a band as overtly politcal as Pearl Jam, this comes as a surprise.
Even when Neil Young comes out - which brings down the house - he doesn't have much to say. I've never known Neil Young to miss an opportunity to pontificate about any subject, so this stuns me. I'm woefully unaware of his music and have to ask the journo next to me (fellow Mizzou mafia Gary Graff) to ID the songs. "That's 'Cortez the Killer'" he offers kindly. God looks out for fools and freelancers, and I survive both the rest of the Neilfest and the drive back to Detroit. More later.
Saturday afernoon found me bound for lovely Toledo to catch a leg of the Pearl Jam/Death Cab for Cutie run of the Vote for Change tours. (Can't make hyperlinks with WebTV. Sucks to be me.)
Toledo's sports arena is a venue with all the charm and elegance you'd expect from a mid-70s structure in a rust-belt town.
The crowd is 99% white, 90% under 30, 100% Kerry. (I do my best to suss out a single Republican, but come up short.) This is a blue-collar crew, girls with bad bleach jobs and guys in pants that are fixed-income poor instead of frat-boy faux faded. They paid fifty bucks for these tickets, and some of them will be borrowing gas money before the month is out. Everyone I interview swears that they are already registered to vote with the exception of a Jehovah's Witness kid from Indianapolis who says voting is against his religion.
Vedder comes out first for an acoustic version of Steven van Zandt's "I'm A Patriot," before announcing that "in accordance with the Fairness Doctrine," he's giving equal time to the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Bob Roberts. The crowd erupts in boos as "Senator Roberts" is wheelchaired onstage, draped in an American flag anthem. "Here's a song for all you liberal freaks," he yells as the kids shout him down. Two songs later he's out of the chair and rocking out in ripped jeans, dedicating "Drugs Stink" to Rush Limbaugh and roaring through "Masters of War." It's all well and good, except that there are no video screens, so more than half the crowd doesn't recognize Tim Robbins. Those that do are too young to remember "Bob Roberts," which was a small film to begin with. The concept: great. The execution: eh.
Death Cab for Cutie's publicist tells me the band is the next U2. I don't think so, but when they cover a Psych Furs tune I realize that there are worse directions for a band to go in. The crowd's reception is lackluster except for spirited applause whenever the band mentions that Pearl Jam will be on soon.
The headliners come on strong, making me wish I hadn't forgotten the earplugs the nice people from ASCAP give out at SXSW. This is definitely an evening for music. Vedder's politcal speechifying--statistics on job loss in Ohio over the last four years and an exhortation to vote, "For you. For me. For the soldiers."--is much shorter than the guitar solo on "Even Flow." For a band as overtly politcal as Pearl Jam, this comes as a surprise.
Even when Neil Young comes out - which brings down the house - he doesn't have much to say. I've never known Neil Young to miss an opportunity to pontificate about any subject, so this stuns me. I'm woefully unaware of his music and have to ask the journo next to me (fellow Mizzou mafia Gary Graff) to ID the songs. "That's 'Cortez the Killer'" he offers kindly. God looks out for fools and freelancers, and I survive both the rest of the Neilfest and the drive back to Detroit. More later.
posted by Cyn at 4:16 AM
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