(I’ve decided to try to make the blog a bit more multimedia intensive. Natalie is a little more adept at posting images than Julie was and I’m close to figuring out how to embed YouTube clips into my posts. Not sure if any of this will turn out to be beneficial but I’m hoping that pretty pictures distract people from my writing.)
Over the weekend I learned something that totally bums me out and will potentially ruin the concert I’ve been looking forward to for months. The news is that the lovely and talented Lisa Hannigan (pictured above) has left Damien Rice’s band. Or, as the official press release stated, “Their creative partnership had run its course.” Or, translated from press release speak, “They got into a screaming match that had been brewing for months and she either quit or was fired.” In the music industry, creative differences indicates that blunt objects were being thrown.
Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me because it was always strange to see that everything was recorded as Damien Rice when Lisa sang lead on a number of tracks. The opening track on his new album begins with Lisa singing the entire first verse. That, and the fact that labels were desperately trying to sign her, had to add a lot of tension to the band. And it had to be a pretty rough ending given that the story I read is that she did the sound check in Berlin in the afternoon and was out of the band before the set began that evening.
Of course, what bums me out is that I have tickets to see Damien in a few weeks and my goal was to be next to the stage and standing right in front of Lisa with the hope of her looking down, seeing me and going, “You know, I really should marry that guy.” (Yes, that’s how my brain works.) It should still be a good show but a huge element is going to be missing. I don’t even know how he’ll do some of the songs. I’ve heard a version of “I Remember” without Lisa’s vocals and while it is nice it definitely doesn’t have the incredible power of the original version. I guess I’ll find out when I see the show where I’ll be hanging out by the soundboard.
I did just come back from seeing Guster tonight in Lawrence. Not only was I one of the oldest people at this show but I was getting a contact buzz off of the magic marker fumes from all the hands they had to mark. While it is nice that it makes the line to get beer a lot shorter I really don’t like feeling that I am one step away from being on Dateline NBC when all I want to do is catch a band. The more that I think about it, the rule of “Half your age plus seven” as the acceptable floor for who you should even be looking at seems to be incredibly accurate.
The other thing is that this was part of Guster’s “Campus Consciousness Tour.” Which means that not only did I have to deal with slightly more hippies than usual I was also chastised for not living a carbon neutral lifestyle. There’s a lot of things that I am in life and that is not one of them. Chaotic neutral yes, carbon neutral not so much. I do want to help out the environment, just don’t state that the fact that I drove an hour to see your show was a horrible decision before the band even plays. Though after seeing the opening act I definitely was thinking that. There is a fine line between a passionate lead singer and a total douche bag and he was treading on the douchery side of the line. Also, twenty year olds shouldn’t be emulating Mick Jagger. Mick Jagger shouldn’t even bother emulating Mick Jagger anymore.
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