This might be the strangest piece of graffiti that I have ever seen. I understand the idea behind graffiti. You get to show your artistic abilities in an urban environment, engage in self-promotion and stick it to the man by defacing helpless walls. But this one is pretty stunning. Now there is the possibility that Tom Cruise himself did this and this is his tagging style, which would be rather low key and refined. If not, then I am at a loss as to what this means. If it said “Rulez” or “Suks” afterwards then it would at least be a critique. Here it is just a statement. Maybe it is a part of some urban marketing campaign to raise overall Tom Cruise awareness to new heights. Or maybe some guy just thinks that Far and Away is a really, really great movie and wants us all to bask in the majesty that is the words “Tom Cruise”.
My fun Ticketmaster comment for the night. In a case of target marketing gone berserk over the course of twenty four hours last week I received emails informing me that I was eligible to pre-order tickets to two concerts. One was for Morrissey because you can’t keep me away from concerts by Englishmen who have been depressed for twenty years. The other was for Social Distortion. I am really, really trying to figure out how I got on both lists and whether I am the only person on the planet who is equally likely to be in the pit at a Social D show as he is to wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside at a Morrissey show. I’m pretty sure I’ve broken whatever algorithm they are using as a part of their recommendation engine.
So I was at another concert tonight, this time to see Jack Ingram. Night started out the way a lot of my nights have recently with an abysmal opening act. That’s not quite fair on my part. The guy had talent and since it was a country show I should have expected country music but I do expect opening acts to sing their own songs. Not “Here’s a Travis Tritt cover, here’s a Brooks and Dunn cover, here’s a Big and Rich song” until I start banging my head against a wall because it is more pleasurable than listening to any of those bands. That’s the problem with lounging in the alt-country gutter, occasionally I find myself forced to listed to mainstream country and it is just god awful. Also, I just have an issue with people wearing cowboy hats in a non-ironic manner. Unless for some reason there has been a cattle stampede in the past few weeks there really is no reason for anyone to wear a cowboy hat in this town and consider a good look in anything but a retro hipster manner.
Anyway, Jack performed better than expected and I was only tempted to yell “Sell out” and “Traitor” once during the show. I’ll have to explain this. I first saw Jack back in 1999 when he opened for Kelly Willis. I’ve seen Jack play when there were maybe thirty of us in the crowd. He’s a talented musician and songwriter and I’ve talked to him after shows and he is a nice guy who really appreciates his crowd. Well, a year or two ago he cashed in his Nashville card and got on Toby Keith’s label and was able to have a number one hit. This means that he is now popular and playing bigger venues and opening for people like Sheryl Crow and Brad Paisley and making people like me wonder “What the hell just happened?”
It’s not that I fault the guy’s success because he sure has hell earned it. It’s just that by making that leap he lost some of what made him special. I’ll give him credit because even in a bigger venue his show was similar to when I’ve seen him in the past. He played a lot of his great old songs and his new material is pretty good. It’s poppy and has a Nashville sound but that sells discs. What kills me is that on his new disc (which he even said sold more copies last week than Electric sold in five years) he covers Hinder’s “Lips of an Angel” and uses it as his first single. I don’t care how he tries to push the idea that he thought it would sound good as a country song. Nothing Hinder does will sound good in any format. They are just a horrible excuse for a rock band. And covering them seems like such a sell out move.
That and the dancing girls who came on stage at one point. Actually, I doubt those were Jack’s. They were probably supplied by the record station promoting the show. While I certainly have no problem with scantily clad women dancing in front of me there is a hell of a lot of unintentional comedy watching them dance to a song called “Barbie Doll”. A song which has the lyric, “She’s really good looking but she’s got no heart at all.” It was a very meta moment. Still, he has remained the same appreciative, nice guy and while I’m stunned that someone I like has actually become popular it’s nice to know that it hasn’t changed him.
And as long as he closes his shows with Goodnight Moon I’ll always leave happy.
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